Unconventional World Records

In April 2008, Sabine Hilschenz, 42, a German woman, was sentenced by a Frankfurt court to 15 years in prison for killing 8 of her own newborn children between 1992 and 1998.

In fact, she killed a 9th child, also her own, but “the time in which she could be charged for that crime had lapsed since 1988.”

Ms Hilschenz is a divorced unemployed dental assistant in the eastern German state of Brandenburg. She and her her former husband were members, under the communist regime, of the Stasi (East German secret police).

Such was the nature of the crimethat it raised questions about the long-term social effects of communism.

She had been found guilty 2 years earlier (2006).

She said she had been too drunk to remember either their births or their deaths. . In most of the births, she was drunk when she went into labour.

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Consider the following:

Detectives feared that as Elisabeth aged, Kerstin may have become Fritzl’s next victim. That would be an even more unthinkable crime: having sex with your own daughter who at the same time is also your granddaughter, her offspring (if it’s a she) would be your daughter, granddaughter and your great-granddaughter all at the same time. That’s revolting beyond words.

Joseph Fritzl started making the dungeon in 1978, when Elisabeth was only 12, 6 years before he forced Elisabeth to a quarter-century of subterranean hell.

Joseph had a previous rape conviction in the 60s.

Elisabeth was his favourite child because she was the prettiest. Joseph allegedly started abusing her in 1977 when she was 11.

Elisabeth as a teenager

Image of Elisabeth as a child and a younger Joseph [pic source: Daily Mail UK]

Joseph fathered 7 children with his own daughter.

The 7th child died at 3 days old in 1996 and Joseph threw his body was thrown down an incinerator.

Joseph went on extended holidays in Thailand, weeks at a stretch, without his wife, knowing full well that his daughter and his incestuous offspring were being locked in air so stifling one could almost suffocate in it. Investigators have had get holes drilled through the walls. Inner chambers appear to be solitary confinement cells with bare walls and floors used to terrify Elisabeth and the 3 kids if they misbehaved.

Joseph enjoying himself on holiday

Joseph chained Elisabeth to the wall with a dog-lead for the first 9 months of her captivity.

Detective Franz Polzer, head of criminal investigations in Lower Austria, said: “The man is evil beyond words. The misery he has inflicted on his family is unimaginable.”

Joseph’s motive was to “recreate once again the situation he had with his first family, the legal family, but this time with a good looking young daughter.” But by the time Elisabeth, now 42, was rescued, she looked more like a sister to her mother, Rosemarie, 68. Her hair had turned grey and she had aged beyond her years.

Elisabeth Fritzl was imprisoned behind not one but eight doors, one of them weighing half a ton. Another 3 doors needed electronic codes, and they were secured with conventional locks as well.

Elisabeth had tried to run away from home in 1982, when she was 16, but was dragged back.

If his eldest incestuous child, Kirsten, 19 had not been very sick, the ordeal would not have stopped. She had spent all her life underground, never seeing sunlight. Kerstin is in a coma due to multiple organ failure, and is likely to die.

Joseph is planning to plead insanity to escape jail.

Even other inmates in the jail hates him and threatens to kill, making Fritzl refuse to come out of his cell.

Joseph had forced Elisabeth to help him build the dungeon.

From 1984, when she was first incarcerated, until 1992, that’s a full 8 years, Elisabeth was in a single room underground. The dungeon was only expanded after she had given birth twice. When she then begged him for more room, he made her help him scrape out another room by hand.

Even awaiting trial, Joseph is obsessed with media coverage. He enjoys watching TV news and reading every newspaper story about himself.

Which father could be worse than this?

Source
Daily Telegraph (UK)

Vernon Kedit Jolly, the manager of top local vocalist Ning Baizura mentioned in his blog that on 30th April 2008 they were on the same KL-Penang flight with the current Chief Minister of Penang, Lim Guan Eng.

They first met during the check-in queue. Vernon and Ning were settling down in first class, couldn’t locate Lim there and when they looked beyond the curtain, saw him seated on the front row of economy class.

Source

I am still on about Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, The French First Lady, the wife of the President of France here.

On 26th of March 2008, the French First Couple went on an official visit to Britain. When Carla walked over to the Queen, she performed what could very well be the world’s most over-analysed curtsey:

Image source: dailymail.co.uk

Amanda Platell of the Daily Mail (UK) wrote that:

Not since Anne Boleyn has a woman curtseyed so deeply, so demurely or so calculatedly before a British monarch. When Carla Bruni-Sarkozy swept in to London to meet the Queen yesterday on her very new husband’s presidential jet, she was part Grace Kelly, part Jackie Kennedy, part Princess Diana.

Anne Boleyn was apparently a woman who lived 500 years ago.

A video of the curtsey (starting 0:50)

France’s first lady, Carla Bruni, 40 was a model before she married Nicolas Sarkozy in February 2008, less than 4 months after his divorce from his wife of 11 years, Cecilia Ciganer-Albeniz.

On the eve of their official visit to Britain at end of March 2008, interest in a nude photo of her has been fanned. The photo taken by Michel Comte in 1993 and was due to be auctioned in the month after.

Pic of Ms Sarkozy at a banquet during the visit to Britain [source: dailymail.co.uk]

Then the BBC reported on 11th April 2008 that the photo has been auctioned for USD91,000, more than 20 times the expected price. The office of the French President declined to comment.

This is the first time in history that a nude photo of a serving first lady has been sold for profit.

To add more spice to the whole saga, Comte, 53 the photographer added that:
- he took hundreds of photos of Bruni over 10 years
- he has photos of her that are even more explicit
- “But she need not worry as I would never put them on sale.”

