1. Police in Wichita, Kansas, arrested a 22-year-old
man at an airport hotel after he tried to pass two
(counterfeit) $16 bills.
2. A man in Johannesburg, South Africa, shot his
49-year-old friend in the face, seriously wounding him,
while the two practiced shooting beer cans off each other's
head.
3. A company trying to continue its five-year perfect
safety record showed its workers a film aimed at encouraging
the use of safety goggles on the job. According to
Industrial Machinery News, the film's depiction of gory
industrial accidents was so graphic that twenty-five workers
suffered minor injuries in their rush to leave the screening
room. Thirteen others fainted, and one man required seven
stitches after he cut his head falling off a chair while
watching the film.
4. The Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on
nuclear weapons, setting a $500 fine for anyone detonating
one within city limits.
5. A bus carrying five passengers was hit by a car in
St. Louis, but by the time police arrived on the scene,
fourteen pedestrians had boarded the bus and had begun to
complain of whiplash injuries and back pain.
6. Swedish business consultant Ulf af Trolle labored 13
years on a book about Swedish economic solutions. He took
the 250-page manuscript to be copied, only to have it
reduced to 50,000 strips of paper in seconds when a worker
confused the copier with the shredder.
7. A convict broke out of jail in Washington DC, then a
few days later accompanied his girlfriend to her trial for
robbery. At lunch, he went out for a sandwich. She needed to
see him, and thus had him paged. Police officers recognized
his name and arrested him as he returned to the courthouse
in a car he had stolen over the lunch hour.
8. Police in Radnor, Pennsylvania, interrogated a
suspect by placing a metal colander on his head and
connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine.
The message "He's lying" was placed in the copier, and
police pressed the copy button each time they thought the
suspect wasn't telling the truth. Believing the "lie
detector" was working, the suspect confessed.
9. When two service station attendants in Ionia,
Michigan, refused to hand over the cash to an intoxicated
robber, the man threatened to call the police. They still
refused, so the robber called the police and was arrested.
10. A Los Angeles man who later said he was "tired of
walking," stole a steamroller and led police on a 5 mph
chase until an officer stepped aboard and brought the
vehicle to a stop.
