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Weird, Stupid & Illogical Laws

Mighty_Emperor

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Inspired by:

www.dumblaws.com

Underwater bike ride to launch students' eight-week crime spree

Gerard Seenan
Saturday February 26, 2005
The Guardian

As US coast-to-coast crimewaves go, it is not in the league of Bonnie and Clyde. It lacks both violence and avarice and is further hindered by an overabundance of pre-publicity.

Undeterred, a couple of students from Cornwall are intent on making American criminal history by spending their summer breaking as many US laws as possible.

Starting in the liberal state of California, they hope to evade the attention of local police officers when they ride a bike in a swimming pool and curse on a crazy-golf course.

In the far more conservative - and landlocked - state of Utah, they will risk the penitentiary when they hire a boat and attempt to go whale-hunting.

If they manage to outwit state troopers in Utah, and perhaps federal agents on their trail, they will be able to take a deserved, but nevertheless illegal, rest when they have a nap in a cheese factory in South Dakota.

"There are thousands of stupid laws in the United States, but we are limiting ourselves to breaking about 45 of them," said Richard Smith, from Portreath, Cornwall.

The journey, which appropriately enough begins in Alcatraz, will cover around 18,000 miles and take eight weeks - provided, of course, that Mr Smith and his accomplice, Luke Bateman, are not apprehended along the way.

Mr Smith got the idea for his transatlantic crime wave while playing a board game called Balderdash with his 12-year-old neighbour. One of the game's questions asks players to complete the phrase: "It is illegal in Florida for a widow to ... "

The answer is to parachute on a Sunday. However, as he is not female and has not lost a husband, Mr Smith will be un able to pay homage to his inspiration. Still, there are many more laws to choose from.

"I looked on various websites, one in particular called dumblaws.com, and found loads of stupid laws. Some of them there are outmoded reasons for, others just seem to be ridiculous, like banning whale-hunting in a landlocked state," he said.

Mr Smith has made some preparations for his criminality - although he thinks the cheese factory owner in South Dakota wasn't taking him entirely seriously - but in other states he admits there will be difficulties in transgressing the law.

"Driving round the town square 100 times in Oxford, Mississippi, is going to take for ever because there are no roundabouts," he said. "And I'm rubbish at walking on my hands so crossing the street in Hartford, Connecticut, while walking on them is going to be very difficult."

He is attempting to negotiate a book deal, which could help pay any fines he incurs.

Source
 
Hmm, I can't seem to find a website with a lot of silly laws on such as the famous Hackney Cab 'bale of hay' or the 'Shoot a welshman with bow and arrow' one.
 
Another report:

February 26, 2005

Meet the criminal mastermind who plans to go whale-hunting in Utah

By A Correspondent

A STUDENT is planning to carry out a crime spree by travelling across the United States and breaking weird local laws along the way.

Richard Smith, 23, will risk being arrested for falling asleep in a cheese factory in South Dakota and going whale-hunting in landlocked Utah. He intends to break about 40 strange state and town laws as he crosses America, starting from the notorious former prison island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay.

His 18,000-mile journey across the continent will end in Hartford, Connecticut, where it is illegal to cross the road while walking on your hands.

Mr Smith, from Portreath, Cornwall, said: “I am not really one of those people who likes going away and sitting by a pool. I want a purpose, and this seemed perfect.”

The inspiration for his criminal crusade came while he was playing a board game which included details of a law forbidding widows in Florida from going parachuting on Sundays.

He then researched America’s odd legislation on the internet and came up with his 40 favourites.

He said he was disappointed that the senate in Virginia this month dropped a Bill making it illegal to wear low-slung trousers exposing your underwear.

Mr Smith, a journalism student at Cornwall College, Camborne, plans to write a book about his exploits and is hoping to interest a television company in the story.

Asked if he was worried about running foul of the law, he said: “I think there’s more chance I will get arrested for the way I break the laws than for breaking the laws themselves.

“Who knows, there might actually be a good reason for their existence — I am quite willing to find out.”

