$faa|1-Fortean Times Extracts $fff [From Issue 84] Typed by Zebedee/Carnage UK I recently went into Plymouth city centre to buy some Christmas presents for the family as well as a copy of Weekly World News. Anyone who has bought a copy of this paper will know that there is virtually nothing in it that can be believed - I only buy it because its a good source of laughter. The newsagent at Bretonside suggested I take a look at another publication called Fortean Times. I bought a copy for £2.20 and typed up some of the articles for you to read and enjoy... $faf Sidelines A street vendor cleaning a fish in the Caribbean port of Turbo on 12 September found `1124' on its side. About 300 people were inspired to use the number in the Columbian lottery and won over one million pounds. [Western Morning News, 16 Sept 1995] Two Chinese soldiers, patrolling their barracks on the outskirts of Beijing, captured a 2ft long, 8lb grey rat with paws like a cat and an 8in tail as thick as a man's thumb. [Glasgow Herald, 5 May 1995] Austrian climber Armin Liedl reported that a stray dog joined his group on the 7,000 metre Aconcagua Andes, the tallest mountain outside the Himalayas. At 6,500 metres, the dog barked his discovery of two lost and sick Argentine climbers, before accompanying the group to the top of the mountain and vanishing. [Brisbane Sun-Herald, 19-Feb-1995] The riddle of five dead sheep found dangling 100 foot up from trees in a New Zealand forest was solved when a pilot admitted they had fallen from his helicopter. [R] [19 Sept 1995] A Ukrainian man of 21 accused of killing a woman and making a brassiere and shorts out of her skin told a court that he did it to calm his nerves. [AP] [6 July 1995] Ireland's tallest man, 7ft 4in Mick Coulter, was unable to launch a non-smoking campaign in Ulster schools after he was sentenced to nine months' jail in the Irish Republic for stealing cigarettes from a petrol station in Lifford, County Donegal. [D. Telegraph, 7 Mar 1995] $afa From A Great Height... A brown shower landed on spectators at an East of Scotland tournament at Craiglockhart Tennis Club, Colinton, Edinburgh, in August. John Paterson said, `I was sitting on the grass watching the tennis when I heard a loud slap. I looked around and my wife Jane's back and arms were covered in human excrement. Several other people sitting near her were covered too. The smell was unbearable - no one would go near them.' At first, the Edinburgh-to-Birmingham shuttle which was passing overhead at the time, was blamed; but stringent checks of the aircraft's sewage tanks ruled this out. Edinburgh District Council, which confirmed that the faeces were human, could offer no alternative explanation and environmental health officers were no nearer a solution more than a month later. [Edinburgh Eve. News, 11 Aug, 16 Sept 1995] $aaf Lambs to the Slaughter a herd of sheep committed mass suicide in a lake in Inner Mongolia on 17 July, refusing to return to shore despite frantic efforts by their Chinese shepherd to save them. Two goats with an apparent death wish jumped into the 1.5 metre deep water, prompting the rest to follow. After a three-hour rescue aided by 20 herdsmen, the shepherd succeeded in saving 281 sheep while the other 249 animals, including 206 goats, drowned. Some of the rescued animals tried to jump back in. Vetinary experts had no explanation for this unusual behiour and an inquiry was planned. [Daily Yomiuri (Japan), Le Matin (Benin), 4 Aug 1995] $afa Animal Saboteurs - those pesky critters have been at it again! The launch of the space shuttle Discovery was delayed from 8 June to 13 July when NASA discovered that two woodpeckers had made 135 holes, up to 4in in diameter, in the fuel tank's insulating foam. Technicians had to move the shuttle from the launch pad so that they could patch up all the holes, at a cost of nearly $100,000. The Kennedy Space Centre is in a wildlife refuge. When the delayed countdown commenced, ground controllers serenaded the astronauts with Woody Woodpecker's trademark snicker. [AP] [3 June, 11 July 1995] The Daya Bay nuclear power plant in Shenzen, China, was opened in February 1994 and supplies much of Hong Kong's electricity. By November, however, it was faced with a major threat to safety as white ants went on the rampage, chewing through everything in sight. The