The Odd Truth, May 19, 2003
The Odd Truth is a collection of strange but factual news stories from around the world compiled by CBSNews.com's Brian Bernbaum. A new collection of stories is published each weekday. On weekends, you can read a week's worth of The Odd Truth.
Fish + Blender = Art
COPENHAGEN - A Danish art museum director was acquitted of animal cruelty charges Monday after a court ruled that a display featuring goldfish inside working blenders was not cruel.
The display at the Trapholt Art Museum in Kolding featured 10 blenders and invited visitors to blend the fish if they wanted to. Somebody did in early 2000 — and two goldfish were ground up.
Animals right activists complained that the exhibit was cruel. Museum director Peter Meyer was fined $315 by police, but he refused to pay and went on trial in Kolding, 125 miles west of the capital, Copenhagen.
Judge Preben Bagger ruled Monday that Meyer did not have to pay the fine because the fish were killed "instantly" and "humanely."
During the two-day trial, a zoologist and a representative of blender manufacturer Moulinex said the fish likely died within a second after the blender started.
The installation was the work of Chilean-born Danish artist Marco Evaristti.
Lost Beagle Found 800 Miles Away
AUBURN, Ala. - Stray dogs show up all the time around Auburn University in Alabama. They don't usually belong 800 miles away in Kansas.
But that was the case with Norman, a beagle who wandered away from his home in Solomon, Kansas, in March. He showed up on the Auburn campus Friday. If he walked all the way, he'd have had to average about 20 miles a day.
Staffers checked the dog's collar and found a tag with the name of his Kansas hometown on it. They called City Hall in Solomon, and the astounded city clerk recognized their description of the chubby beagle.
Norman's owner, Jennifer Cross, says she was crying too hard to keep on teaching her class after she got the news that her dog had been found.
The Crosses hadn't planned to take a vacation this year, but now it looks like they'll be driving to Alabama to fetch Norman.
Bad Day For Bank Robber
FLORENCE, Ore. - A man suspected of robbing a bank was arrested after he told the son of the bank manager he had to get out of town quickly and asked him for directions to the bus station, police said.
Police arrested 48-year-old Sandine LaGrand Friday after the bank was held up earlier in the day. It was not immediately clear how much money was taken.
The robber entered Klamath First bank in this coastal town and passed a teller a note demanding money. After the teller handed over the cash, the man left the bank and fled on foot.
A short time later Jared Torgison — whose mother is the manager at the bank — was on the street across from the bank, when a man approached him and asked for directions to the bus station, explaining that he had to get out of town quickly, police said.
Torgison, whose mother had told him about the robbery, thought LaGrande looked like the suspect: a white man with short blond hair, wearing a gray sweat shirt and blue jeans.
Torgison called the bank on his cell phone and told employees to look outside and verify that the man was the one who robbed the bank, police said.
They did.
Officers arrested LaGrande a few blocks from the bank and charged him with second-degree robbery.
Texas Man Gets Two Years For Stun Gun Discipline
ANGELETON, Texas - A Texas man has been sentenced to two years in prison and four years of probation for using a stun gun to discipline his children.
Investigators say the victims were Theodore Moody's eight-year-old stepson and eleven-year-old stepdaughter.
Jurors in Angleton, Texas, about 50 miles south of Houston, found Moody guilty of injury to a child for using the electronic shock device.
He also was convicted of endangerment for allowing his two-year-old son and three-year-old daughter to play unattended in their neighborhood.
Moody testified that more traditional forms of corporal punishment, such as a paddle, didn't seem to be working — and that child welfare officials told him he couldn't break bones or draw blood. The judge called him either mean or just lazy.
All four children have been placed in foster care.
Elephant Attacks Drunk Tourist
HANOI, Vietnam - A drunk Vietnamese tourist who ran into an elephant he didn't see standing in the street was injured when the animal picked him up and tossed him aside, an official said Monday.
Vu Quang Phuc, 39, was rushed to a hospital after Saturday's attack, said the official of Buon Don tourist site in Daklak province, some 220 miles northeast of Ho Chi Minh City.
He suffered three broken ribs and bruises on his face and body, a doctor at the hospital in Ho Chi Minh City said.
Phuc was among a group of tourists from Ho Chi Minh City. He stumbled out of a restaurant when he heard an 8-year-old boy wailing on the ground after tripping, said the official who identified himself only as Du.
Phuc didn't see the full-grown elephant — one of several dozen owned by villagers in the area — and he ran into it. The animal lifted him up with its trunk and pitched him several meters.
Du said it was the first incident in the area of a tourist attacked by an elephant.
Buon Don is a popular site among foreign and local tourists, where they can ride elephants and visit ethnic minority groups living in the area.
3,669 Push-Ups In One Hour
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. - What began as a quest to beat his dad doing push-ups as a 12-year-old ended 28 years later with a likely world record for Tim Sikes.
Sikes on Saturday managed 3,669 push-ups in an hour — well above the current record of 3,416 recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records and set by Canadian Roy Berger in 1998.
Sikes said he trained three hours a day, six days a week since last July. While the number of pushups works out to more than one per second, "if you hang in there, you can break through the pain," he said.
Sikes did 75 push-ups at a time and took 15-second breaks to set the record at a Murfreesboro karate studio. Several times he had trouble getting off the floor, his arms red from stress and covered in perspiration.
His feat was part of a fund-raiser for the Boy Scouts of America and a United Way program. Witnesses signed a document after the event that will be sent to the Guinness Book of World Records.
Sikes said a push-up competition with his father as a child inspired his dedication to physical fitness.
"I came home from working out with some athletes and was telling my dad how much I could lift," Sikes said. "My father asked me how many push-ups I could do, and then he beat me. I guess that's how it all started."
Supreme Court Refuses Redneck Case
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court is refusing to take up a case that pits the free-speech rights of students against a school's power to discipline.
The court is rejecting an appeal from a New Jersey school district. School officials were appealing a lower-court ruling that they went too far in suspending a student for wearing a certain T-shirt. The federal appeals court in Philadelphia questioned whether schools would next try to stop the use of other words like hillbilly.
The shirt bore comedian Jeff Foxworthy's "Top Ten Reasons You Might Be a Redneck Sports Fan." School district officials had said the shirt violates an anti-harassment policy that was created because of racial tensions at the high school.
The lower court had said the word "redneck" wasn't used to harass other students. The school policy also banned the display of the Confederate flag on school grounds.
Jail Installs ATM Machine
AUBURN, Maine - There's a new cash machine in Auburn, Maine — at the county jail. Cash-strapped inmates can now use bank cards to come up with bail money. Officials believe their ATM is the first in the state behind bars. Jail administrator Captain John Lebel says the jailhouse cash machine is especially useful for people arrested on minor offenses. He notes the charge of driving without a license usually carries a $50 bail, plus $40 for the bail commissioner's fee. That's $90, more than most people typically carry. Lebel says he proposed the ATM to ease jail crowding — so prisoners wouldn't have to stay overnight until the banks open.