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The Word 9
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The Word 9 (Disk 2 of 2).adf
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09-Bizarre.txt
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09-Bizarre.txt
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1996-01-17
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|1-Strange... But True!
Stuff Michal Aspel wouldn't dream of mentioning...
From ITV Teletext Page 324
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An 18-Minute luxury helicopter ride turned into a 10-hour ordeal for
five passengers bound for the Portuguese encalve of Macau from Hong
Kong.
Their pilot lost his way in bad weather and when fuel ran low he had to
land on a football pitch in China.
The passenges were granted emergency visas to enable them to leave the
country and travel by road to Macau.
---------------
Pieces of coal from the Titanic have gone on sale - the first items from
the wreckage to be made available to the public.
The pieces of coal, about the size of half a golf ball, can be bought
for $25 each from RMS Titanic Inc in New York.
The company plans to stage a worldwide exhibition of artifacts from the
ship which went down in 1912, drowning 1500.
---------------
Tax evasion in Venezuela is so common officials are starting a monthly
lottery to encourage more people to obey the law.
Venezuelans who hand in five receipts showing they paid the sales tax on
anything from deodourant to washing machinies can participate.
The grand prize is a Fiat Tempra 2000. Eight others will win cash
prizes.
---------------
A grandmother of 74 has been granted a divorce after a court heard her
61-year-old husband refused to consummate their five-year marriage.
Kathleen Chippendale-Glen tried to persuade second husband David to make
love but he refused her advances.
She was granted a decri nisi as Teeside County Court. The couple met in
an old people's home in 1990.
---------------
Australian children are born more laid-back than American or Chinese
infants, according to a 12-year study by The Australian Temperament
Project.
If tound Australian infants were siginificantly less active, less
intense, and eased into routines more readily.
"We believe infants are born with a temperament profile that is modified
by environment", a spokesman said.
---------------
An Alabama judge has granted $2m in legel fees to the 19 lawyers it took
to win a $1 judgement for consumers in a petrol price-fixing case.
District Judge Myron Thompson gave the legal team and nine assistants
the money for a six-week trial held in 1992.
The jury found that at least three retailers had conspired to fix prices
in the town of Dothan.
---------------
Armaggedon has been delayed and the end of the world is no longer nigh,
say Jehova's Witnesses.
Founder Charles Russell, first forecast the world would end in 1914.
There were more "false alarms" in 1925 and 1975.
Now the movement has decided not to give any more exact forecasts on
Judgement Day, according to its official magazine Watchtower.
---------------
Two Chinese girls are claiming a world record by living for 12 days in a
room with 888 snakes - a lucky number for the country's wealth-seekers.
Eight special guests unlocked eight golden locks to a glass pit
containing the serpents and 23-year-olds, Qian Linping and Ni Junfang.
They were greeted with applause, drums, music and flowers.
---------------
A woman arrested on a prostitution charge was mistakenly locked up with
men - and had sex with two of them before the mix-up was discovered.
The blunder happened at Denver City Jail when the arresting officer
indicated in his paperwork that the 38-year-old woman was a male.
The woman and two men slipped into an empty cell and had sex.
---------------
A five-year-old italian boy who was in a coma for three weeks after
being hit by a car was fined when he woke up - for not using a zebra
crossing.
Luca Rizzo was in his mother's car near Venice when he saw his father
across the street. He bolted out of the car and was hit by an oncoming
vehicle.
The Ansa news agency said bureaucracy was not only "blind but without
pity".
---------------
Experts are puzzled by the colour of a kitten born two months ago in
northern Denmark - it's green.
Vets who examined its fur tried several times to wash out the strong
green colour, but all in vain. Samples of the cat's hair were sent to
Copenhagen's university hospital for further tests.
Experts believe it could be a metabolism defect.
---------------
There's no honour among theives - not even when they're up before a
judge.
French officials said they caught Lahcen Touijri, 25, trying to steal a
handbag as he appeared on a charge of receiving and using false cheques.
The panel in Bordeaux was so astonished at Touijri's boldness that it
immediately sentenced him to eight months in prison.
---------------
An 18-year-old man accidentally shot himself in the genitals when he
tried to show his girlfriend the sawn-off shotgun in his trousers.
Kevin Hall was treated at a hospital for a cut to his penis and powder
burns to the inside of his thigh.
Police in Bridgeport, Conneticut, then arrested him on charges,
including possession of a sawn-off shotgun.
---------------
Authorities in a midle school in China's Jiangsu province have banned 20
abusive phrases often use by teachers to criticise pupils.
The ban includes phrases like "You'll never amount to anything" and "I'm
ashamed of having a student like you".
Teachers have been urged not to pounce on children's feelings of
inferiority or to punish them for not performing.
---------------
Actor Paul Newman says a letter from a fan of his spaghetti sauce helped
keep his celebrity in perspective.
Writing to rave about Newman's Own sauce, the fan said his girlfriend
claimed Newman had done some acting.
"If your acting is as good as your spaghetti sause, you must be great,"
the letter said. "Do you have any movies on VCR?"
---------------
A drug dealer who sold vitamin C tablets passing them off as Ecstasy
pills, was himself conned when a customer paid him with fake banknotes.
The dealer walked into a police station in Amsterdam and dumped 41
counterfeit 100 guilder notes on a desk.
"This stuff is worthless, you keep it," the man told the duty officer,
according to a police statement.
---------------
Zoo directors in the central Russian city of Nizhny Novograd have
threatened to set free two tigers unless the local authority provides
money to feed them.
It had been hoped revenue from tickets to the recently opened zoo would
cover the costs of the tigers' food.
But with the zoo closed during the winter, the directors have found it
hard to cover their costs.
---------------
A German drunk who lay down between railway tracks to sleep off a big
night out was run over by a passenger train but miraculously escaped
unhurt.
The horrified train driver saw the man, 25, too late to start braking.
Police in Nabburg rushed to the scene expecting the worst, but ended up
charging the man with endangering rail traffic.
---------------
A candidate for mayor who bungee-jumped from a helicopter says the
campaign stunt has sent his popularity soaring.
"We've had calls from all over the world," says Pedro Mosqueda, who is
running for mayor in Maracay, a city of 500,000 people in Venezuela.
Mosqueda, 40, made the jump from a helicopter as it hovered 5,000ft over
a park packed with 15,000 spectators.
---------------
It's like being called Lee Harvey Oswald, says the man with the same
name as Yitzhak Rabin's assassin.
Yigal Amir, who is 57, says his life has been ruined since the murder
and he has decided to change his name.
Bank clerks have refused his cheques, security officials have rummages
through his post and ordinary people recoil at the sound of his name.
---------------
Mail to Elvis Presley's desert hideaway in Palm Springs, California, is
temporarily beingreturned to sender.
Someone has stolen the iron mailbox from the home Elvis leased from 1966
to 1977. Suspicious minds, such as Mark Snider, who lives there now,
doubt the theft was the work of true fans.
"Real Elvis fans are the most respectable, decent people," he said.
---------------
Sleepyhead Gary Swift headed back to sea after failing to wake up when a
cross-Channel ferry arrived in England.
Even the sound of the ship's foghorn and a bell did not disturb Gary,
who was travelling from St Malo in France to Portsmouth.
Gary, 33, was stranded on board the ferry for a day. He said: "Even the
cleaners didn't give me a shake".
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A Royal Navy commander has been issued with court orders on how to curb
the noise from his four cockerels.
Kenneth Ayres' neighbours in Dunbartonshire claimed the dawn-till-dusk
noise was ruining their lives.
Now Mr. Ayres must get rid of three of their four birds and keep the
remaining one with hens in a single flock.
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