Bizzare Mystery (stories...)

Top 5 Bizarre Disasters

2010-10-31T22:09:00.001+01:00

1. The St. Pierre Snake Invasion

Volcanic activity on the ‘bald mountain’ towering over St Pierre, Martinique, was usually so inconsequential that no one took seriously the fresh steaming vent-holes and earth tremors during April, 1902. By early May, however, ash began to rain down continuously, and the nauseating stench of sulphur filled the air. Their homes on the mountainside made uninhabitable, more than 100 fer-de-lance snakes slithered down and invaded the mulatto quarter of St Pierre. The 6-ft long serpents killed 50 people and innumerable animals before they were finally destroyed by the town’s giant street cats. But the annihilation had only begun. On May 5, a landslide of boiling mud spilled into the sea, followed by a tsunami that killed hundreds and, three days later, May 8, Mt Pelee finally exploded, sending a murderous avalanche of white-hot lava straight toward the town. Within three minutes St Pierre was completely obliterated. Of its 30,000 population, there were only two survivors.

2. The Shiloh Baptist Church Panic

Two thousand people, mostly black, jammed into the Shiloh Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 19, 1902, to hear an address by Booker T. Washington. The brick church was new. A steep flight of stairs, enclosed in brick, led from the entrance doors to the church proper. After Washington’s speech, there was an altercation over an unoccupied seat, and the word ‘fight’ was misunderstood as ‘fire’. The congregation rose as if on cue and stampeded for the stairs. Those who reached them first were pushed from behind and fell. Others fell on top of them until the entrance was completely blocked by a pile of screaming humanity 10 ft high. Efforts by Washington and the churchmen down in the front to induce calm were fruitless, and they stood by helplessly while their brothers and sisters, mostly the latter, were trampled or suffocated to death. There was neither fire – nor even a real fight – but 115 people died.

3. The Great Boston Molasses Flood

On January 15, 1919, the workers and residents of Boston’s North End, mostly Irish and Italian, were out enjoying the noontime sun of an unseasonably warm day. Suddenly, with only a low rumble of warning, the huge cast-iron tank of the Purity Distilling Company burst open and a great wave of raw black molasses, two storeys high, poured down Commercial Street and oozed into the adjacent waterfront area. Neither pedestrians nor horse-drawn wagons could outrun it. Two million gallons of molasses, originally destined for rum, engulfed scores of people – 21 men, women and children died of drowning or suffocation, while another 150 were injured. Buildings crumbled, and an elevated train track collapsed. Those horses not completely swallowed up were so trapped in the goo they had to be shot by the police. Sightseers who came to see the chaos couldn’t help but walk in the molasses. On their way home they spread the sticky substance throughout the city. Boston smelled of molasses for a week, and the harbour ran brown until summer.

4. The Pittsburg Gasometer Explosion

A huge cylindrical gasometer – the largest in the world at that time – located in the heart of the industrial centre of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, developed a leak. On the morning of November 14, 1927, repairmen set out to look for it – with an open-flame blowlamp. At about 10 o’clock they apparently found the leak. The tank, containing 5 million cu. ft of natural gas, rose in the air like a balloon and exploded. Chunks of metal, some weighing more than 100 lbs, were scattered great distances, and the combined effects of air pressure and fire left a square mile of devastation. Twenty-eight people were killed and hundreds were injured.

5. The Gillingham Fire Demonstration

Every year the firemen of Gillingham, in Kent, England, would construct a makeshift ‘house’ out of wood and canvas for the popular fire-fighting demonstration at the annual Gillingham Park fête. Every year, too, a few local boys were selected from many aspirants to take part in the charade. On July 11, 1929, nine boys – aged 10 to 14 – and six firemen costumed as if for a wedding party, climbed to the third floor of the ‘house’. The plan was to light a smoke fire on the first floor, rescue the ‘wedding party’ with ropes and ladders, and then set the empty house ablaze to demonstrate the use of the fire hoses. By some error, the real fire was lit first. The spectators, assuming the bodies they saw burning were dummies, cheered and clapped, while the firemen outside directed streams of water on what they knew to be a real catastrophe. All 15 people inside the house died.

