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August 2026

1 Augsut 2026

After fixing the sign that advertises a Wilmington, Illinois, petrol station's current prices, a maintenance worker identified a breakage in something else: the mechanical lift between him and the ground 40 metres below. While he cooled his heels inside the sign, occasionally giving a thumbs-up to helicopter-based news crews and a police drone, city fire crews - whose ladders top out at 30.5 metres - arranged to have a basket-equipped boom crane roll in from a nearby county under the necessary state-police escort. After a five-hour wait, the worker safely reached terra firma.

In Gold Hill, Colorado, Patrick Sullivan's sleep was repeatedly interrupted by blasts from a neighbour's car horn throughout the night. However, his neighbours had had the same experience. In the morning, locals traced the sound to the offending SUV and the rude individual within: a bear trapped in the front seat. Residents attached a long rope to one of the doors, opening it from a distance to free the animal. Though the bear caused damage to the side of the vehicle, the SUV-owner at least has proof that the driver's-side air-bag system works.

The mode of transportation starring in our next item is boats. Finding all the doors of a client's vessel at a Sausalito, California, harbour, locked, yacht captain Bill Aubrey chased off the trespasser responsible, Elaine Christina Forbes, whom he later connected with unauthorised lodging on a second boat and with theft of a woman's clothing there. Forbes, who has a floating home of her own, is no newcomer to the waterfront: she was director of the Port of San Francisco for nine years.
The intrusions occurred about three weeks after Forbes, 52, took office as Sausalito city manager. Her arrest and booking at the Marin County jail occurred two days after a closed city-council meeting approved a two-month leave of absence for her for unspecified reasons.

Near the peak of Ben Nevis, Scotland's Christina Bluhme noticed that the youngest member of the party, five-year-old Tokyo, seemed to be suffering from 'a spinal thing or a disc that had slipped because of the climb', affecting her hind quarters. As Tokyo, a 24-kilo black Labrador, began slipping into and out of consciousness, the family attempted to carry her back down the mountain. Stymied by heavy rains, however, they ended up summoning the Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team, whose volunteers had just dealt with an emergency nearby. Once Tokyo had been stretchered down the mountain, veterinarians discovered the root of her ailment: consuming significant amounts of cannabis, likely from an 'edible' dropped on the trail. A puff of gas from the now-recovered animal's above-mentioned hind quarters confirmed the diagnosis.

After that hike, it's time to board a bus, the 302 waiting in Kensal Rise, north-west London. That's where a laundry bag protruding from the luggage bay obstructed the path of a mother with a pram. When the driver pushed the bag out of the way, it began 'chirping and jumping'. Within was a well-concealed female marmoset and some pieces of apple.
The Metroline team placed the monkey - now called Oyster - in a dark, cool part of the bus station and contacted the RSPCA, whose investigator Clare Dew said that this dehydrated, understandably terrified animal is unlikely to be the only one 'dumped' in light of new legislation that requires pet primates to be microchipped. She added that the incident was at least timed propitiously: only hours after the RSPCA's efforts to find a partner for a sanctuary's lone male marmoset had fallen through.

For another tale of animals and transport, we turn to security workers at Schiphol Airport, where a Canadian woman attempted the subtle act of smuggling a brassiere-borne ball python onto an aircraft. She explained to enforcement officers that she'd rescued the snake from her hotel in Amsterdam. 'We highly doubt that' stated the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority. Even so, one isn't allowed to 'simply take protected animals [...] on a trip, not even if you found them on the street'. Their inspectors drove the snake to a shelter and filed a police report against the woman.

When the Atlantic Seafood Sauce Company closed up shop in Newfoundland, they did not clear out that shop: a facility housing 100+ tanks of fish sauce. The roof blew off, a storm knocked out a wall, and the contents continued to ferment, for 20-plus years, to the annoyance of the 300 noses in the community of St. Mary's.
The residents' crusade, led by volunteer mayor Steve Ryan, who worked at the plant as a teenager in 1990, is finally bearing fruit: while the national government 'forgot about us', the province is now bringing in suction trucks to drain the vats, after which their contents will be mixed with peat moss to absorb the smell of what Ryan terms 'the worst rotted fish you ever smelled in your lifetime, times 100' and placed in a covered pit lined with high-density polyethylene. The operation, which the contractor describes as 'not fall[ing] under any of the standard classifications', will cost tax-payers a seven-digit sum.

