Woodstock Festival Baby

http://lohud.com/article/20090720/NEWS05/907200332/-1/newsfront

Lower Hudson Journal News [New York]
20 July 2009

Rumors persist of infant born at Woodstock festival 40 years ago

By Michael Hill
The Associated Press

BETHEL — Singer John Sebastian is captured on film at the Woodstock festival 40 years ago announcing that some cat's old lady just had a baby, a kid destined to be far out. [...]

But no one has come forward with a credible public claim of giving birth to a Woodstock baby or being born there. [...]

Trace Human Remains on a Concrete Floor

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121383843/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

Journal of Forensic Sciences, vol. 53, issue 6 (November 2008), pp. 1437-1442.

CASE REPORT
Analysis of Suspected Trace Human Remains from an Indoor Concrete Surface

Carolyn M. Zimmermann, Ünige A. Laskay, and Glen P. Jackson

Abstract: This paper describes the sequence of analyses used to determine the nature of a stain located on the floor of room in the former Athens Mental Health and Retardation Hospital in Athens, OH. The location of the stain was reported to be the position in which a decomposing body was discovered on January 11, 1979. The current stain is found to contain strong evidence for both natural decomposition products and deliberate adulteration. [...]

[Excerpt from p. 1437.]

Although the floor was supposedly cleaned after removing her
body, there now (December 2007) is present a very distinct white
mark on the floor in the shape of a human body (Figs. 1 and 2).
This ‘‘stain’’ has fueled numerous ghost stories and urban legends
in the community, and has been featured in a TV documentary
⁄ drama. Until recently, however, the stain has never been
chemically identified or explained.

[Thanks to Peter Darben. -- bc]

Israeli Sex Gum

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iflSn6wJWSpD_E55DV8LHxvldfiA

AFP
14 July 2009

Hamas says Israel dumping aphrodisiac gum on Gaza

GAZA CITY (AFP) — Hamas suspects that Israeli intelligence services are supplying its Gaza Strip stronghold with chewing gum that boosts the sex drive in order to "corrupt the young," an official said on Tuesday.

"We have discovered two types of stimulants that were introduced into the Gaza Strip from Israeli border crossings," Hamas police spokesman Islam Shahwan told AFP. [...]

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3746017,00.html

Ynet News
13 July 2009
Hamas: Israel distributes libido-increasing gum in Gaza

[Two older reports:]

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/07/10/world/mansura-journal-of-college-girls-betrayed-and-vile-chewing-gum.html

New York Times

19 July 1996

Mansura Journal; Of College Girls Betrayed and Vile Chewing Gum

By DOUGLAS JEHL

If it is true, as it is whispered here, that certain young women in this provincial capital have let their moral standards lapse, then no one wants to believe they fell prey to hormones alone. No, the cause -- the curse, it is said -- was ordinary-looking chewing gum laced with aphrodisiacs capable of transporting the most innocent female into a sexual frenzy. [...]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/mideast/july/28/gum2807.htm

Washington Post
28 July 1997

Pop! Went the Tale of the Bubble Gum Spiked With Sex Hormones

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Foreign Service

GAZA CITY—The Israeli plot, as Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority exposed it recently, was triply diabolical.

To begin with, it aroused irresistible sexual appetites in women, undermining Islamic morals and self-restraint. Then it sterilized them to suppress Arab population growth. Worst of all, according to Palestinian Supply Minister Abdel Aziz Shaheen, it was capable of "completely destroying the genetic system of young boys."

All that with packets of bubble gum. [...]

Jemison Mansion's Slave Escape Tunnel (Tuscaloosa, AL)

http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20090712/NEWS/907109958/1005?Title=Digging-up-the-truth-about-the-Jemison-house

Tuscaloosa News [AL]
12 July 2009

Digging up the truth about the Jemison house

By Mark Hughes Cobb
Staff Writer

Sorry, underground Tuscaloosa conspiracy fans. There’s no slave-escape tunnel leading from the Jemison-Van de Graaff Mansion down to the river. [...]

