Real, Strange News

My all-time favorite WWN cover headline appeared shortly after the US invaded Grenada. The headline read "US Marines Invade Covey of Naked Witches!"

I saw it coming, ever since BatBoy went all Hollywood with "Bat Boy: the Musical." Sad.

The only WWN I ever bought had the headline "PREACHER EXPLODES DURING SERMON!" and also contained the classic "STATUE OF ELVIS FOUND ON MARS!"

"UFO Lands In Desert, You Won't Believe What's Inside!"

Like the UFO landing is par for the course

I shall always miss the various creatures and people who "exploded" or "caught on fire for unexplained reason! Experts baffled!!" I had always thought the Alien ought to have abducted Donald Rumsfeld...

"Groom freezes at nudist wedding"

Spy Cat turned double agent.

I remember a headline that said "Heaven Full" and the story wwent on to say there was no more room in heaven. About a month later it was revealed in another headline that heaven was not full, there was room for some specific, absurd number of people (like 18,310 or something). WWN, you will be missed!

Not a headline, but the best horoscope of all time came from there: "Beware of Doorknobs."

Saddam and Osama's Gay Wedding. All Time Favorite (and sitting in my bedroom).

The most funniest cover headlines in the history of the "Weekly World News" included "Exclusive interview -- First since Aug. 26, 1977 -- ELVIS IS ALIVE!", "Elvis is alive -- and running for President!", "World's fattest cat has world's fattest kittens!", and the ever-popular "Abraham Lincoln was a woman!"

"Pit Bull Eats Mobile Home"

My favorite 2
"200 ELVES LAID OFF! Santa moves operation to Honduras sweatshop"

and

"HOTCAKES NO LONGER SELLING WELL"

Brilliant... WWN you'll be sorely missed

One more just cause I can't resist and it works on SOOOOOO many levels:

"VENGEFUL FROGS EAT FRENCH CHEF'S LEGS"

My favs
VENTRILOQUIST IS IN COMA -- BUT HIS DUMMY'S STILL TALKING!

126 REASONS YOU SHOULD NEVER GET DRUNK AT A TATTOO CONVENTION!

JIMMY HOFFA FOUND -- IN ELVIS' GRAVE

MAN FALLS OFF ROOF - MOUNTING LUCKY HORSESHOES

SCIENTIST INVENTS 'REVERSE LIGHTBULB' THAT MAKES ROOM DARKER

FIREFIGHTER FIRED FOR FIGHTING FIRE WITH FIRE!

GRAVY TRAIN DERAILS!

CONCRETE ENEMAS A BAD IDEA, DOCS WARN

I can attest to that last one. Its not just tabloid gossip

Elephant Kills Clown Dressed As Peanut

"Cannibals Shrink Space Alien's Head!"
To an anthropologist like me, this has it all.

I liked this one enough that I used it to illustrate news values in my book:

LADY VAMPIRES DEMAND OWN BLOOD BANK

Accompanying a photo of a U.S. sailor holding a large spoon, and a mesh tea strainer:

WWII SUBMARINER PERFORMED EMERGENCY APPENDECTOMY USING ONLY KITCHEN TOOLS

FLYING CAT TERRORIZES ARKANSAS!

And the article listing all the songs that can make you gay. Anything disco, ABBA, or Cher.

Redneck Vampire Attacks Trailer Park

Hillary Hosts ETs in Rose Garden

Adam And Eve Found In Egypt And She Was A Space Alien!

"Big game hunters from Mars gunned down our dinosaurs!"

"Dracula's descendant runs a blood bank!"

Soviets Clone 10,000 Hitlers!

Cock-a-Doodle Doom!

Killer Rooster has no fear of, or respect for man!

My favorite: "Chocaholic Mom Has Sugar-Coated Baby." (Named Candy, of course)

Kitten Accused of Murder -- Sign the Petition, or Fluffy Dies!

From the mid-eighties:
"Mental Supermen Lock in ESP Duel; Top Psychic's Head Explodes!"

What it lacked in brevity, it made up for in sheer cinematic glory.

I always thought you could chart the likeliehood of a story's truth based on the occurences' distance from the U.S. Dinosaurs re-appeared in China or Russia, people ate odd things or had semi-believable medical conditions in Europe. The one exception, of course, was Nevada. But that is true in real life, anyway. I just hope another publication will pick up Ed Anger's columns. That man knows how the world should run!

It's sad to see the weekly world news go, but our blog site cnndotcom is carrying the torch and exposing the truth.

