Don't Panic! Lighten Up!
FERNDALE, Pa. - A western Pennsylvania man is trying to solve a mystery that recently landed in his mailbox: a letter mailed more than 50 years ago and addressed to a Frederick Zane Yost.
The letter, with a 3-cent stamp and postmarked Oct. 26, 1954, was encased in a large Postal Service window envelope. There is a return address - in nearby Richland Township - but no sender's name.
BANGKOK, Thailand - A Bangkok municipal office has launched a new program to increase productivity: Lights go out just past noon and civil servants are invited to take an afternoon nap.
Seeking to infuse city workers with a bit more pep, the Pathumwan district office in central Bangkok has set up a lunchtime "nap room" with soft music, sweet-smelling flowers and strict rules barring mobile phones and talking, said Surakiet Limcharoen, the district's top official who started the program.
TUCSON, Ariz. - Residents of a neighborhood next to the University of Arizona say small white rats have been swimming through sewer pipes and into their toilets.
Laura Hagen Fairbanks, spokeswoman for the county's Wastewater Management Department, said she doesn't know where the rodents come from, however they are the kind that researchers use in labs.
Editor
AnanovaTue, 02 Jan 2007 14:17 UTC
A couple are selling snow on eBay after their house was covered following two blizzards.
Picking through centuries-old rubbish, masonry and discarded body parts beneath an abandoned Tuscan church, an Italian historian believes she has solved one of history's great crime mysteries.
For more than four centuries, researchers have puzzled over the fact that Francesco I Medici, the son of the first Grand Duke, Cosimo, died within hours of his wife in October 1587. Legend had it they were poisoned by his brother and successor, a cardinal.
BOISE, Idaho She's just 12, but prodigy Akiane Kramarik (AH-key-ah-nuh KRAM-uh-rik) is already winning laurels for her work as a little painter and poet.
Akiane, who lives in Post Falls with her family, says her realistic images are inspired by spiritual dreams and prayer. She says God appeared to her when she was just four.
Using the conclusions from her personality analysis, Dresbold dismantles some of the long-standing theories about the identity of Jack the Ripper. One, which was put forth at the time of the murders by the then-Assistant Commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police, was that the Ripper "and his people were low-class Jews." Dresbold, however, contends that the letter's spelling errors were actually phonetic spellings of Cockney- or Irish-accented English. Further, she says, in 1880s London most "low-class Jews" would have spoken primarily Yiddish and very little English - not enough, in any case, to produce a letter from Hell.
Nick Redfern
UFOMysticFri, 15 Dec 2006 12:00 UTC
The news that British-based computer-hacker Gary McKinnon may be facing up to 70 years in a U.S. prison (or, worse still, in Guantanamo Bay) for hacking 97 American military and NASA computers between 2001 and 2002 as he searched for secret information on UFOs, is unfortunate.
Earlier this year, Gary lost his first appeal against extradition to the States in a High Court Hearing. And what may be his last appeal to ensure he stays a free man (or at least that he doesn't serve a sentence in a U.S. jail) will be heard in February. And if that fails, his only hope is an appeal to the British Government's House of Lords.
BBCFri, 15 Dec 2006 12:00 UTC
Blind hunters would be able to use laser-sighted rifles to hunt animals in Texas, if a bill introduced in the state's legislature is successful.
Comment: Comment: We are speechless.
Sure, it was a giant humongous image of Mr. P-Niss-those crazy, lovable Brits-but what next? The Moonie wire service:
STOCKTON-ON-TEES, England, Dec. 13 (UPI) - Pranksters drew a willy on the roof of a top British prep school that was so big it could be seen from space - and, in fact, was found on Google Earth.
Excellent! Clearly these British lads have no soy in their diet!
Comment: Comment: We are speechless.