STRANGE , ODD AND WEIRD NEWS

Bret Michaels has claimed that he could potentially replace Simon Cowell on American Idol's judging panel. "I can't say this is true yet, because I don't know. Next year they asked me to possibly be the judge on American Idol," Michaels told the crowd during his concert at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Biloxi, MS on Friday, according to video obtained by TMZ. In addition, The Celebrity Apprentice third-season winner and former Rock of Love star also encouraged the crowd to support him as Cowell's American Idol replacement in an "email to Fox." A source close to Michaels told TMZ in a Saturday report that the former Poison frontman is "in the running to replace Simon" but added a deal is not close to being done. In addition, a Fox representative told TMZ that the network is not commenting on any speculation regarding Cowell's replacement. Michaels performed "Every Rose Has Its Thorns" with American Idol third-place finish...

Known as the "Salmon River Caveman," Richard Zimmerman lived an essentially 19th century lifestyle, a digital-age anachronism who never owned a telephone or a television and lived almost entirely off the land. "He was in his home at the caves at the end, and it was his wish to die there," said Connie Fitte, who lived across the river. "He was the epitome of the free spirit." Richard Zimmerman had been in declining health when he died Wednesday. Few knew him by his given name. To friends and visitors to his jumble of cave-like homes scrabbled from a rocky shoulder of the Salmon River, he was Dugout Dick. He was the last of Idaho's river-canyon loners that date back to Territorial days. They are a unique group that until the 1980s included canyon contemporaries with names like Beaver Dick, Cougar Dave and Wheelbarrow Annie, "Buckskin Bill" (real name Sylvan Hart) and "Free Press Frances" Wisner. Fiercely independent loners, they lived...

The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. It was the fashion in Renaissance Florence to shave them off! Every day 20 banks are robbed. The average take is $2,500! The most popular first name in the world is Muhammad! Tablecloths were originally meant to be served as towels with which dinner guests could wipe their hands and faces after eating! Tourists visiting Iceland should know that tipping at a restaurant is considered an insult! One car out of every 230 made was stolen last year! The names of Popeye's four nephews are Pipeye, Peepeye, Pupeye, and Poopeye! Until the nineteenth century, solid blocks of tea were used as money in Siberia! The Nobel Peace Prize medal depicts three naked men with their hands on each other's shoulders! When glass breaks, the cracks move faster than 3,000 miles per hour. To photograph the event, a camera must shoot at a millionth of a second! A Boeing 747 airliner holds 57,285 gallons of fuel! A car uses 1.6 ounces of gas idling for one minute. Half an ounc...

The first product to have a bar code was Wrigleys gum! No piece of square dry paper can be folded more than 7 times in half! A group of geese on the ground is a gaggle, a group of geese in the air is a skein! Over 2500 left handed people a year are killed from using products made for right handed people! There are more than 10 million bricks in the Empire State Building! If you counted 24 hours a day, it would take 31,688 years to reach one trillion! Taphephobia is the fear of being buried alive! A crocodile always grows new teeth to replace the old teeth! The sun is 330,330 times larger than the earth! Clinophobia is the fear of beds! A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second! Porcupines float in water! Pinocchio is Italian for "pine eye"! The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog." uses every letter of the alphabet! The average life span of a major league baseball is 5-7 pitches! The Mint once considered producing dough...

Until 1796, there was a state in the United States called Franklin. Today it's known as Tennessee! The Earth weighs around 6,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons (5,940 billion billion metric tons)! A cockroach can live several weeks with its head cut off - it dies from starvation! Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie! The average person has over 1,460 dreams a year! It's against the law to pawn your dentures in Las Vegas! One in every 4 Americans has appeared on television! The average American/Canadian will eat about 11.9 pounds of cereal per year! It's against the law to burp, or sneeze in a certain church in Omaha, Nebraska! you're born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have 206! Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete! Over 10,000 birds a year die from smashing into windows! The state of Florida is bigger than England! There are more than one million animal species on Earth! In Natoma, Kansas, it's illega...

It’s amazing how we fool ourselves... while at the same time believing we are doing what’s best. Let me give you an example. I overheard a guy telling a group of friends, over drinks, how he had become fed-up with work. Guys being guys, they immediately started to come up with options to fix the problem – ideas like changing company and changing jobs. That was when the guy got all logical… ‘Yeah, but I need to pay the mortgage and my kid’s education and we’ve got a holiday planned for the Bahamas and…’ I interrupted. ‘How much do you need?’ ‘A hundred grand a year,’ he replied. ‘What’s more important,’ I asked, ‘your happiness or the money?’ Of course he said happiness. Then he got all logical again. ‘But I can’t be happy unless I can pay the mortgage and give my kids the best and have great holidays.’ ‘How many hours do you work?’ ‘Around fifty.’ ‘And how do you feel when you get home?’ CLICK HERE to get the full details

Mary Josephine Ray, who was considered to be the oldest person in the U.S. and second oldest person in the world, has died at 114, the New Hampshire Union Leader reported Monday. The paper said Ray died early Sunday in her sleep at a Westmoreland, N.H. nursing home. Born in Canada on May 17, 1895, she lived in Maine for nearly 60 years and moved to New Hampshire at 102 to be close to her son and his family. The paper reported Ray was recognized as the second oldest person in the world in November when a woman in upstate New York died at the age of 114. It said the oldest person in the world is believed to be a woman in Japan, Kama Chinen, who was born one week before Ray. Neva Morris, 114, of Ames, Iowa, is now considered the oldest person in the United States, the paper reported.