Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Small Bits of News You Didn’t Know you Needed

Highway to Hell popular at funerals
AC/DC's Highway to Hell is becoming one of the most requested funeral tunes in Australia.
Ding Dong the Witch is Dead from the Wizard of Oz, and Another One Bites the Dust by Queen are also popular.
Funeral managers at Centennial Park, the largest cemetery and crematorium in Adelaide, said only two hymns still rank among its top 10 most popular funeral songs: Amazing Grace and Abide With Me.
Highway to Hell, which includes the line: "Going down, party time; My friends are gonna be there too", is just outside the top ten, with Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven.
Leading the funeral chart is crooner Frank Sinatra's classic hit My Way followed by Louis Armstrong's version of Wonderful World.
"Some of the more unusual songs we hear actually work very well within the service because they represent the person's character," Centennial Park chief executive Bryan Elliott said.
Among other less conventional choices were Always Look on the Bright Side of Life by Monty Python, Hit the Road Jack, and I'll Sleep When I'm Dead.
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Police wait for suspect to marry
Police in a Chinese town waited outside the suspect house for two days to avoid interrupting his wedding.
Officers in Sanjiang township said they wanted to save the groom, bride and both families from losing face in front of their guests.
The suspect, Leng Qiang, had been wanted by police for two years for robbing a nightclub, reports West China City Daily.
"We received a clue that he had a new girlfriend and perhaps was hiding at her place," said Guo Feng, director of Shuanggui Police Station in Sanjiang township.
"When we arrived at the scene, we were surprised to find that the bride's family was preparing a wedding ceremony, and moreover that the bride was obviously pregnant."
Guo said they decided to wait to arrest the suspect until after the wedding was over, in order to avoid embarrassing the bride's family.
After the wedding was over, the police decided to let the newly wedded couple first enjoy their wedding night, and then arrest the suspect the morning after.
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Maybe he thought it would make his car fly.
A 20-year-old man is accused of breaking into a small airport and trying to fill up his car's gas tank with aviation gasoline.
"We've had people try and steal gas here in the past," said Jim Meide, who works at Reid-Hillview Airport. "It's really stupid. Put aviation gas in your car and it's so heavily leaded that eventually your valves warp and you'll end up with some very expensive repairs."
The suspect was arrested Sunday night on suspicion of driving while intoxicated and attempted theft. But he probably wasn't trying to save money.
The aviation fuel in the pumps used for aircraft and race cars was going for $5.97 a gallon, accessed only by a credit card, authorities said.
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Shrew identified as world's hardest drinker
A tropical shrew with a taste for alcoholic nectar has been identified as the hardest-drinking creature in the world.
Pentailed tree shrews have such an appetite for alcohol that each night they imbibe, weight for weight, the equivalent of a human downing up to nine glasses of wine.
Their capacity to hold their drink and keep a clear head, however, puts human boozers to shame. After a night supping at the jungle bar the shrews are not even unsteady on their feet, let alone being copiously sick or starting drunken fights.
They get their drinks from bertam palms, which grow in the jungles of West Malaysia and produce nectar boasting an alcohol content that can match beer.
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Mother's Dead Body in House for 7 Years
A brother and sister who left their mother's corpse to rot in her ramshackle house may not be charged with a crime for keeping her death a secret for more than seven years.
While John and Diane Simmeck acknowledged they allowed Ann Simmeck's body to decompose and did nothing about it, the Connecticut law that makes failing to report a death a crime does not require private citizens to contact officials when a relative is discovered dead.
The statute only applies when a body has been officially reported dead.
PICTURE and More
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Jersey nightclub bans girls for being 'too fat'
A group of girls hoping to enjoy a fun night out were refused entry to a club - for being too fat.
Police were called to calm the situation after they say the manager told them to "go away and lose some weight."
Georgina Mason, 23, who was among the group, was left feeling "disgusted" by the ban.
She said: "About five or six or us got there about 11.30pm on Saturday and the bouncers said we were not allowed in because we were too big.
"I told them not to be ridiculous and asked to speak to the manager. He would not look at me directly but said they'd received too many complaints about fat people. He told me to 'go and lose some weight before you come in - fat people are bad for business,'
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Pit Bull Attacks Woman as She Disciplines Child
A woman disciplining a child for breaking a glass was attacked by her boyfriend's pit bull.
Caddo Parish sheriff's deputies say the woman stabbed the dog, and two neighbors alerted to the commotion helped subdue the animal by beating it with a pipe and a board.
Deputies say the dog will be euthanized because of the viciousness of the attack and the extent of its wounds. Caddo sheriff's spokeswoman Cindy Chadwick said 27-year-old Kathryn Long suffered severe dog bites to her arm and buttocks and had to be hospitalized.
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I know for a fact that "Pit Bulls" are protective of the young.
The woman must have been abusive towards the child.
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New Jersey Motorist Hits Husband, Drives Off as He Dies
Authorities say a New Jersey woman struck her husband with her car, got out to check on him, then drove off as he died.
Prosecutors in Winslow, New Jersey, say 34-year-old Patricia Hernandez is charged with leaving the scene of a fatal accident. Her bail is set at $150,000.
Prosecutors say her husband, Pedro Hernandez, called her to pick him up from his job at an arts and crafts distribution center early Sunday.
Authorities say she struck him outside the warehouse and he was found dead there about six hours later.

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