Follow-ups

*Don't forget to watch "Saturday Night Live" tonight, hosted by Betty White!*

4/19/10 Oklahoma City Bombing About this photograph, follower Cynthia Chaldekas commented, "I often wonder about the people behind these iconic images. How must they feel as the rest of the world embraces a piece of them, via an image. the person in the image suddenly is no longer theirs in the same way because pictures do take on a life of their own. I think of the Kent State College student who screams out in pain over a fellow...or the child who is running down a road in Vietnam. Most of live anonymously, so to be thrust into the forefront by sheer accident would be disturbing."

4/18/10 Another kind of crittercam Footage of a sea lion gobbling up an octopus.

4/17/10 Xenoglossia A British woman attributes her Foreign Accent Syndrome to her migraine headaches.

4/11/10 We lost another Munchkin James Taylor reports that just a few days before this post, he had a long conversation with the author of this book during which they discussed how many of the Munchkins would survive to celebrate the 75th anniversary of "The Wizard of Oz."

4/6/10 Corpses in strange places On a motorcycle in a funeral home in San Juan, Puerto Rico (pictured).

4/5/10 Ostrich people A Massachusetts woman with no arms is preparing for her black belt in tae kwon do.

3/26/10 Dwarfs on display The shortest woman to give birth in the U.K. is only 7" taller than her now 14-month-old son. A dwarf horse, possibly the world's smallest.

1/24/10 Follow-ups These photos of owls rival the one used to illustrate this post.

1/21/10 Gatorland! Customers were lured to the grand opening of a business in New Mexico with a display of live alligators, but then scared away when the animals were fed live bunnies. An Australian water aerobics class was postponed so a crocodile could be removed from the pool.

1/20/10 Ancient Egyptian finds A Greco-Roman mummy has been found southeast of Cairo.

1/20/10 Bees in the weird news Researchers at the University of London have determined that bees see the world five times faster than humans.

12/27/09 Bushmeat An Indonesian couple was arrested for making and selling meatballs made from the meat of protected monkeys. PETA finds the Banana Derby, an event at St. Mary's Spring Fling in which dogs are raced with monkeys as jockeys, objectionable.

12/20/09 Rats! An island in the Hebrides that spent £600,000 getting rid of its rats is now overrun with rabbits.

12/19/09 Nero's dining room Italian archaeologists have unearthed a small 6th c. B.C. temple with do-it-yourself assembly instructions that they compare to Ikea furniture! Here is a panoramic view of a temporarily drained 19th c. Belgian reservoir.

12/8/09 Hermits - 2 scenarios The death of a 94-year-old loner ends a tradition in Idaho.

12/7/09 Rose round-up British plant biologists have succeeded in developing a polka-dot rose.

11/25/09 Homicidal somnambulism This article warns that sleepwalkers can be violent and shouldn't be awakened.

11/19/09 Stone/house A woman parked her car in Derbyshire, U.K., to run an errand, and when she returned a few minutes later it had been smashed by a 5-ton boulder that had tumbled off a passing truck.

11/13/09 Circus animals on the lam It took 15 people to wrangle a rhinoceros back into its enclosure at the Jacksonville Zoo in Florida. Lemurs were on the loose in Clearwater, Florida. Australian nursing home residents hospitalized after being injured by a rampaging goat.

10/23/09 Trepanation A British countess and friend of Mick Jagger, now 67, trepanned her skull at age 23.

10/22/09 Birds in fable and fact New Zealand researchers have found that crows can use 3 tools in succession to perform a task.

10/3/09 Dinosaur eggs An 11-million-year-old primate fossil has been found in Catalonia. Fossil remains of a newly identified extinct turtle have been discovered in a coal mine in Colombia. An amateur paleontologist has uncovered a rare dinosaur fossil in Colorado.

9/5/09 The biting off of fingers The theft of a newly-purchased iPad stripped part of a man's finger to the bone and necessitated amputation.

8/9/09 Adventurers Club An unemployed man in West Sussex, U.K., is living in a treehouse. Local children in Brisbane, Australia, are fighting to prevent the city council from tearing down their treehouse. Photographs of 6 amazing treehouses.