He plans to set off in late July with his partner in crime, Luke Bateman, 20, from Redruth, Cornwall, and estimates that the challenge will take him eight weeks.

Mr Smith is not the first Briton to pursue an eccentric quest. In 2000 comedian Dave Gorman travelled around the world in search of 54 of his namesakes.

-----------------
TOWNS WHERE LAW IS AN ASS

Laws that Richard Smith intends to break include:

# It is illegal to play cards against a Native American in Globe, Arizona

# It is illegal to drive around the town square in Oxford, Mississippi, more than 100 times on a single occasion

# It is illegal to say “oh boy” in Jonesborough, Georgia

# It is illegal to play golf in the streets of Albany, New York

# It is illegal to give lighted cigars to dogs, cats and other pets in Zion, Illinois

# It is illegal to take a lion to the cinema in Baltimore

# In Carmel, New York, a man cannot go outside while wearing a jacket and trousers that do not match

# In Miami, it is illegal for men to be seen publicly in any kind of strapless gown

Source
 
Student plans crime spree

http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=216992005
Student plans 'crime spree' breaking odd American laws

JIM MCBETH


A MADCAP student is embarking on an epic 18,000-mile journey across the United States to break the law in a "crime" spree worthy of Bonnie and Clyde.

Fortunately, his transgressions are not likely to land him in jail, because he will break only bizarre and arcane legislation, such as the prohibition against falling asleep in any cheese factory in South Dakota.

Richard Smith, 23, from Portreath in Cornwall, will also attempt to play cards with a Native American, which is against the law in Globe, Arizona.

He will flout the authorities by loudly declaiming "Oh Boy!" in Jonesborough, Georgia, and by driving round the town square in Oxford, Mississippi, more than 100 times on a single occasion.

Mr Smith’s other planned "illegal" exploits include playing golf in the streets of Albany, New York, and whale hunting in Salt Lake City, Utah - a state with no coastline.

"I got the idea when I was playing a board game with my neighbour in 2002," he said.

"The game featured laws which were ludicrous and I thought they would be enjoyable to break for real."

Mr Smith is in talks with a publisher about a book and he plans to document his experiences on broadcast-quality film, in case television companies show an interest. He said: "I’m excited about the trip and the prospect of a book."

Mr Smith intends to break 40 strange state and town laws as he crosses the United States, and fittingly he will begin his journey at Alcatraz, the former prison island off San Francisco.
 
Stinky People Banned From Library

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=9&u=/ap/20050307/ap_on_fe_st/smelly_readers

Smelly Readers Banned From Calif. Library

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. - A new county law aims to keep readers from reeking. Libraries in San Luis Obispo County have had their own rules banning offensive body odor since 1994, but the policy became law after the Board of Supervisors last month adopted an ordinance that lets authorities kick out malodorous guests.

Visitors to 14 libraries and a bookmobile also could be asked to leave for fighting, eating, drinking, sleeping, playing games, and printing or viewing illegal materials on library computers. "The point is to make the library a comfortable, safe place for everyone to use," said Moe McGee, assistant director of the San Luis Obispo City-County Library.

A strict code of conduct, officials argue, is needed to ensure one patron's right to use a public library doesn't infringe on the rights of another. Yet the law can raise tough questions for librarians, said Irene Macias, Santa Barbara's library services manager.

"What is bad odor?" Macias asked. "A woman who wears a strong perfume? A person who had a garlicky meal?"
 
I've always thought showering facilities a MUST at all public libraries... And a decontamination area for the heavily perfumed...
:D
'Splash, who hates perfume and rather likes body odour...
 
Elffriend said:
I work in a library in a college full of teenagers and in the summer or wet days it positively reeks in here.

Ah, student pong. Not something I miss. What is it with people away from home for the first time that makes them forget the basics of personal hygiene?

