80 Stupid (But True) Story Summaries

* In Boston, a groom who became so nervous that he passed out at the altar got married in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, attended by emergency workers and the minister who tagged along.

* At a jail in Bridgeport, Conn., a man who was arrested on drug charges, but escaped, later realized he'd left all of his belongings at the police station and went back to demand they give him his stuff back. He was promptly re-arrested.

* In Corpus Christi, Texas, a sheriff who for 10 years said he was underpaid, on his last day simply wrote himself a check, jotted on the memo line - "salary adjustment" - and made it out for $48,000. He's been charged with embezzlement.

* In Newark, N.J., a woman about to give birth was turned away at a hospital after being told she would not be allowed to smoke cigarettes during delivery, even if she was nervous.

* In Denver, a 30-year-old ex-topless dancer filed a $100 million lawsuit, claiming her breast implants deflated while on stage and began leaking during her act.

* In Portland, Ore., a man "just trying to have fun" was inadvertentently shot through the skull with an arrow by a friend trying to knock a fuel can off his head. He survived with no brain damage.

* In Stratford, Conn., a bank robber wrote on a deposit slip - "Give me the money" - apparently forgetting the slip also included his name, address, phone number and driver's license number.

* At a prestigious art show in Manchester, England, a pre-schooler color painting submitted by his mother as a joke, was judged best-of-show and won $1,000.

* In Cannon, Mich., a mayoral candidate caught driving around the community at 5 a.m. removing his opponent's campaign signs from residents' yards, told authorities he was only trying to take part in a neighborhood cleanup.

* A woman who asked a casino guard in Las Vegas to save her slot machine while she ran to the restroom for a moment is now suing after he allowed another woman to sit down at the machine and play just one game. It paid out $99,000.

* At the end of an Evansville, Ind., trial for a man whose nose was bitten off in a bar fight and tossed on the floor, the judge allowed the man to have his nose back, once it was no longer needed as evidence.

* In Orlando, an executive was fired midway through his contract from an animal-petting farm and instead of a salary and severance pay package valued at $520,000, received free tickets for his next 40,000 visits to the farm. He said he planned to sue.

* In Sacramento, Calif., the same citizen's group that successfully fought for an increase in the national minimum wage, filed a lawsuit in California to exempt itself from the law, saying it could not afford it.

* In Albany, N.Y., an appellate court ruled it is not cruel and unusual punishment to make prison inmates actually eat the prison meatloaf. 

* In Farmington, N.M., a 45-year-old man who was drunk and fell asleep in the middle of a strip mall parking lot, was killed when a youth tried to wake him up by running over him with a shopping cart.

* In Navarre Beach, Fla., Air Force officials arrested 31 nude sunbathers who were using a secluded area along a government air strip, causing pilots to become distracted and nearly crash their jets.

* In Bogota, Colombia, a street vendor cleaning fish found one with the numbers "1124" written on its side, which inspired about 300 people to buy those numbers in the country's weekly Lotto drawing - and sure enough, those numbers won. The country did not have enough money in its national treasury to pay off the prize.

* In Atlantic Beach, Fla., officials announced a more rigid police-training program into handling suspicious boxes after officers investigating a cigar-shaped package with the word - "BOOM!" - across the front, shook it,  threw it to the ground and drove it back to the station before a bomb squad analysis showed it was a real bomb.

* At a jail in Roseburg, Ore., an inmate asked a guard to buy him a pack of   M&Ms from the courthouse vending machine. That was done. Ironically, that also enabled the inmate to post bail and get out of jail. The wrapper had a $1 million instant winner coupon printed on the back.

* In Big Lake, Minn., cabbie Wayne Voigt says he will take passengers anywhere they want to go. So when 73-year-old Cynthia Benolkin boarded the other day, he took her where she wanted to go - Los Angeles. "She said she had difficulty walking and didn't want to take the bus, train or plane," said Voigt. The ride, which took 4 1/2 days and stretched 4,000 miles, rang up a $2,5000 toll. She paid it.

* In Oakmont, Pa., police and fire officials rushed to a tragic scene where a man had reportedly heaved a baby off a bridge but an investigation revealed it was only a bowler getting rid of his ball after an expecially bad game.

* At an accident scene in Montgomery, Ala., two paramedics were injured when they became involved in a fight over which one would take the injured to the hospital, as they were lying on stretchers along the highway.

* In St. Petersburg, Fla., a policeman's inability to shoot straight was all that saved the life of a 65-year-old man who was pulled over for speeding and emerged from his car with a walking cane the officer thought was a high-caliber shotgun.

* In Greenville, Miss., police found a man's finger on the floor of a store that had been vandalized and took prints, thus being able to track down the burglar who had lost the finger trying to crawl through a broken glass door.

* In Lincoln, Neb., what was hailed as the largest cocaine bust in the history of the area turned out to be laundry detergent.

