Don't Panic! Lighten Up!S


Magic Hat

Blind woman tees off, hits Hole-In-One

LEHIGHTON, Pa. - Sheila Drummond didn't need to see her hole-in-one. She heard it.

Drummond, blinded by diabetes 26 years ago, experienced the highlight of her golfing career Sunday, recording an ace on the 144-yard, par-3 fourth hole at Mahoning Valley Country Club.

Playing with her husband and coach, Keith, and two friends in a steady rain, the 53-year-old Drummond hit a driver on the hole. The shot cleared a water hazard, flew between traps and landed on the green, where it hit the flagstick before dropping into the hole.

Rocket

Man swaps rocket launcher for trainers

Police who launched a gun amnesty in Florida were shocked when a man handed in a surface-to-air rocket launcher.

Under the Kicks for Guns programme, anyone who handed in a weapon was given a pair of trainers, reports Sky News.

One man, who has not been identified, took advantage by exchanging the four-foot-long launcher for a pair of Reeboks for his daughter.

Bizarro Earth

The world's strangest laws

25. It is illegal for a cab in the City of London to carry rabid dogs or corpses.

24. It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament.

23. It is an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the British monarch upside down.

22. In France, it is forbidden to call a pig Napoleon.

21. Under the UK's Tax Avoidance Schemes Regulations 2006, it is illegal not to tell the taxman anything you don't want him to know, though you don't have to tell him anything you don't mind him knowing.

People

Man Rides Mule From Minnesota to Wyoming

GILLETTE, Wyo. - He rode his mule into town looking for work. No, it wasn't the opening scene of a Western movie. It was what Rod Maday did last week, ending a six-week odyssey from his home town of Boy River, Minn. "I've done about 1,500 miles and I've got the saddle sores to prove it," he said.

Smiley

This week we want to know all about ... The Homer Simpson X-ray

From the Queen not walking out in a huff to the non-sighting of a great white shark off Cornwall, it has been a summer of controversy over media spin and fakery. But as always, China does things bigger and better - including cock-ups.

Xinhua, the state news agency, published a health report on its English-language website, China View, under the headline: 'Two new genes found for multiple sclerosis.' It was illustrated by an X-ray scan of a human head, presumably from the agency's picture library.


Unfortunately, it was a cartoon X-ray image of Homer Simpson, he of the domed head and doughnut-sized mouth - and walnut-sized brain.

Padlock

Calif. woman locked in bank 6 hours

LAGUNA WOODS, Calif. - A 73-year-old woman became trapped in a bank when employees accidentally locked her in the building while she was looking over the contents of a safe deposit box.

Marian Prescher, who has diabetes, apparently passed out during the ordeal because she had not taken her medication with her. A cleaning person discovered her six hours later.

Coffee

Hundreds pose nude on Swiss glacier

BETTMERALP- Hundreds of naked people formed a "living sculpture" on Switzerland's Aletsch glacier Saturday, hoping to raise awareness about climate change.

The photo shoot by Spencer Tunick, the New York artist famous for his pictures of nude gatherings in public settings worldwide, was designed to draw attention to the effects of global warming on Switzerland's shrinking glaciers.

©(AP Photo/Keystone, Laurent Gillieron)
Hundreds of naked people pose in front of the Aletsch glacier during a massive naked photo session with U.S. photographer Spencer Tunick, near Bettmeralp, Switzerland, Saturday Aug. 18, 2007. The environmental group Greenpeace commissioned Tunick to take pictures of nude volunteers on a Swiss glacier to call attention to the issue of global warming and its impact on glaciers.

Bizarro Earth

Yikes! Orlando shoes for guns program produces missile launcher

Orlando emptied its bureau drawers and closets on Friday of more than 250 unwanted guns -- and one surface-to-air missile launcher.

The shoulder-fired weapon showed about 6 p.m. when an Ocoee man drove to the Citrus Bowl to trade the 4-foot-long launcher for size-3 Reebok sneakers for his daughter.

©Red Huber/Orlando Sentinel
Orlando Police Sgt. Barbara Jones holds a surface-to-air missile launcher that had been turned in to the Orlando Police Kicks for Guns 2007 program on Friday.

"I didn't know what to do with it, so I brought it here," explained the man, who said he found the missile in a shed he tore down last week. "I took it to three dumps to try to get rid of it and they told me to get lost."

Question

Mystery of 'Poe Toaster' revealed

The legend was almost too good to be true.

For decades, a mysterious figure dressed in black, his features cloaked by a wide-brimmed hat and scarf, crept into a churchyard to lay three roses and a bottle of cognac at the grave of Edgar Allan Poe.

Now, a 92-year-old man who led the fight to preserve the historic site says the visitor was his creation.

Life Preserver

Woman has rare identical quadruplets

HELENA, Mont. - A 35-year-old Canadian woman has given birth to rare identical quadruplets, officials at a Great Falls hospital said Thursday. Karen Jepp of Calgary, Alberta, delivered Autumn, Brooke, Calissa and Dahlia by Caesarian section Sunday afternoon at Benefis Healthcare, said Amy Astin, the hospital's director of community and government relations.