Cosmos Rays from Mars

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Mumbai/SMS-on-Mars-rays-a-prank/articleshow/4764481.cms

Times of India

11 July 2009

SMS on 'Mars rays' a prank

Mumbai: Many Mumbaikars, including students, were surprised to receive an SMS on Thursday night warning that so-called "cosmos rays'' would enter the earth's orbit from Mars between 12 midnight and 4 am. They were advised to deactivate their mobile phones.

The message claimed that it was repeating what Nasa had told BBC. But when TOI checked the Nasa website, there was no such warning and no one had even recalled hearing about it on the news channels. [...]

Swimming in Hotel Pool Causes Pregnancy

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2525921/Teen-pregnant-after-swimming-in-pool.html

The Sun [UK]

9 July 2009

Teen pregnant after `swimming in pool'

By HAYLEY DOYLE

A WOMAN is suing an Egyptian hotel claiming her daughter got pregnant - from using the swimming pool.

Magdalena Kwiatkowska's 13-year-old returned to Poland from their holiday expecting a baby.

Magdalena believes the teenager conceived from stray sperm after taking a dip in the hotel's mixed pool. She is now seeking compensation from the hotel.

A travel industry source said: "The mother is adamant that her daughter didn't meet any boys while she was there.

"She is determined to go ahead with the case."

Tourist authorities in Warsaw, Poland, have confirmed they received the bizarre complaint.

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_3394806.html?menu=news.quirkies
Ananova [UK]
9 July 2009
'Pool got my daughter pregnant'

Stuck Couple (Italy)

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2417853.ece

The Sun [UK]

8 May 2009

Loo sex pair get stuck in

A PAIR of shop workers sneaked into the loo for sex - but got locked together when the woman suffered cramp.

Naked Salvatore Mazzi, 37, and Angelina Marcelo, 26, were found by her furious husband, who had been waiting for her to finish her shift.

Medics freed the embarrassed pair at the clothes shop in Bergamo, Italy.

Security guard Salvatore was kicked out by his wife and sacked for romping during work.

Cashier Angelina was also dumped, but kept her job after bosses decided she had finished her shift at the time.

Bedridden

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/letters-to-the-editor/and-twice-in-a-dory/article1206629/

The Globe and Mail [Toronto]

4 July 2009, p. A16

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

For all I know, Pierre Berton had it right when he declared that a Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe (How I Became A Real Canadian - June 27). Where I come from - Newfoundland - the best-known personal watercraft isn't the canoe, but the dory, a practical fore-and-aft wooden rowboat that was the mainstay of the inshore cod-fishery - now, sadly, more memory than reality.

Not to be outdone by our Canadian compatriots, we Newfoundlanders have a water-borne sex story of our own. Years ago, when the late Don Jamieson was still a radio journalist - he would later be a member of several of Pierre Trudeau's cabinets in various capacities - he made regular Christmas-season visits to retirement homes in Newfoundland, to speak with residents.

His chat with one feisty lady has long since passed into the realm of legend. Noting the lady's apparent good health at a very advanced age, Mr. Jamieson asked if she had ever been bed-ridden.

Her response was immediate, and garlanded with pride. "Yes, my son," she declared. "T'ousands of times. And twice in a dory."

Thomas Rendell Curran, Ottawa

["Twice in a dory" seems to be a popular punch line to this joke in Canada's Atlantic provinces. According to Google, some other places the woman has enjoyed a romp in are a canoe, a buggy, a sulky, a sled, a hayloft, and a haystack. Sometimes she responds that she hasn't been bedridden in, say, twenty years, since her husband died.]

Beware of Door-to-Door Perfume Sellers

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/west_yorkshire/8134564.stm

BBC News [UK]
4 July 2009

Burglary scent scam 'urban myth'

Police in Hull have reassured the public after an urban myth has surfaced about a new burglary method which involves perfume sellers.

