Bill Cosby Pays for Annual Lobster Dinner

http://dailycollegian.com/2011/10/27/lobster-dinner-myth-debunked/

The Massachusetts Daily Collegian [University of Massachusetts Amherst]
27 October 2011

Lobster dinner myth debunked

By: Steffi Porter

[...] “Everyone knows that Bill Cosby donates lobsters to UMass every Halloween. It’s a UMass tradition,” said sophomore Audrey Coulter. “I assume it’s because he’s a UMass alum. He just wants to give us lobsters for a happy Halloween.”

But while some are avid believers in the Cosby theory, others are skeptical and suspicious that Cosby does not actually have any involvement with the annual lobster dinner. [...]

Clown Stabs People (Tyneside, UK)

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/north-east-news/breaking-news/2011/10/25/rumours-of-clown-stab-attack-on-tyneside-are-false-72703-29658223/

ChronicleLive.co.uk
25 October 2011

Rumours of clown stab attack on Tyneside are false

ODD rumours that a man dressed as a clown had been spotted stabbing people on Tyneside have turned out to be false.

Our website was inundated with people searching for news on the supposed incidents after Twitter and Facebook lit up with reports about the attacks.

Some people claimed the knifings had taken place in Whickham, Gateshead, while others said the man had been spotted in Newcastle city centre. [...]

Cheating Couple's Encounter (Kenya)

http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/politics/InsidePage.php?id=2000045422&cid=349

The Standard [Kenya]
23 October 2011

Man bumps into his wife at a lodging

By PETER KAMURI

A husband and wife who had been cheating on each other literally caught themselves pants down when they bumped into each at a lodging in the expansive Karagita estate near Naivasha Town. [...]

Pedestrian Enters & Exits Car Blocking Crosswalk

Fun Fare: A Treasury of Reader's Digest Wit and Humor (Pleasantville, NY: The Reader's Digest Association, 1949), p. 245.

At a busy intersection in Oklahoma City, as a traffic signal turned red, a four-door sedan rolled to a stop, completely blocking the pedestrian crosswalk. Instead of following a flow of pedestrians around the front and rear of the car, a middle-aged man walked straight ahead, opened the read door, climbed through the car and stepped out the other door, leaving both doors wide open, while amid the honking of horns the driver stared bewildered after his retreating form. -- Oscar E. Gram.

http://www.timescolonist.com/entertainment/senior+versus+crosswalk/5586185/story.html

Times Colonist [Victoria, BC, Canada]
21 October 2011

The senior versus the crosswalk hog

By Steve Wallace, Times Colonist

When you teach driving for as long as I have, you see some very strange things. Every professional driver who spends a lifetime behind the wheel has stories to tell. Here is one of mine.

As my student driver pulled up to a four-way stop, I noticed a vehicle opposite us had also stopped, but was significantly over the crosswalk line. Cross traffic had interrupted his path through the intersection.

A senior was attempting to cross the street by walking between the freshly painted white lines delineating the crosswalk. She became so incensed that she walked in front of the driver's car and started to pound on his hood with her umbrella as she scolded him for the obvious driving indiscretion. [...]

She expected the driver to vacate the intersection. More cross traffic, thinking the show was over, further delayed the driver's movement across the intersection.

The senior took a few steps toward the back door of the already embarrassed driver and noticed there was not enough space to walk behind the car. She then proceeded to open the back door and proudly announced: "If I cannot go around you. I will go through you."

She got in the car, slid across the back seat and out the other door and walked away, chastising the driver once again for blocking her walking path. The stunned driver now had both back doors open and was seemingly paralyzed. [...]

U.S Navy Researches Rumors

http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-10-14/news/30282265_1_rumors-low-tech-aliens

San Francisco Chronicle
14 October 2011

Researchers help U.S. military track, defuse rumors

Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writer

[...] [T]he U.S. Navy is paying $1.6 million to San Francisco State University Professor Daniel Bernardi and three Arizona researchers to track, collect and find ways to defuse stories used as weapons. [...]

The U.S. military fails to systematically track rumors, Bernardi said.

To do it right, he'll employ an ethnographic team - people who study cultures - to evaluate the threat of individual rumors, an engineering team to build the rumor database, and analysts to do what analysts do. Finally, a "countermeasures team" will "develop targeted counter-narratives that speak directly to the cultural and religious traditions of relevant populations," Bernardi said. [...]

Diner Chokes on Dog ID Chip

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8824697/Bizarre-urban-myth-ruining-business-at-Chinese-restaurant.html

Daily Telegraph [UK]
13 October 2011

Bizarre urban myth ruining business at Chinese restaurant

By Richard Alleyne

Diners are shunning their Chinese eatery after an urban myth spread around the area that a woman choked on a dog's identification chip as she ate her meal.

The rumour, which began on the internet, is becoming so widespread that the 30-year-old restaurant could go out of business. [...]


The rumour revolves around a woman diner at the China Rose near Doncaster, South Yorkshire, who is said to have choked on an identification microchip from a former racing greyhound. [...]

Tunnels Connected Bars & Brothels (Durango, CO)

http://durangoherald.com/article/20111011/NEWS01/710119926/-1/s

The Durango Herald [CO]
11 October 2011

If tunnel walls could talk
Many stories about spaces more fantasy than fact

By Emery Cowan Herald Staff Writer

There’s a rumor swirling around Durango, and historian Duane Smith has tried to correct it too many times to count.

Though the details differ from person to person, the story goes that there’s a system of tunnels underneath Main Avenue that was used by women of ill repute and their male customers to travel between brothels and bars while remaining hidden from the public and protected from cold winter weather. [...]