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Radioactive Rattler
Sometimes a routine traffic stop (in this case, for an expired license plate) is the most interesting incident in a cop’s day. So it was on Wednesday, July 10, for Guthrie, Ok., police officers. Around 11 a.m., they stopped a car driven by Stephen Jennings, 40, who had a friend, Rachael Rivera, 30, in the front seat and a timber rattlesnake in a terrarium on the back seat. Jennings told police he had a gun in the car at about the same time they identified the car as stolen, reported KFOR. Upon further search, officers found an open bottle of whiskey (next to the gun) and a container of “yellowish powder” labeled “uranium.” “The uranium is the wild card in that situation,” Guthrie Police Sgt. Anthony Gibbs explained. Jennings told police he was trying to create a “super snake” with the radioactive substance. Charges for Jennings included possession of a stolen vehicle and transporting an open bottle of liquor. Because it was rattlesnake season, his valid hunting and fishing license absolved him of any charges related to the snake. Police are still trying to figure out what charges might be brought regarding the uranium (yes, it actually was uranium).
Dancing on Gudin’s Grave
Gen. Charles-Étienne César Gudin de La Sablonnière, one of Napoléon Bonaparte’s “favorite generals,” was killed by a cannonball on Aug. 22, 1812, during the failed French invasion of Russia. Posthumously, he got the star treatment: a street named after him in Paris, his name carved on the Arc de Triomphe and his heart removed and brought home to be placed in a Paris cemetery chapel. But on Saturday, July 6, Reuters reported, a team of archaeologists found what they believe are his remains buried (ironically) beneath the foundation of a dance floor in Smolensk, Russia. Their first clue? Gudin had lost one of his legs below the knee in battle and, indeed, the skeleton was missing its left leg. Scientists will compare the skeleton’s DNA with living descendants of Gudin’s to confirm their suspicions.
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Ready to Take the Plunge
People in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) depend heavily on expensive desalination for drinking water. But an Emirati businessman has a novel idea for providing fresh water to the Arabian gulf. Abdulla Alshehi wants to borrow an iceberg from Antarctica, EuroNews reported in May. For six years, Alshehi has been working on a plan to tow an iceberg, as much as 1.25 miles long and a third of a mile wide, the entire 5,500 miles to the UAE coast. He estimates the journey will take 10 months, and the iceberg may lose about 30% of its mass en route, but he believes its presence could provide drinking water to about a million people for five years. A trial run this year will move a smaller iceberg at a cost of $60-80 million. Alshehi believes the cost of the larger project will be $100-150 million.
Mr. Guo in the Kitchen with a Ladle
Nearly a year after chef Xiu Bin Wang, 33, was found dead in his room above China Chef carryout restaurant in Brockenhurst, Hampshire, England, police are still trying to figure out how he died, Metro News reported. He apparently suffered a “forceful blow” to the head, and officials first fingered Zhu Long Guo, a colleague at the restaurant who admitted to striking Wang with a ladle during an altercation. “A ladle was seized, and there was a thorough investigation,” Detective Constable Brad Wanless reported at an inquest on Thursday, July 11. But the coroner could not make a definite determination: “I do not accept that there is a clear causal link between the admitted blow with the ladle and the death of Mr. Wang,” senior coroner Grahame Short concluded.
South of the Border
A. Janus Yeager, 49, of Dixon, Ill., was arrested on Tuesday, July 9, as she motored toward home with an inflated kiddie pool on the roof of her SUV. CBS2 Chicago reported that Dixon police officers pulled Yeager over after being alerted by other drivers to the fact that there were two children in the pool atop Yeager’s vehicle as she drove home. She told police she took the pool to a friend’s house to inflate it, then had her daughters ride inside it “to hold it down on the drive home.” Yeager was charged with two counts of endangering the health or life of a child and two counts of reckless conduct.
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