MEEK SUE TO INHERIT THE EARTH!
ONE ANGRY WOMAN, A SHARP KNIFE + 13 men whose lives will never be the same!
JACK THE RIPPER WAS MY GRANDMOTHER!

WWN please come back... I gotta feed the monkey, man.

My favorite: "RUDOLPH DEAD" Red nosed reindeer found in butcher's meat locker.

When they got rid of the page 5 girl it was downhill from there!!!

Woman gives birth to baby rabbits.

Man searches for his own severed head.

Mine is hanging over my desk at work:
"Why Do My Eyes Glow Like Hot Coals Every Night?" A simple question, amusingly free of any panic or drama.

I can't believe that no one has mentioned "Dick Chaney is a Robot"

That expose was the type of exemplary reporting we've come to expect from Weekly World News. WWN will be missed!

On the bulletin board in my office I keep the 8/19/2003 WWN:

SADDAM'S WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION -- KILLER DINOSAURS!

(perhaps better than any official White House justification for the Iraq war, but that's just my opinion...)

Hitler's Brain Found in Mayonaise Jar.

My favorite was one my friends found:

HITLER'S NOSE ALIVE IN A JAR -- AND IT'S GROWING A MUSTACHE!

I believe that same issue had the story:

FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE LOST -- WANDERING NEAR PARIS!

The best for me was way back in the 80s when I was a kid, when they did the "expose" that 10 sitting US Senators, including my own personal senator at the time (Howell Heflin, D-AL), were space aliens. I was so excited. I'm going to miss those headlines...

"Severed leg hops 75 feet!"

Fat Owns Twenty Old Ladies

Fat Cat Owns Twenty Old Ladies

The Ed Anger commentary was best!

Hanging in my office is the June 7, 1994 issue:
12 U.S. SENATORS ARE SPACE ALIENS!
with a picture of Bill Clinton shaking hands with one and the quote,"I'm amazed it's taken you so long to find out." - Senator Phil Gramm

Also on the cover:
DRACULA'S SKULL FOUND!

College Student killed by arm-wrestling machine!

Hmm..interesting timing. I thumbed through a copy of the News just last night at a local convenience store, and it was pretty clear that they were just phoning it in.

IMO, It's been all downhill since Eddie Clontz died.

Boy trapped in refrigerator/Eats own foot to survive

Also: Didn't the space alien also endorse George HW Bush?

Also also: On a personal note, I've met Phil Gramm; I wasn't fooled for a second.

first and best -

HUMAN HEAD TRANSPLANT!

52 DEVIL BABIES BORN WITH TAILS!

"JFK Proven Alive!" because they held a seance to talk to his ghost and the ghost didn't answer.
"Drinking Straws Can Make You Pregnant!" that is, if you use one for at-home artificial insemination!
Oh, what a world, what a world!

My favorite line in Clerks is from WWN:

"I saw one, one time, that said the world was ending the next week. Then in the next week's paper, they said we were miraculously saved at the zero hour by a Koala-fish mutant bird."

Don't know if its real but I know what its referring to

Statue of Jesus that was walking across the pacific ocean...has disappeared!!!

I liked the WWN. None of my people were alive then. Soup.

My favorite: 'Boy Can See With His Ears!'

Highly imaginative.

I bought issues occasionally to read with my kids. When they had to do a school report from a newspaper article I tried to get them to use WWN, but they wouldn't go for it! Too bad. I'll miss it.

If you want an interesting perspective and a bunch of good laughs, try to find Mary Roach's magazine article on tabloids. In true investigative journalism fashion, she got access to the WWN...ahem..."newsroom" and the results were both funny and illuminating. Don't miss this one if you're a true tabloid fan.

A friend showed me the first issue I ever saw. It was the one with the original "Pave the Damn Rainforests!" article from Ed Anger. We didn't know what to make of it! We really thought it was for real, for quite a while, in fact.

WWN - You'll be sorely missed!

I started reading WWN when I was eleven years old. I saw it in the checkout at the grocery store and made my mother buy it for me.

It made me the man I am today. Scary.

I'll miss it.

"Cheeseburger Kills Space Alien"

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I like the Hitler's cloned nose. Great picture with it.

I always knew I didn't really fit in. So when I found out that I was an alien (no earlobes), I was kind of relieved.

There are a couple of just stupid, kind of mundane ones that I loved. So many, how to choose, but this one keeps me chortling for hours for some reason.

Bible's 4 Horsemen Ask For Directions In Paris

I also liked all the self-help pieces (like how to tell if you're an alien, how to tell if you're crazy, how to tell if your kids are planning to kill you ......)

Hey, I think only the print version is going under. I think it's still going to be on the net.

