Joan Ginther came from Bishop, Texas. She earned her doctorate in math from Stanford in the 70’s but in more recent times locals saw her exiting a town convenience store carrying $50 reams of scratch off tickets at a time.

Joan Ginter has won the Texas lottery 4 times. She is a millionaire many times over and has declined every attempt by reporters to get her on the record about her winnings.

So how did Ginther do it, then?

Good luck pinning her down to ask.

Ginther has never spoken publicly about her lotto winnings and could not be found for comment. She now lives in Las Vegas after moving away from Bishop, and an answering machine message for a telephone number listed at her address says not to leave a message.

She asked the few people who’ve exchanged more than brief pleasantries with her not to grant interviews and sneaked into lottery headquarters in Austin to collect her winnings with the least publicity the state offers jackpot winners.

Is Joan Ginther astronomically lucky and press shy? Or has she achieved what so many have dreamed of, a mathematical flaw in a system designed to rake in money with only a glimmer of a statistical chance for a payout?

[AP]

Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Tirades ever thrown.

There’s an old saying that goes something like, “In the land of the blind the psychotic optometrist is king.”

Never has this oldest of wives’ tales been less true…as you’ll see in the clip.

Although this was clearly a premeditated outburst (and beyond that, just a really douchey move), I can only hope he didn’t order McNuggets for lunch as that would further support my theory that a lack of processed chicken-like meat is at the root of all spontaneous rage.

What makes this really weird is the voice mail he left pre-outburst. Not only did Dr. Douchebag phone in a false apology to ensnare an unsuspecting octogenarian journalist but he over-the-topped-it with a plea of born again Christianity and love of all things news reporter. After that move I was really rooting to see the old guy clock him in the face.

Your thoughts? Do you have something better for the list of Weirdest Tirades? Share it!

Someone print a t-shirt! Thanks to Weird Things reader Katy for sending this in.

[WFAA]

[CNN]

We get pretty cocky here in the 21st Century with our internets and World Wide Web Highway pages, but did you know that the idea for the Internet is four years older than Superman?

In the video above you can check out Belgium inventor Paul Otlet’s idea for a windowed display system that hooked up to other systems “over the telephone.” He also called word processing, a file system, and the multimedia CD-Rom craze all the way back in 1934.

How would the Internet be different today if we had made it then? Let us know your alternative Internet history in the comments!

Check out Paul Otlet’s Wikipedia page

Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Tirades ever thrown.

Ho HO! You say it’s Tuesday night already? You say, where are Brett’s posts?

Well, to you I say, “Wait…what? Seriously? Tuesday? When the hell did that happen?”

Here goes nothing! In honor of “friend of the blog” Mel Gibson’s latest poorly thought out tirade, this week we’ll be looking at some of the weirdest Jekyll and Hyde-esque bouts of rage you’ve ever seen…er, read. (Although you could argue Mel was probably more of a Hyde and Hyder moment.)

First up, Melodi Dushane!

What sent her over the edge? Was it residual anger directed at her parents for spelling her name wrong on her birth certificate, thereby sentencing her to an entire lifetime of leaning over the counter to watch the clerk as he takes down her information, knowing full well she’d have to insist, “No, no. It’s with an ‘I’…”?

Was it an uncontrollable hatred for that guy on the Promenade who told her she looked like a model and for a scant $500 dollars he could get her some “cheap” headshots that would be guaranteed to rocket her heretofore non-existant modeling career into the same eschelon as the likes of Twiggy and Zsa-Zsa Gabor, only to present her with the photo on the right.

Nope. It was Chicken McNuggets.

More specifically, it was a lack of Chicken McNuggets. And as everyone knows, the only appropriate response to a shortage of McNuggets is to hulk out and punch out the drive-thru after smacking the nearest McDonald’s employee in the face.

Yeah. She did that.

The end.

I know this is technically weird rage week…but does anyone out there have any great fast food related stories? When I was researching this one I just kept thinking of when I was that jerk high school kid who always ordered, “a large napkin and diet water…that’ll be all.”