Reports have being circulated on mobile phone messages that would-be thieves are knocking on doors in the area with perfume samples.

When the samples are smelt, a person is knocked unconscious and the thief is then free to burgle the property. [...]

Painting Sydney's Harbour Bridge

http://www.smh.com.au/national/bridge-seen-in-a-whole-new-light-as-facelift-takes-an-eternity-20090702-d6kh.html

Sydney Morning Herald
3 July 2009

Bridge seen in a whole new light as facelift takes an eternity

John Huxley

[...] Sydney can expect to get its upgraded, uncluttered bridge back early next year. But doesn't the job of painting the Harbour Bridge then begin all over again?

"No," [RTA spokesman Mark] Henderson said. "Obviously, there is ongoing maintenance, but the idea that we get to the end of painting and then have to go back to the beginning and start again is an urban myth."

The Rev. Slee's Biscuit Recipe

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/03/hugh-muir-diary-biggs

The Guardian [UK]
3 July 2009

Diary
He fought the law and the law won. Maybe he needs another lawyer

Hugh Muir

[...] We end with thought for the day, and it concerns the Very Rev Colin Slee, dean of Southwark Cathedral, who purchased, during a trip to Woolworths in South Africa, a biscuit recipe. How much does it cost, he asked the assistant. "Two fifty," she told him. "Two rand fifty, he thought. That's reasonable. Twenty pence. And these biscuits, they are delicious." And they were. But the Lord works in mysterious ways - rivalled only in this respect by Woolworths in Johannesburg; and so it was that on inspecting his credit card bill back home in London, Rev Slee found the upmarket store had charged him 250 rand for the recipe. About £20. That's ridiculous, give it back, he thundered down the phone at them. No chance, "you have already seen the recipe," the store said. "We absolutely will not refund your money." OK then, said the Rev, for he is a man of righteous anger, why don't I just stick your recipe on the internet so everyone can have it for nothing. "I wish you wouldn't do that," said the lady from Woolworths. But by then it was too late. And so it is that the Rev sent the Woolies cookie recipe far and wide with the instruction that each recipient "pass it on to everyone you can possibly think of". He baked them, in a batch of 112, and reflected that these people will think twice in future before they mess with a man of the cloth.

Swine Flu Parties

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/swine-flu/5694808/BMA-warns-parents-against-holding-swine-flu-parties.html

Daily Telegraph [UK]
30 June 2009

BMA warns parents against holding 'swine flu parties'

Parents have been warned not to take their children to "swine flu parties" in the hope they will catch the disease now and build up immunity. [...]

No firm evidence has emerged of such events taking place with swine flu and Dr Richard Jarvis, of the British Medical Association, warned parents against staging such events. [...]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8125191.stm

BBC News [UK]
29 June 2009

Swine flu parties 'a bad idea'

By Nick Triggle
Health reporter, BBC News

Throwing "swine flu parties" in an attempt to get immunity against the virus while it is a fairly mild form is not a good idea, doctors say.

Reports have emerged of people intentionally mixing with friends who have flu. [...]

"Rule of Three" Celebrity Deaths

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/29/AR2009062903986.html

Washington Post
30 June 2009

For Celebs, Is Death a True 'Triple' Threat?

By David Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer

Rarely since Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper crashed and died more or less simultaneously in an Iowa cornfield on Feb. 3, 1959, has the Celebrity Death Rule of Three fulfilled itself with such swift efficacy. [...]

Bullet Stopped by Bible

Gerald C. Milnes, Signs, Cures, and Witchery: German Appalachian Folklore (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2007), p. 27.

