Karl's Weird News

It’s raining fish in the Northern Territory

WHILE the Top End and Central Australia have been battered by torrential rains, a Territory town has reportedly had fish falling from the sky.

The freak phenomena happened not once, but twice, on Thursday and Friday afternoon about 6pm at Lajamanu, about 550km southwest of Katherine, The Northern Territory News reports.

Christine Balmer, who took the photos of the fish on the ground and in a bucket, said she had to pinch herself when she was told “hundreds and hundreds” of small white fish had fallen from the sky.

“It rained fish in Lajamanu on Thursday and Friday night,” she said, “They fell from the sky everywhere.”

“Locals were picking them up off the footy oval and on the ground everywhere. “

“These fish were alive when they hit the ground.”

Busted: Statue’s a Dead Ringer for Jacko 

The Pharaoh of Pop doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as King of Pop, but visitors to Chicago’s Field Museum could swear that’s Jacko’s face on a 3,000-year-old Egyptian bust.

The spitting image limestone sculpture has been on display at the museum since 1988, but recently started drawing attention because of its likeness to Jacko — complete with disfigured nose.

Unfortunately the bust, which was carved sometime between 1550 B.C. and 1050 B.C., is of a woman and MJ likely never had the chance to see the statuette.

“I have no idea whether Jackson ever visited the museum,” a Field spokesperson said to the Sun-Times. “But the similarity between the limestone statue of a woman – which is about 3,000 years old — and Jackson is astounding.”

Doctors baffled by Indian village of over 200 sets of twins

Walk around Kodinji village and you’ll think that you have double vision. The village is home to as many as 230 sets of twins.

Nobody knows why there are so many twins in the village of 15,000 people, although one local doctor suspects it might be due to the water.

In fact with about 35-45 twins per live birth, this village in North Kerala, India, has four times more twins than normal. Not surprisingly, the village has been dubbed “the twin village.”

The latest official estimates by the Kodinji’s Twins and Kins Association (TAKA), which conducted door-to-door surveys at the start of the year, found that there were 204 sets of twins.

Based on births since the survey was conducted, there are probably now around 230 sets of twins in the village, locals said. That number is set to rise as there are five women pregnant with twins.

Baby Born On NYC Mass Transit For 2nd Straight Day

For the second day in a row a newborn girl has been born on New York City’s mass transit system. A Brooklyn bus became a makeshift delivery room on Friday morning. A woman passenger helped the mother deliver the baby that just couldn’t wait to come aboard.

Paramedics took the new mother and baby to a hospital. Their names were not released.

On Thursday, conductor Bretta Sykes helped a mother deliver a girl in a subway car. The mother of two says she used information from her own chilbirth classes to coach the woman through her seven-minute delivery.

A New York City Transit spokesman says it could be the system’s first consecutive births on a subway train and a bus.

US government securities seized from Japanese nationals, not clear whether real or fake

Italy’s financial police (Guardia italiana di Finanza) has seized US bonds worth US 134.5 billion from two Japanese nationals at Chiasso (40 km from Milan) on the border between Italy and Switzerland.

 They include 249 US Federal Reserve bonds worth US$ 500 million each, plus ten Kennedy bonds and other US government securities worth a billion dollar each. Italian authorities have not yet determined whether they are real or fake, but if they are real the attempt to take them into Switzerland would be the largest financial smuggling operation in history; if they are fake, the matter would be even more mind-boggling because the quality of the counterfeit work is such that the fake bonds are undistinguishable from the real ones.

What caught the policemen’s attention were the billion dollar securities. Such a large denomination is not available in regular financial and banking markets. Only states handle such amounts of money.

The question now is who could or would counterfeit or smuggle these non-negotiable bonds.

Mystery surrounds deaths of horses before polo match – CNN.com:

Fourteen thoroughbred horses dropped dead in a mysterious scene Sunday before a polo match near West Palm Beach, Florida, officials said.

State and local veterinary teams are trying to figure out what happened at the International Polo Club Palm Beach in Wellington, Florida, as team Lechuza Caracas prepared to compete in a U.S. Open match. It’s unclear what killed the horses but necropsies and blood tests were being done Sunday, the Palm Beach Post reported.

The U.S. Polo Association, the sport’s governing body, is expected to open an investigation Monday, the Sun-Sentinel newspaper reported. Two horses initially collapsed, and as vets and team officials scrambled to revive them, five others became dizzy, said Tim O’Connor, spokesman for the polo club.

Sabotage attacks knock out phone service:

Vandals cut fiber-optic cable lines belonging to AT&T at two locations early today, knocking out phones and access to 911 emergency services to thousands of residential customers and businesses in southern Santa Clara County, in Santa Cruz and San Benito counties and along the Peninsula, authorities said.

