BS: Odd Headlines

Subject: BS: Odd Headlines
From: Rapparee
Date: 24 May 03 - 10:10 AM

For some time I've been "collecting" headlines that cause me a "HUH?!" moment. Here's today's, taken from the news headlines at Netscape's website:

"Toddler Rescued 2 Days After Quake Kills 1,600"

Some kid, huh?

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: DMcG
Date: 24 May 03 - 10:34 AM

The UK Guardian had one of my favourite headlines back when the Conservatives were running the UK. Micheal Howard was running the home office, I think, and after a series of mishaps it looked likely that he might lose his position. Jack Straw, Labour, was charged with leading the assault but when it came to it the attack was incredibly feeble - perhaps deliberately - and Micheal Howard lived to fight another day. Add in the proverb about "Dogs bites man" not being news" but "man bites dog" being another matter. And the headline? "Straw clutches at drowning man".

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: GUEST
Date: 24 May 03 - 10:42 AM

Ultimate odd stories site. Years of this stuff archived:

News of the Weird

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: GUEST,New York City
Date: 24 May 03 - 11:59 AM

Jay leno does a feature on weird headlines every week on the Tonight Show. You can seem them on the web by clicking here.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: Bill D
Date: 24 May 03 - 05:52 PM

I have one I cut out of the paper years ago....I have NO idea what the original story was: (sometimes it's more interesting NOT to know)

"Lesbians Turned Back En Masse at Border"

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: khandu
Date: 25 May 03 - 02:09 AM

"Bush Sees Need For Better Intelligence"

My favorite was in the Fort Worth Star Telegram many years ago. A typo gave the headline a different meaning. "Strippers Arrested on Exposing Counts", however, the "o" was left out of the last word.

Another typo in the same paper, this in the "Lost and Found" section of the classifieds; "Lost- Black Female with long ears, in the White Settlement area."

k

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 25 May 03 - 02:27 AM

One that caught my eye recently was:

"DYLAN WON'T SELL OUT"

Seemed reasonable enought to me, since some folk think he's that kinda guy.

Unfortunately, the article actually related that they had not sold sufficient tickets to hold his scheduled concert in the 48,000 seat arena as planned, so they were moving it to the bar across the street - seating about 480.

Worth some reflection either way?

John

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: Watson
Date: 25 May 03 - 04:49 PM

From 1958 "Sir Vivian Fuchs Off To The Antarctic"

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: The O'Meara
Date: 26 May 03 - 12:58 PM

Love to scan the scandal rags headlines while I'm in line at the supermarket. Two of my favorites:

"450 Pound Soprano Falls, Crushes Cellist."
(Turns out this was a true story, just what it said.)

"Duck Hunters Shoot Angel."

O'Meara

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: Sorcha
Date: 26 May 03 - 01:33 PM

I have this one somewhere
Bovine Flautulence Causes Global Warming

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: Giac
Date: 26 May 03 - 02:25 PM

From a small-town weekly in the 40s:

WCTU President
Gives 5-Pint Speech

(For those unfamiliar, it's an acronym for Women's Christian Temperance Union)


One I still have somewhere, 36-point type in an ad for a drygoods store:

Stretch Cocks
2 pairs for $1

~;o)

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: Bardford
Date: 26 May 03 - 03:36 PM

One I remember from quite a few years ago: "Peacekeepers Batter Warlords".

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: Snuffy
Date: 26 May 03 - 05:28 PM

From WWII (allegedly) "British Push Bottles Up Germans"

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: khandu
Date: 26 May 03 - 10:01 PM

A Jackson, MS newspaper's wedding announcement proudly proclaimed the marriage of "Little-Cox".

k

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: Bill D
Date: 26 May 03 - 10:24 PM

for pure dense, awkward phrasing, I remember THIS from "The Wichita Eagle" in the 1960s:

"Car maker lies
claim gets probe"

yes, you CAN work it out...but...

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: GUEST,chip2447
Date: 26 May 03 - 10:42 PM

Not long ago, our local tv station and public radio staion, (both are University owned, and are a training ground for upcoming journalists), both used the same headline for one of their news items;

"Reno decides against deepening Gore probe."

Helluva visual there...

Mustang rear ends Celebrity, film at 11.

