Darcy Stewart wrote Monday 19 June 2006 @10:54:50 EDT
re last week's headline "Parachute carries skinny woman up":

About 1960, a world parachuting altitude record was set -- by accident.
An Air Force test pilot (in Nevada or New Mexico) bailed out at fairly
high but normal altitude (30,000 feet?).   This would not have set the
record.  He did not know that a storm cell was generating extremely
high velocity updrafts.  Had he known, he might have done a free-fall
to lower altitude; but his chute opened automatically and the updraft
carried him and his ejection seat up, not down.  He topped out about
100,000 feet.

If he hadn't been a figher test pilot, he would have died very shortly.
But fighter pilots have oxygen in their ejection seats.  He blacked out,
anyway, and was unconcious when he set the record.  He nearly froze
to death.  He had frostbite but recovered.  The round trip, up then down,
took 30 or 40 minutes.

Governor Ernie blocked state workers' access to political blogs.

Six Lexington police officers have been disciplined for boasting
on MySpace.com  about arresting country music star John Mi-
chael Montgomery for DUI.
                                                    [courtesy Courier-Journal]

A  doe  entered the home of a 75-year-old Cleveland suburban
woman and stomped her. . . . The mayor of Virginia City, Mon-
tana, brought in 200 goats to eat the weeds.  .  .  .  The Spanish
language telecast of hockey's Stanley Cup finals had more view-
ers than the English language telecast.  . . .  Homeland Security's
unpublished hotline number  was put on the "Do Not Call" regis-
try ("Every time that phone rings," said Delaware Governor Ruth
Ann Minner, "it's telemarketers").  . . .  Prince Victor Emmanuel,
son of Italy's last king, was arrested for pimping at a casino.  . . .
Kazakhstan launched a satellite. . . .  Bird flu reached Prince Ed-
ward Island. . . .  An Oregon man climbed 30 feet up a fir tree to
rescue his cat and had to be rescued by the fire department when
he couldn't get down. . . . Roger Busdicker's ashes were interred
in his clarinet in Winona, Minnesota.

"Lambert Hooper" sent us an e-mail titled "generous observatory."

A photo in the Indianapolis North Central High School yearbook
shows students drinking, smoking and using illegal drugs (see also
the dumb news from New Jersey in the Bonus section below).

An Idaho man tossed his decapitated wife's head from his
pickup truck as he crashed into a car killing  another  wo-
man and her 4-year-old daughter. . . . The celebritybuster
web site TMZ.com caught Paris Hilton parking in a handi-
capped space  outside  football hero Matt Leinart's apart-
ment, then later hitting a parked car without leaving a note.
. . .  A Gallup poll found that Muslim women are generally
happy with their lot and think that Western values  lead  to
moral decay, pornography, and promiscuity.  . . .  Officials
ripped a page from the Phillipsburg High School yearbook
in New Jersey because it contained a photo of a girl sitting
on a desk, in a play, with a bit of underwear showing. .  .  .
"What if my  grandmother  had  certain  sexual  attributes?"
Vlaimir  Putin  asked  a  reporter.  "Then she would be my
grandfather."  . . .  Chrystal McEntee was allowed to keep
her potbellied pig  in  Colorado  Springs,  but Bob Perkins
was told to get rid of  his  weed-eating  goat  in Manhattan,
Montana.  .  .  .  Female deer were attacking pedestrians at
Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. . . . A small bird
was attacking people on South Bass Island in Lake Erie.

"Zachary Schaffer" sent us an e-mail titled "Your health, orlop deck."

A State Education Department audit  reported 81.3 weapons viola-
tions at Edmonson County High School last year.  The correct num-
ber was zero (81.3 was the graduation percentage).

                                 [courtesy Edmonson News ("The Gimlet")]

A woman from  Warsaw,  Indiana,  killed the wrong people in a traffic
accident in Logan County, Kentucky,  last  weekend -- a  banker  and
an automobile dealer  who happened also to be chairman of the West-
ern Kentucky University Board of Regents.  She  was  jailed  for  man-
slaugher in lieu of $250,000 bond, and the Judge refused to appoint an
attorney for her because she was self-employed.  She's still in jail.