Check out this creepy full-motion x-ray of a human being speaking. The human being in question is Christine Ericsdotter and she recorded herself speaking to study how the different parts of our mouths work together to make words. You can read more about the study here and watch a full video here (Quicktime required).

Where does, “Mommy, an alligator bit my hand off” rank in the Top 100 Calls You Never Want To Make?

[CNN]

There’s some kooky stuff going on inside the rings of Saturn. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has identified distinctive giant propellers that could be created by a new class of moon.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft spotted the distinctive structures inside some of Saturn’s rings, marking the first time scientists have managed to track the orbits of individual objects from within a debris disk like the one that makes up Saturn’s complicated ring system.

“Observing the motions of these disk-embedded objects provides a rare opportunity to gauge how the planets grew from, and interacted with, the disk of material surrounding the early sun,” said the study’s co-author Carolyn Porco, one of the lead researchers on the Cassini imaging team based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. “It allows us a glimpse into how the solar system ended up looking the way it does.”

Chew on that.

[Space]

You’ve found the physical remains of a dinosaur who a gaudy heart-shaped skull which by all probability was used to capture the attention of the opposite sex. What do you call it?

Over a few beers with fellow paleontologists one night, he blurted out the first thing that came to mind: Mojoceratops.

“It was just a joke, but then everyone stopped and looked at each other and said, ‘Wait — that actually sounds cool,’ ” said Longrich, a postdoctoral associate at Yale University. “I tried to come up with serious names after that, but Mojoceratops just sort of stuck.”

With the publication of Longrich’s paper describing his find in the Journal of Paleontology, the name is now official.

Imagining the above clip a heart-headed dinosaur in the Austin Powers role has made my morning, please do the same! Hat tip to Dan Wheeler for sending this along.

[Science Daily]

In honor of his birthday this past Saturday, enjoy this brief History of Nikola Tesla and learn why he was the weirdest inventor this side of Fred MacMurray.

Related Story: Reason #99,912 Why Nikola Tesla Rules: He Knew Mobile Phones Were Coming

From The Daily Mail:

Chinese airport was closed after this mysterious object was spotted in the sky.

Arcing over Zhejiang’s provincial capital Hangzhou, the UFO appeared to glow with an eerie white light and left a bright trail in its wake.

Xiaoshan Airport was closed after the UFO was detected at around 9 pm and dozens of flights had to be diverted.

No word yet on the origin of the mystery craft but if you have the gumption to fly across the galaxy, you could at least be courteous enough to obey local no-fly zones, right?

[Daily Mail]

Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Alien Photos ever taken.

Look out! Everybody DUCK!

Wait…no. I meant…

DUCK! Everybody lookout!

If you’ll direct your eyes to the crotchal region of this duck x-ray you may notice that the Alien aliens have found a new host with which to incubate their planet destroying young. In fact…he may even be holding a single finger up to his mouth as if to say to the x-ray technician, “Shh…don’t tell the doctors and I promise I’ll spare you. No, really. Scout’s honor. *snicker*”

(Who knew a finger to the lips could say so much?)

Regardless, if this alien menace spreads much further then it’s only a matter of time before we all experience an untimely death at the hands of our foul feathered friends. And to think of all the stale bread we wasted on them at the park…

Weird Off!

How would you rank this week’s Weirdest Alien Photo posts?

We have:

1. Alien or Grandma?

2. G’Gugvuntt or Vl’hurg?

3. The Cutest. Alien. Baby. Ever.

4. Murder Most Foul

What do you think, friends?

So you’re a cute little monkey, scampering about the Amazon. For the sake of this discussion, your name is Joe. All of a sudden you hear someone yell, “Hey Joe! Nice haircut!” You look around, but don’t see anyone. What anonymous stranger is shouting compliments through the thick underbrush of the rain forest? Do they really like my haircut, or was it one of those backhanded compliments?

Lost in thought you make a left through a bush only to find yourself face to face with a gigantic jungle cat. You’re paralyzed with fear. The cat repeats his haircut compliment in what you now realize is just an uncanny monkey impression.

“By the way,” Jungle Cat purrs in his natural brogue. “Your hair makes your face look fat.”

And with that, you’re devoured. Victim of a deadly impression.

[Live Science]