Month: July 2004

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    85 YEARS AGO TODAY:


    1919, July 21: Dirigible (Balloon) Crash



    [Dirigible in Grant Park]

    Two passengers, a mechanic and 10 employees of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank died when the dirigible Winged Foot Express burned and fell through the skylight of the bank. The craft had been conveying passengers between Grant Park and the White City Amusement Park on the South Side of Chicago, when it caught fire at an altitude of 1,200 feet above downtown.

    The pilot and chief mechanic parachuted to safety. Another passenger parachuted, broke both legs and died later. The other occupants of the balloon descended with the craft to their deaths. The City Council immediately proposed regulations banning the flying of flammable gas balloons over the populated parts of the city.


    http://www.chipublib.org/004chicago/disasters/dirigible_crash.html


     

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    From SimonTemplar


     

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    2004-07-20


    42 Percent Of Americans Pee In The Shower


    PISCATAWAY, N.Y. (Wireless Flash) -- Urine trouble now. According to a new survey, at least four out of every 10 Americans pee while taking a shower.

    According to a shower survey sponsored by VertiSpa, 42 percent urinate while bathing, certainly pissing off the 58 percent who don't.


    From




    QuidProQuo


     

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    Nude Man Covered in Nacho Cheese Arrested






    Mon Jul 19, 4:36 PM ET






    MARYVILLE, Tenn. - A man was arrested on his 23rd birthday after a police officer saw him nude and covered with nacho cheese from a pool snack bar.






     

    An officer saw a nude man carrying a box of Frito Lay snacks and a container of nacho cheese run toward a Jeep in the lot and stopped him.


    "The male had nacho cheese in his hair, on his face and on his shoulders,"  officer Scott Spicer reported.

    Investigators said someone climbed an 8-foot fence, broke into the pool snack bar through a window, threw nacho cheese on a wall and scattered chips on the ground. About $40 in chips and $7 in nacho cheese were stolen.

    From LibraryPrincess


     

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    Drunk Filipino man nails wife's mouth shut, then beats her to death

     

    Canadian Press

    July 19, 2004


    MANILA, Philippines (AP) -Rodolfo Porras, 40, returned home to his house Friday night, got into an argument with his wife Vilma, 40, and then proceeded to beat her.


    The couple's 12-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son watched, too afraid to call for help, as Porras strangled his wife, slammed her head against a wall, drove nails through her mouth and the backs of her knees, hammered her two hands, poured boiling water on her body and burned her skin with a hot iron.


    He then fell asleep, woke up the next morning and prepared breakfast for his family. He only realized he had killed his wife, who was blind from previous beatings, when his son tried to feed her and discovered she was dead.


     


  •                              saridwynn  has wheels!

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    Dig These Pig Facts



  • Pigs dream and see in color.


  • Pigs outperform 3-year-old human children on cognition tests and are smarter than any domestic animal, and animal experts consider them more trainable than cats or dogs.


  • Pigs are naturally slender. They only become fat when humans overfeed them.


  • Pigs are sociable. They like to cuddle and snuggle up, nose to nose, with one another as they sleep.


  • In the wild, pigs live in matriarchal societies, as elephants do.


  • Piglets love to chase each other, play-fight, and roll down hills.


  • Pigs can be picky eaters: When given the same food, even a favorite one, such as melon or banana, over and over, they will soon set them aside and eat their other food first. When pigs are offered a new food, they don’t gobble it right up, as a dog might, but sniff at it delicately as they decide whether or not to try a nibble.


  • Pigs are hygienic. When given the chance, they are more particular about their sanitary behavior than most dogs. They will not, unless locked inside a factory-farm cage, defecate anywhere near their living space.


  • Pigs roll in mud to cool down and ward off parasites and sunburn, just as elephants do.


  • From sillifish.

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    Fire-walking not such an enjoyable feat


    An attempt to create a world record for fire walking has led to 28 people being treated for burns.


    They were among 341 people who fulfilled criteria set by the Guinness Book of Records - stepping inside markers on the side of the 3.5 metre-long pit and being aged over 14 - and about 100 to 150 more who did not but also walked across the hot charcoal pit.


    The event, run by the New Zealand International Science Festival as a fund-raiser for defibrillators for the Order of St John, raised about $1000. But St John spent more than that treating patients.


     

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    God's Number Is Up

     


    By Michael Shermer

    If faith is tethered to science, what happens when the science changes? One of the most innovative works in this genre is The Probability of God (Crown Forum, 2003), by Stephen D. Unwin, a risk management consultant in Ohio, whose early physics work on quantum gravity showed him that the universe is probabilistic and whose later research in risk analysis led him to this ultimate computation.









    Unwin begins with a 50 percent probability that God exists (because 50–50 represents "maximum ignorance"), then applies a modified Bayesian theorem:


    The probability of God's existence after the evidence is considered is a function of the probability before times D ("Divine Indicator Scale"): 10 indicates the evidence is 10 times as likely to be produced if God exists, 2 is two times as likely if God exists, 1 is neutral, 0.5 is moderately more likely if God does not exist, and 0.1 is much more likely if God does not exist. Unwin offers the following figures for six lines of evidence: recognition of goodness (D = 10), existence of moral evil (D = 0.5), existence of natural evil (D = 0.1), intranatural miracles (prayers) (D = 2), extranatural miracles (resurrection) (D = 1), and religious experiences (D = 2).


    Plugging these figures into the above formula (in sequence, where the Pafter figure for the first computation is used for the Pbefore figure in the second computation, and so on for all six Ds), Unwin concludes: "The probability that God exists is 67%."


     

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    Police at the scene of the slurry vat accident 

     


     

    Three men were killed when they became trapped in a vat of slurry in Norfolk.

    It is believed two of the workers had plunged into the 12-feet deep tank to save the other man.

    A fourth man escaped from the tank, which contained chicken waste to be used as fertilizer.

     

    • dingus5

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