The 100 Weirdest News Stories we Dugg in 2008: 4 - 2

4. Woman Sat Dead in Front of TV for 42 Years (5445 Diggs)
The tale of the Croatian woman who sat dead in front of her television for 42 years before someone checked on her is debated enough that Digg marked it with a warning that the content may be inaccurate. Details vary between versions of the story -- dead 42 years vs. 35 years, 1966 vs. 1973, the police had to break in vs. neighbors demanded use of the apartment. But the moral of modern alienation seems to appeal enough that the dubious tale hit the front page of Digg.

When you've got a story as awesome as this one, who really cares about little things like whether it actually happened? As Digg user Alabare put it: "Might think someone would have been looking for rent, mortgage, something ... And wouldn't the neighbors have wondered what the smell was? I strategically call bullsh*t yet still think it's cool."

3. Chocolate Factory Refuses Bathroom Access to 5-Year-Old with Diarrhea (5775 Diggs)
Everyone who has ever worked customer service knows the rules of customer bathroom usage: always give the key to old people, pregnant women and little kids. The reason being that those people will go whether you let them into the bathroom or not, and you don't want to be stuck cleaning that up for minimum wage.

Therefore, this story has everything: an innocent child wronged, consumers exacting revenge and the offending company being brought to justice by a story Dugg over 5,000 times. And we've never heard of the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Company, so we guess it worked. In the words of Digg commenter weebmac, "Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory is a useless company to begin with. Mediocre product sold at premium prices in inconvenient locations. They can at least justify their existence by being a good neighbor in circumstances like these. Let's wipe that laugh right off the manager's face. Dugg."

2. Never Steal a Law Student's Laptop (6066 Diggs)
Never try to steal a law student's briefs. When a thiif named Gabriel Saucedo (whose face already makes a great case for state-mandated paper-bag wearing) broke into ASU Law student Alex Botsios's apartment, the young JD let the man with the bat take what he wanted -- until he went for the laptop. At that point, Alex wrestled the would-be Dell-snatcher to the ground and beat the living bejesus out of his face, so much so that police had to take him to the hospital for stitches before they could properly book him. Everybody who reported on this news item made it seem like a motivated student's moment of heroism, but to us it sounds more like a case of a guy with a laptop full of secret unicorn porn.

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