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Hampton Roads' Biggest "Born & Raised" Know-It-All!
The Downtowner Answerman
Dear Downtowner
Answerman,
Have you collected anything over the years that you
are proud of?
– Kelly on Granby Street
Dear Kelly on Granby,
I have. Since 1970, I have clipped off-beat stories
that were gathered by writers for the Associated Press
(AP) and United Press International (UPI). This was
much earlier than a current column called “News
of the Weird” that was once published in the
now defunct Port Folio Magazine.
I would like to share with you now some excerpts from
several in my collection:
MILWAUKEE, Wis (UPI) – Deep down in his basement,
in a state of suspended animation, Edward Ben Elson
has 10 bushel baskets full of little people, he says.
They are only one inch tall, but they weigh what normal
people weigh. Elson says they were delivered on Monday
by a 10- foot tall visitor who landed his spaceship
on Elson’s lawn and made 10 trips to the basement
carrying the baskets. All told, Elson says, there
are 143,000 miniaturized human beings. He says it’s
up to him to pick up 1,000 more.
The whole thing is connected with Elson’s theory
that the world will end Christmas Day (1972). “The
comet Kohoutek will mix with the atmosphere on Christmas
and the earth will drown in a sea of petroleum oil,”
Elson said Tuesday from his McFarland, Wis. home.
Elson is an attorney who has drawn headlines before
for his ways. A couple of years ago, he announced
his candidacy for state office while standing naked
inside one of Madison’s topless bars. He also
ran for state superintendent of public instruction
last year, saying one of the planks in his platform
was to do away with education after the seventh grade.
(Elson has since passed away but was a legend in Wisconsin.)
OUDTSHOORN, South Africa (AP) – A farmer said
one of his hens laid a sixounce egg, three times the
normal size, climbed off her nest and dropped dead.
LITTLETHORPE, England (UPI) – Steve Smith, 22,
discovered that 210 pounds is too big for a man to
be fired from a cannon. Smith answered a newspaper
ad calling for someone “willing to travel”
and found the job was a human cannonball. He found
the job was a human cannonball. He took the job, donned
the special clothes and climbed into the barrel for
the first time and somebody lit the charge. Smith’s
body wedged inside the barrel, the cannon blew in
half and he ended up in a lake 15 feet away still
stuck inside half the barrel.
“He’s too fat,” said Joe Weston-Webb,
owner of a local carnival. “Never mind, I quit,”
said Smith.
BERLIN (AP) – Taunted about having a wooden leg,
a 51-year-old man took it off and used it to beat
to death his 50-yearold roommate, West Berlin police
reported yesterday.
LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland (UPI) – A man posing
as a bus driver hijacked a bus with 27 persons aboard
from a Londonderry terminal Friday, drove it four
miles and then fled after crashing it into a hedge.
SEVENOAKS, England (AP) – Robert Shaw was fined
$104 for paying his newspaper bill by bow and arrow.
He tied a check for $57.77 to a steel-tipped shaft
and shot it through the bedroom window of the paper
dealer at midnight. He said he had been harassed for
payment.
RECIFE, Brazil (UPI) – Judge Ribamar Teles de
Araujo said after the ceremony, “I think it is
a mistake, but before anything I have to think of
their happiness.”
The civil magistrate had just conducted the marriage
of Elias Joaquim de Sousa and Rita Mariano Leite.
The judge told Sousa his bride was too short for him.
Sousa is 5 feet 6, and his bride is 35.8 inches.
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