News of the Weird: Ironies

By Chuck Shepherd

A school principal in Ohio resigning after admitting she lied about her income on federal forms so that her children could qualify for reduced-price school lunches, the writer of Elizabeth Taylor’s New York Times obituary having died six years before Taylor, and a Christian pole-dancing class––just a few examples of the humorous anecdotes found in News of the Weird’s “Ironies,” an e-book original that proves that truth is stranger than fiction.
What started as a hobby among a few friends more than 25 years ago, Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird, has grown to be the most widely syndicated compendium of strange-but-true news stories today. Shepherd has turned this hobby into a mission, and now with the aid of the Internet, he continues to present a weekly distillation of the best bizarre dispatches gathered from around the world.
Not simply an aggregation of news feeds indiscriminately thrown together, News of the Weird contains items hand-picked by a man whose long experience in the realm of the unreal has given him a discerning eye. He would be the first to tell you that you really can't make this stuff up, nor do you need to. Drawing from legitimate reportage, Chuck has plenty of material to work with, and he delivers each story he selects with a dry wit that lets its human eccentricity stand for itself - no need for embellishment.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
• Release date: Dec 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781449437794

Book preview

News of the Weird:

Ironies

Chuck Shepherd

In June (1995), Barbara Ricci was voted by fellow contestants as Mrs. Congeniality in the Mrs. New York State pageant, receiving 22 of the 28 votes. However, six months earlier, she had gone to trial in Mount Vernon, N.Y., on charges that she tried to run down with her car the 11-year-old daughter of a neighbor with whom she had been feuding (resulting in a hung jury). And two years before that, a police officer had charged her with punching and kicking him at a school board meeting (and she pleaded guilty to harassment). [New York Times, 6-7-95]

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On March 30, several hours before addressing the nation on TV about Libya, President Obama received a prestigious open-records award presented by five freedom-of-information advocate organizations for running a commendably transparent, accessible administration. However, news about this award came about only because the presenters leaked it to the press. As noted by The Washington Post the next day, there was no White House notice to the press; the presentation was not on the president’s calendar; no photos or transcript were available; and the award was not mentioned on the White House website. [Washington Post, 3-31-2011]

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The author of most of the text of The New York Times obituary on Elizabeth Taylor, published on March 23, was Times reporter Mel Gussow, who passed away almost six years before Taylor. [New York Times, 3-23-2011]

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U.S. News & World Report magazine, and the National Council on Teacher Quality, announced plans recently to issue grades (A, B, C, D and F) on how well each of the U.S.’s 1,000-plus teachers’ colleges develop future educators, but the teachers of teachers appear to be sharply opposed to the very idea of being issued grades. The project’s supporters cited school principals’ complaints about the quality of teachers applying for jobs, but the teachers’ college representatives criticized the project’s measurement criteria as overly simplistic. [New York Times, 2-9-2011]

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In June, as five young men gathered around the Mount Tabor Reservoir near Portland, Ore., one urinated in it, thus contaminating the 7.2 million gallons that serve the city, and, said Water Bureau administrator David Shaff, necessitating that the entire supply be dumped. Under questioning by the weekly Portland Mercury whether the water is also dumped