I’m not sure if he still does, but Jay Leno used to have a section called “Headlines” on the Tonight Show where readers sent in amusing/comical but true headlines from local papers. I thought it might be interesting to see what you folks could come up with in this realm of reasoning. My personal favorite from our local paper is an article headlined “Surgeons see guns as major health threat.” Oh, really? Funny, I’d always thought they were a cure for migraines, thanks for clearing that up.
Your favorites?
And, yeah, this thread is a blantent ripoff of that “Funniest product warning” one, which I found quite amusing. Thanks!
I clipped this one:
YOUTH, FARM ANIMALS HIGHLIGHT WEEKEND RETREAT
You can go all sorts of places with that one.
I clipped one a few years ago, but it was partly visual.
There was a picture of a firefighter in full protection gear standing in the middle of the ruins of a house, hosing down the remaining coals. It looked like there had been a gas explosion or something.
Right below that was a headline for a different story: “Population Explosion in Waller County”
Jay Leno, my patootie. He stole the idea from The Columbia Journalism Review, which, on their back page, has been running these howlers for decades. They have two books of them out—RED TAPE HOLDS UP BRIDGE and SQUAD HELPS DOG BITE VICTIM—which y’all should rush to find (they’re out of print).
I save them, too; a few I can recall are—
HOW TO LICK DOBERMAN’S LEG SORES
FIVE ON WAY TO CRUISE AMONG PLANE CRASH VICTIMS
LOT OF WOMEN FINE, STUDY SAYS
WOMAN BETTER AFTER BEING THROWN FROM BRIDGE
TEEN SEX PROBLEM IS MOUNTING
When the MicroSoft anti-trust verdict came in the New York Daily News ran this headline:
You Got Nailed!
I hesitate to submit this one, given the Wisconsin bashing that’s occurred lately, but it is really priceless.
The Wisconsin Governor has extensive line-item veto authority. After one particularly creative veto session by Governor Thompson, a state newspaper headline read:
Thompson’s Pen is a Sword
(un)fortunately, the space between “pen” and “is” was very small…
We all had it posted a work for the longest time.
The National Post ran a story a few months ago titled: Two tiny moons discovered near Uranus.
This was from 1995 or so, I can’t remember the name of the paper, but it ran a story about terrorism in the Middle East with the headline:
SUICIDE BOMBER RENEWS ATTACKS
I saw this one on Jay Leno, and it sticks with me:
Bush Briefed on Drought Situation, Says Rain Needed to End It
BTW, that’s Bush the elder it referred to. That’s how long he’s been doing that shtick (although back then he was the designated guest-host for Johnny Carson, not the actual host).
I can’t remember the exact wording, but it was an Army General being investigated for something…
“Ft Rucker General Probed”
I have a couple that come to mind.
“Ancient Tongue Found Alive in Syria” had to do with people speaking a nearly extinct language.
The second one has to do with the Ball brothers (of Muncie Indiana) and a painted portrait in a gallery: “Lincoln Hung by Balls.”
Back in high school one week our girls basketball team had a bunch of injuries, and the boys Team won a quadruple over-time game. Thanks to a smartass senior newspaper editor and a distracted faculty advisor the side-by-side headlines were
Central Girls all Knocked Up Boys Show Good stamina in
lengthy affair.
Way back in the Eighties our local paper ran the head line “Russia Invades Afganistan” beside another story with a large picture but a small headline. The picture was of a group, including myself, dressed as 19th C millitary costume as part of a historical renactment.
I have been led to belive that someone lost their job over that one.
as_u_wish said:
There was a similar headline in Pennsylvania back in the '80s. Dick Thornburg had signed a lot of legislation, and a newspaper wanted to indicate that his pen had been busy. What they ended up printing, however, was:
Governor’s Penis Busy
Which makes me suspect some of these things are intentional.
Army’s Sex Probe Snarled
Durham Firm Helps Out Boy Scouts
Stratham Man Named Fish Panel Head
News from the town of Big Ugly, West Virginia: Big Ugly Girl Wins Beauty Contest I heard about this when I lived in W.Va. but I didn’t see it myself.
From Fractured English by Richard Lederer
I couldn’t stop laughing when the KFOR Chronicle from either April or May had bumping headlines which read across two pages:
“Germans stop beating/Polish humanitarians”
Back on February 1, 1997, Jessica Darling married Benjamin Swallow. On February 16, 1997, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette ran the following wedding announcement:
**SWALLOW-DARLING**Looking at the same page of wedding announcements I noticed this one…
**SHEFFELD-PUTZ**I actually sent this one in to Leno, don’t know if he used it or not. It was in the text of an article in The Baltimore Sun about 3-4 years ago.The article talked about U.S. Navy fighter planes and made reference to the “F/A 18 Super Horney Fighter”. Sounds like a lot of the Navy guys I know.
“All Utah Sentenced To Be Shot” is one that’s actually in my scrapbook. (Sorry, Snark and peaches, we’ll miss you!)
Back in the mid/late 1970s, when the death penalty was making its comeback, the authorities in Utah decided that all who were sentenced to death in the state (“All Utah Sentenced”) would be shot, rather than hanged, fried, gassed, or whatever.
I’m still ROFL about Swallow-Darling, and the knocked-up girls!