It can be nerve-wracking handing your car keys to a total stranger at a valet station. You don’t know if they’re responsible drivers, what their definition of “gentle” is, or often where your car is headed. If all parking valets were trustworthy, there wouldn’t be a need for the “valet key” that prevents one from […]
Category Archives: Odd News
Prison Break Odd News
5,113 Nuclear Warheads
The United States has 5,113 nuclear warheads in its stockpile and “several thousand” more retired warheads awaiting the junkpile, the Pentagon said Monday in an unprecedented accounting of a secretive arsenal born in the Cold War and now shrinking rapidly. The Obama administration disclosed the size of its atomic stockpile going back to 1962 as […]
10 Biggest Bankruptcies In U.S. History
Lehman Brothers Assets upon filing: $691 billion Date of filing: Sept. 15, 2008 Description: Investment bank What happened next: Within days of its filing, Lehman’s North American business was taken over by UK bank Barclays; Japan’s Nomura Holdings snagged its international operations. Washington Mutual Assets upon filing: $328 billion Date of filing: Sept. 26, 2008 […]
Cyber Monday
Cyber Monday shoppers: 4 million per minute Online traffic surges 43% as Americans hunt for bargains from the comfort of their desk or home. NEW YORK — Not satisfied with your holiday weekend shopping? Don’t worry, it’s Cyber Monday. It is the day that e-tailers will furiously push big discounts, free gift cards, free shipping […]
Australian physicist spots dictionary error
An Australian physicist has uncovered an error in dictionary definitions that has likely stood uncorrected for a century. University of Queensland academic Stephen Hughes found that entries for the word ‘siphon’ incorrectly said atmospheric pressure is the force that allows the device to move liquids from one place to another. “It is gravity that moves […]
Wanna Buy Nicolas Cage’s Money Pit?
Apparently not. At an auction held Wednesday in Los Angeles, no one was willing to throw down the minimum bid of $10.4 million. Debt-ridden movie star Nicolas Cage lost his Bel Air mansion to foreclosure on Wednesday. The courthouse auction was a flop, as no one was willing to make the minimum $10.4 million bid. […]
Larry Gelbart Dies on 9/11
Larry Gelbart, the American comedy writer who died on September 11 aged 81, developed the hit television series M*A*S*H and co-authored the long-running Broadway and West End farce A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum as well as the Oscar-nominated screenplay for the film Tootsie (1982). Hailed as arguably the most successful […]
Is Facebook Growing Up Too Fast?
WHEN Facebook signed up its 100 millionth member last August, its employees spread out in two parks in Palo Alto, Calif., for a huge barbecue. Sometime this week, this five-year-old start-up, born in a dorm room at Harvard, expects to register its 200 millionth user. That staggering growth rate — doubling in size in just […]