Archives

Great Art! At press time, two major pieces of art at galleries in London and New York City were basically holes in the floors of the buildings, yet were the subjects of glowing reviews. Doris Salcedo'... more

Small-Town Mayors: (1) Mayor Ken Williams resigned in Centerton, Ark. (pop. 2,146), in November and revealed that he is actually Don LaRose, an Indiana preacher who abruptly abandoned his family in 19... more

Software engineers told Fortune magazine in November that they are constructing a filter to eliminate stupid messages to online forums and bulletin boards. Lead researcher Gabriel Ortiz said his team ... more

The Modern Mother: Style- and environment-conscious Canadian mothers insist on cloth diapers, especially designer labels of flannel, fleece or wool-knit, according to a November report in Toronto's Gl... more

As an alternative to burial, cremation is no longer green enough, say environmentalists, because it releases smoke and mercury, and thus the industry is considering "promession," in which the body is ... more

Update: The man noted in News of the Weird in 1996 for keeping an almost unbelievably detailed personal diary died in October at age 89. For 25 years, Rev. Robert Shields of Dayton, Wash., had chronic... more

Terrye Cheathem, a criminal defense lawyer and adviser to the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, has developed a line of greeting cards for a Hallmark-ignored demographic: the recently incarcerated. Am... more

Crime-fearing female pedestrians in Tokyo can soon protect themselves with fashion designer Aya Tsukioka's skirt that opens into a realistic-looking (except made of fabric), full-size vending machine ... more

Junior New York City hedge fund trader Andrew Tong charged in October that his boss forced him to take female hormones to dampen his aggressiveness, which the supervisor said was leading him to make b... more

In the northern Albanian countryside, about 40 women still practice an ancient tradition as "sworn virgins," who are young females who renounce sex forever in exchange for being treated as men, accord... more

In September, prominent California cardiologist Maurice Buchbinder had his privileges revoked at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla after he allegedly roughed up an unruly angioplasty patient durin... more

Ralph Whittington, 57, retired in 2000 as curator of the main reading room at the Library of Congress, but was better known as the "King of Porn" for his private collection that he recently sold (500 ... more

In August, a Roman Catholic bishop in the Netherlands, Martinus Muskens, suggested that Christians start referring to God as "Allah" as a way of relieving world tensions. "Allah is a very beautiful wo... more

The periodic Christian Nudist Convocation took place in July at the Cherokee Lodge nudist camp in Tennessee, and according to a dispatch in Nashville Scene, the group evokes skepticism not only from m... more

Brian Blair, now a county commissioner in Tampa, Fla., asserted in a 2002 lawsuit that he had been forced into retirement from his previous career as a professional wrestler after he tripped over a tr... more

Until a July Florida appeals court ruling, Mark O'Hara, 45, had been in prison for two years of a 25-year mandatory-minimum for trafficking in hydrocodone, based solely on the 58 tablets found in his ... more

Ric Hoogestraat is married to Sue and works at a call center in the Phoenix area but spends 30-plus hours a week inside the online Second Life video game, pretending that he is the digitally drawn Dut... more

East Dublin, Ga. (in July), and Athens, Texas (in August), sponsored their own versions of Redneck Games, with events such as mud-pit belly-flopping, seed-spitting and making armpit music (Georgia), a... more

Kyle Krichbaum, 12, of Adrian, Mich., has had an obsession with vacuum cleaners since infancy, when he was mesmerized by the whirring, said his mother, and for years, he says, he has enjoyed vacuuming... more

Australian Jeffrey Lee is the last surviving member of the clan that controls the Koongarra uranium deposit near Kakadu National Park (east of Darwin), and federal law requires his permission for the ... more

A New Delhi, India, glaciologist said in June that global warming in the Himalayas is at least partly responsible for the melting of the stalagmite in the Amarnath cave in Kashmir, which is one of Hin... more

Some parents feel "unprecedented levels of angst" to pick cool enough names for their kids, with some even hiring consultants, according to a June Wall Street Journal report. Baby-book authors charge ... more

It is increasingly difficult these days for a girl to go through the stage of "plain old kid," according to a June Arizona Republic story, because clothing fashions seem to move from "toddler" directl... more

Africa's largely primitive Hadzabe people, down to their last 1,500 members after surviving thousands of years of disease, famine and encroaching civilization, fear their final blow will be the recent... more

Popular Science's "10 Worst Jobs in Science" this year (July issue) included the divers who scrub the walls of pits of sewage, toxins and nuclear waste; the elephant vasectomist (wielding a 4-foot-lon... more

After several reports of grizzly bears intimidating people near Alaska's Russian River, the state Department of Fish and Game recently gave several usual-suspect bears makeovers, using ordinary hair d... more

The relatively recent creation of almost-obscene wealth has precipitated a crisis in Britain and New York City because the resulting demand for professional butlers far exceeds the supply. Longstandin... more

People can develop intimate, romantic relationships with objects (beyond mere fetishism, which produces only short-term arousal), according to one of Germany's most renowned sexologists, Volkmar Sigus... more