NEWS OF THE WEIRD
Life Imitates Cartoons
The Fremont (California) Police Department responded to a Safeway store where 39-year-old Adam Kowarsh, armed with a French baguette, was on a rampage.
According to SFGate, workers told Kowarsh he needed to pay for his items and leave the store, but when one employee tried to calm him, Kowarsh responded by pushing him and then hitting him across the face with the baguette. The Safeway employee was unhurt, but Kowarsh was charged with suspicion of battery and a parole violation.
No Pain, No Gain
Archaeologists in Cambridgeshire, England, have discovered the remains of a nearly 200-year-old colony of utopians espousing “free love and wife-swapping,” according to Metro News.
The Manea Fen community, established in 1838 by Methodist minister William Hodson, who championed a community free from marriage, money or monogamy, once numbered 150 members, but lasted only 25 months before succumbing to “personality clashes and objections to the practice of free love.” Lead researcher Dr. Marcus Brittain believes “they got the wrong people, they had no labor skills and put in no time and effort, they were drunk, they went into local brothels, and thought they could build a utopia without breaking a sweat.”
Smooth Reactions
A movie stuntman in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England, put his skills to work when a potential buyer of his Mercedes Benz tried to take off with the car.
The Telegraph reported that Matt Spooner met the “buyer” and gave a test drive in the car, but the thief wouldn’t get out and started to take off. So, Spooner told reporters, “I ran round to the front and asked him politely to step out. I then ended up on the front of the vehicle and it began to move.”
The driver entered a highway, but when he finally slowed down, Spooner let go and “skidded off to the side of the curb,” suffering cuts and bruises to his face. While Spooner creates stunts for film crews, he advises, “It’s a bad plan to do them yourself.”
Least Competent Criminals
The first rule of thievery ought to be: Draw no attention to oneself. An unnamed driver in Lelystad, The Netherlands, apparently hadn’t learned this rule before he strapped two large lampposts to the roof of his tiny two-door car and drove away from Almere, where police believe he stole them. The NL Times reported that officers stopping the man on Aug. 1 smelled alcohol on his breath, but his offenses didn’t end there: His license had been declared invalid late last year, and his car was uninsured. It was unclear what the man planned to use the lampposts for.