Robert Simmons [of Pendleton County, West Virginia], born in 1908, related a story to me about his grandfather, Martin Simmons. He said that during the Civil War, Martin was a conscientious objector, being of the old Brethren pacifist persuasion. When authorities came to force him into conscription, he hid under the house. Someone gave away his hiding place and he was discovered, but he attempted an escape by running across a field. He was shot in the chest as he ran by Armand Hiner, of Franklin, who, I presume, was there in an official capacity. Robert ends this story by saying that the shot never seriously hurt him, as the impact was almost totally absorbed by a small New Testament he had in his shirt pocket. Robert thinks a distant cousin still has the Testament, which "has some bloodstains on it."

Revived Corpse Slaps Pastor

http://www.news.sl/drwebsite/publish/article_200512633.shtml

Awareness Times [Freetown, Sierra Leone]

25 June 2009

In Sierra Leone, No Corpse Woke Up in Freetown

By Abdul Fonti & Sylvia Blyden

The Chief Executive of the Columbia Davies Funeral Home, Madam Junietta Macaulay has spoken to Awareness Times during which she completely debunked a wild rumour that spread in Freetown yesterday June 24th 2009 that a corpse of a late female school teacher (name withheld) which had been kept at her Funeral Home, woke up during the Funeral Service at the St. John’s Church in Central Freetown and proceeded to slap the Pastor. [...]

Nepalese Worker Eaten by Vietnamese

http://www.gulfnews.com/region/Qatar/10139448.html

Gulf News [United Arab Emirates]
15 July 2007

Probe launched into reports about cannibalism in Qatar

Staff Reporter

Doha: The Public Prosecution has launched an inquiry to find the source of rumours of a Nepalese worker being killed and devoured by four of his Vietnamese colleagues, Asian diplomats and legal sources in Doha said.

The Nepalese charge d'affaires in Doha told Gulf News yesterday his mission received a "confirmation" from Qatari police saying that there were no reports of missing Nepalese workers. [...]

http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=299253&version=1&template_id=36&parent_id=16

Gulf Times [Qatar]

25 June 2009

Journalists acquitted in ‘cannibalism’ case

Seven local journalists, including three editors-in-chief, were yesterday acquitted of charges of harming the relations with a friendly country and spreading hatred in society by publishing “false news”.

The seven were tried in a case related to a report that appeared in local dailies in June 2007 that four Vietnamese workers had “killed and eaten a Nepali labourer”. [...]

Ed McMahon's Mug

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1298&dat=19920522&id=YdMQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=1YsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2931,1516908

The Free-Lance Star [Fredericksburg, VA]

22 May 1992, p. D6

New horizons for second banana No. 1

By Paul Lomartire
Associated Press Writer

[For 30 years as the sidekick on "The Tonight Show," Ed McMahon would sit in a chair next to Johnny Carson's desk and laugh uproariously at the host's wisecracks, pausing occasionally to sip iced tea from a stoneware mug. That mug, Lomartire writes, was "part of the Ed-the-jovial-Irish-drunk legend created and milked by Carson."]

[...] "That's been kind of a running gag, 'What's in Ed's cup?'," [McMahon] says. "People would take a drink and feign it was loaded with booze and they'd almost collapse, gag or choke or some people would drink it all the way down like they liked it." [...]

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/celebritology/2009/06/when_i_met_ed_mcmahon.html

Washington Post

23 June 2009

Celebritology [Blog]

When I Met Ed McMahon

By Liz Kelly

[Sometime in 1991 Liz Kelly met Ed McMahon backstage at "The Tonight Show" the night her father was a guest. She describes McMahon as being "florid, merry and smelling a bit... spirited."]

[...] We were giddily riding back to the hotel in our NBC-provided limo when dad said that during a commercial break he'd accidentally picked up McMahon's coffee mug for a sip of water, only to discover it was filled with whiskey.

Apocryphal or on the level? Since both dad and McMahon are now dead, we likely won't know. But it does make a good story.

Yankee Stadium Rats

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/nyregion/22diary.html?ref=nyregion

New York Times
22 June 2009

Metropolitan Diary

[A man on a New York City train was overheard telling his young son why it's okay to throw peanut shells on the floor of Yankee Stadium. "[T]hey keep rats at Yankee Stadium, and after the fans leave, they let them in to clean up the shells."]

