Not Strangely Enough #1

This is my first month searching for strange news nearly every day, and I have to say: people can do some really weird things...

Adapted from photo by Designecologist

For starters, people are still looking for the Loch Ness Monster and seem to be more driven than ever: there's a whole website and a weekend event dedicated to it. Which I suppose makes sense, seeing as how there were T. Rexes running an official race in Washington. In California, a missing woman was found--somewhat similarly to Nessie--to have never been missing in the first place. I keep seeing stories like this, and the news doesn't clarify why the woman was reported missing, so someone, please, fill me in on this.

"Loch Ness Monster" by Ad Meskens

A man in Geneva tried to hug a giant fountain, which went off about as well as a soccer event and peace rally wherein Eritreans duked it out instead of hugging it out. Too bad these wise youths from Chicago weren't there, as they could have calmed things down as they did when they asked local gangs to enter into a daylight cease-fire. Or perhaps the government could have drawn some squiggly lines on the ground to confuse everyone into submission, as they did in this French town to stop speeding cars. Then again, the government can be a bit unreliable: a Kansas judge thought it prudent (she was wrong) to issue a warrant to seize documents from a local newspaper for having the audacity to... verify that someone had gotten a DUI.

To make things stranger, the judge herself seems to have had a DUI in her past. And, to top it all off, the townspeople seem to think that this violation of free speech wasn't so bad: the newspaper wasn't always real supportive of the town, after all! Elsewhere, the justice system missed the mark when this Kentucky prosecutor was recently indicted for soliciting nudes from defendants in exchange for leniency. If only he'd known of this sunflower field, he could have gotten all the nudes he wanted.

"The First Amendment" by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Pix4free.org

I don't usually go for such a dark story, but I have to mention the monstrous Lucy Letby, an English neonatal nurse recently convicted of murdering multiple babies. Also, because I myself am strange, I have to point out that the news reported that this disgusting murderer had said five heartless words upon her arrest: "I've just had knee surgery." Given that they were putting her into a squad car when she said this, and given what she did to be put into the squad car--these five words were fairly unimpressive to me.

To (somewhat) lighten the mood: a man in England was suspected of stealing pacifiers from babies. Luckily, he was caught. He then admitted to the police that he was stealing them for... personal use? (Fun fact: in the UK, they call pacifiers "dummies." When I first read the above story I had no idea what he was stealing from the babies.) Perhaps, despite the geographical distance, this gentleman is related to the following two subjects of recent reports: a man who stole a neighbor's entire porch, and who was subsequently arrested for that and for throwing rocks at his own home; and this man, who thought that wearing furry boots, a speedo, and an illegal gun were the new fashion trend.

Photo by Kristina Paukshtite

The following story is fairly strange in and of itself, but my imagination is what really made me include it. It caught my eye because it involves the Notre-Dame de Paris (the main character of one of my favorite novels). But it also involves a strange death: the French general in charge of restoring the cathedral recently died from falling off of a mountain. I wanted to see if the circumstances of his fall were strange (they weren't), but my imagination made it so. Apparently, this general was hired by President Macron, who wants to renovate the cathedral somewhat... creatively. And it turns out that the architect in charge of the reconstruction itself is only interested in replicating the old structure exactly as it used to be. Which led to these two butting heads several years ago.

Photo by Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz

First, the architect, Villeneuve, said publicly, "Either I restore it identically, [and] it will be me [as the architect], or they make a contemporary spire and it will be someone else.” A month later, General Georgelin said publicly, "As for the chief architect, I have already explained that he should shut his mouth,” which caused some controversy in France. Having read this, I imagined that the architect had somehow managed to push this general off of a cliff--an imaginary scenario I may or may not have fantasized about for aesthetic and dramatic reasons.

I'll end this first edition of Not Strangely Enough with two stories that seem both cute and strange. Apparently, cats are cathartic, even in the Gaza Strip, where the constant war didn't stop a woman from creating a café for cuddling cats.

Photo by Arina Krasnikova

And back on our side of the globe, hummingbirds also seem to be therapeutic, at least to one woman: a Mexico City woman has been running a hummingbird hospital out of her home for the past decade. Actually, I got a bit confused just then. I should probably say she's therapeutic for the hummingbirds. I don't know for sure. Our world sometimes defies my understanding.

Photo by Chris F

There you have it, the stories I thought were the strangest of August. I'll leave a list of them below for anyone who's interested. If you have any comments, strange news you found, or if anything inspired you, please let me know in the comments below or feel free to e-mail me at NotStrangelyEnough@gmail.com