Odd Stew – Weird and Bizarre News – Issue 25

April 5, 2018

oddstew25Issue 25 of the Odd Stew: strange and weird news items, oddities, plus other fascinating things that have happened in the news that you may have missed.

A Student That Just Won’t Go

Hunter College in New York is having difficulty getting rid of a former student. The college is trying to evict 32-year-old Lisa Palmer from her dorm room and has filed suit because they say that the woman owes more than $94,000 in residence hall fees that haven’t been paid. Palmer was last enrolled in 2016 and dropped out the same year, but she claims she was forced out after disputes with the college because of her tuition and housing bills.

Palmer told the New York Post that she plans to fight the suit and wants to eventually finish her degree at Hunter College. The college moved her to another wing of the dorm which is only occupied by one other person; a nurse who the college is also trying to evict. (New York Post 2/28/2018)

A Living Ghost

The Turkish government deported 63-year-old Constantin Reliu back to Romania in January 2018 , where he hadn’t been to since the late 1990s, because he had expired documents. When he got to Romania, he learned of some terrible news. He had died in 2003. Reliu was presented with his own death certificate that had been registered by his wife stating that he was indeed dead.

First, Reliu had to convince custom officials in Romania that he was not dead and that the whole thing wasn’t just a prank. They finally let him enter after measuring the distance between his eyes on his passport photo and those on his head. But things didn’t get any easier for the man. He next learned that his wife had obtained the death certificate after she hadn’t heard from him over the course of many years, and Romanian officials figured that he had died in an earthquake. He said the reason he hadn’t contacted his wife was because she had cheated on him after he had left for Turkey in 1992.

But things got even harder for Reliu. In March 2018, a court in the city of Vaslui rejected Reliu’s attempt at getting his death certificate overturned even with him being present in the courtroom to present his own case. The court said he had no case because he had filed his appeal to late. To add insult to injury, the court said the ruling was final. So now Reliu can’t go back to Turkey because he was banned from the country, and Romania says he officially no longer exists and is dead. (NPR 3/16/2018)

Gold Bars Raining From the Sky

On March 15, 2018, a plane taking off from Yakutsk Airport in Siberia had an unusually mishap. The Nimbus Airlines Antonov AN-12 cargo plane was carrying 9.3 tons of gold and silver when the cargo door somehow came open and showered the runway with gold bars. The Siberian Times reported that some of the bars were found as far as 16 miles from the airport. About a third of the total cargo fell out of the plane.

Officials cordoned off the area to prevent people from finding the bars, and one official said only 172 gold bars had been found with another saying all the bars had been recovered. The cause for the loss of gold from the plane was blamed on ground personnel who officials say didn’t properly latch the cargo door after the plane refueled. The plane returned to the airport after the cargo door had been partially torn off.  (The Washington Post 3/15/2018)

Bring Your Tractor to School Day

Fremont High School in Michigan has an unusual day once every school year. Students drive their farm equipment to school during the Drive Your Tractor to School Day, and they do bring with them a lot of tractors. For the 2018 day, students drove around 40 tractors to the school with even more being parked near the Freemont Public School’s elementary and middle school. Younger kids even get in on the day and drive lawn tractors to school. It takes some of the students two hours to get to school by tractor.

The day is meant to celebrate the farming community and its importance to the town of Fremont. The Drive Your Tractor to School Day is an all-day affair that has other agriculture events throughout the day that recognize the importance of farming to the community. (UPI 3/30/2018)

A Drug Butt–I Mean, Bust

A man was arrested at Lisbon International Airport when it was discovered that he was attempting to smuggle over two pounds of cocaine in a fake butt. The fake butt was attached to a bathing suit the man was wearing. The man had been under investigation by Portugal’s National Anti-Narcotics Trafficking Unit, and after he was detained by custom agents and searched at the airport, they noticed his backside didn’t appear to be quite right. Another man was detained later at a train station in Lisbon as it was believed he was going to be the recipient of the fake butt full of drugs. (NY Daily News 2/14/2018)

I Didn’t Expect That To Come Through My Roof

A woman in Miami got a nasty surprise that interrupted her day on February 28, 2018. As Luce Rameau was lying bed, talking to a friend on her phone, she became covered in dust and wood particles after something crashed through the roof of her home. What was the object? It was an uninflated six-seat life raft that weighed 80 pounds.

The raft had gotten loose from a Royal Canadian Air Force search-and-rescue helicopter as it flew back to Miami-Opa locka Executive Airport. The Canadian crew was returning to the airport after doing water search-and-rescue training off the coast and were in Florida to do training because of the warm weather, according to a Royal Canadian Air Force spokesman.

Rameau luckily escaped the disaster with only minor injuries, and the Canadian Air Force said they would help the woman with support and accommodations. The Canadian Air Force was investigating the cause of the release of the life raft that could have caused even more damage than it did.  (Miami Herald 2/28/2018)

Check Out Previous Issues of the Odd Stew and More Weird News:

Odd Stew – Issue 24
Odd Stew – Issue 23
Odd Stew – Issue 22
Odd Stew – Issue 21
All the Issues of Odd Stew

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About the author 

Daniel Ganninger - The writer, editor, and chief lackey of Knowledge Stew, the author of the Knowledge Stew line of trivia books, and editor of Fact World and the Knowledge Stew sister site on Medium, our ad-free subscription sites (you can find out how to join below). I hope you find things here to annoy those around you with your new found knowledge.

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