Weird news - Alligator on the road

One of the animals that most people are scared of are large reptiles such as snakes and alligators. However, there are plenty of places where people do come into contact with such reptiles, especially when they live in a place where there are a large number of such predators. For people living in the Amazon rain forest, there is the potential to come into contact with wild animals; for people living in the Sunderbans, there is the ever present danger of coming into contact with a tiger. In the US, Florida is the place where people have the highest possibility of coming into contact with reptiles - for example, there are so many cases where house pools have found alligators in them which have then had to be removed. In this case, on the road, there is this large alligator and you would be scared seeing this pretty large alligator (especially if you were walking or cycling on the road) (link to article):

An unusually large alligator was found wandering on a road in Florida, USA, during the ongoing gator mating season. The Florida Highway Patrol said troopers received a surprise on Sunday morning when they spotted the massive reptile taking a stroll along a highway, next to a chain link fence. The alligator was spotted at the appropriately named Alligator Alley of Interstate 75 in Collier County. While writing about the incident on social media, officials quipped that the gator at least obeyed traffic rules. "Way to at least stay in the grass shoulder and out of the travel lanes," Florida Highway Patrol joked on Twitter while sharing a picture of the alligator looking up the fence.

Weird news - Getting back your parked car after 20 years

Nowadays I see a number of people, who when they have parked their car, take a photo of the location, or take some notes because with everything that people have on their minds right now, they can forget where they put their vehicles, the parking lot and spend time trying to find out their vehicles. This can reach extreme levels, I once spent 30 minutes trying to find my vehicle. However, this extreme case referenced in the article is more extreme, with the person forgetting where he left his vehicle and reported it stolen. And then found it, wait, 20 years later. The car had to be junked, but it was still weird (link to article):

Ever forgotten where you parked your car? It has happened to the best of us. For one man in Germany, however, it was a reunion two decades in the making with a car he 'lost' back in 1997. According to the Metro, authorities in Frankfurt found the car in a garage in a building which is set for demolition. The owner of the car had parked it there in 1997 and forgotten all about it. It was reported stolen and never recovered, until recently, when authorities found it rotting in the garage.

Weird news - Man wants nuggets, not available, so orders 200 hash browns

Sometimes an item can catch your fancy. So you have people who love to eat at Taco Bell, others gloat over the regularity with which they eat at McDonald's. When people do not get their regular fix, it can be frustrating for them, and you sometimes have odd events such as people calling 911 to complain about a food item not being available. In other cases people have become real angry when they realize their favorite food item is over or not in stock. In this case, a man wanted to have chicken nuggets so showed up at the McDonald's, only to be told that the breakfast menu was available and it did not have nuggets. What did he do that made it weird ? (link to article):

A man in Sydney craving to have some chicken nuggets showed up at a McDonald's in the early hours of Saturday. But he was left disappointed when staff told him there were no nuggets on the breakfast menu. Frustrated with the absence of chicken nuggets, the man allegedly opted for hash browns - 200 of them. The alleged incident took place at a drive-through McDonald's in North Sydney. When the man's early morning request for chicken nuggets was turned down, he did four laps of the drive-through outlet. On the second round, he stopped to place the order for 200 hash browns, reportedly worth $230.

Weird news - Flight affected as woman finds out husband cheating on her

When you find out that your spouse is cheating on you, things can get very rocky. In the extreme cases, the husband or wife have killed their spouses directly or got somebody else to kill them in their anger. In other cases, a divorce happens in many cases, since this is seen as an extreme betrayal and the parting can be very bitter. However, the immediate reaction when the person gets to know this can be exhibited in terms of extreme anger, and the anger will take an outlet at whoever is there, the current situation in which the person finds themselves can also be affected such as this flight having to offload the couple because of the high level of anger shown by the wife, which was compounded by the fact that she has also consumed alcohol (link to article):

Hell hath no fury like a woman cheated, especially if she happens to be tipsy and 37,000 feet above ground when discovering shocking news about the man she loves. Qatar Airways’ Doha-Bali nonstop flight on Sunday (November 5) had to be diverted to Chennai because an inebriated Iranian woman created a ruckus after she found out that her husband was cheating on her when she unlocked her sleeping husband’s phone by doing his finger scan and saw some content on it, say sources. The husband was the obvious target of her anger. Co-passengers and crew members who tried to pacify her also became the target of her ire. The uproar compelled the pilots to land the plane mid-way in Chennai. Qatar Airways’ Doha-Bali nonstop flight is almost 10 hours long while Chennai is midway.

