Construction Worker Mistaken for Panhandler – Doris Day’s Dog Chases Ball Out of Window – St. Joseph Statue Sells Dump

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/sister-my-cup-ain-t-empty-20211005-p58x9t.html

 Sydney Morning Herald, 5 October 2021

 Column 8

 Sister, my cup ain’t empty

Ian McNeilly of Darlinghurst reckons that with the impending return of international travel, “we need to learn how to behave when overseas. I was with my friends Fiona and Greg in New York. Fiona had been a tad wary of the pan-handlers constantly thrusting their coffee cups in her face begging for loose change. After about a week, she grew in confidence, and when she saw a guy with his cup out, she thrust a dollar bill into it. Feeling good, she looked back expecting to see a happy face. Instead, she saw a bemused construction worker, picking a sodden dollar bill out of his full coffee cup. Fiona marched on.”

[Other versions I have seen feature a coin or coins dropped into the full coffee cup, which would make for a more satisfying splash than a bill.]

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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-times-diary-stars-dog-dies-another-day-7lm33cmhf

The Times [London], 6 October 2021

The Times Diary: Star’s dog dies another day 

Patrick Kidd

A memorial service was held at St Bride’s in Fleet Street yesterday for Paul Callan, the flamboyant tabloid journalist who was described by a former editor on the Mirror as “the very best of exuberant rascals”. Many tall tales were shared, some of them even true, but Jeremy Deedes scotched one. Callan did not kill Doris Day’s dog during an interview, he said: he merely showed her how to do it. The interview was in her penthouse and as the photographer snapped away, Callan entertained Day’s dog by bouncing a rubber ball for it to jump and catch.

Two days later a tearful Day called him. She had tried to recreate the trick but in catching the ball her dog had leapt out of the window and fallen 21 floors to its death. Seeing in all tragedy an opportunity, Callan took her out for a drink to sympathise and they ended up in a bar singing Que Sera Sera as a duet.

[A contemporary legend often told by Truman Capote.]

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Stephen J. Binz, St. Joseph, My Real Estate Agent: Patron Saint of Home Life and Home-Selling (Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Publications, 2003), 113-4.

“There was a seller who bought a St. Joseph statue and was very excited; he just knew that his home would sell for sure now. […] After three months the seller was frustrated and threw St. Joseph in the trash. A few days later the frustrated seller opened the newspaper and saw the headline, ‘Local Dump Has Been Sold.’”

Neil Armstrong Converted to Islam

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/10/12/false-persistent-rumor-that-neil-armstrong-converted-islam/

Washington Post

12 October 2018

The false, but persistent, rumor that Neil Armstrong converted to Islam

By Sally Tyler

[…] A less familiar story for most viewers is a persistent urban legend about the first human to reach the lunar surface. I first encountered it in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in the 1990s, when I was traveling alone for the first time. A Somali named Abdullah, who had come to Indonesia to purchase sarongs to sell in his store back in Mogadishu, […] told me, matter of factly, that when Armstrong was visiting the Middle East several years after his Apollo flight, he heard the call of the muezzin and asked what it was. Upon being informed of the sound’s source, the story went, Armstrong said he had heard the very same sound on the moon. In the legend, he converted to Islam on the spot. […]

That was my first exposure to an urban legend that held sway in parts of the world for decades. […]

Rumors of Cow Killings (India)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/15/world/rumors-of-cow-killings-in-india-deepen-rift-between-hindus-and-muslims.html

New York Times

15 October 2014

Rumors of Cow Killings in India Deepen Rift Between Hindus and Muslims

By NIDA NAJAR

MEWAT, India — In villages nestled among freshly razed wheat fields, a group of activists, spurred on by rumors, is hunting killers. They hear that these hunters are rounding up their prey by the thousands, snatching them at midnight from ponds and roadsides. They prod them onto stolen cars with heated iron rods, the whispers say, and butcher them.

The victims of these attacks are cows, deeply revered by many Hindus, and the perpetrators of these alleged assaults are mostly Muslims, making the fight a flash point between India’s largest religious groups on the eve of state elections. […]

Acid Bible

http://www.ep.tc/realist/75/14.html

The Realist, #75, June 1967, p. 14

Case History of the Manchester Caper

By Paul Krassner

[...] During the Free Speech Movement's mass imprisonment, a Bible which had been soaked in an acid solution easily made its way into the cells, and the students just ate those goddam pages right up, here getting high on Deuteronomy, there taking a trip on Exodus. [...]

Richard Dorson, America in Legend (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973), 283.

The greatest Owsley story  tells of his visiting a group of Free Speech Movement activists in jail. Owsley astonished the Berkeley radicals by appearing dressed in a purple velvet suit and carrying a Bible. He opened it solemnly and with a grave countenance proceeded to read passages aloud. When the suspicions of any possible passersby had been allayed, he revealed that the Good Book had been dipped in acid so that the jailmates could "groove" on its pages. Owsley passed it around, each tore out a page from his favorite section -- one from Jeremiah, most from Job -- and sucked on the sheets until all were wiped out.

