Global Oddities

A Briton living in Australia has agreed a bid of more than £192,000 after putting his “entire life” up for sale following a split from his wife.
Ian Usher, 44, who left Darlington six years ago, included his house, car, job and friends in the online eBay auction, in an effort to make a fresh start.
The lot attracted a peak offer of 399,300 Australian dollars (£192,276) when bids closed early on Sunday.
Despite expecting higher bids, Mr Usher said he had “no regrets”.
At one point offers on the “life lot” rocketed to over two million Australian dollars (£1m) within hours of the sale’s start last Sunday.
However, Mr Usher and eBay were forced to introduce a registration system to weed out what were revealed as hoax bids, many of which were from the UK.
Up for auction was his three-bedroom home, in Western Australia’s capital Perth, and everything inside it, including his Mazda car, motorcycle, jet ski and parachuting gear.

Source: BBC news online, June 30, 2008

Drinkers at an Outback watering hole in Darwin, Australia may have wondered if perhaps they’d had one too many when they were greeted by a crocodile at the pub’s door.
But being good hosts, they did the only polite thing and invited him inside. They even posed for photographs with the sea creature

The saltwater croc was just 2 feet long and more a curiosity than a threat to drinkers at the Noonamah Tavern on Sunday. The aggressive hunters can grow to more than 16 feet and have been known to attack people.

Barmaid Sarah Sparre said Thursday that three patrons spotted the creature outside the pub, grabbed it and brought it inside.

“You could say we were a bit surprised,” Sparre said. “He was pretty complacent, easygoing. But we weren’t going to test him out.”
Source: AP, June 26, 2008

We’re not sure what was on TV in 1966 in the former Yugoslavia, but it was the last thing seen by a woman whose remains have only recently been found.

Hedviga Golik, who was born in 1924, was discovered by police in the Croatian capital of Zagreb, long-dead and sitting in her armchair in front of her black-and-white television.

The deceased had been reported missing 42 years ago, and neighbors say they thought she had moved away to live with relatives. Oddly though, the police only recently broke in to try to determine who owned the apartment and they still have not figured out how the woman could have been reported missing so long ago without anyone checking the residence.

“When officers went there, they said it was like stepping into a place frozen in time,” a police spokesman said. “The cup she had been drinking tea from was still on a table next to the chair she had been sitting in … Nothing had been disturbed for decades, even though there were more than a few cobwebs in there.”

A neighbor, fittingly, remembered Golik as “a quiet woman who kept herself to herself.”

Source: Tom Radler, AOL News, Jun 23rd 2008

Bond producer Barbara Broccoli has splashed out £19,000 for a kiss with 007 star Daniel Craig.
The film mogul also gets a smooch with actors Hugh Grant and Robbie Coltrane for her money.
The kiss was the highlight of the Great British Movie Event, an auction to raise cash for the National Film and Television School.
Bond’s tuxedo from Casino Royale was snapped up for £9,500, while Craig, 40, paid £18,000 for Harry Potter memorabilia, outbidding Love Actually star Grant.
The event, which was hosted by Jonathan Ross at Old Billingsgate in London on Wednesday night, raised £400,000.
It was also attended by Lord Attenborough, Christopher Lee, Rowan Atkinson, Honor Blackman, Bill Nighy and Richard Curtis.
Source: ITN, June 19, 2008

Romanian authorities have taken a seven-year-old boy weighing more than 100 kilogrammes (220 pounds) out of his parents custody so doctors can help him lose weight.

“We’ve taken charge of him for an unlimited period. He’ll be put on a regime of strict diet and physical exercise by doctors” in a special care centre, said a spokeswoman for the child protection agency in the county of Botosani.
The boy, born to low-income parents who fed him mainly on bread and lard, was admitted to hospital two weeks ago suffering from respiratory and cardiovascular problems.
The media here have recently reported a number of cases of obesity among Romanian children. Last month, parliament adopted a “healthy food” law banning junk food from school canteens and shops on school premises.
Source: AFP, June 11, 2008

The mayor of a tiny town in northeastern Romania who won re-election in municipal elections, died before he could take office, the Electoral Commission said..

The commission in a controversial decision, declared the former mayor’s rival, and runner-up.
The death of the 58-year-old Neculai Ivascu, who had held the post for 18 years, was announced early Sunday last week, too late to cancel the contest.
Local residents said they still voted for him “to prevent his rival from winning.” The mayor received 23 more votes than his opponent, Gheorghe Dobreanu, of the ruling National Liberal party.
Ivascu’s opposition Social Democratic party has already said it will contest the electoral commission’s decision.
Around 1,700 other local mayors were elected in Romania.
Source: AFP, June 16, 2008

A street-sweeping truck has sucked a dog up through its bristles on a New York street, leaving its horrified owner holding nothing but the lead.
Robert Machin, 57, had just finished walking his two Boston terriers in the Bronx and was about to load them into his car when the truck appeared.
He recalls being whipped around, only to glimpse Ginger meeting her end in the sweeper’s round brushes.
City sanitation officers described the dog’s death as “rare and unfortunate”.
But Mr Machin, a retired public transport worker, questioned whether the driver had been observing proper procedures.
The truck, he said, seemed to have been barrelling through the street at an unsafe speed.

Source: BBC newsonline. June 16, 2008

Egyptian authorities have banned a 92-year-old man from marrying a 17-year-old girl, the Egyptian al-Akhbar newspaper has reported.

The ministry of justice invoked a law which says the age gap between spouses should not exceed 25 years.
Egypt brought in the law prohibiting the marriage of elderly men to very young girls during the Gulf oil boom.
It was an effort to prevent wealthy men from the Gulf states seeking young poor brides from the Egyptian countryside.

Not much is known about the 92-year-old man who tried to marry an Egyptian girl of 17 except that he is an Arab from the Gulf.
An Egyptian justice official said by refusing to endorse their marriage it would now be impossible for the girl to travel abroad with her husband.

Source: BBC news online. June13, 2008

If you are somewhere in China and hear a man or woman yelling “Olympic Games”, you should not assume he or she is referring to the summer games due to take place in Beijing this August. That person may be calling his or child.

In China, it is fashionable to name kids after great events. So far, over 4,000 kids have been named “Olympic Games” in the past 15 years since the country began to nurse the idea of hosting the games.

According to Chinese officials in charge of issuing identity cards, 92 percent of 4,104 Aoyuns, the local equivalent of “Olympic Games”, are boys. When China first applied to host the games in 1992, 680 Aoyuns were registered in the country. And in 2002 when the country was chosen to host the games, another 553 Aoyuns were issued with identity cards.

Source: BBC news online. June 12, 2008

Seven people died and 10 others were injured after a man hit pedestrians with a truck and then stabbed people Sunday in broad daylight on a street in Tokyo’s busy Akihabara district, a popular electronics area and a magnet for comic and animation fans.
Rescue workers from the Tokyo Fire Department, seen wearing white helmets, and investigators from the city’s Metropolitan Police Department arrive Sunday at the scene of the deadly stabbing rampage in the Akihabara district.

Police arrested the man, 25-year-old Tomohiro Kato from Susono, Shizuoka Prefecture, and seized a survival knife he was carrying. He admitted to stabbing all the people with the knife from around 12:30 p.m., the police said. The truck was rented in Shizuoka Prefecture.

“I came to Akihabara to kill people,” investigative sources quoted Kato as telling the police. “I am tired of the world. Anyone was OK. I came alone.”

Source: AP, June 6, 2008