This is my special strange but true section

STRANGE BUT TRUE
When Ronald Reagan was in office, an Illinois housewife wrote to the White House with the plea that he should relieve special education from planned budget cuts. In reply, she received a package containing two 8 by 10 inch glossy photographs of the Reagans and a recipe for crabmeat casserole.

STRANGE BUT TRUE
Ex-Policeman Stephen D'Andrilli's company, Guardian Group International, sells bullet-proof mink and sable coats for the wives of diplomats, politicians and celebrities, at prices up to £50,000.

STRANGE BUT TRUE
A bin cleaner in Guatemala served meat he found on his daily rounds at weekend barbecues organised by the residents of his apartment building. A doctor present choked on his supper when he realised the parts came from dead babies, obviously hospital waste. Enrico has not been charged since a judge later decided that Enrico had only unknowingly supplied the food to his neighbours.

STRANGE BUT TRUE
Martin Yauch and his wife, Lois, were sentenced to 75 days in jail following an incident at their office party in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, when they jokingly laced a cake with a powerful laxative.

STRANGE BUT TRUE
A tall scruffy tramp accosted a passer-by in the doorway of McDonald's on Third Avenue at 84th Street , New York, but instead of the standard plea he asked earnestly , 'Pardon me, sir, but if I were to give you a discussion or a lecture on James Joyce or Kierkegaard or Proust or Anais Nin, would you give me a dollar for a bowl of soup?'

STRANGE BUT TRUE
Convicted murderer Michael Godwin, 28, successfully had his sentence reduced from electrocution to life imprisonment in a South Carolina prison. In his cell he sat naked on a metal toilet seat while attempting to fix a television set, bit through a live wire and was instantly electrocuted.

STRANGE BUT TRUE
American Midwestern housewife Jean Voight has to keep her small dog Larry in the house or just take him out wrapped in a blanket. Larry, who exercises on a treadmill, has been confirmed by pet psychologists as hating the looks of himself naked as he trots past shop windows.

STRANGE BUT TRUE
George Mitchell, 31, of Hashville, Tennessee, has spent 11 of the past 13 years in jail following 40 arrests for stamping on women's feet . 'The only thing I ever get out of this is jail,' he lamented.

STRANGE BUT TRUE
David B.Lee, was arrested in San Francisco for bludgeoning his 84 year old grandmother to death with a television set. He was found waiting for the police to arrive in a room across the hall from the bloody murder scene, singing 'The Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of Music.'

STRANGE BUT TRUE
Hispanic inmates at Orange County Jail in California sued the authorities , demanding the right to receive hot, spicy dishes traditional to their culture , rather than the bland food they were being served. However, jail officials ruled out chilli peppers which they claimed could be used as weapons.

STRANGE BUT TRUE
Chung Pang, woke up one crisp morning to find that his wife was trying to hack off his foot. His wife was screaming that it was possessed by demons and that it must go . Chung's foot had actually started to swell in 1985 , baffling local doctors. His wife's justification was that it was eating all the food in the house.

STRANGE BUT TRUE
Carlene Gray, 36, was arrested for shoplifting in San Francisco when she attempted to waddle out of a fur shop with a $30,000 full-length sable coat between her legs.

STRANGE BUT TRUE
In Taormina Italy, a bank robber was caught when two weeks after his crime, he returned to the same bank to open a savings account.

STRANGE BUT TRUE
Washington State university professor Steve Parish has proposed that cows should be fed washing powder mixed in water as an aid to helping them belch after big meals . They produce two or three litres of gas every minute and if they cannot belch, their stomachs are likely to explode within an hour. The inability to break wind is an affliction that kills thousands of cattle each year.

STRANGE BUT TRUE
In the South Pacific a man loves his TV so much he's had himself chained to it, by his body piercings.

STRANGE BUT TRUE
Sister Franziska Leske, 57, a Roman Catholic nun in Graz, Austria, was fined £300 for strangling a kitten after it meowed loudly in her convent.

STRANGE BUT TRUE
In the presence of 40,000 fans and a 200 strong police escort, Miss Colombia, Maria Teresa Egurrola, got ready to kick the first ball of the new football season, handing her purse to a bystander to hold for her. He stole it.

STRANGE BUT TRUE
Police Officer Bill Schatzman, 23, of Las Cruces, New Mexico, accidentally shot himself in the foot twice in a two week period.

STRANGE BUT TRUE
When Clint Bolin vacated his Long Beach, California apartment the landlord found that he had left 600 boxes containing 30 tons of rocks stacked to the ceiling in each room. Bolin's behaviour was never explained, but it was discovered that he had left similar pieces of rock filled boxes in motel rooms before.

STRANGE BUT TRUE
Harvey Bird, a professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, New Jersey, has discovered that voodoo music disorientates mice, but that waltz music does not affect them.

STRANGE BUT TRUE
In Providence, Rhode Island, Patricia Morris, 24, was charged with prostitution. She solicited Lt Richard Tamburini, head of the Police Undercover Team while he was driving to meet his colleagues. Reluctant to reveal his identity, he tried to shake her off, telling her he had spotted a police patrol, but she chased after him shouting 'There's no police car' and 'There's no cops!' until he met up with his team. They arrested her.

STRANGE BUT TRUE
Fire-fighters were called to Oak Hill Funeral home in San Jose, California, when the cremation of a 21-stone man got out of hand causing $20,000 worth of damage. Firemen blamed the blaze on the build-up of fats from the body.