News of the Weird newspapers illustration
Be Good—or Die!
The Behney House Hotel in Myerstown, Penn., was evacuated after police responded to a reported bomb threat there on Sunday, June 23, reported WPMT. When officers arrived, they found David Oxenreider, 28, who lives at the hotel, and the homemade bomb he claimed to have made next to a dumpster outside the building. Oxenreider told police he made the bomb to get their attention because he was frustrated that his attempts to warn officials about aliens hadn’t been taken seriously. According to the criminal complaint, Oxenreider said he encountered a UFO and aliens in 2014, who told him “humans need to start being good people, or else they were going to destroy Earth with a nuclear laser beam.” Police disarmed the device and arrested Oxenreider.
Calling Alfred Hitchcock
Roy and Brenda Pickard of Knotts End, Lancashire, England, lived in a 1960s horror film for a week in June as a pair of nesting herring gulls terrorized them each time they emerged from their home. “If I try to go out of the door, the two adult birds are right there, and I’ve got no chance,” Roy told the Mirror. At one point, Roy was attacked so viciously on the back of the head that he had to go to the hospital for treatment. Roy contacted animal organizations, but they offered no remedies for the violent birds: It’s breeding season, and herring gulls are protected when nesting. “The whole thing has been terrible,” Roy lamented.
What’s That Per Hour?
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Equality got a boost in Argentina in June when that country’s National Appeals Court ordered a man to pay his ex-wife eight million pesos (about $178,000) for 27 years of housework. Newsweek reported Judge Victoria Fama reasoned that the wife, who holds a degree in economics, put her career aside for the entirety of their marriage to keep house and raise children, and by the time her husband left her in 2009, she was too old to compete in the job market. “The economic dependence of wives on their husbands is one of the central mechanisms through which women are subordinated in society,” Judge Fama said.
What’s That Metallic Aftertaste?
A 26-year-old man identified only as Chang from Guangdong, China, went out for a Friday night of drinking with friends on Friday, June 7, and returned home to find that his keys were missing. Someone inside let him in, and he went to bed to sleep it off. The next morning, the Chinese news site Sohu reported, Chang awoke with a sharp pain in his chest and went to Dongguan Hospital, where an X-ray revealed the missing house keys lodged deep in his esophagus. Doctors first thought emergency surgery would be necessary to retrieve the keys, but with the help of a muscle-relaxing drug, a gastroenterologist was able to pull them out through his mouth.
The Ear That Needed an Oar
Holmes Beach, Fla., police posted a query on their Facebook page on Saturday, June 15, regarding an unusual item that had washed up on the shore and was turned in by a local resident: a prosthetic ear. Social media did its magic, and the ear and its owner were reunited five days later. The Associated Press reported that a Beaufort, S.C., couple had been vacationing in the Tampa Bay area, and the man was putting the rubber ear in his pocket for safekeeping when a wave knocked it out of his hand. Police Sgt. Brian Hall said he would mail the ear back to its owner.
© 2019 ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION
