Category Archives: Strange News

Pageant Mom Feeds Daughter Tapeworms to Slim Her Down

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[P]ediatric E.R. nurse, Maricar Cabral-Osorio thought the teenage girl [who] arrived with a bulging stomach at the Florida hospital where she works might be pregnant, but an ultrasound showed no signs of a baby.

[Then she] went to the bathroom and started screaming:

“It was a toilet bowl full of tapeworms.” Cabral-Osorio said. “[S]he had pooped all these tapeworms. There were a couple that were wiggling around trying to get out of the toilet bowl.”

Then – of course – the mother started apologizing to her daughter, saying “I’m sorry. You know, I did it just to make you a little skinnier. You needed some help before we went on to the pageant.”

Yep. She gave her daughter pills with tapeworm eggs to get her to lose weight. For a beauty pageant.

Photo of a tapeworm head via Getty Images.
Via Huffington Post.

Landmine Detector Rats

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APOPO (an acronym for Anti-Persoonsmijnen Ontmijnende Product Ontwikkeling: “Anti-Personnel Landmines Detection Product Development” in English) is a Belgian non-governmental organization which trains African giant pouched rats to detect landmines and tuberculosis.

Bart Weetjens, the founder of APOPO knew that rats, with their strong sense of smell and trainability, could provide a cheaper, more efficient, and locally available means to detect landmines.

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Using African giant pouched rats to detect landmines has several advantages. The rats are indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa, where they are used and, thus, are well-suited to the climate and are resistant to many endemic diseases.[6] They are also widely available and inexpensive to procure.

In the minefields, the rats are too light to detonate a pressure-activated mine by walking over it. Their small size also means that the rats can be easily transported to and from operational sites.

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I should have trained my rats to do this kind of thing…

Video via on YouTube.
Quoted text via Wikipedia.

Orthodox Jewish Gang Arrested for Intimidation Tactics in the Service of Divorce

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Matthew Shaer [in GQ did] a profile of a gang of Hasids hired for thousands of dollars to persuade Orthodox men who have refused to grant their wives a “get” – a Jewish divorce document — to reconsider that decision.

In Orthodox Judaism, a get is required by the husband in order for a couple to get divorced. Without a get, a woman is not permitted to remarry and is therefore considered to be an agunah: a chained woman.

It’s an interesting cultural position – in the ultra Orthodox world, the gang was fighting for the underdog, even though to the outside world their tactics made them difficult to distinguish from any of a thousand other groups utilizing violence.

The gang used strong powers of persuasion to get their job done: physical assault with ropes, acid and cattle prods.

That last implement earned the head of the gang, Rabbi Mendel Epstein, the Prodfather nickname. He and his henchmen were arrested in an FBI sting last year.

What’s next…a Tibetan Buddhist hit squad?

Photo via USA Today.
Via Tablet.

After the Rapture Pet Care

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[A]t some point in the future Jesus will come in the air, catch up the Church from the earth, and then return to heaven with the Church. This is known as the Rapture and it will be glorious.

But what of our pets? Who will take care of our pets when we’re gone?

After The Rapture Pet Care is building a network of non-Christian pet caretakers and a massive database of Christian-owned pets.

If the Rapture comes, our caretakers will be ready to find, rescue, and care for your pets.

The FAQ in particular is brilliant and the operation is real, founded by a Christian and a non-Christian:

Can I contact the Volunteer Pet Caretakers in my area?
We have promised our Volunteer Pet Caretakers we will keep their information strictly confidential. If they thought their information would be given out, or that Christians might try to pressure them to become Christians, they simply would not sign up.

Isn’t the world going to be totally collapsed after the Rapture?
When all the Christians on the planet disappear, there will certainly be massive confusion. However, the majority of people will still be on earth, and communications will be their first priority to maintain. [D]ata about all registered pets is located on Google servers as well as our own server in Lansing, Michigan (away from political and military hot spots to minimize chance of destruction if there is a post-Rapture war).