Four AT&T fiber-optic cables in an underground vault were severed shortly before 1:30 a.m. along Monterey Highway north of Blossom Hill Road in south San Jose, police Sgt. Ronnie Lopez said.

Four more underground cables, at least two of which belong to AT&T, were cut about two hours later along Old County Road near Bing Street in San Carlos, authorities said.

John Britton, spokesman for AT&T, said, “Clearly, we have some vandalism. Someone purposefully and deliberately cut the wires.”

Al-Qaeda Web Forums Abruptly Taken Offline

Four of the five main online forums that al-Qaeda’s media wing uses to distribute statements by Osama bin Laden and other extremists have been disabled since mid-September, monitors of the Web sites say.

The disappearance of the forums on Sept. 10 — and al-Qaeda’s apparent inability to restore them or create alternate online venues, as it has before — has curbed the organization’s dissemination of the words and images of its fugitive leaders. On Sept. 29, a statement by the al-Fajr Media Center, a distribution network created by supporters of al-Qaeda and other Sunni extremist groups, said the forums had disappeared “for technical reasons,” and it urged followers not to trust look-alike sites.

Ghost Of Ted Bundy Has Returned To Florida Prison:

It would appear that the ghost of Ted Bundy has returned or showed up at the Florida Prison and appears to be having a great time.

 The reports coming from the Florida State Prison have gotten strange indeed. It appears that the Ghost of Ted Bundy has showed up and is terrorizing prison guards and inmates at the prison. A guard who has asked not to be identified says that Bundy’s Ghost appears in the area where he was executed and in his former cell where he spent his last hours before being put into Florida’s Electric Chair. Up until the end Bundy tried to save his life by offering to tell where more bodies were buried but in the end they refused to give him any more time and he was executed.

Stonehenge May Have Healed Sick, Injured

Stonehenge has a new age ? and a new purpose. It’s long been understood that the Neolithic stone circle on Salisbury Plain in southern England was an observatory tuned to the summer solstice and the positions of the stars. But new excavations led by a pair of British archaeologists show that it was also a healing center, a sort of pagan Lourdes for chronically ill and crippled pilgrims from across western Europe. “Stonehenge would attract not only people who were unwell, but people who were capable of [healing] them,” Professor Tim Darvill of Bournemouth University told the BBC. The dig by Darvill and fellow archaeologist Geoff Wainwright also may reset the timeline of the Stonehenge site.

Shroud of Turin stirs new controversy

The tie that binds John and Rebecca Jackson is about 4 feet by 14 feet, woven of herringbone twill linen. It once led to their romance; years later, it still dominates their thoughts and fills their conversations.

It brought Rebecca, an Orthodox Jew, to the Catholic Church; it led John to suspend himself from an 8-foot-tall cross to study how blood might have stained the cloth. Together, the two have committed to memory every crease, scorch mark and unexplained stain in their years-long pursuit of the mystery

Adventurer Steve Fossett ‘may have faked his own death’

Round-the-world flying adventurer Steve Fossett may have faked his own death, investigators have claimed.

Steve Fossett went missing last September when his final flight in a light plane over the Nevada desert went missing

Fossett, a friend of Virgin boss Richard Branson, and the first man to fly non-stop round the earth in a hot air balloon, went missing last September when his final flight in a light plane over the Nevada desert went missing.

However, Lieutenant Colonel Cynthia Ryan of the US Civil Air Patrol has said Fossett, whose body or plane was never found, could still be alive.

She said: “I’ve been doing this search and rescue for 14 years. Fossett should have been found.

“It’s not like we didn’t have our eyes open. We found six other planes while we were looking for him. We’re pretty good at what we do.”

Mysterious Midair Dent in Jetliners Nose

Don’t blame a bird for the punch that the Northwest Airlines plane took in the nose on Sunday.

Northwest is now examining the dented nose cone of a Boeing 757 jet that was damaged during a flight from Detroit to Tampa. Images snapped by passengers (MSNBC even has some video, above) show the front tip of the plane looking a bit like a beer cup smashed in after a football game.

A spokeswoman for the Tampa airport initially told The Associated Press that the damage was probably caused by a bird striking the plane in mid-flight.

But this afternoon, the Federal Aviation Administration essentially ruled out that possibility as more details became available.

7-Year-Old Boy Critical After Being Found Hanging From Clothing Hook at School

A 7-year-old boy is in critical condition after being found hanging by his shirt collar from a clothing hook in a charter school’s dressing room, and police tried to determine Thursday whether it was an attack or an accident.

The shirt collar cut off the boy’s oxygen, and he was unconscious when a teacher found him Wednesday, said police Lt. Mark Spangler. He was in critical condition at a hospital Thursday.

