WEIRD NEWS

96-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor is the What?

It may just be the greatest headline you'll hear all year: "96-year-old Holocaust Survivor is the Lead Vocalist of a Death Metal Band!" Yes, it's very much for real. Inge Gingsberg is the songwriter and lead vocalist of death metal group TritoneKings and is known as "Death-Metal Grandma". She grew up in Austria, but was forced to flee to Switzerland in the early days of World War 2, to avoid persecution. She spent years in a refugee camp, and after the war, she and her husband relocated to Hollywood, where they had to start their new life from scratch. Inge was able to begin a career in the music industry, composing songs for some of the most popular singers at the time such as Nat King Cole, Doris Day, and Dean Martin, but soon tired of Hollywood life. Of that time in her life she says, "It was all fake, so I left." She continued to write lyrics and poetry in her old age, but she grew frustrated with the fact that she no longer had much of an audience. Then Pedro De Siva, a frequent musical collaborator, read some of her work and told her this sounds like death metal. Despite being in her 90s, she decided to form a metal band with Pedro. They took the name The TritoneKings, with Inge handling lyric writing duties, and Pedro and the rest of the band writing the music. This new creative outlet allowed Inge to spread her message to a whole new audience. She and the band have taken part in various competitions, such as Switzerland's Got Talent and America's Got Talent, and their songs have thousands of views online. You really should check ‘em out. (Oddity Central)

Hope You Saved Your Baseball Cards

When a 76-year-old man from New Jersey saw an ad in a newspaper earlier this year for a 1952 Mickey Mantle card being sold by Heritage Auctions with an estimated value of $3.5 million, he was sure the listed price was an error. It wasn't. When he realized it was true, the guy, who asked only to be identified as John, began looking through the baseball card collection he jointly owns with his older brother, Ed and decided to call Heritage to have them evaluate his cards. As it turns out, their collection includes five Mantle Topps cards from 1952, similar to the one Mathis sold. However, that card was graded a Mint 9 by PSA, the second best rating a card can get. The best card in the brothers' collection is a PSA 8.5 that has been valued at $1 million and is part of its Summer Platinum Night Sports Auction that runs through Aug. 19. Heritage already sold 26 cards in July for a total of $384,000. John recalled he and his brother began collecting cards in 1951 when they were growing up in West Hartford, Connecticut. John was 9 years old at the time, and Ed was 12, and they each had separate collections that got merged at some point years later when they were being stored. Their cards are all from 1951 and 1952. (Newser)

No Good Deed... 

They should be calling Richard Hill of Parma, Ohio a hero. When he saw two dogs suffering and locked inside a hot car at a Walmart parking lot, he knew something had to be done. Then he noticed the younger of the two dogs, a puppy wasn't moving. That's when he smashed the window with a hammer he retrieved from his truck, even though another witness alerted by the older dog jumping around had already called police. Hill said, "I felt they needed out right then and there." He says it was around 79 degrees at the time and he believed the dogs had been in the car for around 30 minutes. Police, however, say the dogs had only been left in the car for around six minutes when Hill broke the window. Sgt. Dan Ciryak said, "We believe his heart may have been in the right place, but he should have waited a little more. He knew the police were coming. I don't know what his sense of urgency was." Anyway, the police gave Mr. Hill a citation but when the vehicle's owner emerged from the store after around 14 minutes, he got off Scott free! Hill, who says he thought he was protected under the state's "Hot Car" law, plans to fight his citation in court. He says he would do the same thing again in a similar situation, though he would take video to protect himself and prove that the vehicle's sunroof wasn't open, as police are claiming. He says, "I just wanted to help [the] dogs. That's all." (Cleveland.com)

Love Is a Many Complicated Thing

In Honduras, Rosa Castellanos Diaz was expecting twins with her boyfriend, Melvin Mendoza. Or at least that's what everyone thought, including Melvin, as Rosa looked pregnant and had even showed everyone an ultrasound scan. As the big day approached, the mother-to-be boarded a bus to the capital of Tegucigalpa, so she could give birth to her babies at Escuela Hospital. However, later that night, she called Melvin with heartbreaking news: one of the twins had died while she was in labor, and the other one would have to stay at the hospital in order to receive special care. The next day she returned to her home town of El Coyolar with a small casket in order to attend a wake held by her boyfriend and his relatives. When people started asking if they could see the infant, the woman told them that the casket had been sealed by the hospital and she had been instructed not to open it. Melvin was so grief-stricken that he even had to be propped up by friends while watching his child's coffin be buried. But something wasn't sitting right with some of Melvin's friends. So they went to the cemetery, dug up the coffin and found the truth - the coffin only had a doll inside and Rosa had never been pregnant. They had recorded the entire horrifying discovery with cell phones and took the casket and video evidence to the police and returned the doll to Rosa to show they knew of her deception. Surprisingly, Melvin actually did not press charges on Rosa and asked the police not to pursue further action against her. (Oddity Central)

Maybe We Need a Moray Eel Week!

Maryland resident Kristen Porter was vacationing in Waikiki and kicking back in a float in about 5 feet of water at Kuhio Beach. Suddenly, she knew "something bad" had happened. She felt something latch onto her foot, and says "it hurt like hell." Then there was blood everywhere and her son and two other people had to help her back to shore. Nope - it wasn't a shark bite this time - something possibly worse - a moray eel which experts say only attacks humans in rare situations, such as when it feels threatened. In fact, an eel attack in the area is such an uncommon event that locals told her they were "flabbergasted" to hear about it. The director of the Waikiki Aquarium said moray eels can grow to be 10 feet long, launch fast attacks, and can swallow their prey whole. Porter received treatment at a nearby urgent-care site but declined to get stitches at the hospital. She says her experience won't keep her away from Hawaii and notes, "Statistically, there's no way I can be bitten twice, I think. The odds are in my favor." (Honolulu Star-Advertiser)

Grumpy Old Men... in Costco

Police had to be called to a Costco store in Greenville, S.C. after a fight broke out between two old men over those free samples! Apparently a 70-year-old man was waiting for his complimentary bite-size chunk of cheese, when a second senior citizen - a 72-year-old man in a Hawaiian shirt - cut ahead of him, snatched the cheese and walked off. A short while later, the 70-year-old man was waiting for a cheeseburger sample at another stand, when Hawaiian shirt man approached. Still fuming about the first encounter, the 70-year-old told the other senior that "he could get in front of him because he knew he would just cut the line anyway." Then, according to police, angry words were exchanged and Hawaiian-shirt-man suddenly punched the other man! Good grief grandpa! (The State)

What the What?

In St. Petersburg, Florida, police say 41-year-old Damian Simms dumped a bucket of human waste inside a 7-Eleven convenience store as an act of revenge on a manager who had kicked him out months prior! Simms reportedly walked into the 7-Eleven around 1:30 a.m. and emptied the bucket containing human feces and urine onto the floor and some splashed onto merchandise. Police said Simms filled the bucket with waste from a port-a-potty. He was charged with trespass and criminal mischief and is barred from contacting the store or the manager. Not surprisingly, Simms has a long criminal history, which includes convictions for burglary, weapons possession, grand theft, animal cruelty, drunk driving and carrying a concealed weapon. (Smoking Gun)

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