Ten things which raised an eyebrow this week - 15-11-13
EP brings you a brief round-up of some of the news items which were perhaps as surprising as they were enlightening
- The Devon & Somerset Firefighting service was called on 125 times last year to help people caught in "unusual circumstances" including the woman whose fingers were stuck in a pair of scissors, a man trapped in a child's playswing and, on two occasions, people unable to extricate themselves from a set of handcuffs!
- Police in Will County, America have charged a 25 year old, highly intoxicated, man with a felony after he repeatedly called 911 requesting police come and unlock his car as he was “running late for his probation hearing and couldn't find his keys!”
- Recruitment policies at Burger King have come under fire in the States after a store in Washington put up a sign reading "Now Hiring. Must be Mexican."
- An estate agent in Bristol hoped to entice would-be buyers to a property, placed on the market following a police raid, by posting photos on RightMove of a cannabis farm and drug-making equipment in the living room & kitchen
- A Chinese man has successfully sued his wife for $120,000 after she gave birth to “an incredibly ugly baby” (At first believing the child to be the product of an affair, it transpired that, unknown to him, she had had $100,000 of plastic surgery before getting married, which the judge deemed “trickery”)
- Police in Sweden responded to reports of a "domestic incident" only to be confronted by a couple screaming & shouting in frustration while trying to assemble Ikea furniture
- Taking a minimum of 255 days, at a cost of £50,000 "the ultimate bucket list" includes 100 once-in-a-lifetime experiences such as watching the sunset over Alcatraz, cheese-rolling in Gloucestershire, taking an icebreaker to the Arctic and running with the bulls in Pamplona
- To strengthen the message that ivory is not a legitimate material for use in any product, The US Fish & Wildlife Service has destroyed 6 tonnes of ivory based items including carvings, jewellery and tusks gathered over the last quarter century
- According to measurements taken by NASA the sun is going to "flip" any day now which could result in ripple effects throughout the solar system
- An ice-cream company has created a glow-in-the-dark ice cream by harnessing the luminescence of jellyfish protein