Weird news - Employee bathing in restaurant kitchen

With frequent reports of people getting sick because of contaminated food, any reports of unsanitary conditions in kitchens or places where food is getting prepared can cause great amounts of outrage. With social media, any such report quickly becomes viral, and the organization that is the focus of this has to quickly take action for fear of a horrible public relations disaster. So one wonders about the employees of this restaurant chain who took part or cheered this case, where an employee got into a sink in the kitchen and took a bath and when the shit hit the fan, the restaurant had to respond to the outrage (link to article):

A man in Florida has lost his job after a video surfaced showing him bathing in the kitchen of a restaurant he worked at. The man, an employee of the American fast food restaurant chain Wendy's, was filmed taking a bath in an industrial sink at the franchise's Milton location, reports Northwest Florida Daily News. The video has gone massively viral online, collecting over a million views on Facebook and disgusting many patrons of the popular chain. The viral video shows the employee stepping into a sink of soapy water wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. Other employees are heard laughing and cheering him on. Once inside, he proceeds to wash his armpits and comment on how warm the water is.

Weird news - Alligator breaks into Florida home

Florida is known as the alligator state, with a large number of alligator occurrences happening there. There are cases of alligators being found in pools, on roads, in gardens, and so on. There are reports of alligator encounters in lakes and other waterways, even though the reported encounters would be far less than the cases where alligators and humans share the same waterway. There are alligator trappers who remain busy, catching these alligators wherever they come into contact with humans and take them to the wild or to alligator farms. These would be needed because of incidents like this where an alligator climbed inside a house through a window and then proceeded to do some wrecking before it was caught (link to article):

A late-night intruder at her home woke up a woman on Friday - but it was no ordinary burglar that she found when she went to investigate. Mary Wischhusen, 77, found a huge alligator in the kitchen of her Clearwater, Florida home when she heard a loud crash on the early hours of Friday morning. According to the official City Of Clearwater Twitter account, the alligator had managed to break into her home through some low window in the kitchen. "I had this beautiful face staring at me as though he belonged there," Ms Wischhusen recalled to Spectrum News. "He was just lying there. It's like he made it all the way through the kitchen and he thought he was so smart," she said. Ms Wischhusen then went back to her bedroom after finding the reptile and called 911. A trapper was then sent to her home to remove the alligator, that had by then managed to shatter the windows, put several holes in the wall, dent the fridge, damage some furniture, and raid Ms Wischhusen's wine collection, reports Spectrum News.

Weird news - Finding vomit on your airline seat

In the service business, quick turnaround is a necessity for earning more money, but that sometimes clashes with service levels. I once had to take a train, and it was a turnaround from another train that was supposed to arrive some time earlier, be cleaned and then take on more passengers. It was late so it was probably decided to quickly just let it be used again without cleaning, and that was what happened. The problem was, the inside of the train was pretty dirty, one is used to see a train after there has been some amount of cleaning. Similarly, when you take a cinema hall or a flight, it is typically a quick turnaround. If you spill some popcorn or soda, do you stop to think about how quickly they would be able to clean it before the next set of customers arrive ?
Well, this gentlemen got to see the case when the seat was not cleaned and got a seat with vomit on it, and with not much of sympathies or action from the cabin crew (link to article):

A British Airways passenger was horrified to find his seat covered in what appeared to be vomit. Passenger Dave Gildea was travelling from London Heathrow airport to Seattle when he was assigned seat 64K. "I had upgraded to business class at the airport in London Heathrow and was assigned seats 64K," the 38-year-old told The Sun. "I didn't notice anything until about two hours into the British Airways flight when I popped down the foot stool so I could get some sleep and saw the vomit on the seat. "It was also splashed on the wall behind and the floor below, which I then noticed." However, Mr Gildea says that he when he told the cabin crew about it, they asked if he had been sick on the seat himself. "I went to the cabin crew and the attendants first response was 'was this here when you boarded?' but it was clear it was dried in," he says.

