QUIRKY WORLD: Couple's $10m gold rush sparks speculation frenzy
Word last week that a Northern California couple found $10m (€7.3m) in gold coins while walking their dog has set off a gold rush of theories over who left behind all that loot.
One is that Jesse James’ gang deposited it in hopes of someday financing a second civil war. Another postulates that the gold originally belonged to gentleman robber Black Bart, who wrote poetry when he wasn’t sticking up stagecoaches.
But the theory gaining the most traction is that the hoard is made up of most of the $30,000 in gold coins that Walter Dimmick stole from the US Mint in San Francisco in 1901. The coins were never recovered.
That theory, from fishing guide and amateur coin historian Jack Trout, set off a flurry of calls to the US Mint after it was reported by the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday.
The Northern California couple’s coins are called the Saddle Ridge Hoard after the area of the couple’s land where they were discovered.
“We do not have any information linking the Saddle Ridge Hoard coins to any thefts at any United States mint facility,” mint officials said in a statement.
Although Trout acknowledges he can’t prove his theory, he still thinks he’s right.
“There is no real direct proof, but I am getting more research in on this,” he told The Associated Press.
Dimmick is said to have spirited six sealed bags — each filled with 250 $20 gold pieces — out of the mint, where he was the chief cashier.
Cadbury has been voted the UK’s happiest brand, followed by British toilet roll company Andrex and search engine Google.
Fairy detergents and Nivea took fourth and fifth place, followed by YouTube and Amazon, while Mars, Walkers, and Heinz completed the top 10, the poll for advertising agency Isobel found.
Meanwhile, the bottom 10 of the 100-strong ranking was littered with political parties, banks, and the airline Ryanair.
Ever feel like you’re on a big hamster wheel and you can’t get off? Ward Shelley and Alex Schweder know that feeling all too well.
The two performance artists are spending 10 days living, eating, and sleeping on a giant hamster wheel to make a larger point: We all have to work together to get through the daily grind.
“I wasn’t prepared for this… perhaps I should have been,” Shelley said from atop the wheel, his feet dangling off the side of the 25ft-tall structure.
One wrong move by him or his fellow human hamster and they risk being thrown off. They are perched on opposite ends of the wheel, 180 degrees from each other, and must carefully coordinate their movements. When one walks, the other must walk in the opposite direction. When one stops, the other must stop.
“It’s really an exploration of what it means to collaborate,” Schweder said from the relative safety at the bottom, inside of the wheel. “It’s an exploration of trust between two people.”
Their live performance called In Orbit is running at The Boiler, the Pierogi gallery’s performance space in Brooklyn. The wheel, which the artists built themselves, is 60ft in circumference and equipped with everything they need: narrow beds, chairs, desks, a fridge, rudimentary kitchen and a chemical toilet — all strapped down. Even the participants are tethered to safety harnesses.
“We’re living on a big wheel that is essentially a two-bedroom apartment,” Schweder said.
A court has ruled that a prospective Berlin police recruit’s breast implants cannot be used as grounds to keep her off the force.
The woman applied in 2012 to join the force, but was rejected after authorities said her implants would prevent her from wearing a protective vest or riot gear. They argued the implants would mean the gear put so much pressure on her chest there was a risk of fibrosis or other health problems.
But a Berlin administrative court upheld her challenge of the decision, saying a doctor testified that protective gear should cause no greater health problems for a woman with implants than without.
It is soon expected to be ok to be willfully annoying in the US city of Grand Rapids.
The City Commission is cancelling a 38-year-old section of city code that states “no person shall willfully annoy another person”.
City lawyer Catherine Mish recommended repealing the language, saying the wording is “unconstitutional in terms of being vague” and “simply unenforceable”.
A final decision is expected on March 11.
Mish has been scouring city code to find archaic rules. Last year, rules that got a look included one prohibiting people from riding horses on a pavement and another allowing jail time for failing to return a library book.
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