The article raises a good point though - what if you've just been out for a meal and there's a smell of cooked food about you? Or if you've had a couple of glasses of wine with your garlic bread? Where do you draw the line, people?!
 
i think there is a big difference between someone who smells a it garlicky and someone who is dragging around their own personal noxious cloud ( many students i have associated with seem to fulfil this definition - i find the easiest way to get them to clean up is to tell them that no-one will shag them if they smell like that )
 
Indeed there's a huge difference between food smells and BO or other unwashedness :cross eye
 
I'm a librarian. And I would LOVE to see the stinky people go, but in my experience that's the people you CAN'T tell to leave, either because they're old and feelbe and absentminded seniors you don't have the heart to kick out, or beacuse they're drunk, homeless and/or mentally ill and there's the risk they'll beat the crap out of you.

The fist public libraries in the USA had a basin, soap and towels by the door, in case you needed them.
 
Yeah, I worked in a Library for a bit and it was quite charming to see the smelly old men come in every morning to read the papers and have quiet convos. Their smells didn't really bother me or others as they tended to keep to one place and all in all, were some of the best behavied people in the library.
 
My neighbour is a librarian and says that they get a lot of homeless people hanging around in there. She also warned me off of using the library loos as they were full of people doing drugs. :? They've had to get extra security in there (library not just loos). (I hate this town)
 
It's not the guys who've been able to score and are taking the drugs you have to worry about, it's the ones in the street who need a few more notes to get a hit they'd kill for...

Sorry, that didn't sound terribly positive.

...erm... it's a lovely evening... :?
 
It's the same here in Kitchener. I was at the central library today and there was 10 or 15 homeless people sitting or sleeping there. Mostly well behaved but two were having a loud argument over possession of a chair.

Kinda pissed off about it untill I went outside and had to wait 20 minutes for a bus and realized that anyone who fell asleep outside today woudn't wake up.

Think the best solution would be to tell them to use the city hall instead.
 
Odd laws sometimes still have bite

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 Posted: 11:25 PM EDT (0325 GMT)


WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- In Virginia, under the terms of a 1950 law, no animal may be hunted on Sundays except raccoons, which may be hunted until 2:00 a.m.

In Connecticut, a 1949 ordinance forbids the storing of town records in any place where liquor is sold.

A 1974 Tennessee law states: "It is unlawful for any person to import, possess, or cause to be imported into this state any type of live skunk."


The legal codes of U.S. states, counties and cities are replete with archaic, sometimes nonsensical and often humorous laws, many of which were passed decades or even centuries ago for a reason that seemed good at the time but has long since been forgotten or faded into irrelevance.

But these old laws occasionally come back to bite.

Sheriff Carson Smith of Pender County, North Carolina, recently relied on a 1805 law banning the cohabitation of unmarried persons to give one of his employees an ultimatum.

He told Deborah Hobbs she could either marry her boyfriend, move out of the house they were living in together or get fired. Hobbs, 40, quit and went to the American Civil Liberties Union, which launched a legal challenge to the law.

"This is not a dead-letter law in North Carolina. We have found this statute has been used 36 times since 1997 to charge people with a crime. At least seven have been convicted," said Jennifer Rudinger, the ACLU's North Carolina director.

It turns out six other states also have anti-cohabitation laws: Virginia, West Virginia, Florida, Michigan, Mississippi and North Dakota. Four other states -- Illinois, Minnesota, South Carolina and Utah -- have laws against fornication, defined as unmarried sex, according to Dorian Solot of the Alternatives to Marriage Project, a group based in Albany, New York which advocates for equality and fairness for unmarried people.


"The good news is most of these laws are not enforced, as far as we know," said Solot. "They occasionally come up when a prosecutor is already looking into an individual and may decide to throw another charge at them."

The ACLU argues all these statutes are unconstitutional, citing a 2003 Supreme Court decision striking down a Texas anti-sodomy law, which established a broad constitutional right to sexual privacy.

In Washington state, Gov. Christine Gregoire signed a law last month allowing pregnant women to divorce their husbands. It was prompted by the case of Shawnna Hughes who was denied the right to divorce her physically abusive husband by Superior Court Judge Paul Bastine because she was pregnant.

"There's a lot of case law that says it is important in this state that children not be illegitimized," the judge said at the time.