Weird news - Too many calls caused dismissal of rape charges

Rape is a heinous crime, and is also one of the most reported (and as many probably unreported) crimes. Trying it legally and prosecuting can be difficult, with little evidence available in many cases. There may not be witnesses, and in the past, the word of the lady was given high value with the presumption that a lady would not lie about something that would affect her so much, which might affect her reputation and so on. At the same time, there are also the black sheep, and it is also true that there would be cases where the accused was almost asked to prove his own innocence, with the charge against him being in the open, and could be false in order for some kind of revenge. In recent times, courts have also become more careful, not automatically taking the version of the lady, but trying to view all the circumstances and then evaluating whether the case did indeed hold water (link to article):

The Delhi High Court has upheld the acquittal of a man by a trial court in a rape case, saying the woman's testimony was "untrustworthy", full on contradictions and she had called him 529 times between the date of alleged rape and the filing of the complaint. A bench of Justices Manmohan and Sangita Dhingra Sehgal said it was in agreement with the trial court's view that the woman's testimony was "highly unreliable", "untrustworthy" and "inspires no confidence", while dismissing her appeal against the man's acquittal. The trial court had acquitted the man on January 5. The high court noted in its judgement that there were several contradictions in the woman's statement regarding how she met the man, how the alleged incident took place and why there was delay in reporting. The other inconsistencies in her allegation the court noted were that even after getting her phone back from the man, who had allegedly taken it, she did not call the police for over 30 days and in-between called him 529 times.

Weird news - Stealing a bridge in Russia

Movies sometimes show robbers making spectacular robberies, right under the nose of the authorities. It can be by in older times by robbing trains that was carrying cash or gold, or in more recent times by drilling into vaults, or in even more recent times by hacking into accounts or stealing bearer bonds that are untraceable, and so on. At the same time, another time of stealing is going on from time immemorial - the stealing of the items that make up modern infrastructure. Thieves steal the copper wires that make up communication networks, or steal metals from different locations, especially when the price of commodities has increased. However, stealing the metal from a bridge over a period of time until it totally vanishes seems very different (link to article):

The disappearance of a 56 tonne bridge in Russia's Arctic region has sparked a criminal investigation into the incident. According to Daily Mail, the 75-foot structure made up the central section of a dismantled bridge over the Umba river, in Russia's Murmansk region. In May, reports of the bridge's mysterious disappearance began to circulate on VK - a Russian social media platform. Pictures shared on a VK page on May 16 show a part of the bridge lying in water. Just ten days later, however, more pictures of the area surfaced on VK. These pictures showed no trace of the bridge, and even the debris in water had vanished. "It was taken away by unknowns. At the bottom, too, there are no large debris. Natural phenomena could not bring down the bridge," wrote the page where aerial shots of the bridge that disappeared where posted.

Weird news - massive swarm of ladybugs

Sometimes we come across natural behavior that seems incredible, and weird in some ways. The mass movement of animals is something that happens in many species, but when we come across it, it is an awe-inspiring experience. In earlier times, before man intervened in the environment, there were vast herds of large animals moving across the land (these were disrupted because of man settling in there, or shooting many of them), and in the skies, there are these huge movement of birds or insects as a part of their migration. Most of these are not seen now, and the ones that are seen are seemingly so out of the ordinary and incredible that they become news, such as this movement of ladybugs over California (link to article):

A huge blob that appeared on the National Weather Service’s radar wasn’t a rain cloud, but a massive swarm of ladybugs over Southern California. Meteorologist Joe Dandrea says the array of bugs appeared to be about 80 miles (129 kilometers) wide as it flew over San Diego Tuesday. But Dandrea tells the Los Angeles Times that the ladybugs are actually spread throughout the sky, flying at between 5,000 and 9,000 feet (1,525 and 2,745 meters), with the most concentrated group about 10 miles (16 kilometers) wide.