SOURCE:http://listverse.com/2007/07/11/top-10-bizarre-disasters/

Bizarre Data Loss: What’s Your Story?

2009-06-05T10:01:00.002+02:00

Computer users have lost data under very bizarre circumstances.

As data storage technology expands to accommodate business production - including email histories, company records and research - digital data forms a large part of a company’s backbone. In one famous case, an employee left a rotting banana on an external hard drive, which seeped into the mechanism and compromised all of his saved data. Do you have a messy desk? Don’t leave your lunch on your computer because even breadcrumbs can jam the tiny mechanisms that make the drive run.

When a data storage medium is crammed with photograph albums, Mp3 music and private records or calendars, it’s a big part of our personal lives, too. And we take it with us everywhere. If you’re clumsy, don’t leave a cup of coffee within an arm’s reach of your hard drive. Liquids and oils will almost certainly make your data too slippery to handle. Nevertheless one person greased his hard drive with mechanical grease because it was squeaking!

Pack your belongings for travel with care. Don’t slide toiletries into your laptop bag and risk spilled shampoo on your personal or professional hard drive. Every year, data recovery firms receive hard drives that have been left in the path of moving vehicles. At the airport, laptop bags and external devices have been crushed under luggage carriers. Don’t drop your laptop, ever. Not from a high counter, a moving car, over a balcony, or - and this really happened - from a helicopter. Remember that digital data - although recoverable in all of the instances above - is easily lost.

Protect your data and save yourself plenty of personal and professional trouble.

Nevada Doctor Charged with Medical Malpractice

2009-06-05T09:52:00.000+02:00

Kevin Buckwalter, a Las Vegas-area family doctor, has recently been stripped of his medical license after a series of investigations revealed that at least eight of his patients died due to negligence and medical malpractice.

According to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the state medical board, Buckwalter has allegedly over-prescribed prescription drugs and failed to monitor their use among his patients for years.

In one shocking example, medical records reveal that Buckwalter prescribed a single patient over 17,000 narcotic painkillers within a 4-year period – even after that man had already experienced an overdose on the same pain medication.

Details of Buckwalter's Medical Malpractice

Through the investigations of the Nevada Medical Examiner's Board, state officials have found evidence indicating that Buckwalter has recklessly prescribed potent drugs, without performing proper medical exams of patients, in dozens of cases.

While, to date, eight patients are known to have died due to Buckwalter's malpractice, tens of others have filed reports with the state medical board indicating that they have experienced severe injuries as a result of Buckwalter's reckless practices.

Along with prescribing the highly addictive drug OxyContin, Buckwalter also has a history of inappropriately prescribing patients:

Hydrocodone (an addictive opiate-based painkiller that is commonly marketed as Vicodin)
Methadone
Xanax

refinance: Billionaire Wilbur L. Ross makes bizzare corporate bankruptcy prediction for 2007. Private Equity firms to blame?

2009-06-05T09:40:00.000+02:00

From this Reuters Article.

"Ross, dubbed the 'King of Bankruptcy' by Fortune magazine in 1998, said at a conference in London on Wednesday that defaults would rise to about 7 percent of all companies by the end of next year -- one of the most bearish predictions in the industry -- from about 1 percent now."

More information from an article in US News and World Report:

"A shakeout is coming, experts say. It is just a question of when. Many banks, law firms, hedge funds, and private-equity groups are already bolstering the ranks of their distressed-debt units and are gathering bankruptcy specialists for just such an occasion. Private-equity player Wilbur Ross, known for his astute nose in picking up distressed companies on the cheap, says it won't be long. Too much money is being paid to take on too much risk with too much debt, Ross warns, adding that bets by some highly leveraged buyout firms that they will be able to cheaply refinance their deals in a few years have "been building in a time bomb." In this scenario, higher default rates aren't just likely, he concludes; "they are quite inevitable.""