In the first of two pole-accident stories, David Cifaldi slipped while hiking with two friends near the peak of Montana's largest mountain, Granite Peak. He ended up with his 112 cm trekking pole protruding from his back. Since helicopter rescue consumes significant public resources and Cifaldi as a wound-care nurse was 'pretty confident' that the steel-tipped pole hadn't breached his chest wall, he elected to 'self-rescue' by returning to a marked trail and hiking the 16 km back down the mountain while keeping the county rescue team informed of his progress.
Six hours later, the three hikers arrived at the local clinic, where medics declared the 32-year-old Ciflaldi in need of more advanced treatment. They got back in their truck and drove to Billings, where Cifaldi's co-workers removed the pole and bandaged him up.

When a colleague mentioned that he was giving away a pole-dancing pole, Asha Gilbert jumped at the opportunity. She and a friend promptly installed it in her flat, and three days later she was spinning along to a pole-dancing workout tutorial. She then jumped at something else - the pole coming loose from where tension alone had held it in place between ceiling and floor. It hit a fire sprinkler. Gilbert has had to move to a different flat, write off much of her furniture, and deal with a 'very very cool and understanding' downstairs neighbour. She has given up pole dancing, at least for now.

20 August 2026

A counsellor at a YMCA summer camp in New Jersey thought nothing of an attendee breaking the rules by distributing chocolates to fellow 10-to-13-year-olds, until one reported feeling unwell. Twelve more then began experiencing symptoms, with one boy starting to shake and repeat 'I don't want to die, I don't want to die'. Medics reported that all the children had unwittingly consumed hallucinogenic mushrooms via the chocolates. None died; all were safely collected from hospital or the East Orange YMCA by their parents, one of whom described the white-lipped mumbling campers as resembling 'little baby zombies'. A police investigation is in progress.

Ohio's Rosanna Kinsinger, 28, failed to show up for work the day after she rebuffed amorous advances by Samuel Hochstetler, the 19-year-old Amish man who had been helping her and others build a greenhouse. Concerned co-workers visited her home, where they found an open back door, a wild goat wandering around, and Kinsinger's corpse naked and face-down on her bed. One of the people who volunteered to tell her family of her demise was Hochstetler. In the coming days, he helped them plan the funeral, assisted with their chores, and stayed in their home.
He has since admitted to raping her, though maintaining that her death by suffocation was an accident caused by inexperience. After a plea deal, he was sentenced to life in prison, which entails eligibility for parole after 25 years.

For another grim tale, we turn to Pingpu, a village in China's Jieyang district, where four boys under age 14 captured the puppies of a stray dog who had previously escaped their clutches mid-beating. In a video they likely filmed themselves, they killed the three two-week old pups with spiked sticks, then blinded, petrol-immolated, and whipped the mother, known to locals as Wang Wang, while laughing about the lovely aromas created.
When the national government's censorship apparatus proved insufficient to quell discussion of the incident and social-media demands for laws against cruelty to animals, an official statement emerged: 'We urge the public not to disseminate related information, to reject cyber-bullying, and to work together to create a good environment for minors' growth.' Accordingly, a manager at Changsha's Wan Jia Li shopping reported that 'we can't do animal-protection billboards anymore...'. And that is why messages such as 'Justice for Wang Wang' then began appearing at least hourly in locations such as Times Square and Kuala Lumpur's city-centre billboard.

It isn't unusual for people to be annoyed by roadworks and the associated slow traffic. Things took an unusual turn, however, at a Tallinn intersection where a Mercedes-Benz driver didn't obey signs where a temporary pedestrian crossing had been marked. No, the 40-year-old motorist didn't just manage to run into a pedestrian. He ploughed into the man directing traffic. Furthermore, he did so with sufficient momentum that the 62-year-old traffic controller died at the scene. Criminal proceedings are in progress.

It might be time for a feel-good story.
Normally, magnet fishermen don't catch fish. While showing his children how to fish for metal objects in Werkendam, Dutchman Gerbert van der Stelt encountered something too heavy to raise from the Dokvijver under his own power. What ultimately surfaced was a three-metre long metal sturgeon, a piece of municipal art that had disappeared from a dike in the village of Hank a month earlier. According to Omroep Brabant, artist Juul Baltussen, who crafted the 70-kilo statue from iron 11 years ago, would have been perfectly happy to craft a replacement but found the successful fishing trip fitting.

