Donut and UFO capers are eclipsed by a creative use of the 911 emergency system that could only happen in Florida in this week’s ever-amusing, ever-disturbing tales of the weird and wacky.
TWO BRICKS SHY OF A LOAD
Two people in Florida were arrested after one of them made a 911 call to get help with moving their belongings from a home they were burglarizing. Deputies in Poinciana (about 55 km from Orlando) concluded that nobody lived there, but they found a male suspect and his girlfriend inside the home after entering it through an unlocked door. The female suspect told them that she had called 911 for the purpose of having law enforcement help them move their belongings from the house they were burglarizing. They also wanted to get a ride to the airport so they could spend the weekend in New York, the sheriff’s office said.
“Deputies did help them with their belongings, and did give them a ride, but it wasn’t to the airport… it was to the Polk Pokey,” the sheriff’s office said in a Facebook post. “And they are welcome to stay there all weekend long. The Polk Pokey is much better than New York anyway.”
RETURN TO SENDER
Authorities in Queretaro in central Mexico said they found a strange holiday-season package at a local airport: four human skulls being shipped to Manning, South Carolina. An X-ray detected strange shapes in a cardboard box and when it was opened four human skulls wrapped in plastic and aluminum foil were discovered. The Mexican Guard said the shipment, regardless of how the skulls were obtained or whether they items were meant for medical study, may violate Mexican laws on the handling of corpses.
PRE-WASHED TO THE EXTREME
Pulled from a sunken trunk at an 1857 shipwreck off the coast of North Carolina, work pants described as the oldest known pair of jeans in the world sold for US$114,000 at an auction in Reno, Nevada. There’s disagreement about whether the white, heavy-duty miner’s pants with a five-button fly have any ties to the father of modern-day blue jeans, Levi Strauss, as they predate by 16 years the first pair officially manufactured by him in 1873, but the company says any claims about their origin are mere “speculation.” It was not revealed who bought the pricy pants.
IT’S A BIRD, IT’S A PLANE…
An unannounced rocket launch in South Korea (photo) triggered a brief public scare, including reports of a suspected UFO appearance. The Defense Ministry said that the rocket launch, which others feared came from North Korea, was not announced to the general public in advance because it involved sensitive military security issues. South Korean emergency offices and police received hundreds of citizens’ reports of witnessing a suspicious flying object and mysterious lights across the country.
AND DON’T FORGET THE SPRINKLES
A Bismarck, North Dakota man allegedly raised a hatchet toward a convenience store clerk who tried to stop him from stealing doughnuts. The man faces a charge of felony terrorizing and misdemeanor criminal trespass in connection with the incident in which a clerk confronted the man who put packaged doughnuts in his coat. When the clerk told him to leave, he pulled a hatchet from his waistband and raised it toward the worker before departing. Police found the hatchet in a snowbank. The whereabout of the donuts were unknown.
DENMARK ACHIEVES NET ZERO – FOR BANK ROBBERIES
For the first time in years, Denmark didn’t record a single bank robbery in 2022. There wouldn’t have been much point. Cash transactions in the Nordic country have become virtually obsolete, with Danes increasingly opting to use cards and smart phones for payments. Finance Denmark, the banking sector’s association, said only about 20 bank branches across the country have cash holdings. But then the number of bank branches has fallen from 219 in 1991 to 56 in 2021, it said. News reports noted that cash withdrawals in Denmark have been dropping by about three-quarters every year for the past six years. In 2000, 221 bank robberies were recorded, Finance Denmark said. In 2021, there was just one.