“We’re not ruling anything out. We can’t rule anything in at this point,” Spangler said about the investigation. “Nothing is stepping out to us to say that there is some predator out there. … We just don’t know yet.”

The boy had attended an assembly at the Not Your Ordinary School campus and asked to be excused to go the bathroom. He was found as the assembly was ending; there was no surveillance camera in the area.

Stolen boomerang comes back

Proving boomerangs really do come back, an Australian town was Thursday celebrating the return of a boomerang stolen from an outback museum by an American tourist 25 years ago.

The boomerang, a flying blade used mainly by Aborigines to hunt animals, was posted home to the city of Mount Isa in the northern state of Queensland by a Vermont man who named himself in a letter only as Peter.

“I removed this back in 1983 when I was younger and dumber. It was the wrong thing to do. I’m sorry, and I’m going to send it back,” according to a note read out to Australian media by Mt. Isa mayor Ron McCullough, who added Peter had also sent a check.

Jesus turns up in pancake, with added Mary

Jesus is a busy person.

A woman believes she has found the image of Jesus and Mary in a pancake she was cooking for breakfast on a Sunday morning.

Marilyn Smith, of Port St Lucie, Florida, decided to sell the pancake on eBay – after an earlier, cancelled sale in which the pancake reached £165 ($338), the current bid stands at $26.01.

Unexplained Blue Cloud Floats, Darts Around Customers At Gas Station

A strange blue cloud seen floating and darting around customers, freezing for 30 minutes and then speeding from an Ohio gas station, remains unexplained even though it was caught on security cams.

The ghostly image was seen moving near and over cars at a Marathon gas station located near the corner of State Road and Pleasant Valley in Parma on Sunday.

Surveillance video of the image showed it flipping and then sitting in the same location for 30 minutes.

It then flies off the screen at a high rate of speed.

‘Kryptonite’ discovered in mine:

Kryptonite is no longer just the stuff of fiction feared by caped superheroes. A new mineral matching its unique chemistry – as described in the film Superman Returns – has been identified in a mine in Serbia. According to movie and comic-book storylines, kryptonite is supposed to sap Superman’s powers whenever he is exposed to its large green crystals. The real mineral is white and harmless, says Dr Chris Stanley, a mineralogist at London’s Natural History Museum.

‘Ghost ship’ puzzles rescuers

Australian rescuers were on Friday trying to solve the “Mary Celeste” style mystery of a yacht found floating off the coast with its engine running, food on its table ready to eat, but no crew.

The 12-meter (36 feet) catamaran was found 80 nautical miles off Townsville on the northeast coast, but there was no sign of the three crewmen who had set sail from Queensland state bound for Australia’s west coast on Sunday.

“What they found was a bit strange in that everything was normal, there was just no sign of the crew,” Jon Hall from emergency management in Queensland told local radio on Friday.

Mummified corpses found in death rite mystery

Five decomposed bodies, possibly of a couple and their children who died one after another several years ago, have been found in a house in Japan, triggering media speculation on religious death rites.

Japanese police have not been able to identify the partly mummified, partly skeletonised bodies, which were found lying on their backs on mattresses in a house in Omuta on the southwestern island of Kyushu, a police spokesman said.

Japanese media said the bodies could be of a couple in their 90s and their two daughters and son who had lived in the house.

“They died between about 20 years ago and four years ago, one after another,” the Yomiuri newspaper quoted a relative as saying.

Mystery of the village’s 5,000 prize daffodils decapitated days before Bloom contest

For years Peter Dungworth painstakingly planted thousands of daffodil bulbs in the hope of one day leading his village to a Britain in Bloom award.

But just days before he was due to welcome judges to view this year’s entry he awoke to find each and every flower had been deliberately beheaded.

Now police have launched an investigation amid claims that mean-spirited saboteurs from a rival village may have crept in under the cover of darkness.

Race horses a target in Hong Kong? 

It was a device worthy of Rube Goldberg or Wile E. Coyote: a dozen remote-controlled launching tubes secretly buried in the turf at Hong Kong’s most famous horse race track last week, armed with compressed air to fire tiny, liquid-filled darts into the bellies of horses at the starting gate.

 No horses were hurt, because the track supervisor noticed something underfoot before racing started, discovered the elaborate mechanism concealed by grass-colored tape and called in a police bomb squad to remove it.

But the discovery of the device, equipped with elaborate electronic controls, has raised concerns about security during the six Olympic equestrian events to be held in Hong Kong next year.

Fingers point to Mafia as ancient column is smashed to pieces

Police sealed off one of the grandest houses in the ancient city of Pompeii yesterday after a tall column was found smashed. Officials at the site fear the destruction is a sign that Mafia gangs are trying to intimidate them.