No cussing

Most states still have anti-swearing laws on their books which police occasionally try to enforce. Judges usually throw them out but citizens sometimes get fined or spend a few hours in a local jail.

In one Michigan case, a man who let loose a stream of curses after falling out of a canoe in 1999 was convicted of violating a law against cursing in front of women and children. He was fined $75 and ordered to perform four days of community service. In 2002, an appeals court struck down the 1898 law and threw out the conviction.

According to Chris Edwards of the conservative Cato Institute, all this argues for increased use of "sunsetting clauses" when passing new laws and regulations. Such clauses automatically terminate statutes after a specified period, unless the legislature expressly reauthorizes them.

Sunsetting was included in important sections of the 2001 U.S. Patriot Act, passed by Congress shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks to give law enforcement agencies more tools to fight terrorism. Congress is now debating reauthorization and seems likely to make some changes.

"These hearings on the Patriot Act are exactly the kind of thing you want. Government doesn't spend enough time on oversight, looking at what's been done and how it's working," Edwards said.

President Bush's 2001 tax cuts also included sunset clauses; its provision are supposed to expire in 2010. However critics charge that this time, sunsetting was little more than a smokescreen, allowing Republicans to keep the projected costs of the tax cut within limits set by a congressional budget resolution.

Silly laws can be a source of amusement. Two enterprising high school students in Georgia, Andy Powell and Jeff Koon, started an Internet site, www.dumblaws.com. It gets up to 10,000 hits a day and has been spun off into a book and a follow-up on dumb warning labels.

The site contains numerous gems, although Powell acknowledged he has been unable to verify them all.

According to the site, in Minnesota a person may not cross state lines with a duck atop his head. In North Carolina, it is illegal to sing off key. In Idaho, you may not fish on a camel's back while Ohio makes it unlawful to get a fish drunk or to fish for a whale on Sundays.


Copyright 2005 Reuters.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/24/weird. ... index.html
 
well, that spoils a sunny day

Well, it may not top the list of stupidlaws but it most certainly gets up there.
In Kimmswick, Missouri, it is illegal to walk one's goose more than two feet in front of yourself.
Seems the little geese might cause trouble, I suppose.
Also, one may not worry squirrells. Seems to me that one is just common sense. Why bother the cute little devils?
 
How can anyone worry a squirrel? The same so carefree and happy all the time.
 
Is it still illegal in England to dress your dog as a member of the Royal Family? Apparently this was punishable by hanging once upon a time. :roll:
 
Folks toast lifting of alcohol ban after 131 years

Friday, January 13, 2006; Posted: 2:43 p.m. EST (19:43 GMT)
WESTERVILLE, Ohio (AP) -- The central Ohio city of Westerville, once known as the "dry capital of the world," is dry no more.

A pizza parlor on Thursday became the first establishment in Westerville's uptown business district to legally serve a beer since 1875.

"Here's to a new tradition in Westerville," local jeweler Bill Morgan said as he raised his plastic cup of Budweiser at Michael's Pizza.

Westerville's temperance history dates back 131 years, when the town's saloon was blown up during what's known as the "Whiskey Wars."

The Anti-Saloon League moved its headquarters to Westerville in 1909, and the city became known as the "dry capital of the world."


Business and city leaders pushed for the serving of alcohol in uptown establishments as a way to compete with restaurants and bars at two new retail developments near the Columbus suburb.

Voters on November 8 approved licenses for beer and wine to be sold at Michael's Pizza and Pasquale's Pizza & Pasta, whose owner plans to start serving libations February 1.

The night of the election, Michael's Pizza owner Michael Evans said he would auction off the first beer, with the proceeds going to a local ministry.

Morgan, whose family has lived in Westerville for four generations, topped five other bidders to win the beer for $150.

"My dad said it would never happen," Morgan, 51, said as he prepared to drink the beer.

Voters in a portion of Westerville approved licenses to sell alcohol in 1998, but uptown had remained dry.

CNN
 
My hometown of Bellevue, Kentucky, is famous among funny laws collectors:

It is illegal for pigeons to fly over the place.
 