Someone in a clown costume decided to ring doorbells in East St. Louis, Illinois, at random, in one case whispering 'I'm looking for you' into a doorbell camera while brandishing a large knife. Residents soon knew to be grateful that they hadn't answered the door or checked on who'd been peering through their windows: less than an hour later and less than three blocks away, a 78-year-old man was found dead at a bus stop. Identified by his VA-hospital bracelet as retired bus-driver John Wesley Allen Sr., he had been repeatedly stabbed in what the state police termed a 'a random attack by a suspect wearing a clown outfit'.
A 15-year-old boy has now been taken into custody as the culprit and been formally charged with first-degree murder.

Osku has put my teeth on edge with reports on an 80-year-old Finnish man who took his wife's advice to get his teeth checked. When entering the dentist's office in Espoo, he assured her that, because of issues related to blood-thinners, he wouldn't get any teeth removed at this visit. However, he emerged an hour later with bleeding gums and all 18 of his teeth missing. Reassured that the staff had given him pills to promote clotting, his wife waited until the next day before summoning medical assistance for the unabated bleeding. He died a few hours later of 'bleeding from tooth extraction'.
Now facing manslaughter charges, the 55-year-old dental surgeon has told the Western Uusimaa District Court that the man failed to perform correct aftercare and claims that the risk of fatal complications would have been far greater if the teeth hadn't been tended to.

A few days after beginning work as a locum physician at Manchester's Royal Oldham Hospital, NHS doctor Yasser Adly Abdel Rahman performed emergency bowel surgery later declared 'not compatible with life'. Namely, the Egyptian doctor connected the outflow of the patient's bowel to his stomach. He failed to recognise his error, which another surgeon corrected in the course of investigating the young man's ensuing uncontrollable pain.
A restriction on his licence to practise as a medic followed. He breached its terms by gaining employment as a physician abroad, in Ireland. Now, six years after the botched surgery, a misconduct tribunal has revoked his licence entirely, for actions 'fundamentally incompatible with continued registration'.

Ohio's Nicholas Hendricks is a caring father, so he cradled his youngest son closely in his arms while spitting at his wife and punching her in the face at the family home in Cincinnati. Still with babe in arms, he then broke down his three-year-old son's door and resumed the assault on his wife, with his other children and his mother as witnesses. Hendricks, 34, does not, however, have the baby with him in jail, where he awaits trial on charges of strangulation and domestic violence.

Kip has alerted me to a road trip undertaken by another special husband. Tyronne Brazille's outing with his wife began with an argument at a Louisiana park, an argument that he ended by shooting her. Investigators allege that he strapped her lifeless body into the passenger seat of his car and set off for Tennessee. The 50-year-old couple's trip ended five hours later, when an officer pulling Brazille over for a traffic violation revealed Lanessa Bradford's fatal gunshot wound.
Bradford had alerted family members outside Louisiana that she had money saved up and had planned to 'just vanish', leaving all of her possessions behind. Well, her wish sort of came true.

Students will not be able to return to Virginia's Forest Middle School as usual this autumn, thanks to the escape of a classroom pet. Crews arriving in response to a fire alarm at the school encountered extensive damage from the sprinkler system, a fire blazing in eight classrooms, and a 2.5-metre python undulating behind a table. After six area fire departments extinguished the structural fire, the Bedford County Fire Marshal's Office was able to identify its cause as a heat lamp knocked over as the reptile secured its freedom.

In his latest lawsuits against Delaware Department of Corrections entities, prison-system frequent flyer Devin Coleman filed claims for more than $100,000 for having been denied a bottom bunk, medical sunglasses, and painkillers for light sensitivity stemming from a pre-existing fracture to his left eye socket. Rather than demand monetary damages for these alleged violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Eighth Amendment, he elected to accept a lower bunk and an offline-use Xbox with two controllers, available from the prison commissary to the tune of at least $1,100 for the console and $350 for a television set, plus $50-$100 per game. Coleman's Xbox has since been confiscated for containing 'suspicious content' notwithstanding its lack of an Internet connection. He has therefore submitted a motion to reinstate court proceedings.

When a stray kitten with a spinal injury entered the care of Ohio animal shelter Cincinnati Animal CARE, the first priority was to restore his ability to urinate on his own. After that, veterinary assistant lead fashioned a tiny mobility device for the feline's back legs from zip-ties, rulers, and two Hot Wheels cars. She explained: 'Gelato was just itty bitty. He was just way too small for anything that we had.' As the kitten began to regain strength, Smith posted photos online to highlight the nature of shelter medicine. The publicity scored Gelato, now 10 weeks old, a 3D-printed mobility device that, while less fun-looking, is engraved with his name and offers adjustability as he outgrows the homemade one. Smith hopes he won't need it by the time he is ready for adoption, in about a month.

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