xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

It's a bank robber's dilemma: He needs to put on his mask soon enough so no one can see his face, but not too soon. In unrelated attempted bank robberies in Hampstead, N.C. (Carolina First Bank, September), and Versailles, Ill. (Farmers State Bank, June), alert employees merely walked over and locked the doors when they spotted men approaching the banks wearing, respectively, a ski mask and a face-covering stocking. The police were quickly called in both cases, and suspects were in custody minutes later.

Two more cases made the news recently in which a government agency (Washington State Department of Employment Security) and a hospital (Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y.) mailed out invoices (using 37 cents postage) to collect payments due, respectively, of 5 cents and 1 cent. Sandi Bryan in East Wenatchee, Wash., had been overpaid on her unemployment compensation claim from six years ago and was billed for a nickel, and Gloria Benavides-Lal had paid a bill of $1,109.72 last year, but the hospital said she owed $1,109.73.

Three of these four things really happened, just recently. Are you cynical enough to figure out the made-up story?

(a) A Canadian province's human rights commission ruled that adolescent girls and boys playing on the same hockey team can't be segregated into separate locker rooms.

(b) A man in Montreal applied for a marketing job by handing a receptionist his resume inside an Arabic newspaper inside a package with a ticking clock.

(c) A public library in Denver revoked meeting-room privileges for a group whose members made library patrons nervous because they wore aluminum-foil caps in meetings.

(d) A hospital in Shanghai, China, reported a 400 percent increase this year in men getting breast (pectoral) implants.
Answer: C is false.
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or Weird@compuserve.com
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd

NEWS OF THE WEIRD