Cannibalism Scare (Sierra Leone)

http://www.awoko.org/2010/11/25/cannibalism-scare-grips-bo/

Awoko [Sierra Leone]
25 November 2010

Cannibalism scare grips Bo

By Easmon Moiguah

Parents and residents of Bo and its environs have for the past two weeks been in fear for the safety of their loved ones especially their children as rumours of cannibalism circulate around the township.

Play grounds were abandoned as children were kept indoors and parents had anxious moments waiting for their children to return home from school. So far there has not been a single case of cannibalism in the area. [...]

http://www.cocorioko.net/?p=4887

Cocorioko
26 November 2010

Ritual murder and Cannibalism scare hit SLPP strongholds, as Borfima Society and human baboons become active once again

[...] According to our Freetown-based reporters, the ritual murder and cannibalism scare have also been fuelled by reports of the sightings of human baboons who have been seen at night in some villages and towns. Human baboons are real human beings disguised in baboon skins and they specialize in capturing innocent people from whom they extract parts for ritual purposes while consuming their flesh. [...]

Dead Mobsters in Lake Tahoe

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/sunny-slopes-shady-stories-20101118-17yu2.html

Sydney Morning Herald
21 November 2010

Sunny slopes, shady stories

Craig Tansley discovers a most unusual ski resort, complete with legends of dead mobsters and thousands of slot machines.

BELOW this place they call Heavenly, hell awaits those who double-cross the Mob.

Around here, urban legend has lake fishermen reeling in human ears and human hands. They say that far below all that fluffy powder snow and those perfectly spaced pine trees and all that sunshine; and way down below the surface of the huge alpine lake the Indians call Lake of the Sky, lies an underwater wax museum of perfectly preserved Mafia gangsters with bullet holes in the middle of their foreheads. [...]

Janitor Unplugs Life Support System

http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/wellness/wellness/view/20101123-304720/Urban-legends-die-hard

Philippine Daily Inquirer
23 November 2010

Inner Awareness
Urban legends die hard

By Jaime Licauco
Philippine Daily Inquirer

I RECENTLY got a text message titled “Mystery at a Medical Center” from a well known ophthalmologist. The message read:

“ICU patients always died in the same bed on Sundays at 11 a.m., regardless of their medical condition. This puzzled the doctors. No one could solve the mystery. Mr. Licauco and the Ateneo paranormal folks were called. They arrived armed with special photographic equipment, infrared devices and motion sensitive radar to detect any presence, so on Sunday, a few minutes before 11 a.m., doctors and nurses nervously waited outside the ward to know what the mystery was all about. Some were holding wooden crosses and prayer books to ward off evil spirits.

“When the clock struck 11, Mang Jose, a part-time Sunday janitor, entered the room, unplugged the life support system and plugged in the vacuum cleaner.” [...]

Gang Initiation: Murder at Broadway Mall

http://www.wpix.com/news/wpix-mall-hoax,0,2409495.story

WPIX-TV [NYC]
18 November 2010

No Murders Planned For Long Island Mall

Rob Hoell

HICKSVILLE, NY — Police say there is no credibility to a barrage of emails circulating in Nassau County of an impending MS-13 gang initiation where an innocent victim would be randomly singled out to be murdered at the Broadway Mall in Hicksville. [...]

Kool Mints Reduce Blood Alcohol Levels

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/jeff-kennet-advises-drink-drivers-to-eat-kool-mints/story-e6frf7kx-1225955860473

Herald Sun [Melbourne, Australia]
19 November 2010

Jeff Kennet advises drink drivers to eat Kool Mints

Felicity Williams

VICTORIA police have lashed out at Jeff Kennett after the former premier advised drink drivers to eat Kool Mints to reduce their blood alcohol content.

Speaking to radio station 3AW yesterday, Mr Kennett said that people who had been drinking should eat Kool Mints before getting behind the wheel.

"If you have had a couple of drinks and you want to absorb the alcohol quickly, Kool Mints will do it,'' he said. [...]

Handshake Used to Inject Drug

http://www.wavy.com/dpp/news/local_news/va_beach/ominous-e-mail-circulates-in-va.-beach

WAVY-TV [Portsmouth, VA]
9 November 2010

Ominous e-mail circulates in Va. Beach
Police said e-mail was an urban myth

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) - Hundreds of people received an exaggerated e-mail that circulated around Virginia Beach.

The e-mail stated that a man approached a Sandbridge woman at a gas station and asked her for gas money. She gave him a few dollars, but before she left, the man thanked her and squeezed her hand tightly. When he did that, the e-mail stated he injected her with something like a date rape drug. [...]

How to Beat a Breath-Alcohol Test

http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/135405/slurring-falling-and-still-driving

Otago Daily Times [New Zealand]
9 November 2010

Slurring, falling and still driving

By Hamish McNeilly

[...] Asked what urban legends he had heard in connection with drink-driving tests, Dr [Allan] Stowell said he had heard of how didgeridoo players can "beat' a breath-alcohol test by drawing air through the nose at the same time as breathing through their mouths.

"If this is correct and they can satisfy the stringent airflow requirements of the breath-testing devices, which I doubt, they could significantly lower their breath-alcohol test results." [...]

Gas-Propelled Astronauts?

Mary Roach, Packing for Mars (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010), 305-6.

The zero-gravity fart has been a popular orbital pursuit, particularly on all-male flights. One hears tell of astronauts using intestinal gas like rocket propellant to "launch themselves across the middeck," as astronaut Roger Crouch puts it. He had heard the claims and was dubious. "The mass and velocity of the expelled gas," he told me in an email that has forever endeared him to me, "is very small compared to the mass of the human body." Thus it was unlikely that it could accelerate a 180-pound astronaut. Crouch pointed out that an exhaled breath doesn't propel an astronaut in any direction, and the lungs hold about six liters of air -- versus the fart, which, as we learned from Dr. Murphy, holds at most three soda cans' worth.

Or the average person's, anyway. "My genes have blessed me with an extraordinary ability to expel some of the byproducts of digestion," wrote Crouch. "So given that, I thought that it should be tested. In what I thought was a real voluminous and rapidly expelled purge, I failed to move noticeably." Crouch surmised that his experiment may have been compromised by the "action/reaction of the gas passing through the pants." Disappointingly, both his flights were mixed-gender, so Crouch was disinclined to "strip down naked" and try it again.