From what I can tell, Ross is saying that the debt markets are in big trouble because of the rise of Private Equity firms and their extensive use of leveraged buyouts to the point where the companies can't support the debt burden. A great example of this is the recent Hertz Global Holdings, Inc. (HTZ) IPO flop in which a few private equity firms dumped Hertz on the open market after increasing it's already heavy debt load in order to pay themselves a quick cash dividend.

If Ross's prediction is correct, the corporate debt markets are in for a real hammering in the next few years. It might be time to start looking carefully at the loan portfolios of major banks.

New Evidence That Meteorite Did Not Wipe Out Dinosaurs

2009-05-19T15:17:00.000+02:00

Princeton geoscientist Gerta Keller and a research team have compiled new evidence disproving a popular theory that an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. Examinations at several new sites have produced biotic evidence - the fossilized traces of plants and animals - indicating that a massive die-off did not occur directly after a proposed asteroid strike but much later. (Photo: Denise Applewhite)

by Staff Writers
Princeton NJ (SPX) May 05, 2009
A Princeton University geoscientist who has stirred controversy with her studies challenging a popular theory that an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs has compiled powerful new evidence asserting her position.

Gerta Keller, whose studies of rock formations at many sites in the United States, Mexico and India have led her to conclude that volcanoes, not a vast meteorite, were the more likely culprits in the demise of the Earth's giant reptiles, is producing new data supporting her claim.

Keller, a Princeton professor of geosciences, and several co-authors lay out the case in a paper published April 27 in the Journal of the Geological Society of London.

Examinations at several new sites have produced "biotic evidence" - the fossilized traces of plants and animals tied to the period in question - indicating that a massive die-off did not occur directly after the strike but much later.

In addition, Keller and other researchers have found "aftermath" sediments that remained undisturbed and showed signs of active life, with burrows formed by creatures colonizing the ocean floor. This would quash a theory advanced by some that a massive tsunami followed the impact, Keller said.

"Careful documentation of results that are reproducible and verifiable will uncover what really happened," Keller said. "This study takes an important step in that direction."

Much of the new data comes from a trench dug out of low-lying hills in northeastern Mexico at a site called El Penon. A group of Princeton undergraduates accompanying Keller on a field trip to Mexico in 2004 excavated the area and uncovered the new evidence. Keller and her team have been analyzing that evidence for the last several years.

Understanding what caused the dinosaurs to disappear remains a great mystery.

Can We Predict When An Asteroid Will Impact Earth

2009-05-19T15:07:00.001+02:00

951 Gaspra is an S-type asteroid (of silicaceous or stony composition, hence the name) that orbits very close to the inner edge of the main asteroid belt. Gaspra was the first asteroid ever to be closely approached, when it was visited by NASA's Galileo spacecraft, which flew by on its way to Jupiter on 29 October 1991. Credit: NASA.

by Staff Writers
Bonn, Germany (SPX) May 19, 2009
Objects with orbits that bring them near to Earth are potential killers. These objects, known as NEOs (Near-Earth Objects), are asteroids (see the astronomy question from week 19: Where is the planet between Mars and Jupiter?) or comets, which we can recognise when they are in the vicinity of the Sun by their characteristic tail.

If these small heavenly bodies cross Earth's orbit while they are orbiting the Sun, it could lead to a collision - a so-called 'impact event'. Can such impacts be predicted?

Dust particles often penetrate the atmosphere and simply cause a harmless light - a shooting star. Less common large bodies leave craters in the Earth's surface or cause tidal waves when they hit the sea. NEOs of around one kilometre or more in diameter can have global consequences, regardless of where they impact.