Weird News - Calling the police when Taco Bell runs out of tacos

One often comes across weird stuff where the police or emergency services get involved. In the US, the 911 service is so well known that people have been known to use it for any case, even when it is not an emergency or police matter and is strictly commercial. Consider the case where you go to your favorite restaurant and they have run out of stock of the item they are most famous for - in this case, this particular Taco Bell had run out of tacos. What would most people do ? They would be disappointed and would take something else, or they would go to another Taco Bell or try some other restaurant. Would you call the police for this ?
You would realize that there is not really something the police can do in this regard - as long as there is no discrimination or something similar going on and they really don't have the food item, they are powerless to interfere. Getting involved in such a commercial transaction is not really the job of the police, and in fact, by involving them, the customer is literally wasting their time (link to article):

When a Louisiana Taco Bell allegedly ran out of tacos, a consumer called the city's police department to report the "travesty." The Slidell Police Department took to its Facebook page Monday to share "another 'we can’t make this stuff up' story." "Somebody called in to complain that the Taco Bell on Gause Boulevard ran out of both hard and soft taco shells," the post said. "While this is truly a travesty, the police can’t do anything about this." This isn't the first time a consumer called the police to report a restaurant running out of an item or an item missing from their order.

Weird news - Hiding inside small spaces in the car

The urge to migrate to a richer place is irresistible. Places that have far better economies such as the United States and Europe see migration of a large number of people from poorer places such as Mexico or Africa, or from places that are seeing turmoil such as Syria. These migrations can cause incredible tension in the places where they are heading towards, and hence this migration is attempted to be controlled through border controls and by funneling people through legal channels. However, people cannot be stopped simply through such measures and there are ongoing efforts by people to enter a country by stealth and then hope that they will not be easily deported and might finally become a citizen. People attempt crossings by boat, inside vehicles, through deserts, even though some of these can be deadly and even result in the death of those doing the migration. Consider the following case where people are attempting to hide inside a vehicle, not in the trunk, but in the dashboard area and other places - wonder how they are even fitting (link to article):

A migrant was found hiding inside the dashboard of a car on the border between Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Melilla, trying to enter Europe illegally. The man, in his 20s, was one of four migrants found inside four separate vehicles within several hours on Saturday, said Spain's Civil Guard officers. Three more vehicles were stopped in Beni-Enzar, Morocco, during the weekend, the Daily Mail reported. Another stowaway was found in an engine compartment, a third under a rear seat and a fourth man in a dangerous position in a dumper truck, where they were in danger of being crushed. Two of these men had to be stabilised by doctors after they were found to be suffering from asphyxiation, disorientation and joint pain due to the conditions in which they travelled. A 15-year-old girl was also among those found.

Weird news - Dying with a stomach full of cocaine

The drug trade is a very lucrative trade, with the amount of money involved being huge. The difference in price of the drug in the drug producing regions such as Colombia, compared with the price in the developed countries is so huge that there are massive efforts made to transport this drug in large quantities to meet user demand. At the same time, there are a lot of efforts made by the enforcement agencies to stop this movement of drugs. As a part of this cat and mouse game, the drug cartels keep on thinking of new ways to move these drugs. In the past, drug supplies have been moved in through fast boats along the coastal regions, through hiding these items in regular trade, through the use of innovate methods such as small submarines, and in the below case, through using people as mules when they actually carry the drug on their persons.
This method involves taking small pouches of the drug, and ingesting it so that it can be carried in the stomach, and later excreted when their reach their destination. However, this is fraught with a high amount of risk since the stomach is full of strong acids that can dissolve items, and if the drugs are exposed in the stomach, their high concentration will be mostly fatal for the person (link to article):

A Japanese man with 246 packets of cocaine in his stomach and intestines died mid-flight on his way from Bogota to Tokyo, authorities said Monday in northern Mexico, where the plane made an emergency landing. The 42-year-old man, identified only as Udo "N," began having a seizure after traveling from the Colombian capital to Mexico City and catching a connecting flight to Japan, said the prosecutor's office for the state of Sonora. "Flight attendants noticed a person suffering convulsions, and requested permission to make an emergency landing in Hermosillo, Sonora," it said in a statement. "When the plane landed at 2:25 am on Friday, paramedics boarded it and declared Udo 'N' deceased." An autopsy found the man had swallowed 246 packets of cocaine, each measuring one by 2.5 centimeters (about one by one-third inch).

