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With headlines like “Octopus ride accident injures two” and “Ferris wheel catastrophe kills five”, it will be hard to look at amusement park rides in quite the same light.

Not that they ever seemed on par with the safety of something like, say, bonsai gardening.

(via BoingBoing)

Caption reads: “Louis cuddles his Mr Potato Head”.

(via BoingBoing)

Interesting enough for the subject matter — the mysterious skyjacker who disappeared from a plane¹ with some gracious amount of money, never to be found again (the skyjacker that is; some of the money was found, maybe) — this article from the AP is probably best for the very last sentence:

“Maybe a hydrologist can use the latest technology to trace the $5,800 in ransom money found in 1980 to where Cooper landed upstream,” Carr said. “Or maybe someone just remembers that odd uncle.”

The FBI’s presenting, as they say, “for the first time” to the public, new & exciting information.

In case you do remember that odd uncle.

¹ Which is to say, jumped.

When police asked the man what caused the accident, his one-word answer was “pterodactyl,” Smith said.

…

The man was treated and released at Central Washington Hospital, hospital officials said.

No word on the pterodactyl’s injuries.

(HeraldNet: “Man blames car wreck on prehistoric winged reptile,” by Rachel Schleif [29 Dec 07]; via BoingBoing)

Yes, it can happen to you. Well, maybe not you, but someone else:

Dropping something may have saved Joy Horton’s life. The 73-year-old woman was preparing some food in her western New York home on Monday morning when she dropped a spoon on the floor of her kitchen. When she bent down, her house exploded.

…

Fire officials said that because Horton was bending down when the explosion occurred, the kitchen sink and counter top helped keep debris from hitting her.

(via BoGlo/AP: “Spoon drop saves woman’s life” [Aug 21, 2007])

This quote from a “spokesman for the soap industry group” — a little suspicious, admittedly.

But seriously, Americans’ hands are getting dirtier.

(Reuters: “Americans getting lax about clean hands?” [18 Sept 2007])

…we won’t need the advice of our friends for anything, and giant birds will terrorize shoppers everywhere.

Oh, wait–the future’s here now!

Really, the headline says it all: “Scientist develops real-life Spiderman suit material.”

Though, admittedly, the body of the article does add some detail (and qualifiers).

(via ScienceBlog)

In Alaska, a child saves a life by dialing 911 — thanks to the teachings of one of his favorite books, It’s Time To Call 911 - What To Do In An Emergency.

The real question, though, is how a child raised on Captain Underpants And The Preposterous Plight Of The Purple Potty People would have fared in the same situation?

I hope we’ve all learned our lesson for the day.

A woman with three crocodiles strapped to her waist was stopped at the Gaza-Egypt border crossing after guards noticed that she looked “strangely fat,” officials said Monday.

(CBS/AP: “Woman Has Crocodiles Strapped To Body.” [Mar 26, 2007])

Yeah, I was surprised, too.

A trailing headline at the foot of an article on the Book Standard boldly shouted “Florida man wins Hemingway look-alike contest”.  Except that the link is defunct, and doesn’t actually lead to an article describing the contest in all its certain hilarity.

So I did a search on Yahoo! News… and came across not an article on a Hemingway look-alike contest (of which there are at least a few, apparently), but an article on a group of folks in Florida being paid big bucks for their land by would-be developers.  You’re wondering, of course, where all this is going.

Well:

One of the new Briny millionaires is Tom Byrne… whose salt-and-pepper beard and barrel chest make him a sure winner in any Ernest Hemingway look-alike contest…

Three-year-old Robert Moore went fishing for a stuffed replica of Sponge Bob and ended up trapped in a vending machine.

…

A stuffed Sponge Bob in a vending machine’s bin caught Robert’s eye. He tried without success to fish it out with a plastic crane.  “I told him I could get it for him,” his grandmother said. “He’s a character. He said, ‘Oh no, I can get it.’” When she turned her back to get another dollar for a second try, Robert took off his coat and squeezed through an opening in the machine. He landed in the stuffed animal cube.  “I turned around and looked for him, and he said, ‘Oma, I’m in here,” Bierdemann said. “I thought I would have a heart attack.”

And in the end… he didn’t even get the stuffed Sponge Bob.