Having Sex in a Car Will Make It Fall Apart

http://www.sowetan.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=1019282

Sowetan [South Africa]
18 June 2009

Myths you just can’t shake off

Amanda Ngudle

[...] Myth: Having sex in a car will make it fall apart.

Fact: “People who generally take the risk of having sex in a car are usually young people who don’t really fret over the condition of their cars and surroundings in general. Their cars fall apart from negligence, not from the act of sex itself,” [Dr. Lebo] Maile- Maimela says. [...]

Drink Spiking Study (Australia)

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25642700-5013404,00.html

The Australian
16 June 2009

Drink spiking claims rejected

Nic White

THE nightclub scourge of drink spiking is greatly exaggerated and is more likely the result of alcohol consumed willingly by the victim than doping by a predator.

Australian researchers have found that not one of the 97 young men and women admitted over 19 months to two Perth hospitals claiming to have had their drinks spiked had, in fact, been drugged. [...]

McDonald's Staff Have Swine Flu (Bahrain)

http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid=253324

Gulf Daily News [Bahrain]
16 June 2009

Restaurant rumours rapped

HEALTH Ministry officials yesterday urged people to ignore rumours that staff at the popular fast food chain McDonald's had tested positive for swine flu. [...]

Abducted Teenagers (Hungarian Chain Letter)

http://www.pestiside.hu/20090616/from-the-inbox-i-hungarian-police-in-kidnapping-spree-coverup-/

[Blog]

Pestiside.hu [Budapest]
16 June 2009

From the Inbox (I): Hungarian Police in Kidnapping Spree Coverup

A chain letter calling Eger and Győr the new epicenters of kidnapping in Hungary has been making its way around Hungarian inboxes recently. [...]

[Teenagers are being abducted by people in a Mercedes.]

UA Football Team's No. 12 Jersey

http://deas.tuscaloosanews.com/default.asp?item=2389538

Tuscaloosa News [AL]
14 June 2009

THE ABC AND DEAS OF SPORTS [Blog]

Tommy Deas

Urban Mythbuster: Alabama's No. 12 jersey

Apparently there has been an urban myth going around about the No. 12 jersey on the University of Alabama football team.

The jersey, according to the myth, is somehow sacred. Only a player -- specifically a quarterback -- who is thought to be the next all-time great is supposed to be assigned that number. There's even a version that claims that to wear the No. 12, a player has to have the blessing of not only the head coach, but whoever wore it before him. [...]

Bristol Zoo Parking Lot Attendant's Scam

http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/homepage/Urban-myth-Bristol-Zoo-parking-attendant/article-1073841-detail/article.html

Evening Post [Bristol, UK]
13 June 2009

Urban myth of the Bristol Zoo parking attendant

[...] Touted as a genuine news article, the tale of a Bristol Zoo parking attendant who lined his own pockets with customers' cash for 23 years before going missing with the loot has set cyberspace alight.

But the Evening Post can confirm the story, which has been emailed to thousands of people across the globe in recent months, is nothing more than an urban myth – and the real attendants say the joke is starting to wear thin. [...]

[The article notes that this legend also appeared in the Evening Post two years ago on April Fools' Day.]

Water Moccasins in Lake Sinclair?

http://news.mywebpal.com/news_tool_v2.cfm?show=localnews&pnpID=1039&NewsID=962202&CategoryID=19733&on=1

The Baldwin Bulletin [Milledgeville, GA]
10 June 2009

Water mocassins on Lake Sinclair?

Chris McKearney

[Many people wrongly believe that venomous water moccasins live in Lake Sinclair. Pres Haslam, a marina owner, laughs at the legend that a man water skiing on the lake died from water moccasin bites. "I think it’s a story that’s told on every lake in Georgia. I’ve had people from out of town come to the marina and tell me that story. But the only difference is that the story happened on the lake back where they are from."]

