 |
Odds and Ends
By Devin D. O'Leary
MARCH 8, 1999:
Dateline: France--A young Frenchman knocked off his moped
by a hit-and-run motorist failed to notice that his left arm was
missing until he made it back home to his village some 10 kilometers
from the accident scene. Oliver Faure, a 21-year-old from Laragne,
France, was hit by a car in the village of Upaix early last Sunday.
After the driver fled, Faure set off toward home on foot before
getting a lift from a passing motorist. It wasn't until Faure
returned home and his mother removed his jacket that anyone noticed
Faure's left arm had been ripped from its socket. Emergency service
workers found the missing limb by the side of the road. It was
packed in ice and reunited with its owner at a Marseilles hospital.
Dateline: Russia--Obviously not cut out for the field of
animal husbandry, a rural farmer in the southern Siberian region
of Altai set himself on fire after three piglets he had purchased
fell ill and died. The unidentified 30-year-old man was apparently
so distraught after the piglets' death that he drank large quantities
of vodka, soaked himself in the spirit and set himself ablaze.
His wife and children put out the flames and rushed him to a nearby
hospital where he remains in critical condition.
Dateline: Colombia--Elders from Colombia's U'wa Indian
tribe announced last Friday that a pair of U'wa twins, considered
by the tribe a curse and evil omen, would not be killed in a ritual
sacrifice. The infant boy and girl were born last week to their
U'wa mother in a health clinic in rural Saravena, Colombia. The
twins were abandoned by their mother almost immediately after
birth, and several local newspapers reported that the twins had
received a death sentence by U'wa tribal elders. In a later telephone
interview with reporters, the U'wa elders admitted that they still
view twins as a punishment from the gods and the product of "impure
spirits." However, Luis Alfonso Teglia--one of the U'wa leaders--said
that the tribe no longer kills twins. According to Teglia, the
worst the newborns will face is "mandatory expulsion from
the tribe." The U'wa tribe consists of about 5,000 people
living in close-knit communities throughout four northern Colombian
provinces.
Dateline: China--Ma Lianbo, a former government worker
in Beijing, broke his own world record last Saturday by spinning
around in a circle for more than four hours. In 1993, Ma spun
himself into the Guinness Book of World Records by rotating
continuously for three hours and completing 12,980 rotations.
Last week, Ma easily outdistanced his old record by spinning around
in a circle for four hours, 34 minutes and 20,044 rotations. A
Chinese government official was on hand to record the results
and submit the new record to Guinness. So far, no one has actually
tried to challenge Ma's record.
Dateline: Indiana--Researchers at Indiana State University--who
seem to have landed a pretty sweet living watching cable TV--have
announced the results of their year-long investigation into violence
and sexual innuendo in televised wrestling. The results: There
is violence and sexual innuendo in televised wrestling. The couch
potato researchers watched 50 "WWF Raw" episodes last
year on the USA network. Amid the staggering amount of profane,
violent and risqué incidents, the researchers counted 1,658
instances of characters grabbing or pointing to their crotches,
157 instances of wrestlers or audience members making obscene
gestures, 128 instances of simulated sexual activity, 47 references
to satanic activity and 609 occasions when a wrestler was struck
by a foreign object such as a chair or garbage can. Most surprisingly,
the researches discovered an average of only 36 minutes of actual
wrestling in each two-hour show. The syndicated news show "Inside
Edition" commissioned the study for a two-part story
that aired last week.
|
|