The extinction of species that took place 65 million years ago, which claimed the dinosaurs amongst its victims, was most likely caused by the impact of a 10 kilometre-wide asteroid. It tore a 180 kilometre-wide crater in the Yukatan peninsula on the Gulf of Mexico.

The most recent larger impact event occurred in 1908, near the Stony Tunguska River, in Siberia. An S-type asteroid (of silicaceous or stony composition, hence the name) asteroid, which was around 30 to 50 metres across, entered the atmosphere at a speed of 15 kilometres per second and released its momentum several kilometres above the ground in an explosion.

It destroyed a region of forest with an area of over 2200 square kilometres - twice the area of Berlin.

However comprehensive forecasts are still not possible

There are probably over one million NEOs that are larger than 30 metres in size; of these, over one hundred thousand are larger than 100 metres and approximately one thousand are at least 1 kilometre in size.

The average period of time between the impacts of two similar-sized NEOs can give us a vague idea of the probability of an impact event occurring: 30 metre-wide NEOs hit the Earth around every 1 000 years and 1 kilometre-wide NEOs around every 300 000 years.

The first successful forecast of an impact event was made on 6 October 2008 when the asteroid 2008 TC3 was discovered. It was calculated that it would hit the Earth only 21 hours later. Luckily it had a diameter of only three metres and did not cause any damage - since then, some stony remnants of the asteroid have been found.

Parrot awarded for yelling about choking baby

2009-03-24T16:32:00.001+01:00

Mon Mar 23, 9:00 pm ET
DENVER – A parrot that alerted his owner about a baby who was choking was recognized as a hero by the Red Cross. Willie the parrot was given the Animal Lifesaver Award during the "Breakfast of Champions" event attended by Gov. Bill Ritter and Mayor John Hickenlooper.
Willie received the award Friday for his actions in November, when he and owner Megan Howard were baby-sitting a toddler. Willie repeatedly yelled "Mama, baby" when Howard went to the bathroom and the toddler started to choke on her breakfast.
Howard saved the baby by performing the Heimlich maneuver but she said Willie "is the real hero."
Information from: KCNC-TV, http://www.cbs4denver.com

Fla. student suspended for passing gas

2009-03-24T16:31:00.003+01:00

LAKELAND, Fla. - An eighth-grader was suspended from riding the school bus for three days after being accused of passing gas. The bus driver wrote on a misbehavior form that a 15-year-old teen passing gas on the bus Monday to make the other children laugh, creating a stench so bad that it was difficult to breathe. The bus driver handed the teen the suspension form the next day.

The CAVE home of SLEEPER'S

2009-03-11T08:12:00.005+01:00

The home of Curt and Deborah Sleeper that was built in a cave.
The entry room is furnished like a normal home in the cave home of Curt and Deborah Sleeper.
The Sleepers have put the house in a cave on eBay as a backup in case they can't meet a large payment due on the property.

(AP Photo/Tom Gannam)

The bizzare death of Ronald Carnaby

2009-03-06T16:43:00.000+01:00

Roland Carnaby flashed a CIA ID when pulled over for speeding. The cop did not believe it. Carnaby also had a CCW permit which would have been redundant.

Carnaby calls an Internal Affairs detective in the Houston Police department and hands the phone to the officer. The Detective tells the officer that Carnaby was "probably"* a CIA agent. The cop did not like that answer.

The officer than contacted the HPD criminal intellegence and major offenders units and was told that Carnaby was known to them and a likely faud. The officer was instructed to "find something to arrest him on; you can't arrest him for speeding"*. *--both these quotes are from a Houston PD spokesman.

When Carnaby was told to step out of the vehicle the second time he flead and led police on a high speed chase. While driving Carnaby called a friend who was "possible FBI" who aparently told him to pull over.

Carnaby stopped and his car was swarmed by police. After police broke his window, carnaby was shot and killed as he stepped out of his car.

