On Jan. 30, as Angel Eck, 20, drove her Pontiac Sunfire on Interstate 70 toward Denver, she suddenly could not slow down. The car was locked in overdrive and climbed to 100 mph; the ignition would not disengage; and the clutch and accelerator were stuck. A half-hour later, two enterprising Denver police officers, having been alerted by cell phone and reprising a tactic from the old “CHiPs” TV show, slowed the car by allowing it to repeatedly bump the rear of their squad car until it came to a stop. A few days later, idling in the shop at Green Mountain Auto Service, the car jumped gears and pinned a mechanic against an inside wall until a colleague set the emergency brake.
The December attempted robbery of a BB&T bank in Chesapeake, Va., was aborted when the robber and the teller arrived at a stalemate. The robber pushed a holdup note across the counter, but the teller read it, said, “I can’t accept this,” and passed it back. The robber pushed the note through a second time. The teller wadded the note up and tossed it back at the robber, who picked it up and walked out.
the robbery of a liquor store in Greenville, S.C., in February was aborted when the clerk ran out of the store after the perp told him to empty the register, while pointing his bare index finger at him, simulating a gun.
In December, Australia’s TV Channel 7 reported that many schools across the country, at the behest of the Australasian Performing Rights Association, were discouraging parents from making keepsake movies of their kids’ appearances in Christmas musicals, because recording the holiday songs might violate copyright law.
A team of researchers that included Ben Wilson of the University of British Columbia (Vancouver) reported in November that herring communicate with each other via a high-pitched, “raspberry”-like sound emitted from their anuses. (Since the sounds were frequent, whether the herring had eaten or not, the researchers concluded that the noise was not produced by digestive gases.)
A 41-year-old model airplane hobbyist was killed when his radio-controlled helicopter went haywire and crashed into his neck
A 27-year-old woman was killed when, during calm weather on a suburban street, a 40-foot magnolia tree fell on top of her while she was jogging (Titusville, Fla., December).
A 38-year-old man was killed when his pickup truck hit a ditch at 60 mph, with the cause of death later determined to be that the truck’s radio had been jarred loose during the crash sequence and hit him in the face.(Timberlake, N.C., January).
several dozen (maybe many more) automobile keyless-entry systems failed in the Las Vegas area on Feb. 20, allowing conspiracists to remind everyone that the city is only 150 miles from “Area 51,” supposedly the government’s extraterrestrial research center. [Associated Press, 2-24-04]
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