WEIRDNUZ.441 (News of the Weird, July 19, 1996) by Chuck Shepherd LEAD STORIES * Technology to Make Golf Less Laborious: Two Fremont, Calif., men obtained a patent recently for a golf club that will fire a ball up to 250 yards by detonation of an explosive charge in the club head. (The club is not expected to be approved for tournament play.) And in April, a Houston, Tex., man obtained a patent for a cup that goes inside a golf hole and periscopes up after the ball goes in so that the golfer does not have to bend down to retrieve it. [New York Times, 7-1-96; Sports Illustrated, 5-13-96] * Anal-Compulsive Criminals: Two men who broke out of a jail in Rutland, Vt., in May were captured a week later, done in when police recovered a "things to do" list they had made to guide them in a post-escape robbery. In Dallas, Tex., in May, Travis Crabtree, 15, was indicted for murder, done in by a list of instructions he had written to himself for a robbery, including a reminder to kill the victim, which he allegedly did. In January in San Antonio, Tex., Jonathan Blaine Downey, 26, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for assembling fertilizer bombs to kill his enemies, done in when police found his list of 17 targets. [San Jose Mercury News-AP, 6-5-96] [USA Today, 5-17-96] [San Antonio Express-News, 1-11-96] * Two girls at the Mount St. Mary Academy in Little Rock, Ark., were not permitted at their graduation ceremony in May because of a school ruling barring pregnant students. Girls who have had abortions are not barred from the ceremony. [USA Today, 5-29-96] THE LITIGIOUS SOCIETY * In March, Sunrise, Fla., police Sgt. Mark Byers filed a lawsuit against Jane Liberatore, a woman whom he rescued in the line of duty from an abusive husband. Byers suffered a permanently warped hand by smashing through a door after the husband had killed Liberatore's boyfriend and was about to attack her, and wants compensation because Liberatore's immorality put him in jeopardy. Said Byers's lawyer, "When you cheat on your husband and create the potential for murder [and] a police officer is injured as a result, you make your own bed, and you have to sleep in it." [St. Francois County (Mo.) Press-Advertiser-AP, 3- 28-96] * In January, Jacquelynne Stafford filed a $300,000 lawsuit against the White Marsh (Md.) YMCA because a runner crashed into her at 2nd base during a league softball game, breaking her collarbone, when league rules require the runner to slide. In response to Stafford's lawsuit, the YMCA then sued the runner, his manager, the umpire, and the company that paid for the team's T-shirts for not assuring that the sliding rule was adhered to. [Washington Times, 1-30-96] * Diana J. Nagy filed a lawsuit in Charleston, W. Va., against the manufacturer of the golf cart from which her husband fell to his death after he had been drinking during a tournament at the Berry Hills Country Club. She claimed the cart ought to have had seat belts and doors. Mrs. Nagy's son was driving the cart so she also sued him. [Tampa Tribune-AP, 6-13-96] * In May, the U. S. Supreme Court rejected the claim made in 1992 by Ms. Bobby June Griggs that South Carolina Electric and Gas Company owes her for a nervous breakdown she suffered. Griggs entered a rice-recipe cook-off but became stressed and had to seek psychiatric help when the company, against her wishes, subsequently published the recipes of all contest entrants. [Miami Herald, 5-23-96] * In March, a woman filed a lawsuit against Israel's Channel 2 and its weatherman Danny Rup for about $1,000 because of an erroneous forecast. Rup had predicted sun, and the subsequent rainstorm, said the woman, caused her flu and resulted in four days' missed work and $38 in medications. [Arlington (Va.) Journal, 3-18-96] * In January, Kevin McGuinness, who flunked out of the University of New Mexico medical school, filed a lawsuit accusing the school of failing to accommodate him under the Americans with Disabilities Act. McGuinness said his disability is that he is very anxious when he takes exams and consequently doesn't do very well on them. [Albuquerque Journal, 1-4-96] * David Earl Dempsey, 37, filed a lawsuit against Pima County (Ariz.) and state officials in February for injuries suffered when he hit the concrete after his bedsheet had become unfastened as he jumped out a jailhouse window trying to hang himself. (He had been arrested for mugging a woman, for which he was later convicted; Dempsey succeeded on a second suicide attempt shortly after filing the lawsuit.) [Arizona Daily Star, 2-17-96] AWESOME, DUDE!!! * In June, Bob Ringewold, 43, was driving with a friend in Holland, Mich., when the roof of his car was dented by a 5-lb. sucker fish that fell from the sky. (It had fallen from the talons of an eagle that couldn't hold it, and Ringewold took it home.) [Detroit Free Press, 6-15-96] * A man stole a 10-ton tractor from a construction lot in York, Neb., in June, and, as a police cruiser blocked his exit, merely drove directly over the car, crushing it. (There were no injuries.) And in a June major apartment house renovation in Baltimore, Md., a construction worker accidentally drove his tractor off of the fifth floor (but received only minor injuries). [Greensboro News Record, Jun96] [USA Today, 6-25-96] * In April, convicted murderer Gene Travis escaped from the maximum security prison in Cranston, R. I., by hiding in a garbage truck, but he failed to escape from the truck soon enough and was compacted with the driver's first load. (He survived and was captured, but the garbage-hauling company had previously said no one could survive a compacting.) [Providence Journal- Bulletin, 5-21-96] * On May 6 in Escondido, Calif., a wrecking ball came loose from a crane traveling on an overpass and rolled away and down to the freeway below as the crane kept on going. A van drove over the cable connecting the ball with the crane, and the cable wrapped itself around the van's rear axle. In a few seconds, the cable was pulled taut, causing the van to spin around like a top, then be hurled straight up into the bottom of the overpass. (The van's driver was hospitalized.) [San Diego Union Tribune, 5-7- 96] UPDATE * Artist Todd Alden made News of the Weird in October 1993 after he asked 400 art collectors to deliver to him in cans samples of their feces for a display. In May 1996, Alden's show featuring 81 such cans was scheduled to open in Manhattan, but the New York Observer revealed Alden's claim to be a hoax in that only one collector had actually contributed as instructed. (It was not revealed what was in the other 80 cans or why even one collector had complied with Alden's request.) Said Alden, "There is a whole subtext to this that is between me and my therapist." [San Francisco Chronicle-New York Observer, 5-23- 96]