Strange News of the Week: January 14, 2008

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Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy and girl get married. Boy and girl then find out they are really brother and sister - Twins, even - and their plans, hopes, dreams, and their love itself, gets blown away.

Find it hard to swallow? Believe it. It's real.

In what is sure to be one of the most astonishing stories of 2008, a newly married English couple discovered that they were brother and sister shortly after tying the knot.

Separated at birth, the young man and woman, whose identities are being protectively withheld, had no idea that they were even adopted kids, let alone had a sibling. Let alone that said sibling also happened to be their significant other!

It stretches the boundaries of belief to wonder at this cruel twist of fate. The odds that the two children should happen to meet, happen to fall in love, and happen to marry are beyond astronomical. That they should learn their love is forbidden only after the fact is perhaps the most dramatic turn of all.

A judge was forced to rule to annul the union, saying that such a thing was never valid to begin with, even if the couple was unaware.

'How could this happen?'

According to the UK Sun: "Each was adopted by different parents - who never told them they had a twin. It was not clear how they eventually discovered that they were brother and sister."

Already experts are in a tizzy with wonder at the strange sequence of events. It seems natural that two people who share so much would grow to love one another, but the speculation on the matter seems boundless.

How can a person not know his or her own sibling? Well, if someone has thought his or her whole life that he or she was an only child, then the mind would cling to that belief, even in the face of the truth. This is surely a case of the head and the heart both leading people down the wrong path. Imagine the horror of suddenly discovering everything important to you in your life was a lie - in the worst way possible.

Already, British law states that a child has the right to identify his or her biological parents upon turning 18. However, the law does not require that the adoptive parents be the ones to fess up. But who would think to ask the government 'am I adopted?'

According to Lord Alton, a British Legislator, and a slew of experts, the twins' attraction was inevitable. Because they shared 50% of their genes, and even the same womb - at the same time - there must have been an amazing sync between them. From favorite hobbies, to mannerisms, even to facial expressions, the relationship must have seemed to be the work of the hand of destiny. 'Soul Mates' doesn't even begin to describe the connection they must have felt.

So what now?Since the identities of the twins are not known, there is no telling where their story will go from here. One can't help but wonder, though, if this seemingly impossible situation were to happen, 'what would you do?'

Well, that's DEFFINATELY strangest story of the week. While we're giving out titles, here's our retard-award winner:

Talk about bad timing. On January 9^th, two of New York's most venerable geniuses, David Dalaia and James O'Hare, brought the dead body of O'Hare's roommate, Virgilio Cintron to a check-cashing store in order to cash Cintron's final Social Security check.

The two sick culprits put the dead body into an office chair and wheeled it through the streets of Manhattan to get to the store. Several witnesses saw them continuously adjusting the body to keep it from falling off.

They left the body outside the store while they went in and tried to cash the $355 check. Of course, the clerk asked where Cintron was, and the pair said they would go and get him.

Meanwhile, a crowd had begun to gather around the obviously dead man, drawing the attention of a police detective who was having lunch next door. He called in uniformed officers, who arrived just as the would-be leeches came out to collect their living-impaired co-conspirator. They were promptly arrested.

The medical examiner quickly determined that Cintron died of natural causes, so police were able to dismiss their initial suspicion of foul play, but the fact remains that they did try to steal money from the government, and probably committed all sorts of lesser violations in their attempt to commit fraud. I wonder if abandoning a dead body on the street counts as littering?

Both men are 65, and are facing check fraud charges. Cintron was 66.