Vampire Rumors at Elementary School

http://heraldnet.com/article/20090611/NEWS01/706119930

The Daily Herald [Everett, WA]
11 June 2009

Lake Stevens school quells vampire rumors

By Kaitlin Manry
Herald Writer

LAKE STEVENS -- Lake Stevens school administrators want to drive a stake through rumors that vampires -- or children making believe they were undead -- abducted and bit two Mount Pilchuck Elementary School students. [...]

[Apparently the rumors started after a seventh-grade girl hugged a fifth-grade boy.]

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/47879422.html

KOMO News [Seattle, WA]
11 June 2009

Vampire rumors haunt Lake Stevens

By Theron Zahn

[Although school district officials say there is no evidence the girl bit him, the boy's mother insists there were marks on his forehead "that looked like they could be from her teeth."]

Stella Awards Editorial (Lebanon Daily News)

http://www.ldnews.com/alllistings/ci_12537514?IADID=Search-www.ldnews.com-www.ldnews.com

Lebanon Daily News [PA]
6 June 2009

Sad but true

We can’t begin to describe what you’re about to read. It could fall into the category of “what were they thinking,” but that language isn’t nearly strong enough. We don’t know if language has been invented yet to describe the wrongness to which we are about to subject you. [...]

[The editorial goes on to describe some infamous lawsuits that appear on a website dedicated to the "Stella Awards." Two days later, the paper apologizes for its gullibility.]

http://www.ldnews.com/alllistings/ci_12549431?IADID=Search-www.ldnews.com-www.ldnews.com

Lebanon Daily News [PA]
8 June 2009

We fell for it

[...] Jury madness is something that pushes our buttons; always has. So when we received what we thought were other egregious examples of juries gone wild, we ran with it before we stopped to vet the information. We saw red, brought our level of righteous indignation to the boiling point and fired off a lament against the legal system that had virtually no basis in reality. [...]

Red Mercury Gang Caught (Kuwait)

http://www.arabtimesonline.com/kuwaitcrime/pagesdetails.asp?nid=33127&ccid=22

Arab Times [Kuwait]
2 June 2009

Gang held selling $42m worth ‘red mercury’

KUWAIT CITY : In an incident which is believed to be the first of its kind in the Gulf region, police have reportedly arrested four men — a Kuwaiti, a Syrian and two Egyptians — for attempting to sell two grams of ‘Red Mercury’, worth $42 million, reports Al-Qabas daily. [...]

[The Syrian claims the red mercury -- a remarkably versatile substance that can be used to boost sexual potency or make a nuclear weapon -- was taken from an Egyptian mummy.]

http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=MTEzODc0MTE1

Kuwait Times
2 June 2009

Nuke material smugglers caught

KUWAIT: The existence of the chemical substance red mercury as well as its application in making nuclear bombs has been denied by a third year student of chemistry in Kuwait University. The student explained that what is popularly known as red mercury is either mercury oxide or mercury mixed with red dye. [...]

Third-Grade Failures Predict Prison Spots

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/03/AR2009060303566.html?sid=ST2009060303653

Washington Post
4 June 2009

In Politics, Fact, Fancy Can Blur in Keystroke
Bogus Claim Linking Jail, School Raised Election After Election

By Maria Glod and Rosalind S. Helderman
Washington Post Staff Writers

[...] "Imagine if your entire future was determined by what you did in the third grade," says Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe in a television advertisement promoting his plan to expand preschool. "Did you know we use the failure rates of third-graders to help predict how many prison spots Virginia will need in 15 years?" [...]

Rumored Fate of Tamil Tiger Chief

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25498043-12377,00.html

The Australian
17 May 2009

Fate of Sri Lankan rebel chief Velupillai Prabhakaran a mystery

SRI Lanka is gripped by rumours about the fate of Tamil Tiger chief Velupillai Prabhakaran, who is said to either have been killed, smuggled abroad, or even be living under the sea in a survival capsule. [...]