* In Littleville, Ala., a man who lost his right leg after being hit by a train in 1986, lost his left leg after being hit by another train.

* In Victoria, Canada, a man with a history of allergy problms sneezed so hard while mowing his lawn, his right eyeball came loose and then popped out. He required emergency surgery.

* In Marion, Ala., the police chief who also serves as a part-time minister was fined $200 after he punched out the pianist at the church.

* To avoid hitting a turtle that was trying to cross the highway, a woman in Myrtle Beach, S.C., got a $60 ticket for stopping along the roadway during rush hour.

* In Fort Wayne, Ind., as Al Fitzwater revved up his car, he spotted a garden snake on the floorboard. In an attempt to stomp on it, he hit the accelerator, which lurched the car forward hitting the garage, which knocked over a can of gasoline, which ignited, which set the car and the adjoining home on fire, and did $40,000 damage to the home and destroyed the car. The snake lived.

* A 26-year-old man wearing a ski mask stole $8,000 from the Midlantic  National bank in Newark, N.J., and then was captured 20 minutes later at his home. He used his own paycheck stub to write a holdup note.

* In Brazil, a leading legislator who came under fire after amassing a $51 million fortune on only the equivalent of of a $33,000-a-year salary, resigned when a committee refused to believe his claim he accrued the fortune by winning at bingo and various lotteries 24,000 times over the past six years.

* In Los Angeles, high-rise office workers who thought their buildings were earthquake-safe because they were built on rollers that allowed them to sway harmlessly, were told there is no such thing as buildings on rollers and they sway only because they are about to fall down.

* In Indianapolis, a 21-year-old claiming to be a pizza deliveryman went naked door-to-door, but then injured himself in the groin when he tried jumping a fence while fleeing police.

* In Berkeley Springs, W. Va., a woman couldn't figure a way to describe to a judge just how cockroach-infested her apartment was, so she brought a thousand roaches to court with her and unloaded them on the judge's desk. She was found in contempt.

* To promote its drug rehabilitation center and offer aid to cocaine addicts, Cincinnati's Care Unit Hospital erected 10 billboards that read, "If you need cocaine, call us." But people got the wrong idea. They began calling for other reasons. "Just a moment ago, I had a call from a guy who wanted to know how much a gram cost and where he could pick it up," said administrator James F. Lynch.

* At the La Conga Supermarket in Jersey City, N.J., thousands flocked to see an image of the Virgin Mary that had begun appearing inside the door of a freezer containing pork sausages, burritos and frozen pizzas.

* At Arizona State University in Tempe, an instructor in the school's theater department was dismissed after he continued to teach Shakespeare, despite an interdepartmental decision that Shakespearean works were too sexist and "Eurocentric male canons."

* A city-sanctioned sting of Yankton, S.D. establishments serving alcohol to minors unfortunately revealed two were owned by the city.

* As part of a folklore-like belief that doing such might bring rain, more than two-dozen 10-foot-tall statues of human penises were erected around drought-ridden Sena, Thailand, but then were ordered taken down when four businesses were destroyed and leaders began to wonder if they were causing business fires instead.

* In Mount Airy, Md., a 12-year-old who saved a classmate's life by handing her a prescription inhaler during a severe asthma attack was placed on three years' probation. Passing a drug without permission is a violation of school district bylaws.

* Officials in West Haven, Conn., pulled the plug on a flashing sign that warned people to keep quiet at the beach after residents complained the generator used to power the sign was making too much noise.

* In Bangkok, Thailand, a world-class distance runner whose wedding featured a 5000-meter run to get to the site unfortunately beat all of the guests to the altar and then had been married nearly 10 minutes by the time the first guests began to gasp in.

* In Saratoga, California, officials hoping the origin of its name was something regal or symbolic so it could be used for promotional purposes were dissapointed to discover "saratoga" is a Mohawk Indian word for "floating scum on water."

* Police in Wichita, Kan., arrested a 22-year-old at an airport motel after he tried to pass two counterfeit $16 bills.

* In Houston, a rare form of cancer got an even rarer form of treatment when doctors pulled a man's heart out of his body, snipped away a baseball-sized tumor and put his heart back in.

* Aboard a South African Airways flight, a couple was charged with violating airline guidelines when they undressed, pushed a seat back into the rest position and, for 12 minutes, made love in the front of the other passengers before the pilot, after several pleas over the intercom, was forced to leave the cockpit and pull them apart.

* In Haydenville, Mass., a 34-year-old blasted his tee shot way too long, driving the ball well past the green, through a rough and onto an adjacent highway where it careened off a passing car, bounced back onto the course and rolled into the cup for a hole-in-one.

* Trying to break into his own restaurant, a short-order cook in Miamisburg, Ohio, became stuck in a vent directly over the french fryer and nearly fried himself to death. "Another 30 minutes," said a police spokesman, "and he would have been toast."