(AP/Mercury News: “Toddler gets stuck in vending machine.” [Oct 24, 2006])

It’s not so strange that some men experienced hallucinations after eating some popular fish–though it is apparently (and thankfully) rare.  The strange part is that it’s reported in Practical Fishkeeping magazine.  Though I guess eating fish you keep in your aquarium is all kinds of practical… Probably not the kind of practicality the magazine’s advocating, though.

A fun, related fact: the species of fish consumed by the men was used “as a recreational drug in the Med[iterranean] during the Roman Empire”.

(via PFK: “Men hallucinate after eating fish.” [Apr 19, 2006])

A Billy Madison reference, from a judge.

(And no, the previous sentence isn’t really intended as any kind of statement. It simply follows the rule of: the unexpected is funny. Ha ha.)

(via The Smoking Gun)

…you won’t find very much on the internet about the elusive “out-of-control doughnut trailer”, never mind how much danger it portends.

What creature some suspected of being a mystery beast is now found to be not so mysterious, though still a little bit strange, perhaps.

Fame is fickle and fleeting for some.

(BoGlo: “Residents wonder if dead animal is legendary mystery beast” [16 Aug 2006]; WMTW/AP: “DNA Tests Reveal ‘Mytery Beast’ Was Dog” [28 Aug 2006])

…a woman came home to find a young bear eating oatmeal in her kitchen.

The bear apparently entered through an open sliding glass door, broke a ceramic food container and started eating, West Vancouver police Sgt. Paul Skelton said.

…

Three officers who went to the home Thursday couldn’t get the bear to budge, so they let it finish its meal.

“The bear didn’t appear to be aggressive and wasn’t destroying the house, so they just let it do what it was doing,” Skelton said. The bear finally left.

(via Chicago Tribune)

No, really!

Monty Coles was 900m in the air when he discovered a stowaway peeking out at him from the plane’s instrument panel — a 1,35m black snake.

“Nothing in any of the manuals ever described anything like this,” the 62-year-old Cross Lanes resident said. But the advice given 25 years earlier from his flight instructor immediately came to mind: “No matter what happens, fly the plane.”

…

While maintaining control of the single-engine plane with one hand, Coles grabbed the reptile behind its head with his other.

(P.S. If this reference means nothing to you, consider yourself charmed.)

(hat tip to XOverboard)

Not particularly current or important, but curious and fun nonetheless:

In 1986, Silo (a chain of home electronics stores) ran a television commercial in 23 markets nationwide, offering stereos for “299 bananas.” They never thought anyone would take them at their word; after all, “banana” is a widely accepted, if playful, term for greenbacks. Who could possibly mistake one for the other? Thirty-two customers held the retailer to its unwitting word — they showed up bearing loads of the yellow fruit and demanding the store keep its end of the bargain.

…

Each stereo was exchanged for $40 to $60 worth of bananas, and Silo took in a total of 11,000 bananas. Many of the bananas were donated to Woodland Park Zoo, but there were too many even for the hungry animals.

(Though how widely accepted, exactly, is the use of the word ‘bananas’ as a stand-in for ‘dollars’?)

(Snopes.com: “Banana Skinned.” [October 20, 2005])

From a once-and-again AP article on Yahoo! News:

LONDON - Aaron Balick expected to find a tiny mouse rustling behind the TV in his apartment. Instead, he found a venomous giant centipede that somehow hitched a ride from South America to Britain.

“Thinking it was a mouse, I went to investigate the sound. The sound was coming from under some papers which I lifted, expecting to see the mouse scamper away,” the 32-year-old psychotherapist said Wednesday. “Instead, when I lifted the papers, I saw this prehistoric looking animal skitter away behind a stack of books.”

He trapped the 9-inch-long creature between a stack of books and put it in a plastic container.

The next day he took it to Britain’s Natural History Museum, which identified the insect as a Scolopendra gigantea the world’s biggest species of centipede.

Stuart Hine, an entomologist at the museum, said it was likely the centipede hitched a ride aboard a freighter, likely with a shipment of fruit.

“Dealing with over 4,000 public and commercial inquiries every year, we have come to expect the unexpected. However, when Aaron produced this beast from his bag I was staggered,” Hine said. “Not even I expected to be presented with this.”

The Scolopendra gigantea has front claws that are adapted to deliver venom when it stings, which can lead to a blistering rash, nausea and fever. The sting is rarely life-threatening, but painful.

(via Yahoo! News, AP: “Briton Finds Venomous Centipede in House.” [August 31, 2005])