FT264

WOMEN CAUSE EARTHQUAKES
In a televised sermon on 16 April, an Iranian cleric has blamed women who wear revealing clothing for earthquakes. Hojatoleslam Kazem Sediqi (or Sedighi), the acting Friday prayer leader in Tehran, explained: “Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes.” Tens of thousands have died in Iranian quakes in the last decade. BBC News, 20 April; Metro, 27 April 2010.

PIRATE’S SKULL STOLEN
The skull of notorious Baltic pirate Klaus Stortebeker, beheaded in 1401, was stolen from a Hamburg museum last January. It disappeared for a few centuries but re-emerged in 1878 during excavations to expand Hamburg harbour. Its age was confirmed in 1999. Stortebeker is regarded as a sort of Robin Hood because he robbed the rich merchant ships of the Hanseatic League, although there is no evidence that he redistributed his booty. The Australian, 24 Feb 2010.

FAIRY TROUBLE
A builder was forced to redesign a luxury housing estate in St Fillans, Perthshire, around a rock, because locals said fairies lived under it, and would be “upset” if it were moved. Marcus Salter of Genesis Properties estimated the modification cost at £15,000. The estate is now built around a small park with the ‘fairy’ rock in the middle. D.Record, 22 Feb 2010.

LIVING IN HOPE
A church in Nakuru, western Kenya, was refusing to bury two pastors killed in a road accident in the belief that they would rise from the dead. “They are just sleeping,” a church member said of Patrick Wanjohi and Francis Ndekei. [AFP] 24 Feb 2010.

NOT ENLIGHTENED
Jobless hairdresser Patrick Baecker, 35, was jailed for eight months in Fehmarn, Germany, after claiming he could cure a blind man by feeding him gherkins laced with LSD. Baecker told Axel Pfeffer he would make him see for £20,000. “You are a hairdresser, not a shaman,” said Judge Markus Faerber. Metro, 25 Mar 2010.

NOT SHARP ENOUGH
Chin Wei, 62, from Hong Kong, thrust a cucumber up his bottom. He was hospitalised after his daughter found him in a pool of blood. He claimed it was a suicide attempt, a variation of the Japanese ritual suicide hara-kiri, usually carried out with a sword plunged into the stomach. His condition was not life-threatening. MX News (Sydney), 31 Mar 2010.

MOBILE ADDRESS
Panda Gorgieva, 48, made her home in an apartment block elevator in Negotino, Maced­onia. The cleaner had lived there for 14 months after failing to find a flat. “It’s small but comfortable,” she said. “It’s difficult when someone uses the lift when I’m sleeping, but it’s a good way of meeting new people.” Sun, 5 Feb 2010.

POSSESSED TREES
A 38-year-old man was arrested for hammering nails into the branches and trunks of 100 chestnut trees next to the Eiffel Tower in Paris. He said he was “trying to rid the trees of demon forces”. Irish Independent, 6 Mar 2010.

ODD EGG
A hen in Shijiazhuang, China, laid a soft-shelled egg in the shape of a figure eight. Her owner suspected something strange when she heard the hen making unusual noises in the night. She decided not to sell or eat the egg. Sunday Mercury, 21 Mar 2010.

MIDLANDS CRUCIFIXION
A man in his thirties, clad only in a loincloth and wearing a crown of thorns, climbed a ladder and strapped himself to a wooden cross attached to a telegraph pole outside his doctor’s surgery in Walsall, West Midlands, following a row over medication. He hung there in a Christ-like pose for more than half an hour in sub-zero temperatures before police talked him down. Sun, 24 Feb 2010.

BAD CAR-MA
Following her fourth collision in 12 months, Joanne Hopkins, 27, put a 15cm statue of Buddha on the back shelf of her car for good luck. However, it flew off the shelf and badly gashed her head when she braked suddenly. Ms Hopkins, from Brighton, ended up in casualty. She then replaced the statue with a rabbit’s foot. Sunday Mirror, 14 Feb 2010.

NEEDLESS SILENCE
Members of an Egyptian family never spoke and commun­icated by written notes for 11 years after Muhammad, the head of the family, found a listening device in the apartment, apparently installed by his first wife. After the ex-wife died, the family called in technicians and were shocked to learn the bug was fake and had never worked. World Around Us, 23 Mar 2010.

DEAD AND GONE
Donald Wolfe, 55, was charged with public drunkenness after being seen attempting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a long-dead opossum, run over some 105km north-east of Pittsburgh. One witness saw him kneeling before the corpse, gesturing as though he were conducting a séance. Opossums are known to feign death when threatened – hence the phrase “playing possum”. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 26 Mar 2010.

RISKY SHAVING
Megan Barnes, 37, crashed into the back of a truck in Cudjoe Key, Florida, while shaving her bikini line. Her ex-husband was holding the wheel from the passenger seat as she carried out her pubic topiary. She was driving to meet her boyfriend and wanted to be “ready”. Two passengers in the truck were injured and Barnes faced a year in jail. keysnews.com, 5 Mar 2010.

MACABRE MAGPIE
A magpie in Forrest, Western Australia, was observed swooping across a window with a dead rat in its beak. It then tied the tail of the rat around a branch, and flew back and forth, nibbl­ing at the rat, possibly taking bits back to its offspring. The 69-year-old woman who saw this said she had been feeding magpies all her life and had never seen such behaviour. Canberra Times, 1 Dec 2009.

TURNED-ON TUSKER
An elephant in musth ran amok at a lavish Hindu wedding ceremony, causing £200,000 worth of damage. One of three hired for the wedding recept­ion of two politicians’ children in New Delhi, it went on the rampage after trying to reach an in-heat female elephant. It charged a lawn full of wedding guests before flipping over about 20 cars in a nearby parking lot, and smashing through a shopping mall. It was finally tranquillised about six (or 15) hours later, after ramming a police truck. Metro, 1 Mar 2010.

OBVIOUS ERROR
An Australian car thief was caught after accidentally locking himself inside the vehicle he was trying to steal. Two thieves were heard trying to take the car in the Adelaide suburb of Port Noarlunga, and police arrived to find a 53-year-old man hiding inside the locked car. The second suspect, 28, was found in bushes nearby. Eve. Standard, 25 Feb; Canberra Times, 1 Mar 2009.

FORGOTTEN SOMETHING?
Birgit Mahler, 33, stuffed cosmetics worth €100 in her handbag and left the shop in the German city of Sonthofen without paying. When a secur­ity tag set off an alarm, she ran off. However, she forgot her six-year-old daughter Ella, who was left behind. The girl was later picked up by her father from a local police station. MX News (Brisbane), Metro (Dublin), 23 July 2008.