Weird news - Penalty on man for forcing plane to dump fuel

Over the years, especially after 9/11, airlines have stopped becoming lenient on passengers who cause a ruckus on a flight. This can happen often enough when people have had too much to drink, something that causes weird behavior and which can threaten the safety of other passengers, or atleast cause them major inconveniences. In this specific case, the drunk man caused a huge ruckus on the flight and the pilot had to land back at the airport from which he had taken off, before doing that, he had to dump some of the fuel that he had loaded on the plane in order to have a safe landing (link to article):

A few preflight drinks can get expensive rather quickly. But for David Stephen Young, a round of six alcoholic beverages he drank before his flight from Calgary to London prompted a rash of unruly behavior, culminating in an abrupt turnaround, an arrest and a hefty fine of more than $16,000. Young, 44, was ordered by a judge to pay WestJet for 20,000 tons of wasted fuel the pilot dumped over Alberta to safely land the aircraft back in Calgary on Jan. 4. The fine came after he pleaded guilty last week to resisting arrest and failing to comply with safety instructions during the fight, according to USA Today.

Weird news - Buying a flat, and finding a body inside

This is truly a horrific experience. Imagine buying a house, opening it and then finding a body inside. For most people, such an experience would make them have a lot of negative thoughts about the house, with a number of house buyers would then refuse to live in such a house. And after six months of death, investigating the death would also be difficult, since even with a reduced amount of decomposition, a post-mortem would not reveal as many details given the elapsed time period. One wonders about the people who committed the murder but then were brazen enough to leave the body in a bed in a house which they then sold off; they would have known that the body would be found and eventually investigated (link to article):

The police have found a six-month-old decomposed body hidden in a box bed in a flat in Bhopal’s Bagsewania area on Sunday evening. The flat has reportedly been locked since June last year and the owners have not been seen since that time. The police is still not sure whether the recovered body is that of a man or a woman. “Everything will become clear after the post-mortem and DNA test. We are searching for the flat owners as only they will be able to reveal how the body reached here. Prima facie it appears to be a case of murder. The body had long hair, so we are suspecting it to be that of a woman,” SP South Sampat Upadhyay said. Police sources say the body had been kept on a mattress and wrapped with a cotton blanket, among other clothes inside the bed box. Even though the body appears to have been lying there for six months, it had not decomposed, instead it had become mummified.

Weird news - Stealing a giant bronze hippo

Sometimes when an item is stolen, people stop and wonder as to how it can happen. Consider a large large animal sculpture in a park, and when I say large, I mean large. This hippo sculpture, made of bronze (and hence somewhat valuable) weighted as much as 1500 pounds, so obviously it was not the work of one person. In fact, it must have required some heavy machinery to have moved the sculpture, and would have taken some time, so a bit puzzling about how no one noticed that the sculpture was being stolen (link to article):

A giant hippo is missing in England. No, it is not real, and yes, it is made of bronze. The 6.5-foot goliath statue, weighing at a whopping 1,500 pound was reported stolen on Friday, CNN reported Kent police saying in a news release. Reportedly, the hippo is believed to have been stolen when someone forced their way into Chilstone Garden Ornaments in Tunbridge Wells.

Weird news - Stealing the ATM

You would have heard of people trying to rob a bank, making many different strategies and mechanisms - in fact, movies about major bank robberies show many different weird methods of doing the same. The same extends for trying to get money when it is on the way, this includes looting cash vans and other major movements of money or precious items / jewels. However, there are so many mobile money spots that seem to be now becoming more of a target. Some scripts talk about hacking ATM's to enable them to dispense money to the attacker, but how about just taking the ATM away and retrieving the money inside it at leisure. '
In many cases, ATM's are located at remote locations with no security guards, which means that these ATM's are vulnerable to anybody wanting to pick up these ATM machines forcibly. Even with security devices and connections to police monitors, their remoteness means that there is a good chance that the attacker can pick up the ATM and be on the way before somebody can stop them (link to article):

Unidentified robbers took away at least two ATMs of Axis Bank, one containing Rs 10 lakh, in the past two days in Noida and neighbouring Hapur district. While five masked men allegedly uprooted an ATM from Rachna market on the NH-91 in Badalpur area on Thursday night, another ATM was taken away from Pilukhwa area in Hapur district on Friday night. Both the ATM booths were not guarded and their security depended on a locked shutter. According to police, at least five robbers were caught on CCTV taking away the ATM from Rachna market around 2.30 am on February 1. The machine contained nearly Rs 10 lakh. Kuldeep Singh, who owns a vehicle-repair shop adjacent to the ATM in Rachna market, said: “When we reached our shop around 8am the next day, we found a part of the machine lying there. The machine was gone and the shutter of the ATM was open.”

