WEIRD BUT TRUE
There’s a lot of dillydallying on the part of pickle manufacturers these days.
Researchers at the University of Arkansas found that pickle-makers aren’t using as much dill as they used to.
Their study, funded by a grant from Pickle Packers International, rates 90 percent of the country’s pickle producers. (s, lcf)
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Three families in Scio Township, Mich., are looking for new housing after a nude woman in a Jeep crashed into their apartment buildings.
First, the woman jumped a curb and slammed into the entrance of one apartment building. Then she put the SUV into reverse, crashed into a motorcycle and a car, and barreled into a second apartment building, where she landed in a bedroom.
No one was seriously hurt.
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More nude news: A British comedian is in trouble for shedding his clothes – in a shark tank.
Guy Venables – wearing only a pair of goggles – jumped into a tank containing sharks, turtles and fish at the Brighton Sea Life Centre.
He did it for a $1 bet. And just happened to have a film crew handy.
Officials were not amused, claiming he endangered the sea life.
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Benjamin Franklin’s kite-flying experiment just doesn’t fly, according to a historian who said he’s examined all aspects of the bespectacled scientist-statesman’s famous test to prove lightning is a form of electricity.
Tom Tucker of the Isothermal Technical College in North Carolina said he tried to replicate Franklin’s experiment, using the materials available in the mid-18th century. But the kite wouldn’t fly – and if it had, he said, it couldn’t have reached the heights needed to draw electricity from the thunderclouds.
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An 89-year-old Minnesota woman was sentenced to seven years in jail for shooting a man she once treated like a son.
She said she did it because he dumped her after he adopted another woman as a surrogate mom, and she couldn’t deal with it.
“I was so hurt, so hurt by the abuse I was getting,” she sobbed before she was sentenced.
She’ll be eligible for parole when she’s 94. (s, lcf)
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Singapore is introducing a restaurant-style rating system – for its public toilets.
“We came up with this program because when you go to a public toilet, you do not know what to expect inside,” a local official said.
The facilities will be rated with one to five stars as part of the “Happy Toilet” campaign. (m)
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Speaking of nude drivers, a motorcyclist, wearing only a scarf, sunglasses and sandals, crashed after he was stung on the thigh by a bee and lost control of his bike.
The 36-year-old biker was on his way to a swimming area at a nudist camp at Giessen in Hesse, Germany. (m)