Who are these Volunteer Pet Caretakers and how do I know they’ll take good care of my pets?
Most Volunteer Pet Caretakers fit this description: They are atheist or another non-Christian religion. They love animals enough to register with us even though they do not believe there will be a Rapture. They are not paid, so they are not signing up simply to make a quick buck.

If there is going to be a time of great tribulation, suffering, judgment, and confusion after the rapture, won’t these Pet Caretakers be much more concerned about that stuff?
There really is little information about what will happen after the Rapture of the Church. We do know, though, that the anti-Christ will bring temporary peace and the world will worship an idol god, so therefore there will be worldwide communication and a societal structure at least for a while. Certainly there will be confusion over the sudden disappearance of millions of people, but you can bet a quick “scientific” explanation will be given to calm the masses.

After The Rapture Pet Care via AATTP.

Mailing Small Children in the Early 20th Century

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In the early years of Parcel Post service, before the U.S. Post Office implemented more specific regulations, people shipped all sorts of unusual things by mail — including babies and small children.

Not that it was a usual occurrence, and was most often a way of listing children as “mail” so as to avoid the cost of a train ticket or similar purposes.

Inquiries could be humorous:

Fort McPherson, Ga.
Postmaster General,

Washington, D.C. — Sir: I have been corresponding with a party in Pa about getting a baby to rais (our home being without One.) May I ask you what specifications to use in wrapping so it (baby) would comply with regulations and be allowed shipment by parcel post as the express co are to rough in handling.

This wasn’t entirely enforced, however. Two weeks after this, a mail carrier in Ohio delivered a baby from his parents to his grandmother:

“Vernon O. Lytle, mail carrier on rural route No. 5, is the first man to accept and deliver under parcel post conditions a live baby. The baby, a boy weighing 10-3/4 pounds, just within the 11 pound weight limit, is the child of Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Beagle of Glen Este. The boy was well wrapped and ready for ‘mailing’ when the carrier received him to-day. Mr. Lytle delivered the boy safely at the address on the card attached, that of the boy’s grandmother, Mrs. Louis Beagle, who lives about a mile distant. The postage was fifteen cents and the parcel was insured for $50.”

Images above vintage postcards to poke fun at the institution.
Via Snopes.

Bronx Man Decapitates Self in Broad Daylight

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Tomas Rivera, 51, of upstate Port Jervis, tied a chain from his head to a pole, then hit the gas on his 2005 Honda CRV in Hunts Point.

He gunned it at 9:35 a.m., slamming into a parked vehicle on Longfellow Ave. near Randall Ave., police said. He was decapitated and died at the scene.

With all respect to the deceased, I admire anyone who is able to achieve this level of panache.

If I were ever inclined to check out (not that I have any such inclinations at the moment) I would have a hard time deciding between guillotine or perhaps being drawn and quartered.

Via .

The Scientists Who Trained Fish to Walk on Land

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Montreal researchers raised a fish called a Polypterus, which can breathe air, walk on land using their front fins, and looks like ancient fishes that evolved into tetrapods – four-limbed vertebrates.

The “terrestrialized” fish – meaning they were raised out of water – showed significant anatomical and behavioural changes.

“Anatomically, their pectoral skeleton changed to become more elongate with stronger attachments across their chest, possibly to increase support during walking, and a reduced contact with the skull to potentially allow greater head/neck motion,” researcher Trina Du said.

Polypterus are strange guys to begin with. They’re freshwater fish…but they can function on land – and do – for short periods of time. What the McGill researchers wanted to do was to force them to exist solely on land – in other words, to “terrestrialize” the fish.

This they did for almost a year, to find out what kinds of behavioral or morphological changes might result in this.

The reasons for performing this experiment are pretty self-evident – it gives clues as to what actually happened in the long distant evolutionary past when this happened to our own very, very, (very) distant ancestors.

I can not possibly be the only person this story tempts to stand up and yell, “Fish out of water!”

Via Toronto Sun.