Gay Dinosaurs: the real reason they went extinct

Without a doubt it was the cover featuring Helen, a sasquatch hooker, propositioning Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy in a black Escalade in front of the Capitol. According to the story, they declined her favors, but what a fabulous photo op! I've always regretted letting that classic get away from me.

"Donor Wants Kidney Back" - his brother, who got it continued to party,
and
"Doctors Reattach Siamese Twins" - they shoulda paid that bill!

I used to subscribe - I got tired of people in grocery store lines gawking at me.

This is really a dark day. Sure they've pretty much dropped the pretense of WWN being anything but a humor mag, but I still want to live in the world they describe. The loss of "Dear Dotti" with her controversial pro-familial abuse stances I think was another shark-jumping moment.

Then again, I picked up an issue for nostalgia's sake and I gotta say, I love Lester the Typing Horse's health column. "Once a sideshow attraction, now America's leading wellness expert".

One of my favorites was from 1995 when Elvis called President Clinton and said that he was performing a comeback concert; it ended up getting cancelled because of "death threats".

I wrote for WWN the past couple years: my favorites were: Rumsfeld Changes His Name to Rumsfeldstiltskin and Tells Rogue Nations "Guess My New Name or We'll Invade You" and Rapper Has Reverse Tourette's Syndrome: Every time he tries to curse, he says something nice.

sad sad sad

500-Foot-Tall Jesus Visits U.N.

You guys need to discover The Fortean Times... If you haven't already! They sound fairly similar publications.

I too shall miss the WWN. Our son, Leskie Pinson was a Senior editor for many years at the Fl. based tabloid. He loved the WWN and his co-workers. He wrote "Around the World with Leskie Pinson" as well as many other stories. He, along with others undercover the Famous Batboy story. Leskie was from Huntington,WV and as you may remember Batboy was discovered in WV. Leskie was also a radio and TV spokesman for the WWN doing over 3,000 radio shows,the popular tv show Road Rules in the late 90's and many TV shows in Canada as well as other parts of the world. I am sure Leskie, who lost his hard fought battle with cancer two years ago July 30,would have moved heaven and earth to keep his beloved WWN afloat

William, crazy as the WWN is, that ("WWII SUBMARINER PERFORMED EMERGENCY APPENDECTOMY USING ONLY KITCHEN TOOLS") actually happened:

http://www.medicalcorps.org/lipes.htm

Man drives 300 miles and realizes "Oh, my God, I forgot my wife!"

Can't remember the headline, but the story was that a woman was kicked out of her apartment complex because the ticking of her biological clock was keeping the neighbors awake. Excellent!

Elvis has been dead (well, maybe) longer than the WWN has been alive!

AS I remember it, the headline read "10-foot high statue of Elvis found on Mars". It remains my favorite.

A real headline from a real paper, the Boston Herald at the start of the Falklands War:

"Gauchos Blitz Brits!". My favorite from the real world.

Chimp Wins Lottery! Loses Half to Taxes.

I can't remember it exactly but I laughed about it for months.

Am I the only one who noticed that WWN's delayed demise happens to coincide with the 30th anniversary of Elvis' move to Kalamazoo? Hmmmm, inquiring minds...

"KKK Responsible for Sinking Titanic." There was a picture of about three skeletons in a life ring wearing KKK robes. Apparently, they were burning a cross on the deck of the ship and it distracted the ice berg watchers.

I've loved the WWN since I first saw it at the supermarket with my mom. I made her buy it and I've had a subscription for years. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw in the latest issue that they were stopping the print issue. I feel like I've lost a great friend. Long live WWN!!!

Egotistical lawyer marries himself.

I used to love the predictions from Nostradumbass, Nostradamus' younger (and dumber) brother. And the whole series of recovered Titanic skeletons, including the gay couple (found in an embrace floating on a life preserver, of course)...Ed Anger, and all the rest of the merry crew.

there's nothing I won't miss about Weekly World News...It's the only Newspaper I've read for the last 18 yrs...My mother bought me my first copy when I was 7 yrs old, and I've been one of the obsessed many that just couldn't keep their hands off of it, every since...I'll especially miss Ed Anger and Dolly...Words to live by in every article and letter reply...Weekly World News, You will never be forgotten...

How To Tell If Your Neighbor Is A Cannibal

"You're looking tasty today..." etc.

I am sure this article saved my life many times over.

"Elvis' face seen on Mars"

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"Ghosts of Sid Vicious and Kurt Cobain haunt Grand Ol' Opry!" My band had that one taped up in our rehearsal space.

Horse sense and Hi Dolly You will be missed