Swindles.com is devoted to scams and swindles – some ingenious, some silly. Lottery cons, vote frauds, medical aid scams – they’ve recorded it all. Apart from entertaining you, it can serve another purpose: The next time someone tries to pull a fast one on you, you just might be able to detect it.

Stay abreast of weird happenings though Reuters’ Oddly Enough section. A town in Colorado plans to celebrate this Saturday as "Frozen Dead Guy Day", in commemoration of a man whose frozen body has been preserved there since 1989. Though long dead, he is the town’s “most famous resident”, and is affectionately called grandpa. On the itinerary are a coffin race, a tour of the shed that houses his body, and a "grandpa look-alike contest.” We wonder who’ll win.

Oddly Enough also features an uncanny occurrence, in which a pair of identical twins perished in identical bicycle accidents on the same road, just two hours apart.

That happened in Finland. But if you want odd news closer home, visit Yahoo’s Asia coverage.

With alarming regularity, people in India see a brief mention somewhere on page 12 of a newspaper, about a bus plunging off a cliff or into a river. Surprisingly, bus plunges and accidents appear to be commonplace. In fact, there is one Web site totally dedicated to cataloguing such freak accidents. Bus Plunge notes that such occurrences are “becoming disturbingly mainstream”. And India does figure prominently.

The site has features like Plunge of the Month, Plunges of Note and Near-Plunge Experiences.

There’s a report of a bus that collided with a giraffe and another instance where a Welsh tourist who was mooning to passing motorists fell through the back window of the bus.

Those who would rather read about instances that did not have such harsh endings can log in to the sister site, Bus Plunge Lite that advertises ‘Close shaves. Happy endings. No guilt.’

The offhand manner in which these reports are written may sound offensive as they satirise the foolish antics that led to accidents. But there’s an underlying word of caution.

And you’d do well to take heed… Unless you want a mention in the ‘Quirks’!



Additional Resources:

-- Moreover.com: Offbeat News
-- Slightly Off Center
-- News of the Weird
-- This Is True
-- This Is Newsbytes