QUIRKY WORLD...Airline makes it a family affair in the cockpit
John and Luke Sharples, who both fly for Monarch Airlines, took their first flight together from Birmingham Airport to Turin.
Dad John told how almost 25 years ago to the day he was flying a Monarch 757 from Madrid to Gatwick when his wife went into labour with their son, Luke.
Sharples, 56, explained how a call from operations asking what time the aircraft would be landing alerted him to the fact that something was up. He said: “It was a bit unusual to get the call from ops in that the flight was on-time and due to land after midnight as planned.
“It later transpired upon my arrival at Gatwick that my wife, Liz, had gone into labour and had been taken to hospital.
“Unbeknown to me, operations had kindly arranged for a taxi to be waiting to whisk me to the hospital where Luke was born 15 minutes after I arrived.”
Luke, 25, said his father had inspired him to follow in his footsteps and become a pilot.
“I took dad for a few flights after I got my first flying licence but this will be the first time we’ve flown a jet airliner together.”
A ballot box used in the first secret voting election more than 140 years ago survives in honourable retirement in Pontefract, West Yorkshire.
Voters in the town turned out on August 15, 1872, for a landmark poll in which they made their choice with an X against a candidates’ name — away from prying eyes — for the first time not only in the UK but also the Northern Hemisphere.
One of the wooden ballot boxes used is on display in Pontefract Museum, still marked with the wax seals to ensure votes were not tampered with. The seal was made using a liquorice stamp from a local factory.
Thrill-seekers have had the chance to ride down a 100m water slide in the heart of a city centre.
The RNLI organised the Slipway Slide in Brighton which gave 360 winners the opportunity to enjoy the slide while raising money for the charity. Places were allocated to people who had taken part in a mobile phone ballot costing £1.50 to enter.
Jade Cohen, a Brighton RNLI lifeboat volunteer who had a go on the slide, said: “It was so much fun sliding along one of the busiest shopping streets in Brighton with everyone cheering us on. The Slipway Slide is such a fun and exciting way of getting people involved with the RNLI and has enabled us to raise vital funds for our crew.”
A man has been sentenced to 18 months of probation and ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation after pulling over a detective while impersonating a police officer.
David Scofield, 50, of Lancaster, Ohio, was arrested on October 13 after a detective said he shined a spotlight into his car and swerved in front of him on Interstate 76 outside Akron.
Scofield pleaded no contest last month to charges of impersonating a police officer, mishandling a firearm and obstructing official business. A judge in Akron also fined him $1,000 (€925) and ordered that all contents seized from his car, including a gun and law enforcement paraphernalia, be destroyed.
For hamburger aficionados who can’t get enough, Burger King has an answer: a grilled burger-scented fragrance.
Burger King said the Whopper grilled beefburger-scented cologne will be sold only on April 1, and only in Japan. It’s not an April Fools’ Day joke — the date marks the Whopper burger day for the company.
The limited Flame Grilled fragrance can be purchased at 5,000 yen (€39) per purchase of the burger, but there will be only 1,000 units.
You’ve heard of wedding crashers, but Joey DiJulio is a stag party crasher — of sorts.
For weeks, the Seattle man found himself getting emails from people he didn’t know about a bachelor party in Philadelphia and a groom he didn’t know.
It turned out he had been mistaken for a friend of the groom with a similar last name.
When he told the group their mistake, groom Jeff Minetti figured, why not still invite him. The Philadelphia estate agent asked him to the stag party on March 28 and even the wedding on May 2.
Joey subsequently went online to tell his story — and raise money to cover his travel.
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