Link to the photo after the break

What can be worse than a recycled April Fools’ Day hoax, not once, but for several consecutive years, in a dictatorship no less.

I was surprised to read that the late Saddam Hussein and his sons liked to play tricks on the people of Iraq come April Fools’ Day.

On 1st April 1 1998, Uday Hussein’s newspaper, the Babil, announced that US President Clinton had decided to lift sanctions against the country. Later, it admitted that it was only joking.

Exactly a year later, via the same newspaper, it was announced that the monthly food rations (I suppose this had to be done because of the ongoing sanctions) would be supplemented to include bananas, Pepsi, and chocolate. Then, like the year before, this was later revealed to be a joke.

By the same date in 2000, any sane person would be able to guess what April Fools’ joke was in store. However, amazingly, the SAME gag was pulled.

Come 2001, guess what: yes, the same one again.

It’s so bad, it’s not even funny anymore, and has a somewhat surreal quality to it.

You could almost sympathize with Saudi Arabia’s chief cleric, the Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah Al al-Sheikh, who in 2001 decreed that the celebration of April Fool’s Day should be banned altogether.

It is not known whether the Husseins’ antics had anything to do with this.

Source

What could be more tragic than real news that was dismissed as an April Fools’ prank, and resulted in many deaths?

On 1st April 1946, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake took place near the Aleutian Islands, which was followed by a Pacific-wide tsunami. Warnings were issued, but many people thought they were an April Fools’ prank. By the time they realised that it’s no joke, it was too late:

165 people died (159 people on Hawaii and 6 in Alaska) and millions of dollars in damages.

No surprises for guessing that the tsunami has ever since been locally known in Hawaii as the April Fools Day Tsunami.

This incident prompted the creation of the Seismic Sea Wave Warning System, which later became the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in 1949.

Lesson: next time you hear of a serious-sounding piece of news on April Fools’ Day, better be safe than sorry.

This is not a record to try to break, during any occasions whatsoever.

I wrote back in October 2006 about Steve Webster’s alcohol binge which I believe is a world record.

Just now, I read in The Star about Zhu Shaoyun, 31, a Chinese tourist in Singapore who died on 12th November 2007 after binge drinking “merely”:

(i) A jug of beer, followed by…
(ii) Several glasses of hard liquor (unidentified), followed by…
(iii) A 750ml bottle of Cordon Bleu brandy (in 30 minutes flat - in drinkers’ terminology, that’s akin to trying to sprint through a marathon - impossible to do)

She started at 5pm alone, then joined by several friends later.

Unsurprisingly, by 8pm she was not her usual self anymore. Zhu’s friends and his employees repeatedly urged her to stop, but in true stubborn-head style, didn’t listen.

A taxi sent her home, but upon reaching her house, she was foaming at the mouth and nose, looking pale and not breathing.

The taxi then went straight to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead around 10.50pm.

Source
The Star, 27th March 2008

Vogue has long been considered the world’s top fashion magazine, having been around for more than 100 years. This is not to confuse the magazine with the other, called Men’s Vogue.

Hence, those who are lucky enough to be featured on the front cover are considered the world’s most fashionable people.

Usually only women are featured on the front cover, supermodels preferred.

But in 1992, Richard Gere broke all tradition when he became the first man to featured on its front cover, together with then-wife, supermodel Cindy Crawford. Not at all surprising isn’t it, it’s not like he needed to go for rhinoplasty in Chicago or anything like that

Gere was married to Crawford from 1991 to 1995. Unfortunately, I can’t find a picture of that page anywhere.

8 years later, in June 2000, the 2nd guy followed.

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A school in Danbury, Connecticut, USA, is being sued by 15-year old student Vinicios Robacher. He was sleeping in class, so what would the typical Malaysian teacher do? She would typically slam her hand on the offending students’ desk wouldn’t she? And that’s what Ms Melissa Nadeau did. But Mr Robacher took exception to that. He said he suffered “pain and very severe injuries to his left eardrum” since that incident on 4th December 2007.

That reminds me of other weird court cases which would never ever see the light of day in Malaysia.

In 2006, Kurt Prochaska, 39, broke into the home of Michael Rainiero in order to steal. Rainiero ordered Prochaska to leave. He didn’t, so he was shot in the back.

Almost a year later, Prochaska sued Rainiero from behind bars, saying the doctor didn’t need to shoot him, claiming that Rainiero “used excessive force to deal with the intruding plaintiff and alleges severe and permanent injuries, relentless pain, and loss of earning capacity”.

Of course, Rainiero claimed he shot Prochaska in self-defense, since he was asleep in bed when Prochaska intruded and “put his life, his wife’s life, and his two kids’ lives in jeopardy.”

Then, in July 2005, in New York, Dana Buckman entered the AutoZone store, brandished a pistol and demanded cash. Then employees Eli Crespo and Jerry Vega beat him with a pipe and held Buckman at bay with his own gun. Buckman was later sentenced to 18 years in prison. A year later, Buckman sued AutoZone, Crespo and Vega, claiming “they committed assault and battery and intentionally inflicted emotional distress.” Emotional distress????

Then, in 1999, in Norfolk, United Kingdom, Brendan Fearon, 32 and Fred Barras, 16 broke into the home of farmer Tony Martin, 50+.

Martin shot and killed Barras, and wounded Fearon.

As a result, he was jailed 5 years for killing Barras and 3 years for injuring Fearon. As if that’s not enough, Fearon sued him for compensation “for being unable to work since being shot in the legs”. Fearon also said he was “concerned about his long-term sexual functioning and he is very tearful when watching a film where someone dies.” He is also said to claim “he is afraid of fireworks, no longer enjoys ju-jitsu and kick-boxing and is depressed about television shows containing gunfire.”