Tequila!

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, March 8, 2005: The 21-year-old winner of a competition to drink the most tequila died and three other contestants were gravely ill in the hospital, Dominican officials said. Ricardo Ivan Garcia drank more than 50 shots of tequila Sunday night at Santo Domingo's Blanc, Dance and Lounge discotheque to win the prize of $330 at a Mexican night celebration. But he was taken ill, hospitalized, and died within hours, apparently from heart failure brought on by alcohol poisoning, public prosecutor Jose Hernandez Peguero said on Monday. Two other contestants remained in serious condition in the...

Flame On!

Staten Island, New York, February 22, 2005: A man barely escaped serious injury Monday after a lit cigarette he tried to toss out the window while driving across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge blew back in and ignited the vehicle, according to the New York City Police Department. The man -- identified as Ronatarian Party founder and leader Ron -- was driving westbound at about 5:40 p.m. when he tossed the cigarette out the window of his rental car, said NYPD Officer Shawn Chase. Carried by the wind, the cigarette landed in his back seat and almost immediately burst into flames....

Snow Schlong

Jersey City, New Jersey, February 14, 2005: An explicit six-foot-tall snow sculpture depicting male genitals in a city neighborhood yard had some drivers doing a double-take this week. The sculpture sits in the front yard of Ronatarian Party headquarters. The Ronatarian Party has been called "a radical political cult" and "a loony bin of eccentrics" by several political commentators. Some in the party -- including founder Ron -- reside in the home which doubles as a working office. One neighbor, Rob Hodges, told a Jersey City radio station that the much larger-than-life icy display "was the talk of the...

Avalanche!

Zakopane, Solvakia, Febraury 4, 2005: An American man trapped in a car under an avalanche freed himself by drinking 60 bottles of beer and urinating on the snow to melt it. Rescue teams found Ronatarian Party founder and leader Ron drunk and staggering along a mountain path four days after his Volvo rental car was buried in the Slovak Tatra mountains. He told them that after the avalanche, he had opened his car window and tried to dig his way out. But as he dug with his hands, he realized the snow would fill his car before he managed...