NEWS OF THE WEIRD BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION
of black ice while driving in Bellevue, Ohio, and slammed into Matthew Burr’s mailbox. Doesn’t seem all that dramatic, but postal service guidelines specify that mailbox poles be able to break away, which Burr’s clearly did not do. Burr had installed an 8-inch metal pole, buried 3 feet in the ground and fortified with rocks and dry cement poured on top, News5Cleveland reported. Snay’s truck rolled when it hit the mailbox; he was paralyzed from the neck down from his injuries, media reports said. Attorney Kathleen St. John argued on June 16 to the Ohio Supreme Court that a property owner “is not justified in inflicting, without warning, bodily harm upon the person of a trespasser,” but Burr’s attorney, Doug Leak, calls the USPS recommendations “just guidelines” and said Burr was justified in reinforcing his mailbox after years of accidents and Inexplicable The latest trend in plastic surgery in Chi- vandalism. The court is expected to rule soon. na, according to Gulf Today, is the pointy ear. The modified ears resemble those of ani- Awesome! Julia Yonkowski of Largo, Florida, only mated characters or fairy tale creatures, and they give the face “a slender shape,” the site needed a $20 bill when she visited the ATM reported on June 17. Doctors first insert car- at Chase Bank on June 19, but she decided tilage or an implant in the back of the ear, to check her balance while she was there. then fill it in with hyaluronic acid. Plastic What she saw on the paper slip surprised surgery clinics in China are experiencing her: a balance of $995,985,856. “I was horsuch great demand that patients have to get rified,” she told WFLA-TV. “I know most people would think they won the lottery, but on waiting lists. I was horrified.” She’s tried several times to contact Chase, but she can’t get through to Fine points of the law In December 2016, Cletus Snay hit a patch anyone. “I get tied up with their automated
Creepy
A TikTok user in New Jersey shared the unsettling scene that unfolded on June 10 as she pulled up carpet in her new home, the New York Post reported. “Ashley” showed followers the floorboards underneath the carpet, which appeared to show a bloodstained imprint of a human being and a chalk outline of a body, along with a 2018 date and a case number. “I wasn’t bothered knowing someone died in my new house,” Ashley said. Responding to comments on her video, Ashley tested the bloodstain by spraying hydrogen peroxide on it, which caused bubbling — a sure sign that the substance was blood, some said. Still, Ashley isn’t fazed: It “seems chill here. It’s all good.”
system and I can’t get a person,” she said. “I Ewwwww don’t know what to think.” The Wellington Correctional Center in New South Wales, Australia, is being evacuated so that crews can clear the prison of Unclear on the concept • Richard Turpin apparently just need- dead and decaying mice and repair chewed ed to borrow a truck, but he ended up with electrical wiring, the Associated Press reportcharges filed against him in Bratenhal, Ohio, ed. Australia has been overrun with mice for on June 18. WJW-TV reported that a mail months, which scientists say happens when carrier parked his USPS van at the end of rain follows several years of drought. Cora driveway and walked up to the house to rective Services Commissioner Peter Severin deliver the mail, giving Turpin a chance to explained that “the mice have got into wall jump in and take off. A witness saw the theft cavities, into roof spaces. They’re dead, but and called police, who caught up with Turpin then they start obviously decaying and then a few miles away. When they asked him why the next problem is mites.” he took the truck, he cryptically answered: “A U-Haul.” The police officer responded, Yeah, science! “I don’t think that’s a U-Haul” — but surIn a study published June 10 in the journal prise! Inside, they found a big-screen TV that Green Chemistry, scientists at the Univerhadn’t been in the truck earlier, according to sity of Edinburgh in Scotland announced a the mailman. And no mail was missing. The breakthrough. They had genetically engimail carrier admitted he’d left the keys in the neered bacteria to convert terephthalic acid ignition. — a compound left over when plastic-eating • A 35-year-old man from Emmaus, Penn- bugs (discovered in Japan in 2016) do their sylvania, was presumably having a good thing — to vanillin, the primary component time on June 20, sitting in his Dodge Ram of extracted vanilla beans that produces the truck and lighting fireworks, then throwing taste and smell of vanilla. Global demand for them out the window ... until he was critical- the chemical is far outpacing the world’s suply injured by one that didn’t make it outside ply of natural vanilla beans. “Using microbes the cab. The exploding firework also did sig- to turn waste plastics ... into an important nificant damage to the interior of the truck, commodity is a beautiful demonstration of lehighvalleylive.com reported, but didn’t green chemistry,” said Ellis Crawford of the cause a fire, Emmaus Police Chief Troy U.K.’s Royal Society of Chemistry. Schantz said. Visit newsoftheweird.com.
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