QUIRKY WORLD ... A daily look at some of the world’s stranger stories
The black knitted tie was discovered by retired civil servant Joyce McWilliams, 66, who found it with some rare signed postcards, when she was clearing out her house. Ms McWilliams, who was handed the tie by Lennon himself at Liverpool’s Cavern Club, got £3,627 for the item, which was one of hundreds of lots which went up for auction.
Mrs McWilliams obtained the tie and some autographed photographs in 1962 when she was a 15-year-old trainee comptometer (key-driven calculator) operator, and used to attend lunchtime sessions at Liverpool’s famous Cavern.
A burlesque act raised the temperature of a room in Dundee — but not in the way the audience had hoped. Hundreds of people were forced to flee the city’s tattoo convention after the burlesque dancer Go-Go Amy set off the fire alarms with her flaming tassels. The large crowd made their way to the exits, disappointed to have seen only half of the exotic dancer’s performance. Convention organiser Ky Thomasson-Kay said: “They weren’t meant to use fire in the act but I think they just completely forgot.”
An atheist parolee who went back to prison after refusing to participate in a religiously-tinged in-patient treatment programme is finally going to get compensation.
Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt ruled that a jury must award Barry Hazle of Redding, California, compensatory damages.
A district court ruled in 2010 that his rights had been violated, but a jury awarded him nothing.
He had served a year in prison on a drug charge. After being released in 2007, he was ordered to take part in the programme but refused, saying he is an atheist. He was arrested and jailed again. After serving three more months, he sued state corrections officials.
Decaying herring inside the fish hold of an 27m trawler created enough noxious gas with a rotting-egg smell to sicken two Maine fishermen and leave one of them unconscious.
Poisonous hydrogen sulphide built up in the fish hold after the Starlight trawler off-loaded its herring. The first fisherman was overcome and lost consciousness while climbing down a ladder into the hold. The second became incapacitated while trying to help him.
Vera is top dog around the office at Battersea Dogs and Cats Home.
In another life, the six-year-old Staffordshire Bull Terrier did show dog work in Lithuania, where she was known as Vega.
Now she is the crop-eared star that keeps staff at the famous London shelter for pets smiling with her energy and good manners around the office, which she prefers to the kennels. The change in career came when her previous owners split up and she was given to Battersea in June.
A man whose heart stopped beating for 45 minutes credits his faith for being alive and says stunned doctors who declared him dead aren’t sure what happened.
The body of diesel mechanic Tony Yahle, 37, was being prepared by nurses to be seen by his family on Aug 5 when he began to show signs of life, doctors said. He fully awoke at the hospital five days later.
Yahle, of West Carrollton, says it is a miracle and doctors couldn’t find any defects in his heart. Their last guess was that it was the result of a possible viral infection, he said.
Yahle’s teenage son said he spoke to his father shortly before he revived. “I pointed at him and said, ‘Dad, you’re not going to die today,’” said Lawrence Yahle, 18.
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