IT’S A WEIRD,
WEIRD WORLD
Here’s proof that truth is stranger than fiction.
LETTUCE MEAT IN PEAS
In 2018 the quiet town of Calais, in northern France, nearly saw an all-out war between those who sell meat and those whose goal is to get the French to stop eating meat, referred to in the press as “militant vegans” (which sounds like an oxymoron). Some of the town’s butchers, fishmongers, and cheese shops claimed the vegans vandalized their shops, and asked for police protection; others vowed revenge. The mayor’s response: he called off a “Vegan Festival” that was going to be held that September. He wouldn’t reveal the exact reason for the abrupt cancellation, saying only that he’d been made aware of “a series of operations aimed at stirring up trouble.” How were the butchers planning to disrupt the vegan festival? According to one of them, “We were ready to organize a big barbecue.”
FOOL’S GOLD
Tran Ngoc Phuc, a 36-year-old Vietnamese businessman, isn’t afraid to flaunt his wealth. (Although he does travel with five bodyguards.) He became “news” in December 2018 after a series of YouTube videos showed him wearing gold jewelry that’s so enormous that it doesn’t even look real. But it is. He wears a gold chain around his neck—and it’s an actual chain, like the kind you’d use to lock a gate. Hanging from the chain is a gold plaque about the size of a Bathroom Reader. He also wears an enormous gold bracelet and four gold rings the size of Rubik’s Cubes. Combined worth of all this bling: $550,000. Phuc—or, as he prefers to be called, Phux XO (the name of a karaoke bar he owns)—made his millions in his 20s by trading oil. And he insists that there’s more to his jewelry than just showing everyone how obscenely rich he is. A feng shui consultant once told him that gold brings good luck. Phuc now wears so much good luck that he had to go to a chiropractor for a sore neck—the result of wearing nearly 30 pounds of gold. According to news reports, Phuc is planning to buy a gold shirt and a gold hat to complete his ensemble.
NAILED IT
Doug Bergeson could see the nail beating with his heart. It was in his heart. And he was standing there with a nail gun in his hand, wondering what to do next. With no one else around, the Wisconsin farmer decided leave the nail sticking out of his heart and drive himself to the hospital, figuring that he’d get there sooner than if he waited for an ambulance. “At about eight miles in,” he later said, “it started to hurt quite a bit.” Bergeson made it to the hospital, and was admitted immediately. When his wife arrived, her jaw dropped at the sight of the 3½-inch nail protruding from her husband’s chest. He shrugged and said, “Oops.” Here’s how it happened: Bergeson was installing a fireplace in a home he was building for his family when he had to get a nail into an awkward spot. “I was on my tip-toes and I just didn’t quite have enough room, and it fired before I was really ready for it, and then it dropped down and it fired again.” It was that second nail that pierced his heart…at 90 mph. After a successful surgery, the surgeon gave the nail to Bergeson and told him that it had penetrated “the thickness of a piece of paper” away from a main artery. Had he been in a slightly different position, or if he was breathing in instead of out, he would have been dead within a few minutes. But the nail missed the artery, and he didn’t even bleed.
American Express started in 1850 as a delivery service.
Dozens of concerned citizens—including one NASA engineer—alerted the authorities in February 2017 about a crashed space capsule sitting in a field about 100 feet from Interstate 10 near Casa Grande, Arizona. The silver, egg-shaped object was about the size of a cement truck mixer. It had rivets and burn scars, and its hull had an American flag printed on it, along with the stenciled words “United States” and “Capt. J. Millard.” A parachute was splayed out behind it. Police arrived and told curious onlookers to keep back while they inspected the object. It didn’t take long to realize there was no danger. That’s because it was a cement truck mixer. It had been sitting there in that exact spot for 30 years, but no one took much notice of it until a local artist named Jack Millard decided to give it a spacey makeover. When the Arizona Republic tracked him down, Millard seemed amused by the reaction to what he called a “glorified yard ornament.” Why’d he do it? “I just get these impulses to create.”
LAWYER, LAWYER, PANTS ON FIRE
In March 2007, Stephen Gutierrez, a 28-year-old Miami defense attorney, was giving the closing arguments in an arson case in which the defendant, Claudy Charles, was accused of burning his own car to collect insurance money. Gutierrez was trying to convince the jury that cars can spontaneously catch fire. Then his pants caught on fire. Literally. Smoke started rising from his pocket and the lawyer ran out of the courtroom in a panic. When he returned a few minutes later—with wet, singed pants—he insisted that it was an accident. He told the judge that he’d been fiddling with an e-cigarette in his pocket when it somehow caught fire…proving his point that accidental fires really do happen! The judge was skeptical, and so was Mr. Charles, who said, “I want another lawyer.” He got one. And he was found guilty anyway.
What’s the empty space at the top of a food container called? Ullage.