Dumblaws - not exactly accurate...

The International section of dumlaws.com summarises them, plus a number of others including a couple I thought were ULs.

I was a fairly regular contributor to the Dumblaws forum up until about 2001. It was so damn addictive, it's why I force myself not to post on here very often (I think this is my third post in total) - I know that once I start I won't be able to stop.

That said, I'd take a lot of what is on the Dumblaws website with a pinch of salt, particularly their International laws section - I have tried repeatedly to get a number of the "dumb" Scottish laws deleted or amended. One of them is an out and out lie, and the other is a really bad misinterpretation of a law. Many of the laws you thought were ULs in all likelihood are. The Dumblaws mods aren't ones for accepting evidence that they are incorrect.

Their response to my suggestion was "who are you to say that these are false". At the time I was just graduating with a Scottish law degree, so felt pretty confident I had the evidence to back my points up. They on the other had were Americans with access to google, and therefore knew better than me. Obviously.

Back to lurking...
 
A lot of the Indiana ones are made up.



edited by TheQuixote: removed link as threads are now merged
 
Don't die in parliament, says stupidest law
By Gary Cleland
Last Updated: 2:53am GMT 07/11/2007

A ban on people dying in the Houses of Parliament has been named the most absurd legislation in Britain.

In a public vote, the second strangest law was one making it an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the monarch's head upside down on an envelope.

Pregnant women can relieve themselves even in a London policeman's helmet
A bizarre Liverpudlian bye-law that apparently banned women from going topless in public unless they worked in a tropical fish store came third.

However, the city has denied such a rule existed, saying it was an urban myth.

A spokesman for Liverpool City Council said: "It's something that has been heard of before and does crop up from time to time, but it is absurd.

"It is a myth and totally made up. It has no basis in fact."

But others are real - the reason people are banned from dying in parliament is that it is a Royal palace.

Nigel Cawthorne, author of The Strange Laws of Old England, said: "Anyone who dies there is technically entitled to a state funeral.

"If they see you looking a bit sick they carry you out quickly."

He added: "You can see the sense in the 1279 law banning people from wearing armour to Parliament. It is not supposed to be a violent place."

At number seven on the list is a law, the Royal Prerogative 1324, that decrees that any whale or sturgeon found on the British coast belongs to the monarch.

The law is very much still in place, as fisherman Robert Davies found out in 2004 when he was investigated by police in Plymouth.

He had faxed the Royal Household to tell them he had caught a sturgeon, and was told to keep it, but did not realise it was still illegal to try and sell it.

Eventually no charges were brought.

Other laws on the list include Oliver Cromwell's decree from around 1644 to combat gluttony by banning people from eating mince pies on Christmas Day and the revelation that, according to an old London bye-law, a pregnant woman can relieve herself anywhere she wants - including in a policeman's helmet.

Not everyone is happy about that. There is currently a petition on the Downing Street website calling on Gordon Brown to take that right away from pregnant women, calling it "an insult to male police officers".

The survey, carried out by television channel UKTV Gold, also asked people to comment on some of the more absurd international laws.

Top of that list was a local bye-law from Ohio in the US, that banned residents from getting a fish drunk.

http://tinyurl.com/yp2xvu
 
rynner said:
Don't die in parliament, says stupidest law
By Gary Cleland
Last Updated: 2:53am GMT 07/11/2007


Other laws on the list include Oliver Cromwell's decree from around 1644 to combat gluttony by banning people from eating mince pies on Christmas Day and the revelation that, according to an old London bye-law, a pregnant woman can relieve herself anywhere she wants - including in a policeman's helmet.

Not everyone is happy about that. There is currently a petition on the Downing Street website calling on Gordon Brown to take that right away from pregnant women, calling it "an insult to male police officers".



http://tinyurl.com/yp2xvu

Presumably they are not expected to put the helmet back on afterwards?
What's the problem?

Also, if you are caught short when driving I'm sure it's OK to p**s on the back wheel of your own car or something, you won't be given a ticket for street slashing anyway.

Your car will stink of p**s though.
 
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