One of the world's best-known strategists on the game of checkers passed away in November. Richard Fortman was Illinois state champion six times, and in the 1970s and 1980s published a seven-volume ha... more

The Christmas Nativity scenes in northeast Spain's Catalonia region have, for three centuries, featured not only Mary and the Three Wise Men but the ubiquitous "caganer" icon, always portrayed with pa... more

Change Oregonians Believe In: The voters of Sodaville (pop. 290) elected Thomas Brady Harrington, 33, mayor in November, notwithstanding his criminal rap sheet showing robbery, eluding a police office... more

The Brazilian designer Lucia Lorio introduced women's lingerie in October containing a global positioning device to enable the wearer to be tracked by satellite. The creator said the password-protecte... more

When a four-bedroom house inhabited by 50 tenants partially collapsed in October in Honolulu, at least 10 of the residents said they had been pressured to let the property manager give them experiment... more

Dutch designer Eric Klarenbeek, 29, has developed jewelry consisting of tiny crystals or flowers that hang directly from the eye via micro-thin medical wire attached to either prescription or blank co... more

Recent research in the Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy sheds light on the thorny social issue of why females continue to earn less money than males, even in similar jobs. Competing hypotheses ... more

Donna and Joel Brinkle of Deltona, Fla., raised a family and held respectable jobs until, in the 1990s, they declared themselves a sovereign nation and stopped paying taxes. Subsequently, the county t... more

Legendary banjo player Eddie Adcock, age 70 and suffering hand tremors that failed to respond to medication, volunteered for a revolutionary neurosurgery in August in which he finger-picked tunes whil... more

CORRECTION: Two weeks ago, News of the Weird mentioned a story from the Ocala (Fla.) Star-Banner that accused school board candidate Bernard LeCorn of not having college degrees from the institutions ... more

The world's most extensive array of animal "rights" took effect in Switzerland in September. Dog owners must take, at their own expense, classes in pet care (and anglers must take a class in humane tr... more

The ashram-museum in Ahmedabad devoted to India's highly revered icon of freedom Mahatma Gandhi recently re-installed a replica of the spiritual leader's personal toilet, in that Gandhi's own hygiene-... more

Angela Pusateri, 79, may be unconventional, but, according to Jenna, 13, "She really is a cool grandmother." The Hallandale Beach, Fla., woman is a rap-music singer with a new CD ("Who's Your Granny?"... more

Deja Vu: The two states whose electoral votes decided the presidential races in 2000 (Florida) and 2004 (Ohio) are provoking anxiety this time around, also. In Palm Beach County, Fla. (home of the "bu... more

Italian and U.K. legal authorities have recently discarded rule interpretations based on embarrassingly anachronistic stereotypes of women. In July, Italy's Court of Cassation reversed a 1999 ruling c... more

The Other "Fight Clubs" Are for Sissies: At the August Dog Brothers "Gathering of the Pack" in Southern California, it was "(A)nything goes," according to one warrior (looking to fight with "blunted k... more

"What was once a gentleman's hobby among a few dozen enthusiasts at the turn of the 20th century," wrote The New York Times in July, "has evolved into a multimillion-dollar industry," namely, collecti... more

Great Moments in Capital Punishment: Prosecutors in Portland, Ore., took the death penalty off the table for Tremayne Durham in July, accepting a minimum-30-year prison term for an "aggravated murder"... more

Martha Padgett gave birth to quadruplets in Riverside, Calif., in July, but she only did half the work. The other two babies were born to her partner, Karen Wesolowski, using Padgett's eggs and the sa... more

Brother Cesare Bonizzi, 62, of a Capuchin Friars monastery near Milan, Italy, is the lead singer in a heavy-metal band that recently released its second album, "Misteri" ("Mysteries"), following a suc... more

Among President Sarkozy's recent moves to trim the size of the French government was the layoff of half of the 165 physiotherapists at the taxpayer-funded National Baths of Aix-les-Bains. The pink-sli... more

The European Union allows fruits and vegetables to be sold only in prescribed sizes and colors (such as its 35 pages of regulations governing 250 varieties of the apple, or rules that cucumbers must b... more

While Iran's leaders saber-rattle and quote the Quran, the country's multitudes of young adults are embracing New Age self-help, as exemplified by the best-selling books and sold-out seminars of motiv... more

After languishing for two years in the Irish legislature, the Nuclear Test Ban Bill of 2006 has recently been rethought and refurbished, according to a June report in the Irish Independent. Originally... more

China continues to prepare for the Olympics: Officials have issued a standard chanting routine that all Chinese spectators should employ during competitions (translated as "Olympics! Add fuel!" with t... more

Faced with its Alzheimer's residents' tendency to wander away, the Benrath Senior Centre in Dusseldorf, Germany, came up with a novel approach: a fake bus stop (an exact replica of a real one) out fro... more

A prominent chef once wrote, "If you're going to kill the animal, it seems only polite to use the whole thing," and recently restaurants specializing in such "nose-to-tail" cuisine have opened in seve... more

Leading Economic Indicator: Rising prices of synthetic fertilizers and organic foods have intensified the collection of bird droppings on 20 climatically ideal islands off the coast of Peru where 12-i... more