ants had been busy in Shenzen, eating banknotes, invading a reservoir, closing an electronics factory and blacking out a hotel. [South China Morning Post, 10 Nov 1994] A porcupine in South Africa chomped through a bunch of buried fibre optic cables, cutting off a large number of telephones in the Vereeninging area south of Johannesburg. A trail of fragments led engineers to the porcupine's lair. [Ivoir Soir (Ivory Coast), 14 Feb 1995] A squirrel wiped out power to Derby City hospital and more than 1,100 houses when it climbed a power line and touched an 11,000 volt cable in October 1994. Two months later, a possum caused a huge blackout for an hour on Brisbane's north side by crawling into a substation and shorting a 110 kilovolt line. [Sussex Eve. Argus, 29 Oct; Brisbane Sunday Mail, 11 Dec 1994] $ffa Sex Simba A Virginia-based anti-abortion outfit called the American Life League has called for video cassettes of Disney's cartoon `The Lion King' to be withdrawn from sale. League spokesman Rodney Miller said that a four year old boy had seen the letters `S-E-X' take form one after the other in a cloud of dust raised by Simba, the lion, when he jumps off a cliff. The observation was reported to the league by the boy's aunt. "It's kind of iffy," said Mr Miller. "Some people see a cloud, kind of wavy lines. It's hard to see even if you slow it down." With a shaky grasp of English, Disney spokesman Rick Rhoades said that what appeared to be a word was "nothing more than a perception" and that there were no plans to withdraw the video. "We can guarantee there's no symbolism," he blustered. The American Life League also alleges that there are risque scenes in two other Disney feature cartoons: in Aladdin, there is an audible message "Good teenagers, take off your clothes" and in The Little Mermaid a man at a wedding becomes visibly sexually aroused. [New York Times, 2 Sept; [AP] 5 Sept 1995] $faf Strange Deaths Lisa Potter, 21, went for a walk at night with her mother, Mrs Ann Everitt of Witham, Essex. When they came to the Moots Lane railway crossing where Lisa's father had been killed 11 years earlier, Mrs Everitt refused to continue. Lisa went and stood on the track and called, "Come on mum, it's all right." At that moment a train light appeared and Lisa was run over and killed. [D. Telegraph, 10 Aug 1995] An Egyptian searching for the treasures of the pharaohs was found on 5 July sitting cross-legged on top of a mountain, his corpse pecked by crows. Police in southern Egypt were searching the area nea Saqolta mountain in Sohag province for four of his relatives who accompanied him on the treasure hunt. [R] [6 July 1995] A young Danish woman died while sunbathing by a pool in Bangkok, Thailand, when a man fell from the 18th floor of a high-rise condominium and landed on her. The man also died. [AP] [18 Aug 1995] Yiannis Karayannopoulos, 87, a farmer in Oropedio, near Geneva in northern Greece, believed that his cat had been stolen by his neighbour, Thomas Koletsos, so he shot him dead as he left for work on 10 May. Mr Koletsos's wife, Chrysanthi, heard the shot, rushed out and was shot dead in turn. Karayannopoulos then turned the gun on himself. The cat returned later in the day. [AP] [12 May 1995] An Israeli soldier on leave from combat duty was sucked into a giant dough-mixer and kneaded to death at Jerusalem's Mystic Pizza on 2 August. A co-worker at the pizzeria said that Moshe Dor-On, 21, had reached into the mixer to pull up dough from the bottom when he was sucked in. [R] [3 Aug 1995] Farmer Ismail Ayyildiz told drinking companions in the western Turkish province of Edirne that he would shoot out an aching tooth on 8 September; but the DIY dentistry proved fatal when the bullet left his mouth via the top of his head. He was rushed to hospital but died a few hours later. [R] [9 Sept 1995] Hu Pao-Yin, 35, stabbed to death her mother-in-law on Christmas Eve. Her reason for doing this, she told police in Taiwan, was that "I am the most beautiful woman in the world and the existence of other women is unnecessary". Her adoptive mother survived a similar attack. [Western Mail, 16 Feb 1995] $fff If anyone has any newspaper cuttings of any articles mentioned above, I'd love a photocopy of them. Please send any to: Zebedee/CRN, 72 Hessary drive, Belliver, Plymouth, PL6 7DQ, ENGLAND end