QUIRKY WORLD ... A daily look at some of the world’s stranger stories
A Minnesota man fined for disorderly conduct after he flung $1,000 (€735) in mostly small bills over a balcony at the nation’s largest mall during a holiday shopping day wants to give away more money.
Serge Vorobyov was banned from the Mall of America in suburban Minneapolis for a year for the publicity stunt on Black Friday that has drawn attention from national media.
Vorobyov, 29, said he hoped a YouTube video of the stunt would continue to generate thousands of views so he could potentially earn money from the advertising revenue and spread the wealth.
Vorobyov said he is in the middle of a messy divorce and was forced recently to close his car-hauling business. He said he emptied his bank account and stamped the cash with his Facebook and YouTube account information. He tossed the cash when a group began to sing “Let it Snow”.
“I had such an adrenaline rush, just throwing the money out like a madman,” he said.
An email promoting a new Lily Allen song sent by music streaming service Spotify has been banned for being likely to cause serious or widespread offence.
The promotional email included the text: “Have you heard this song by Lily Allen? Give it a try. F*** You.”
A complainant challenged whether the use of a swear word was likely to cause serious or widespread offence.
Spotify said it did not intend to cause offence to users or to the wider public, and the email was intended to recommend songs to a user, one of which was titled ‘F*** You’.
Spotify said the recommendation was very unlikely to have been sent to a user who had only ever listened to music targeted at young teenagers or children and was therefore unlikely to have been sent to users who might be more sensitive to the language used.
The UK Advertising Standards Authority accepted that the expletive in the ad reflected the title of a song, but said: “While we considered Spotify users would understand the use of ‘F*** You’ to be the title of a song, we considered recipients of emails from a general online music service would not expect them to include swearing.
“We considered the use of ‘F***’ was likely to cause serious offence to some recipients of such emails and therefore concluded that the ad breached the advertising code.”
It ruled the ad must not appear again in its current form.
One of the world’s first Christmas cards, sent in 1843, is expected to fetch up to £5,000 at auction.
The black and white greeting card depicts a jolly Christmas scene of a Victorian family eating and drinking.
The card was one of about 2,000 printed in colour and black and white. The coloured version sold for 1/2d and the rarer uncoloured version was 1/- .
It was addressed to Marinda Cundy of London. The sender is unknown apart from the initials JCJ. The card was given to her great niece and has been with the family ever since.
The item is to be sold by Henry Aldridge & Son of Devizes, Wiltshire, with a pre-sale estimate of between £3,000 and £5,000.
The card was commissioned by Henry Cole, a civil servant who played a key role in launching the Penny Post, and designed by his friend John C Horsley, a well-known artist who also painted portraits of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria.
It is being sold on Dec 14.
A long-forgotten novel that was out of print for almost half a century until its rediscovery has been named Waterstone’s book of the year.
Stoner, by American novelist John Williams, has been a huge word-of-mouth success since it was re-published. The book, about the life and times of an American professor, was published in 1965 but soon forgotten until it was reissued last year.
Waterstone’s managing director James Daunt said: “It’s incredible that Stoner nearly disappeared, but supremely gratifying that we have played some small part in bringing it back to British readers’ attentions. The year of publication is of no import — this is the book everyone has been talking about in 2013, the very least we can do is name it our book of the year.”
A man stole a passenger ferry from a Seattle waterfront and took it out for a joyride.
Samuel McDonough illegally boarded the vessel and took it out into Elliott Bay.
He has been charged with burglary, reckless endangerment, malicious mischief, and an outstanding warrant for failure to register as a sex offender.
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