Chip2447

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: Gervase
Date: 27 May 03 - 07:42 AM

One of my old papers had some lovely headlines when I worked there. Some I remember were: "House not struck by lightning" (Gosh! Turned out it was a report into the aftermath of a mystery blaze); "Walrus not found in River Wensum" (Despite claims by pissed UEA students that a walrus was frolicking in the river at Norwich!) and "Exit man ate banana sandwiches, court told" (Exit was an organisation for voluntary euthanasia, though the relevance of the sandwich still beats me!).
The owd EDP was also plagued with typos - often, I think, because the comps were permanently pissed. One of the best was in a cinema ad. One issue had "at the Regal, Lowestoft - Clint Eastwoof in Firefox". Next edition had a terse corrxn: "We apologise for the misspelling in yesterday's cinema listings - the star of Firefox is, of course, Cunt Eastwood". I seem to recall that the composing room was nuked by the management after that one - a cock-up that came rather too soon after a typo on an advertorial about booking hen nights at Lowestoft's South Pier (one of the grottiest venues known to humankind) headed "Cunt on a night to remember".
Ah, happy were those those days in local journalism. Like the time when a colleague waited anxiously for the whole print run of the Thetford and Watton Times to make it back from the presses in Norwich on a Thursday night because he'd made a legal bollox in a court report which could have got him sacked and the paper done for contempt. He sat there until the dawn broke, painstakingly crossing through the offending line in every paper with a thick black felt-tip before refolding the copies and tying them up into quires again. Curiously no-one - from the editor down to the dimmest reader - ever queried why there was a black blob in the middle of a court report. Jammy bugger got clean away with it!

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: The Walrus
Date: 27 May 03 - 05:21 PM

Gervase,

"..."Walrus not found in River Wensum" (Despite claims by pissed UEA students that a walrus was frolicking in the river at Norwich!)..."

I'm not surprised, I couldn't even find the river.

Walrus

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: Kim C
Date: 27 May 03 - 05:44 PM

I love the Jay Leno Headlines and check the archive often since I'm not usually up to watch the show. One of my favorite ones went something like, Gas Bubbles Found Coming From Uranus.

Gotta wonder who writes these things, and where can I get a job like that...

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: Mr Red
Date: 27 May 03 - 08:47 PM

military reportage
Eighth Army Push Bottles up Germans
McArthur Flies Back to Front
sorry folks but it is a well documented headline.
Incest more common than thought in America

I do wonder at some headlines - Journos are not without an impish sense of humour (when they are note inventing the truth).

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 May 03 - 08:56 PM

Well, way back in my college days, I was News Editor of the college paper. Lear Keller, a drama student, got the lead in the next play. I got to run the headline "Lear Plays Hamlet!" (Yes! I'm proud of it!)

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: GUEST,Mr Red winding down from Chippenham
Date: 28 May 03 - 09:15 AM

Snuffy
Sorry to be pedantic but I searched for the wrong words just before I was cut-off from the library systum, hence the duplication/correction.

We had one typo in the Ledbury Reporter (Herefordshire UK) advertising a bijou des res close to the shops which should have said

"within walking distance of the town centre" but had a strategic transposition in the "L" dept. What kind of a compositor works in a newspaper like this? Over to you - David.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 28 May 03 - 09:57 AM

Aparantly a dangerous inmate escaped from a lunatic assylum and came across some women washing clothes down by the river. He, unfortunately for the women, was a sexual deviant and had his wicked way with 3 of them before the authorities appeared on the scene causing him to run away. The headline read

Nut screws washers and bolts...

Oh dear dear dear...

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: TIA
Date: 29 May 03 - 12:37 AM

from the Cape May Star and Wave, July, 2000

MOBILE NEUTERING VAN A WELCOME SITE


ouch! for who?

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: Hrothgar
Date: 29 May 03 - 04:43 AM

There was a story in a Yorkshire paper around 1970 that started: "A man was charged in Dewsbury Magistrates Court yesterday with having stolen Cleckheaton railway station."

The theft did occur, but I can't remember the verdict.

The story was that after a lot of railway stations were closed as a result of the Beeching Report, some smart con man convinced a mug that he had the demolition rights to the station. There was some very good material in the station, and the mug was happy to pay for it and take it away. Then, one day, British Rail noticed that one of its stations was missing ....

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: GUEST,Bardford
Date: 06 Nov 06 - 01:22 PM

From the BBC site here

"Boys held over print works blaze"

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: frogprince
Date: 06 Nov 06 - 02:42 PM

My single most favoritist tabloid headline, from something like 10 years ago:
    "Smell of bum's feet kills four in shelter for homeless".

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: Mr Happy
Date: 06 Nov 06 - 08:08 PM

From Liverpool Echo 1970s [allegedly]

'An award for outstanding service to the community was today given to General Leonard Roberts, bottle-scarred veteran of two world wars.........'. [My italics]

Apparently Gen.Roberts made a strong protest to the paper about this description of him, so they printed an apology.

This was the apology:

'we regret that due to a typesetting error, Gen. Roberts was described by us as 'bottle-scarred'.

Of course what we meant to say was 'battle scared'!!

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Headlines
From: Joe_F
Date: 06 Nov 06 - 09:13 PM

A venerable story has it that when a new bridge was dedicated in Manchester, The Times reported "Her Majesty cut the ribbon and passed over the bridge", except that "passed" was lamentably misspelled.

Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim