Freezing Temperatures
Turn Michigan Lighthouse Into Tower Of Ice
Okay, this is really cool.
The winter weather chilling much of the United States was perfectly exemplified by a Lake Michigan lighthouse transformed into an ornate tower of ice.
The lighthouse in St. Joseph, Mich., was filmed last Friday by a drone.
The video shows the lighthouse has been covered in so much ice that it appears as though the structure is a fairy tale tower constructed from crystal.
Temperatures in the area remained low during the weekend, dipping below zero with the windchill.
Police Mistake Mannequin For Woman ‘Frozen To Death’ Inside Car
Police in New York broke into a parked car to rescue an “extremely realistic” mannequin they believed to be an elderly woman.
A “very upset” citizen called Hudson police Friday morning to report an elderly woman who appeared to have “frozen to death” inside of a parked car.
Officers arrived to find the woman unresponsive and wearing an oxygen mask in the passenger seat of the snow-covered car and broke into the vehicle through the passenger side window after assessing the car had been parked there overnight.
Upon entering the vehicle officers discovered the woman was actually a life-sized CPR training mannequin complete with detailed blemishes as well as clothes, glasses, teeth and shoes.
The “incredulous” owner eventually arrived at the scene saying he occasionally transports the mannequin in a manner resembling a passenger and was upset that officers broke into his vehicle.
“It is my understanding that the owner was incredulous that we took action in this matter,” the police chief said. “He apparently was quite vocal and vulgar to my sergeant.”
No charges were filed in the case and police thanked the residents who showed concern while also providing a warning to anyone planning to store a mannequin in the passenger sear of their car.
“Just to clear the record, all citizens should be put on notice that if you park your locked vehicle on the street on a sub-zero night with a life-size realistic mannequin seated in it…we will break your window,” the chief said. “I commend everyone who responded with the intentions to help an elderly woman.”
Don’t Play With That: Family Expecting Toy Package Gets Assault Rifle Instead
UPS? More like Oops-P-S.
A couple in Long Island were horrified to find an assault rifle inside a package they thought contained a child’s toy.
Joel Berman, 60, opened the UPS package in front of his wife and 6-year-old granddaughter expecting a Fisher-Price toy airplane but instead found an assault rifle and other related items.
The package contained a sniper rifle with a “rather sophisticated” scope, stand, ammo clip and copies of an Arizona man’s driver’s license and concealed-weapons permit.
“It was not the little Fisher-Price toy we had expected,” Berman said.
He quickly rushed his granddaughter out of the room and called police, who arrived to pick up the weapon.
Berman and his wife had unknowingly driven around with the weapon in the trunk of their car, believing it was a toy they had purchased for a friend’s child, and he was concerned about the potential negative outcomes of such a mistake.
“What if it went to someone who was having ill intentions, and thought this was the greatest opportunity to get a weapon like this?” Berman said.
A UPS spokeswoman said such a mix-up is “highly unusual” and said the company would both investigate how the mistake occurred and track down the missing toy.
Oldest Living American Celebrates 114th Birthday
In New Jersey
A New Jersey woman celebrated her 114th birthday five months after being named the oldest living American.
Adele Dunlap celebrated the milestone birthday in an as unspectacular a fashion as possible during the monthly birthday celebrations held for residents of the care center where she resides.
“She’s tired of all the attention,” an employee said.
The city’s mayor attended Dunlap’s birthday celebration to present her with a proclamation from the town honoring her as the oldest living American.
While the designation has been confirmed by a research group, Dunlap maintains she’s a decade younger than the group claims.
“Apparently she tells people she’s only 104,” the mayor said. “You know what? I think anyone who’s 114 can claim anything they want.”
In addition to requesting her record-setting birthday not be celebrated separately from the other residents of the care center, she shrugged off reporters who inquired about her birthday wish.
“I’ve never thought of such a thing. I don’t wish for anything,” she said.
Dunlap’s special day ultimately came and went with little more than a rendition of “Happy Birthday” performed by staff for her and 15 other residents.
“Ms. Adele has requested that the celebrations become fewer because she says we are all important, and that speaks volumes about who she is,” the care center’s marketing director said.
British Woman Smashes World Record 923 Roof Tiles With Bare Hands
A British taekwondo expert set a new world record by smashing hundreds of roof tiles with her bare hands.
Lisa Dennis smashed a total of 923 roof tiles to claim the record for “Most roof tiles broken in one minute (female).”
Dennis smashed two 10-tile stacks at a time, leaving only two tiles unbroken on her way to achieving the record.
She has a history with breaking roof tiles having claimed the record for “Fastest time to break 1,000 roof tiles” while her husband holds the male record for most tiles broken in a minute.
Now that’s a couple you don’t want to mess with.
Irish Lawmaker’s Remarks Interrupted By His Own Musical Holiday Tie
An Irish lawmaker’s attempt to address the legislature on a serious matter was interrupted by his own poorly-timed musical holiday tie.
A member of Ireland’s parliament, was addressing the body last Thursday on the issue of workers being exposed to asbestos in the parliament building when his microphone began to pick up some electronically produced music.
The source of the music soon became apparent: He was wearing a musical holiday tie that was somehow triggered at the inopportune moment.
Another lawmaker present joked after the incident that he should “turn off those ties” because they “might interfere with Santa’s flight path.”
11-Year-Old Boy Charges $2 For ‘Emotional Advice’
At New York Subway Station
An 11-year-old New York boy has found a novel way to make some extra cash – charging $2 for “emotional advice” at a subway station.
Ciro Ortiz, 11, a sixth-grader from Bushwick, has been setting up shop on Sundays at the Bedford L train stop with a sign offering “emotional advice” for $2.
The boy’s Peanuts-esque setup gained widespread attention after a commuter snapped a photo of him in action and posted it to Twitter, where it went viral.
“It’s a good way to give back and make money,” Ciro said.
The boy said he makes up to $50 in two hours on a busy Sunday.
“Ciro is really sensitive and he’s had a hard time,” his mother said. “The first day he was out there [on the subway platform, giving counseling], he was very nervous and unsure of himself . . . A few Sundays later he’s come back saying, ‘I’ve met so many wonderful people. I’m gonna end up having so many friends.’”
The boy’s dad said Ciro has the emotional intelligence to help people far older than him.
“He’s always been much more mature than whatever grade he was in,” the proud father said.
Ciro said the most common problem he encounters is adults having trouble with changes in their lives.
“They feel a certain way in the past and when they look [back] in hindsight, they say things were so much better back then” he said. “We have to accept [change]. It’s going to happen – it’s always going to happen. Life is always changing.”
Meat And Potato Pie Launched 100,000 Feet Into Space
A group of pie enthusiasts in England sent a meat and potato pie into space in advance of the World Pie Eating Championship.
The pie was lifted into the stratosphere outside a pub by a helium-filled weather balloon with a specially rigged camera attached and floated in the air for about two hours.
The pub’s owner said they planned to see if the change in atmosphere would make the pie easier to consume for contestants in the World Pie Eating Championships 2016.
“We are continually questing to go where mankind has never gone before – sub-16 seconds consumption of a regulation pie,” the pub owner said. “We are aware that scientists have been experimenting with plants on the International Space Station to see if their molecular structure changes, so we are experimenting with pies to see if the structure changes with space travel and allows the pie to be eaten quicker.”
A company named Sent Into Space provided the camera that tracked the pie’s 100,000-foot journey into space and planned to analyze the data gathered by the experiment.
The man who provided the pies for the contest said, “neither the sky, nor the pie, should be the limit,” for the experiment.
“This pie will be tested to the extreme,” he said. “Its structural integrity will be tested against the potential rigors of being served by a grumpy pie lady or being transported for delivery in a pie van that hits a pothole.”
Sanitation Workers Dig In Trash To Recover Woman’s Lost Mortgage Money
A group of sanitation workers in New York dug through a hill of trash to find $5,000 accidentally thrown away by a Long Island woman.
Krishna Nadalall said his mother had placed $5,000 for a mortgage payment in an envelope and she noticed the cash was missing last Tuesday morning.
Nadalall, a sanitation worker, gathered three coworkers to sift through the multiple loads of trash that had been delivered to the dump.
The workers were able to recover all but $40, which was apparently lost when some of the cash fell out of the envelope.
Nadalall said his mother offered to reward the men who helped him search, but they declined the offer.
Netherlands Students Break Record With 9,690-Square-Foot Monopoly Board
Guinness World Records announced a student association in the Netherlands broke a world record with a Monopoly board spanning more than 9,600 square feet.
The record-keeping organization said the group at teamed with Hasbro, the game’s maker, to construct the 9,689.97-square-foot Monopoly board from 804 printed panels.
The board was assembled on a university sports field, where students then played a round of the popular game under the supervision of a Guinness adjudicator.
The adjudicator confirmed the board broke the record of an 8,017.68-square-foot Monopoly board constructed earlier this year in the United States.
Court Order Can’t Stop Stray Golf Balls From Hitting Home
A couple who lives next to a Pennsylvania golf course says errant balls are still hitting their property despite a previous court order.
Jerzy and Halina Wisniewski returned to court last Wednesday with 50-some golf balls they say came from the course since October.
That’s when the couple got a court injunction, which prompted the course to relocate some tees to keep golfers from hooking balls onto the couple’s property.
The couple’s attorney says the course should have done more to stop the balls.
But the course’s attorney says thick woods already separate the course from the property and suspects the couple has gathered the balls in hopes the course will buy them out.
The judge will rule after both sides submit written arguments.
Indiana Community Lifts 60-Year-Old Ban On Pinball
Deaf and blind, it wasn’t. But an Indiana community felt its 60-year-old ban on pinball was dumb.
Surrounded by city officials at a local record shop last Tuesday, Kokomo Mayor Greg Goodnight signed an ordinance resting on pinball machine lifting the city’s ban on the game.
The mayor said he and city officials are pleased to “bring pinball back to its popular stature here in Kokomo,” and he invited the police chief to play the first legal game of pinball in the city since 1955.
Mike Wilson, who owns the record store, said he was shocked to learn that while he’s been legally selling alcohol in his shop, he’s been illegally supplying free pinball games.
According to Wilson, his two pinball machines were created for home use at the peak of pinball popularity in the 1960s and 1970s.
Never Too Old To Steal: Notorious 86-Year-Old
Jewel Thief Strikes Again
An 86-year-old jewel thief who has kept jewelry sellers on their toes since the 1970s has struck again, police say – this time by slipping a $2,000 diamond necklace into her pocket.
Doris Payne, who has been the subject of a documentary and casually said during an interview earlier this year that “I was a thief,” was arrested last Tuesday at a department store outside Atlanta.
Payne was arrested after she put the necklace in her back pocket and tried to leave the store. She faces a shoplifting charge.
Authorities have said Payne has lifted pricey baubles from countless jewelry stores around the world in an illicit career that has spanned six decades. The legend of Payne’s alleged thefts have long fascinated the public and media, with countless news stories and a 2013 documentary film, “The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne,” detailing her feats.
When asked about her exploits in the interview earlier this year, she said simply: “I was a thief.”
Authorities have said she has used at least 22 aliases over the years and probably got away more often than she was caught, though she has done several stints in prison. The Jewelers’ Security Alliance, an industry trade group, sent out bulletins as early as the 1970s warning about her.
Payne said she realized a simple distraction could make it easy to slip out with a fancy trinket in hand after a friendly store owner let her try on watches as a child and then forgot she had the jewelry on. Her career was born in her 20s, when she got the idea that she could support herself by lifting jewelry.
Payne, who appeared effortlessly elegant and spoke with calm deliberation during the interview, nevertheless grew cagey when asked about her methods.
“I don’t dictate what happens when I walk in the store. The people in charge dictate what happens with me when I walk in the store,” she said. “I don’t tell a person in the store I want to see something that costs $10,000. They make those decisions based on how I present myself and how I look.”
With ‘Ditto’ In Lights,
Family Concedes
To Next-Door Display
A suburban Detroit family is conceding that it can’t match the neighbors’ holiday display.
Jami Kelly used plywood and a few strings of white lights to form the word “Ditto” with an arrow pointing toward the home next-door.
The woman says her family started doing its own light display, but realized that the creation couldn’t compare. She says: “Nothing measures up.”
Kelly’s neighbors have an elaborate display, including reindeer, a large snow globe, and a huge bear on the roof. Kelly says she got the idea for her own display online.
‘Surreal’ Declared
Merriam-Webster’s
2016 Word Of The Year
In a word, 2016 was “surreal.”
Surreal, meaning “marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream” was looked up so much by online users that Merriam-Webster last Monday dubbed it the 2016 word of the year.
“Our word of the year is one that people came back to over and over again in response to several events, and it gives us a look at 2016, according to what sent us to the dictionary,” Merriam-Webster’s editor-at-large Peter Sokolowski said.
Merriam-Webster began tracking dictionary lookup trends in 1996, the same year the dictionary first landed online. The publisher said it ranks the word based off two criteria: a significant year-over-year increase in lookups online, and a high volume of lookups.
“Surreal” had its most significant spike this year following the U.S. presidential election in November. Searches for the word first surged after the Brussels attack in March and then again in July after the Bastille Day massacre in France, and a coup attempt in Turkey.
The word was first defined in a Merriam-Webster dictionary in 1967 and derives from the Surrealism artistic movement of the early 1900s.
In recent history, “surreal” rose to the top of searches after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, the Newtown shootings that left 26 children and educators at a Connecticut elementary school dead in 2012, the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013 and comedian Robin Williams’ suicide in 2014.
Other words on Merriam-Webster’s notable list:
Bigly – Looked up mostly during the U.S. presidential election after then Republican candidate Donald Trump, using “big league” as an adverb, made it sound like the word “bigly.”
Deplorable – Democratic president candidate Hillary Clinton, during the election, famously called Trump supporters a “basket full of deplorables.”
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