Bride in Wedding Gown Saves Family From Fire!
In Bridgeport, Connecticut, Georgette Clemons put her honeymoon on hold -- so she could pull a family from a burning house! Mrs. Clemons had just left her wedding reception when she spotted smoke coming from the house. Still in her wedding gown, she got out of the car she was riding in and ran into the home. A woman inside was yelling about her animals and didn't want to leave, so she had to pull her out. Firefighters arrived and battled the blaze after the other members of the Eitelberg family were rescued. While all this was going on, Mrs. Clemons was spotted nearby folding her blackened wedding dress. She says she also messed up her shoes but that's no big deal because everyone is safe. You rock Mrs. Clemons -- and you're our hero of the day! (Connecticut Post)
Guess They Should Have Let Him Marry
In Egypt, a 25-year-old man found a most unusual way of showing his family how upset he was over them refusing to let him marry a girl from the wrong side of the tracks. The young man came from a prominent family in the southern Egyptian province of Qena, one of Egypt's poorest and most conservative areas that is also home to the famed ancient Egyptian ruins of Luxor. But after unsuccessfully begging his father for two years to marry the girl, he heated up a knife and sliced off his own penis! The guy was rushed to the hospital but doctors were unable to reattach the severed organ. Traditionally, marriages in these conservative parts of southern Egypt are between similar social classes and often within the same extended families and are rarely for love. Guess the message here is "No Grandchildren For You!" (myway.com)
Battle of the Big Eaters
In the world of extreme eating, Japan's Takeru Kobayashi and America's Joey Chestnut are two of the biggest names in the business. The arch rivals are best known for their annual Fourth of July hot dog eating showdowns on New York's Coney Island. So they attracted quite a crowd when they agreed to go stomach to stomach in a pizza eating contest sponsored by Pizza Hut featuring the P'zone, a pizza weighing one pound with pepperoni and other ingredients sealed inside a crust. At nearly 12 inches long, it resembles a calzone. While Chestnut has beaten his Japanese competitor the last two years in the hot dog thing at Coney Island, this time the night belonged to Kobayashi. He consumed 5 3/4 P'zones in a six-minute span of chaotic consumption to win the competition. Chestnut only managed 5 1/2 P'zones. Chestnut later said, "I'm a little bummed. There's nobody I like beating more than him, he pushes me harder than anybody." (myway.com)
Man Keeps Winning Because He Keeps Living!
You might say 59-year-old Jon Matthews of England is like the Energizer Bunny. He just keeps going and going and going. And that's significant given that he was diagnosed with terminal cancer in early 2008 and doctors gave him only a few months to live. But not only has Jon refused to accept his doctor's prognosis, he's also won a nice chunk of change betting on his own life. To defy doctors' predictions, he placed a 100-Pound bet (about $165) with odds of 50 to 1 with bookies that he would stay alive until June 1, 2008. That bet won him 5,000-pounds ($8,150). He then made another bet that he would live until June 1 of this year. That bet won him another 5,000-pounds. And he just made another bet at 100-to-1 odds that he'll live until June 1, 2010. If he makes it, he pockets another 10,000 pounds. Matthews, a widower, said, "I think I'm the first person in the world to bet on my own life. I know I'm going to die eventually and I have no real need for money, so it will mostly go to worthy causes." And in the meantime his doctors all look like idiots! (Ananova)
The Amazing Powers of Facebook
Facebook can now lay claim to reuniting a kidnapped son with his mother, 27 years after he disappeared. 62-year-old Avril Grube was awarded custody or her son Gavin Paros when she split with his Hungarian father in 1982. While Mr. Paros was given visiting rights to his son, one afternoon he came to take Gavin to the zoo and never returned. But Avril and her sister never gave up the search for Gavin. They made contact with the Hungarian embassy and even took the plight to the then Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher. But it wasn't until March of this year that Avril's sister entered the boy's name into an internet search engine which took her straight to his Facebook profile. It shown he was born in Liverpool and his mother's name was even mentioned on his profile. Gavin, who celebrates his 30th birthday this Sunday, is married with three kids and said he'd spent the last five years trying to trace his mother. (Ananova)
Serious Foot Fetish!
In Port St. Lucie, Florida, a former firefighter, 38-year-old Cynthia Economou, has been sentenced to eight months probation after she admitted taking a man's severed foot from an I-95 car accident scene back in 2008. Now why in the world would she do this? She claims she took the foot to use it to train her cadaver dog, which was her side business. The incident ultimately resulted in her resigning from the Port St. Lucie County Fire District. Ironically, the best the courts could muster up was to charge her with a misdemeanor because there was no specific law against steeling a body part. (AHN News)
Classified Ad Deemed Threat to President Obama
The Times Observer, the local newspaper of Warren, Pennsylvania, has publicly apologized for running a classified personal ad that may be an assassination threat against President Obama. They also reported the incident to local police and stopped running the ad that appeared on the newspaper's Thursday issue as the Secret Service was called in to investigate the person who placed it. John Elchert, the publisher of Times Observer, said at first, no one suspected anything wrong with the ad that read: "May Obama follow in the steps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy!" That is until someone pointed out that all four presidents mentioned had been assassinated. The newspaper did not reveal the name of the person who placed the ad, but did turn the name over to the Warren City Police, which forwarded it to federal authorities. And somebody's going to have some 'splainin' to do! (AHN News)
Does This Sound Right To You?
Working off a grant from the National Institutes of Health, Dentist Geoffrey Hart recently developed something he calls Pedi-Sedate headgear which he hopes to use to trick waiting-room kids into inhaling nitrous oxide while playing video games. As a result, the kids will knock themselves out and according to Dr. Hart's company, "will dramatically improve the hospital or dental experience for the child, parents and healthcare providers." The helmet contains sophisticated sensors to monitor the dosages and effects on the child. Still -- would you do that to your kid? (CNET News)