"I Love Paul" buttons

http://www.ep.tc/realist/64/24.html

The Realist, #64, February 1965, p. 24

No, Virginia

By Alan Whitney

[...] The Pope may or may not be infallible in matters religious and/or political, but he is definitely odds-on when it comes to matters commercial. When he visited New York, lapel buttons, plastic holy medals and pennants bearing the holy image left vendors' boards like birth control pills going to Fort Lauderdale. And, an occasionally reliable source swears to me on the soul of  his contact that this really happened:

A vendor sold out his entire supply of Pope buttons and went to the wholesaler to get more, only to find that there just weren't any more. He pleaded eloquently about this historical opportunity to make a bundle, and the distributor finally did the best he could. He yielded 150 "I Love Paul" buttons intended for Beatles cultists. The vendor took them to Yankee Stadium and sold out in half an hour.

The House of Blue Leaves, (New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1994, p. 33), Act 1.

BUNNY bursts in, flushed, bubbling. She has an enormous "I Love Paul" button on her coat.

BUNNY. He's landed! He's landed! It's on everybody's transistors and you're still here! And the school kids! -- The Pope drives by, he sees all those school kids, he's gonna come out for Birth Control today!! Churches will be selling Holy Diaphragms with pictures of St. Christopher and saints on them. You mark my words. (To us, indicating her button.) They ran out of Welcome Pope buttons so I ran downstairs and got my leftover from when the Beatles were here!

[John Guare's farcical play, first performed in 1966, is set in New York during the 1965 papal visit. Text via Google Books.]

Christians Crucified (Egypt)

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/08/22/jonathan-kay-how-egypts-crucifixion-hoax-became-a-classic-internet-urban-legend/

National Post [Toronto, Canada]

22 August 2012

Jonathan Kay: Egypt's "crucifixion" hoax becomes an instant Internet myth

Jonathan Kay

Have you heard the one about how Christians are being nailed up on crucifixes and left to die in front of the Egyptian presidential place? [palace -- bc] It's a story worth dissecting - not because it's true (it isn't), but because it is a textbook example of how the Internet, once thought to be the perfect medium of truth-seeking, has been hijacked by culture warriors to fire up the naive masses with lies and urban legends. [...]

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/08/24/jonathan-kay-more-on-the-debunked-egyptian-crucifixion-hoax-and-its-2009-precedent/

National Post [Toronto, Canada]

24 August 2012

Jonathan Kay: More on the debunked Egyptian ‘crucifixion’ hoax (and its 2009 precedent)

By Jonathan Kay

Earlier this week, I debunked the story -- spreading like wildfire on WorldNetDaily and other Internet sites -- that Christians were being crucified by the Muslim Brotherhood in front of Egypt’s presidential palace. As I noted, the story was based on nothing more than a social-media rumor that had been posted for a few minutes on the Web site of Sky News Arabic, before an alert Sky editor deleted it. [...]

Over the last day or so, I have had an ongoing email correspondence with Michael Carl, the WND reporter who wrote the crucifixion article. He tells me he is sticking by his story. When I asked him if he has “any information from any of the tens of thousands of people who would have seen an actual ‘crucifixion’ if one really did take place in front of the presidential palace,” he told me that he had. Tantalized, I pressed him for details. Alas, he refused to divulge any of the evidence to me -- or anyone else. If he did, he explained, the Muslim Brotherhood “would kill my sources.” And so ended our correspondence. [...]

Martin Luther King Wrote "Dream" Speech in Liverpool

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/238740/He-had-a-dream-but-it-wasn-t-in-Liverpool

The Daily Express [UK]

4 April 2011

HE HAD A DREAM...BUT IT WASN’T IN LIVERPOOL

By Jan Disley

TOURISM chiefs have been left red-faced over a bizarre claim that Martin Luther King wrote his famous “I have a dream” speech at a Liverpool hotel. The boast appears in a guide that was commissioned by the city council and other official bodies. A map in Liverpool Discovers highlights more than 20 places where famous local people were born or with which they are associated. The guide proclaims: “Martin Luther King visited his supporters in Liverpool three times and the first draft of his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech is alleged to have been written on Adelphi Hotel headed notepaper.” [...]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-1373614/Martin-Luther-King-Red-faces-bizarre-claim-civil-rights-leader-wrote-I-dream-speech-Liverpool.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Daily Mail [UK]

5 April 2011

Raised eyebrows over claim that Martin Luther King wrote 'I have a dream' speech in Liverpool

By Daily Mail Reporter

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-12977162

BBC News [UK]

5 April 2011

Apology over Liverpool origins of Luther King speech

Organisers of an art project have apologised over claims Martin Luther King Jnr's "I have a dream" speech was penned in Liverpool's Adelphi Hotel. [...]

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2011/04/05/historians-probe-martin-luther-king-s-i-have-a-dream-speech-links-to-liverpool-s-adelphi-hotel-plus-watch-video-of-the-speech-100252-28461329/

Liverpool Echo

5 April 2011

Historians probe Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream speech

By John Sutton