Weird news - Cryptocurrency CEO dies without sharing password

The wonders of modern technology can sometimes make things pretty difficult. Modern privacy is built on using cryptology, with its system of private and public keys (and other key mechanisms). The more recent development of cryptocurrencies use encryption as their basis, which makes storing of these keys the 'key' to everything. There have been many cases in the past where hackers have managed to get the key and stolen the money held in cryptocurrency wallets, with no recourse to the people who owned the money held in these wallets.
This is a different kind of problem, but one that can also suddenly arise, with the problem of knowledge being held only by one person, who suddenly dies, not having transferred the knowledge to anybody and leaving the cryptocurrency money locked up (link to article):

This is a story worthy of a film script -- which will doubtless be realized. A 30-year old CEO of a Canadian cryptocurrency firm reportedly died in India from complications from Crohn's disease (an intestinal inflammation disorder) taking with him passwords that has locked up $190 million in investor cryptocurrency. Top security experts have been unable to unlock the encrypted password throwing his clients into a tizzy. The saga, just unfolding in the western media, goes back to December when Gerald Cotten, 30-year old founder of QuadrigaCX, died due to complications with Crohn’s disease, according to the company and Cotten’s wife, Jennifer Robertson. Cotten died “while traveling in India, where he was opening an orphanage to provide a home and safe refuge for children in need,” the company's social media page said.

Weird news - Hole under the road for bank robbery

Robberies can take some weird forms. When you read about the various forms and types taken by robberies in the past, you can come across some weird examples where people have tried all sort of things - in home robberies, people have tried to come in through chimneys and even large pipes, for banks and vaults, robbers have tried to dig in through tunnels so that they can get inside undetected. Sometimes, these attempts have been stopped in the nick of time, through security measures meant to protect against thefts. However, there are other times when these attempts have been discovered by accident and thefts avoided, such as this case where road workers were attempting to fix a sinkhole under a road and found that somebody was building a tunnel to a bank (link to article):

Road workers in Florida sent out to repair a sinkhole got a surprise this week when they discovered it was caused by a tunnel leading to a nearby bank. The FBI posted pictures of the narrow underground tunnel leading to a branch of Chase Bank in Pembroke Pines, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Miami. Police and the FBI were called in Tuesday night after the road workers realized that a manhole-sized hole in the road was caused by a tunnel.

Weird news - Not a ghost in the closet

When you are living alone in an apartment, and you find that your clothing has been disturbed, it can feel real creepy, like somebody has come into your house and touched your things. But when you find strange hand prints in the bathroom, and they are not yours, scripts from horror movies would come into the mind, as if there is a ghost in the house (even if you do not believe in ghosts). But whether you have a ghost in the house, or when you suddenly find movement coming from a closet and a man's voice from inside, it can be equally scary. In today's world, the threat of a strange man in the house when you are all alone can be equally scary - the horrors of a slasher or a murderer or a rapist all come to mind.
It takes a lot of courage to handle such a situation, and this girl managed to handle this weird situation well enough, managing to get the man out of her apartment (link to article):

Maddie, a student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who identified herself only by her first name, explained to WFMY-TV that her clothing had mysteriously disappeared in the past. Moreover, the junior told other local news outlets this week she had previously noticed handprints on the bathroom walls. They weren't hers. On Saturday, Greensboro police say, Maddie confronted her "ghost" after hearing something rattling in her closet. "Who's in there?" she recalled asking in the interview with WFMY. As she pressed against the closet door, she realized a spirit wasn't responsible for the sounds. "Oh, my name's Drew," a man's voice replied.