Bizarre or weird news stories

[buttons]

Here kitty, kitty: Meet the two-faced cat

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24680439-13762,00.html

[Roxy]

Omg that poor, sweet baby. I hope he/she survives (they call the kitten an "it" throughout the article).

[bradders]

aw little kitty or is it kitties?
i wonder if the kitty has one or two minds?

[Elahiya]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3481932/Nazi-leader-Hitler-really-did-have-only-one-ball.html


didn´t you know about that?! that´s been known for years... but still interesting...

[Risker]

^ Well, that confirmation was only published yesterday so...

[Mahk]

Um, there's a medical condition, I'd assume there's even a name for it but I can't find it, where one (maybe even both?) testicles move upward into the man's body cavity. This can happen from getting kicked or in this (http://studenthealth.oregonstate.edu/answerspot/message.php?message=5838) person's case naturally from sex. Anyway my point is that even to a trained medic, a casual view of the guy's junk would look like (ahem, and feel) like the dude only had one nut. Seeing as it isn't a painful experience and Hitler was already in extreme pain at the time to notice his "balls felt out of place" I'd think the odds that this is what had temporarily happened to him just as, if not more likely than he was born with only one nut.

It might be related to this. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cremasteric_reflex)

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Update: the double-headed kitty has died. Poor thing.

[bradders]

poor kitty

[Elahiya]

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?Dear,_the_parrot_is_on_the_phone&in_article_id=409615&in_page_id=2&in_a_source=


Missing - one cockatiel. Answers to the name of Smokey. Literally...

An escaped parrot has been reunited with his owner after squawking his name down the phone to confirm his identity.
Fugitive Smokey was found in a park by Sue Hill, who tracked down his owner's phone number and called to check the cockatiel was indeed his.
She spoke to David Edward's wife, who asked her to hand the phone over to the parrot. Right on cue, he began chirping: 'Smokey, Smokey!'
'It was very funny. That was the first time the bird had spoken and it was then I was sure he belonged to them,' Mrs Hill said.
Smokey did a disappearing act from Mr Edwards' house in Wrexham on Saturday.
The next day, he landed on Mrs Hill's shoulder while she was out walking in a park 3km (two miles) away. 'He was very friendly and just stayed there,' she said. In a bid to return the lost bird, she phoned several local vets and eventually found one who had been contacted by a worried Mr Edwards.
'I couldn't believe it when Sue contacted us to tell us she had found him. We were delighted,' the grandfather said.
'He has his own character and says phrases such as "Hello Smokey", "Smokey-Cokey" and "What's that?" he added.

[Ruby Rose]

^ I'd have liked it better if Smokey had just sent his former jailors a postcard from Mexico... ;)

[Elahiya]

:D that would have been far funnier indeed!!! LOL

[Lifeonmars]

Five years ago, when neighbors noticed elderly Frank Bernstorff had quit puttering around his Evanston garden, they asked one of his live-in sisters if anything was wrong.
No, Margaret Bernstorff said, there was nothing to be concerned about -- he'd gone to live with out-of-state relatives.
Last spring, when sibling Anita Bernstorff stopped coming out onto the porch, neighbors repeated the question.
Anita had become afraid to venture outside, Margaret Bernstorff said.
No one wanted to pry. Why should they? They had no reason to suspect anything strange had happened inside the large green-and-white house with the faded lace curtains and yellowing blinds.
Unseen since early '80s
On Saturday, the Bernstorffs' neighbors on historic Judson Avenue grappled with the news that the skeletons of Frank, Anita and a third sibling had been found inside the home a day earlier.

That third sibling -- identified by the Cook County medical examiner as Elaine B. Bernstorff -- had not been seen since the early 1980s, when she was believed to be in her 60s. She was born in 1916.
Anita Bernstorff was last seen alive in May 2008 at age 98 and her brother, Frank, was last seen in April 2003 at age 83, according to the medical examiner's office.
Investigators said all three died from natural causes, but that did little to unravel the mystery of why the remains were kept inside the Bernstorff home.
Halloween treats
"Some were partially clothed, some were wearing full clothes," said a source in the medical examiner's office. The bodies were covered when they were found, another source said.
Margaret Bernstorff has been placed in a senior care facility, officials said Friday. In recent months, Bernstorff had become increasingly frail and, at the urging of some of her neighbors, had sought help from an advocate for the elderly in Evanston. It was that relationship that led police to discover the bodies Friday, investigators said.
As a winter-like wind raked the fallen leaves along Judson Avenue on Saturday, neighbors stared at the yellow police tape around the Bernstorff home and spoke of Margaret Bernstorff as an an articulate, friendly and generous woman.
"She is just a sweet old lady, and we are all very fond of her," said one neighbor, tears welling in her eyes.
That was a common sentiment along Judson Avenue, a wide boulevard of elegant homes with deep front lawns.
Margaret Bernstorff frequently plucked flowers from her yard and delivered them to her neighbors. On Halloween, she handed out candies to the neighbors' kids.
'You didn't go inside'
Neighbors said the Bernstorffs had lived at the Evanston home at least since the 1920s. Neighbors recalled Margaret Bernstorff going to neighborhood Fourth of July parties and talking about her father, a professor of German at Northwestern University. Professor Frank Adolph Bernstorff had also written several German grammar textbooks.
But others noted that Margaret Bernstorff almost never invited neighbors into the house.
"You didn't go inside," said one neighbor. "You left things at the back door."
Al Redmond, 44, a local contractor, had made several outside repairs to the Bernstorff home during the last five years, and he also kept his vintage Buick in its garage, Redmond said.
Redmond said Margaret Bernstorff rarely let him or his workers inside. If Redmond asked to use the bathroom, she'd say there was something wrong with the toilet, he said.
But one occasion, Redmond had to open the attic windows because he'd just painted the exterior frames and didn't want them to get stuck.
The inside of the home was lined with stacks of old newspapers -- some as tall as him, he said. Redmond said he sometimes had to turn sideways to get by the newspapers.
And inside the attic, "it was like it hadn't been touched in 40 years," Redmond said.
But if there were bodies inside the home, Redmond never saw them, he said.
"She was very proud and private," said one neighbor. "No one wanted to pry. She had a real grace about her, and everyone wanted to respect that."
http://www. suntimes. com/news/metro/1267657,evanston-woman-living-with-three-dead-110708. article (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LnN1bnRpbWVzLmNvbS9uZXdzL21ldHJvLz EyNjc2NTcsZXZhbnN0b24td29tYW4tbGl2aW5nLXdpdGgtdGhy ZWUtZGVhZC0xMTA3MDguYXJ0aWNsZQ==)