It got worse:    Radio news reports began referring to her as an "Indiana
native" . . . .
                                                               [courtesy WKYU-FM radio]

A cow fleeing slaughter led two dozen police on a 3.7-mile car
chase in Yakkaichi, Japan. . . .  A drug cocktail killed 48 peo-
ple in Detroit. . . .  British port police were attempting to inter-
cept hooligans on their way to the World Cup in Berlin.  .  .  .
Dutch pedophiles formed a political party  to  lower the age of
consent from 16 to 12 (and that's just their initial goal).  . . .  A
hotel porter in Venice claimed to have slept with 8,000 women.
. . .  The Da Vinci Code was banned in Pakistan.  .  .  . A wo-
woman married a cobra in Orissa. India. . . . A snake bit a wo-
man at a Florida Wal-Mart.  . . .  A man proclaiming "God will
save me, if he exists" lowered himself on a rope into a lions den
at the Kiev zoo and was mauled to death.  . . .  A Missouri wo-
man, angry that her Chihuahua had died, forced her way into the
home of the breeder and beat her with the dead puppy. . . . Bat-
woman will return to DC Comics in July as a lesbian.

"Tyree X. Wiley, VI," sent us three e-mails titled "I called you on phone."

• How Jesus and Mary Magdalene hid their family
• Who their descendants are -- and where they live

Among the revelations are that there were 200 guests at the wedding; that
they scattered their five daughters among three continents, and that their
blood lines extend into the families of Mohandas Gandhi and Bill Clinton . . .

Two of the victims of a five-fatality crash of a van carrying Taylor
University students  were  misidentified,  and  the  family  that had
been praying over what they thought was their injured survivor for
five weeks began mourning ("Laura?" they kept asking the woman
in the hospital bed -- "Whitney!" she kept replying).  Another fami-
ly,  who had been mourning  the  loss  of  Whitney  Cerak  for five
weeks, began praying.     The coroner said the mistake could have
been avoided if his deputy had not urged a relative  not  to  look at
the dead girl's body.
                                          [courtesy Louisville Courier-Journal]

A disgruntled litigant poured 75 gallons of tar on the steps of the federal
courthouse in Louisville and dumped a bucket into the foyer  before  at-
tracting the attention of security guards.
                                                                 [courtesy Courier-Journal]

Two tennis players and their coach were killed in  Baghdad  for
wearing  shorts.  .  .  .  A British MP said an assassin would be
"morally justified" in killing Prime Minister Tony Blair. . . . Anal-
ysis of FCC decisions found that the following terms apparently
are not indecent or profane:  "ass,"  "bitch,"  "for Christ's sake,"
"crap," "damn," "dick," "dickhead," "hell,"  "pissed off,"  "poop,"
"sex with a dog,"  "suck,"  and  "up yours" . . . Senator Bill Frist
helped give a gorilla a root canal.  .  .  . A study found that most
British men are crybabies.  . . .  A Florida woman was arrested
for shooting a bottle rocket at a police helicopter flying over her
house.  . . .  Elizabeth Taylor, 74, appeared on Larry King Live
to deny tabloid reports that she has Alzheimer's disease  and  is
dying. . . .  A West Virginia pilot encountered a 4½-foot snake
behind the instrument panel of his Piper Cherokee as he was a-
bout to land in Ohio.  . . . A college baseball coach found a py-
thon on the console of his rental car in Paducah, Kentucky. . . .
Six high school seniors in Fort Kent, Maine, deposited 10 gos-
lings and 45 chicks in classrooms, lockers, offices and teachers'
desks,  and droppings forced administrators to close the school
(the fowl came from Indiana).  . . .  A Sherpa stood naked atop
Mount Everest.

"Cecil Colon" sent us an e-mail titled "red wine tonsil."