 Pompeii is Italy’s most popular tourist destination, drawing 2.5 million visitors every year. And the house of Obellio Firmo is one of its most important. The villa’s owner was a leading figure in the city’s political life: at his funeral – before the fatal eruption of AD 79 – 10kg of incense was burned, at vast expense.

The column stood in the villa’s garden. No one yet knows exactly how or why it toppled over. The House of Obellio Firmo is being restored, and a high scaffolding next to the column was also found on its side: possibly wind or vandals caused the scaffolding to smash into the column.

Pyramid’s Secret Doors to Be Opened:

Doors will soon open to reveal one of the mysteries of the Great Pyramid in Giza, Dr. Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, told Discovery News in an exclusive interview. Hawass, one of the world’s leading Egyptologists, said he will show what lies behind secret doors inside the 4,500-year-old pharaonic mausoleum by the end of this year. “Finally, people all over the world will know what is behind the second door in the southern shaft and the third door in the northern shaft,” Hawass said. Built in 2550 B.C. for the pharaoh Cheops, also known as Khufu, the Great Pyramid is the largest of a family of three pyramids on the Giza plateau, on the outskirts of Cairo.

Scientists say nerves use sound, not electricity:

The common view that nerves transmit impulses through electricity is wrong and they really transmit sound, according to a team of Danish scientists.

The Copenhagen University researchers argue that biology and medical textbooks that say nerves relay electrical impulses from the brain to the rest of the body are incorrect.

“For us as physicists, this cannot be the explanation,” said Thomas Heimburg, an associate professor at the university’s Niels Bohr Institute. “The physical laws of thermodynamics tell us that electrical impulses must produce heat as they travel along the nerve, but experiments find that no such heat is produced.”

Virgin Mary image draws throngs in Houston

They kneeled. They cried. They asked for healing. Before them, on an altar of roses and prayer candles, was a metal baking sheet, stained with what hundreds of Houston Catholics now believe is an image of the Virgin Mary. Guadalupe Rodriguez, a Pugh Elementary School cafeteria worker, discovered the possible miracle on Ash Wednesday, while scrubbing away the last crumbs from the pizza lunch.

Ice Chunk Crashes Through Bucks Co. Home:

A Bucks County family was abruptly awakened after a large piece of icy debris crashed through the roof of their home.

Police were called to the family’s home on 43 Trailwood Drive in Northampton Township after a large chunk of ice came hurtling through the roof just after midnight Friday.

 ”My mom heard a huge explosion-type of sound and we all came out just to see and there was a huge hole in our ceiling,” said Miyoung Choi.

Aside from the impromptu skylight, Choi said ice and insulation was scattered throughout the home in the aftermath of the crash. Fortunately, no one was injured.

Crowds flock to ‘miracle’ statue

A statue of Jesus Christ is causing a sensation at an art gallery after witnesses said they saw sparks shooting from its eyes.

People are claiming the steel and bronze figure possesses miraculous powers and some visitors have taken to kneeling at its feet.

World’s Smallest Bible Found in a Boot:

Around 106 years ago, someone slipped a copy of the world’s smallest complete Bible in a child’s boot and stuffed it into a cottage chimney cavity to ward off evil. Now British archaeologists have identified the book, which a renovator discovered while working on the cottage in central England’s Ewerby. In addition to the rarity of the book, the find represents one of the most recent instances of anti-witchcraft using a shoe amulet, according to British Archaeology editor Mike Pitts, who reports on the discovery in his latest issue.

Woman Uses Daughter’s Key to ‘Steal’ Car

A college student who reported that his car was stolen got a surprise when he learned a woman had mistaken it for her daughter’s car and taken it- using her key. Kate Anderson of Athens became an accidental car thief when she went to pick up her daughter’s car near an Ohio University building last week. Anderson spotted the nickel-gray Toyota Camry and used her daughter’s key to unlock the car, start the engine and drive home- without realizing that the car wasn’t her daughter’s.

Oddly enough, the exact same thing happened to me about 20 years ago.  My friend had a Honda Civic; we walked up to it in the parking lot of a mall, unlocked the door and got in.  It was only after he started the car that we realized that it was not his.  Same make, model and color, same keys – must be something about Japanese cars made in the 80’s.

Mummified Russian Man Found Dead in Sitting Position After 6 Years

After six years, you’d think someone would have wondered, “Whatever happened to Vladimir?”

Russian police got their answer late last week when they went to the apartment of Vladimir Ledenev, who hadn’t been seen since 2000, Pravda reported.

What they found left them stunned.

Vladimir’s body was discovered in a sitting position, his arm, still retaining some flesh, leaning on the kitchen table, his head slumped over. An empty vodka bottle and a glass sat in front of him, according to Pravda’s reports.