Creme de la Weird 

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Creme de la Weird
Sean Edward Uribe, 35, was arrested on Sept. 12 in the wake of two incidents at Miami clothing stores, The Smoking Gun reported. During the first, at a Ross Dress for Less in June, Uribe allegedly used a medical syringe to squirt a substance on the back of the shorts of a juvenile as he recorded with his phone, police said. Witnesses alerted store employees and the victim as Uribe fled the scene. In late August at a Marshalls store, Uribe allegedly struck again, this time targeting an adult woman to "spray an unknown substance on the victim's left buttocks area," police said. When Uribe was taken into custody, he confessed and said the liquid in the syringes was moisturizing lotion. Then he called his father, as police listened, and instructed him to go to his house and remove hard drives. "Put them under lock and key," he said. Officers got there first and seized the drives, along with loaded syringes. So far, he's been charged with battery on a child, two misdemeanor battery counts and tampering with evidence.

Awesome!
• In November, Stack's Bowers Galleries in Boston will offer an extremely rare three-pence coin from 1652 for auction, CBS News reported. The coin, which was minted in Boston at the Hull Mint, was purchased from a shop in the Netherlands. It is one of only three known coins like it, one of which was stolen and hasn't been seen since. Store manager Stanley Chu expects it to fetch well over $1 million.

• Student volunteers were helping with an archaeological dig in Eu, France, when one of them found a small glass bottle inside an earthenware pot, United Press International reported on Sep. 24. Inside the bottle was a message, written in Jan. 1825, from one "P.J. Féret, a native of Dieppe, member of various intellectual societies." Féret was carrying out excavations at the same site and left the message for future explorers. "It was an absolutely magic moment," said Guillaume Blondel, head of the town's Archaeology Service. Local records revealed that Féret was a well-known archaeologist of his time. Blondel said such finds are rare: "Most archaeologists prefer to think that there won't be anyone coming after them because they've done all the work."

The Golden Age of Air Travel
A Scandinavian Airlines flight from Oslo, Norway, to Malaga, Spain, was diverted to Copenhagen, Denmark, on Sept. 18 after a mouse crawled out of a passenger's in-flight meal, the BBC reported. Jarle Borrestad, who was sitting next to the passenger whose meal harbored the rodent, told the BBC that people on board remained calm, but he put his socks over his pant legs so the mouse couldn't crawl up his leg. Øystein Schmidt, SAS spokesperson, said such events happen "extremely rarely"; passengers were transferred to another plane and went on their way.

Oops
On Sept. 24, as the Kamloops, British Columbia, city council met in the council chambers, someone zooming in online queued up a pornographic video clip while sharing their screen, the CBC reported. The council's public participation segment of the meeting allows people to ask questions or comment on agenda items, but councilman Bill Sarai said Tuesday's incident was the final straw for him. "It's really swayed far, far away from what it's meant to be," Sarai said. He wants to eliminate the public portion of the meeting and ask the public to interact through email or in-person meetings.

It's Good To Have a Hobby
Joshua Kiser of Breinigsville, Pennsylvania, was looking for something to amuse himself during the COVID shutdown in 2020 when he came across an idea: "I stumbled upon a picture of the eccentric man posing with a gigantic top hat on his head," Kiser said, referring to Odilon Ozare, who set the record for World's Tallest Hat in 2018. Kiser thought it would be easy to surpass Ozare's 15-foot, 9-inch hat, but it wasn't until this year that he managed to engineer one, at 17 feet, 9.5 inches, that could withstand a walk of the required 32.8 feet while wearing it. United Press International reported that his final, winning design incorporated lightweight guttering and a Philadelphia Eagles trash can that "looked about the circumference of my noggin."

Freaky
A 27-foot-tall puppet in the shape of a seated baby has been installed in the center of Rochdale, England, the BBC reported on Sept. 25. The baby, named Lilly, with a mouth and eyes that open and shut, is part of a council project to encourage children to talk about the importance of the environment. Ostensibly, the kids will speak to Lilly; their conversations will be recorded and broadcast from the baby at an event on Oct. 24 at Hollingworth Lake Nature Park. But townsfolk aren't warming up to Lilly, calling it "the ugliest baby I've ever seen." One said, "It's creepy with its eyes shut, never mind open." No telling how school-aged kids will react to it.

Overreaction
Wendy Washik, a 58-year-old woman from Simcoe, Ontario, Canada, was taken into custody on Sept. 1 and charged with assault with a weapon, the CBC reported. The charges stemmed from an incident at a backyard party when Washik, who was playing with a child, accidentally shot a neighbor with a water gun while he mowed his lawn. Washik said she apologized repeatedly, but the "victim" "wouldn't listen to me and ... was screaming at me." She said police "didn't ask me a single question. They didn't ask to see the water gun." Washik's next court date is in December.

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