The FBI is refusing to comment. The CIA says they have no relationship to Carnaby. His house is full of photos of at of himself at CIA events and CIA employee recognition plaques.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...s/5748085.html

You can see the shooting here:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=sEw2u3O8ATk

Sexism in advertising

2009-02-16T12:55:00.001+01:00

An article on AdAge this morning slams a new Heineken ad that features a sexy blond robot who serves beer from her (its?) abdomen. I watched the ad, and thought it was bizarre, mildly entertaining, slightly crude but memorable. From the title of the article, I expected a more obvious sexist joke, perhaps with the robot in a french maid’s outfit with a toilet scrubber in one hand and a beer on a tray in the other, and titles labeling the robot as the “perfect woman.”

We have come a long way from the days when tv ads featured perfectly coiffed women with 12-inch waists in heels and pearls selling soap and discussing ways of removing “ring around the collar” from their hard-working husbands’ shirts. I think these days we have swung pretty hard the other direction, with the typical family ad featuring the husband/father as a bumbling idiot who wouldn’t be able to tie his shoes without his patient and amused wife’s steady hand to untangle his fingers. So who’s being sexist to whom?

Once again, creativity in advertising has hit the PC barrier. To sell your brand, you want to appeal to your target audience without enraging the other folks. But there are so many groups of “other folks” out there who just want to be offended by anything that this can sometimes be a very tricky road to navigate. So here we have an example of an ad meant to appeal to young men of beer-swilling age, who appreciate technology, sexy girls and easy beer. This ad hits that right on the noggin. At the same time it makes the statement that it would be really great to have a sexy female robot serve you beer from her ice-cold chest cavity and then do a hot little dance for you with her clone bot girlfriends.

Ok, so what? They’re selling beer. Since when is that a politically correct product?

Let ads be ads. All those creatives out there will have a lot less headaches that way.

The Leaning Tower of Groom

2009-02-13T14:11:00.003+01:00

Ralph Britten constructed this water tower to lean in order to catch the eyes of the tourists who would stop and ask questions.

While they were there, they’d spend money at the truck stop and restaurant nearby. Unfortunately, the restaurant burned a few years ago, but the tower remains as a great photo opportunity. As for why the tower says “Britten” instead of “Groom”, the Brittens are a large family that has lived in the area for a long time.

Balloon Buddies

2009-02-13T13:59:00.002+01:00

Laura Buxton released a helium filled balloon during celebrations for her grandparents’ gold wedding anniversary in Blurton, Staffordshire, in June 2001. Attached to the balloon was her name and address and a note asking the finder to write back. Ten days later she received a reply. The balloon had been found by another Laura Buxton in the garden hedge of her home in Pewsey, Wiltshire, 140 miles away. Both Lauras were ages 10 and both had three year old black Labradors, a guinea pig, and a rabbit.

70-year-old with 15 inches waist

2009-02-13T10:19:00.000+01:00

70-year-old with 15 inches waist

September 29, 2007 | Tags Bizzare and Weird, People, World Records

70-year-old Cathie Jung has the smallest waist in the world, which measures just 15in (38cm).

Cathie Jung the corset queen (Image courtesy of Xinhuanet)

The resident from Connecticut, USA, has been wearing tight fitting corset since 1983. She holds the Guinness World Records for “Smallest Waist on a Living Person” since 1999.

Hundreds ill after Peru meteor crash

2009-02-13T10:13:00.000+01:00

Hundreds ill after Peru meteor crash

September 22, 2007 | Tags Astronomy and Space Exploration, Health and Medical

Hundreds of people have suffered headaches, nausea, and respiratory problems after a meteorite crashed in southern Peru. The meteorite landed in Carangas, Puno, southern Peru last weekend (Sep 16) and created a crater 65ft wide and 20ft deep.

Bizzare shop

2009-02-13T10:02:00.002+01:00

Bizzare exists since 1996. We once begun as small store with a small collection in the rechtstraat in Maastricht. In our beginning years, we specialized in party clothing and special partywear. Later on we added also gothic, punk, cyber, fetish and streetwear to our collection. Currently we also have a nice collection New Rock shoes and boots.