[Roxy]

Update: the double-headed kitty has died. Poor thing.

:( Poor baby :(

[Mahk]

As far as I can tell this is real:

http://www.foxnews.com/video-search/m/21958791/champion_or_cheater.htm

From another site (http://www.4to40.com/newsat4/index.asp?id=2540):

Female athlete was really a man
Xiao Nan, of Chengdu, won more than 40 medals as a women in student competitions after graduating from high school...
Chengdu
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Chinese woman athlete who won dozens of medals has thrown most of them away after learning she is really a man.

Xiao Nan, of Chengdu, won more than 40 medals as a women in student competitions after graduating from high school.

But after hospital tests confirmed Xiao's suspicions that she was really a man she has thrown out all but 10 of them.

"Being a champion was never a happy thing to me. Standing on the podium made me feel guilty, and I always thought the real champion should have been the one standing next to me," Xiao said.

Xiao's extraordinary athletic performances in schools and in provincial and national competitions, won her great honour and free access to university education.

But, inside, she felt confused: "I felt I often had an impulse or desire for women instead of men. And my body is more like a man than a woman."

Xiao had a check-up at a local hospital and the result confirmed she had male chromosomes.

He is now living as a man and has begun a course of sex change surgery at Sichuan Xichan Plastic Surgery Hospital which will take nine months.

"The first thing I want to do after the surgery is to go swimming, wearing only boxer shorts," Xiao told.


Anyone else know more?

Can you imagine only realizing your true gender as an adult?! :eek:

There have been other examples of athletes with questionable gender but they were in on it; even Hitler had some I think.

[Gorilla]

^ it's possible to be born as an intersex person and be raised as the 'wrong' gender and only realise which is your true gender when you get older. there was a very sad case of a guy born intersex who was raised as a girl - as part of an 'experiment' the doctors wanted to carry out to see if you could 'force' a gender onto someone - but realised he should've been a man much later in life; he eventually committed suicide.

[Ruby Rose]

I was really uncomfortable with the way that news item was covered on the link, btw.

[Mahk]

Fox "news" is rather juvenile and unprofessional. In the US we pejoratively refer to it as bordering on "yellow journalism", but I have no idea if that expression is used elsewhere, seeing as it's origin was based on US newspapers c. 1900. From my limited understanding "The Sun" in the UK might be considered analogous.

[Ruby Rose]

Ah, that would fit.

[Zero]

You may want to quote some of the text from some of these articles you guys are posting because the stories don't stay up on news websites forever or get moved into archive areas of their sites.

[Mahk]

^Good point. I've added text from a different source to my previous entry.

[bradders]

yeh fox news is about the same as the sun newspaper (uk and ireland) which is a bit like the New York Post. We sadly get Fox News in the UK now. It is awful. And they have the cheek to use the slogan 'fair and balanced'

[Mahk]

I don't watch fox news, mind you, it's just that my internet service provider's news section on my home page is a mix up of various sources [and out of my control as far as I know] so I never know if when I click on an interesting headline if I'll get CNN, them, or whatever.

[bradders]

glad to hear it lol.
what that channel has done to journalism is just shocking

[Elahiya]

http://news.uk.msn.com/odd-news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=16148817

Tree 'found in man's lung'
A fir tree has reportedly been found growing inside a man's lung during surgery for suspected cancer in Russia.
The 5cm sapling was discovered by surgeons when they operated on Artyom Sidorkin, 28, to remove what they thought was a tumour, according Russian television reports.
Vladimir Kamashev, one of the surgeons operating of Sidorkin, said he was "shocked" when he cut into Sidorkin's lungs during the routine operation and discovered a small fir tree inside.

[jimmeh]

Didn't it need to photosynthesise or something? :dizzy:

If you like strange happenings, I recommend the "breaking news" section of the Fortean Times website. A daily update of odd news.

http://www.forteantimes.com/latest/breaking-news/