7/27/09 Hottentot Venus France is repatriating the preserved heads of 15 Maori warriors to New Zealand.

7/16/09 Cemetery scandal A funeral home in Maryland has been closed after 40 bodies were found stacked up awaiting cremation. Unauthorized funeral urns have been discovered at the bottom of a Swiss lake.

6/18/09 Birthing and hoarding bunnies More than 700 animals - half of them dead - have been found in the home of a man in Ocala, Florida.

6/14/09 "Seven Pounds" A 10-year-old Australian girl has stunned doctors by surviving the sting of a deadly box jellyfish. A strange new jellyfish has been discovered in a Tasmanian river.

5/2/09 Chihuahuas in the weird news A mixed-breed dog in China is nursing abandoned red panda cubs.

4/27/09 Mastectomy tattoos I received an e-mail from Lindsey on behalf of the Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation who writes, "Over the past few months, we’ve been working with some artists and young adults who have cancer as well as young adults living with people who have cancer in art workshops, culminating in an exhibition called ‘The C Word’ that will be exhibited in June this year. The aim of the exhibition is to explore questions of identity and issues young adults face when confronted with a cancer diagnosis, as well as to demystify cancer and to celebrate the idea that though we may be diagnosed with cancer, cancer does not define us. The head artist for the project is Rae Leung, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2007 – she is also a voice-over artist and an avid blogger and was keen to share with other young adults who have cancer how they might find writing a good way to deal and process with the issues that they face. Partnering with her is a professional visual artist / sculptor who is working with the participants to create collages and other work that will be on display in the project. We’re currently doing an open call for submission of written work, video or photography by young adults who have cancer to be included in our video installation. As such, I was wondering if maybe it would be possible for you to help us reach out to your community to see if any of them would be interested. The project is a community art project and we would love to be able to include work from around the world. If you can help us to inform your community that would be amazing!" See their website for details on the project and the submission process and contact Patricia Chiu at pat@hkyaf.com for further information.

4/25/09 Prosimians A pair of rare pygmy lorises have been born at a Texas zoo.

4/24/09 Ocean garbage dump Visions of creating a recycled island out of the plastic floating in the ocean garbage patch.

4/24/09 Bears in the news Vermont officials freed a black bear whose head was stuck in a steel milk can. An e-mail circulates stating that this grizzly bear was hit by a man on a motorcycle, but apparently it was killed by a truck.

3/26/09 Centenarians - and then some A 100-year-old tenant in Illinois is being evicted by her niece. A Japanes woman Kama Chinen, the oldest person in the world, has died at 114. A 100-year-old Australian war hero is being denied government compensation.

3/15/09 Kangaroo home invasion James Taylor told me about the phantom kangaroos terrorizing residents of a mountainous area north of Tokyo, Japan.

3/12/09 Shark attack capital A surfer in Hawaii survived a shark attack.

2/17/09 Killer chimpanzees Chimps in a Scottish wildlife park have been observed comforting a dying member of their group and mourning her death.

1/31/09 A morning's work A British family has complained that a woman's rings went missing between the time her arm was severed in an accident and its arrival at the hospital.

1/23/09 Natural mummification Reader Chase alerted me to the story of a mummified baby who spent years above ground before being confiscated by police and buried in Concord, New Hampshire, and has now been stolen from his grave. The death of a man in Bristol, U.K., went unreported by hid roommate for 10 years as his body remained under the couch.

1/6/09 More mammoths Researchers in Canada and Australia have discovered a mutation in a blood protein of woolly mammoths that allowed them to survive in freezin temperatures.

12/24/08 Progeria A West Yorkshire, U.K., schoolboy has a form of atypical progeria so rare that he is the only person in the world with the condition.

12/17/08 First U.S. face transplant! Full face transplant performed in Spain.

11/25/08 Traumatic skull injuries U.S. surgeons donned body armor to remove a highly explosive bullet from the skull of an Afghan soldier.

11/8/08 Raft of the Medusa News reports that the Donner Party may not have practiced cannibalism after all were greatly exaggerated and do not accurately represent the research of Appalachian State University anthropology professor Gwen Robbins.