At this time, we sell via the internet and via our store in Maastricht. On the internet, we try to offer as many products as possible with really clear descriptions. If you are able to visit our Store you can of course see, feel and fit all of our clothes. If you want to buy tailor made clothes we strongly advise you to bring us a visit so we can make sure that the clothes are adjusted to your specific needs. The clothes from the labels, Paulien Berkelaar, Bizonder and our own label Bizzare, which contains a large collection of corsets, are all tailor made. Please keep a delivery period between 2 and 4 weeks in mind for tailor made clothing.

What we find very important!

You, our customer. We are there for you and we would like all of our customers to be satisfied with our service and products. We are constantly trying to improve our service and find cool stuff to extend our collection. If you have any remarks, suggestions, questions or even complaints please feel free to contact us. You can reach us on the email-address info@bizzare.nl

At Bizzare, we are trying to offer you a large collection of unique, original and out of the ordinary clothing in the following styles: Cyber, gothic, fettish, street, punk and stylish. We also have a collection of matching accessories you shouldnâ€™t miss. Sunglasses, backpacks, purses, bracelets, collars, rings, etc. Furthermore we recently added New Rock shoes to our collection. Since we also have a 'real' store in Maastricht, many of the products in our webshop are in stock so we can process your order directly.

The quality of the products we sell is very important to us. We often get products offered that are very alike for a lower price. In most cases this also has consequences for the quality. We always choose for quality above price, so you can enjoy your clothing longer without having to worry about shrinking, discolor or even stuff that falls apart.

As mentioned before, we do our uttermost best to provide a high service level. You are our customer and we would love to see you back in the future. Since we offer an in house tailor service, small changes can often be made the same day you bring a visit to our store. We do this free of charge!! Changing your product is always possible as long as the product hasn't been worn and is in perfect condition. Furthermore we also provide you with a honest advice. We would like you to look your best in our clothing. If you want to buy something in our webshop and are not certain which size to choose. Please send us an e-mail, we're happy to measure it up.

2009-02-11T15:23:00.001+01:00

UFO Picture Taken in the United Kingdom in 1954 - Flying over the trees on a cool summer evening someone looked up and snaped this picture of a UFO. Notice the strange bottom of the UFO picture, it's unlike many we see high in the sky and appears to be some kind of landing gear.

miracle of sorts

2009-02-09T09:00:00.005+01:00

Twin brothers Phil and Mick Cahalane found this family photo of their grandfather that they say is over 100 years old. The picture shows grandpa holding an amazing string of fish he had caught somewhere in Scotland. As the close-up in the above photo shows, however, there seems to be a figure on the man's left shoulder that some say resembles a saint. Some have even gone so far as to say it is St. Teresa of Avila.

There are many faithful who will, no doubt, say that this is a miracle of sorts. I think it's an amazing illusion.

Bizzare Mystery (stories...)

Top 5 Bizarre Disasters

Top 5 Most Bizarre Videos

Bizarre Data Loss: What’s Your Story?

Nevada Doctor Charged with Medical Malpractice

refinance: Billionaire Wilbur L. Ross makes bizzare corporate bankruptcy prediction for 2007. Private Equity firms to blame?

New Evidence That Meteorite Did Not Wipe Out Dinosaurs

Can We Predict When An Asteroid Will Impact Earth

Parrot awarded for yelling about choking baby

Fla. student suspended for passing gas

The CAVE home of SLEEPER'S

The bizzare death of Ronald Carnaby

Sexism in advertising

The Leaning Tower of Groom

Balloon Buddies

70-year-old with 15 inches waist

70-year-old with 15 inches waist

Hundreds ill after Peru meteor crash

Hundreds ill after Peru meteor crash

Bizzare shop

miracle of sorts