* In San Antonio, a man arrested for carrying around a plastic bag of a white, powdery substance that tested as a drug but he claimed was his grandmother, got back his job and apartment after a follow-up test showed it was his grandmother.

* A mother in Jacksonville Beach, Fla., who sold her 2-year-old daughter for $10, followed up by calling police to ask for a background check on the couple who bought her.

* A Phoenix fast-food cook was sentenced to 45 days in jail for blowing his nose on a police officer's Jumbo Jack burger.

* On the trail of a convicted forger, a policeman in San Ramon, Calif., assumed a suspect wouldn't answer the door if she saw a police officer, so he impersonated a singing messenger, dressing up as a 6-foot chicken complete with feathers, beak and webbed feet, and when she came to the door, sang to her, "You're under arrest."

* In Portland, Ore., thieves made off with a mortuary van, apparently unaware there were two bodies in the back awaiting cremation.

* In San Diego, a woman who won a three-year battle against a strain of leukemia doctors had termed 100 percent terminal, went out on a weekend boating expedition to celebrate and was fatally mutilated by a shark.

* In Anaheim, Calif., a Disneyland visitor fell through a door on a Skyway gondola and landed 20 feet below in Alice in Wonderland.

* In Kansas City, Kan., 21 prison parolees were accidentally let off in Kansas City, Mo., after the bus driver misread instructions.

* At a surprise 30th birthday party in St. Paul, Minn., the drunken guest of honor became angered when he walked into the door to find a party and tried to chase everyone out before stabbing one visitor to death.

* In Minneapolis, apartment residents admitted to police they passed a dead man in the hallway for two days but thought he'd just passed out from a party.

* In New York City, where the school system is under fire for not keeping close enough tabs on its employees, a school janitor who would often miss work or go off on a clean-up job and not return for hours was arrested after it was revealed for the past 14 years, as second income, he's occasionally been flying across the country as a Learjet pilot, returning just in time for the end of the school day.

* In Sugar Tit, S.C., the state's first ever BubbaFest featured country music, a wading pool full of grits, a moon pie toss, coronation of a Mr.and Mrs. Bubba and Bubbette and drawing for a second-hand refrigerator off the front porch of the winner's choice.

* At a home in Gary, Ind., where police were busting a man on marijuana charges, a house cat meowed loudly moments before officers left and pulled out from some bed covers a plastic bag containing several packets of cocaine as well.

* In Hartford, Conn., a 74-year-old man suffered a heart attack while giving CPR during a CPR training class but was saved when the person he was giving CPR turned around and gave CPR to him.

* Coverage of a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball game was interrupted by word of the death of actor James Earl Jones, followed by a nostalgic soliloquy by the announcer...until producers realized they'd misunderstood and it was Martin Luther King assassin James Earl Ray who'd died instead.

* In East Farmingdale, N.Y., a robber polite enough to bend down and help his victim pick up the money he'd dropped while in a flustered state, was forced to flee without any money when that gave the store manager enough time to grab a gun.

* A woman in Fresno, Calif., who fired back at her husband after he shot her during a marriage counseling session will not face criminal charges, a judge decided.

* In Bonn, Germany, two elderly residents got lost while driving their electric wheelchairs outside a nursing home and ended up attempting to negotiate traffic on a busy expressway during evening rush hour.

* Along I-74 near Cincinnati where an overturned tanker truck spilled 20,000 gallons of animal fat on the pavement, nothing could get up the 2-inch-thick layer of congealed waste until Cincinnati-based Procoer & Gamble Co., came through by donating 3 tons of Dawn, the grease-fighting dish-washing liquid. "This was by far our most extreme case of grease buildup," said a company spokesman.

* In New Delhi, India, after nine years of court proceedings, a court let off a law clerk who tried to bribe a judge by giving him 12 cents if he'd give his boss a favorable trial date for a case.

* A protest was lodged in South Korea against the Kia Car Company for producing a TV commercial in which a Princess Diana look-alike, while driving in a Kia, successfully eludes paparazzi this time and at the end of the commercial, winks into the camera.

* In Dublin, Ireland, a 65-year-old man who said he didn't want to waste the double-cemetery plot he'd purchased before getting a divorce began running a personal ad in a local paper: "Single white male seeks woman to share his grave for eternity."

* At Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., workers put the finishing touches on a $19 million, state-of-the-art athletic center and suddenly realized they'd not installed any showers for the athletes.

* In wake of a series of attacks against clergymen in England, an electronics firm announced the creation of a "Personal Security Crucifix" for priests to wear around the necks that, when Jesus is tugged at by the legs, emits an ear-shattering alarm.

* In New York, members of the state's Green Party asked if a death-row inmate on the November senatorial ballot can be replaced if he is executed before Election Day.

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