From (Cape Times, South Africa, 6/13/96) "For several months, our nurses have been baffled to find a dead patient in the same bed every Friday morning" a spokeswoman for the Pelonomi Hospital (Free State, South Africa) told reporters. "There was no apparent cause for any of the deaths, and extensive checks on the air conditioning system, and a search for possible bacterial infection, failed to reveal any clues." "However, further inquiries have now revealed the cause of these deaths.
It seems that every Friday morning a cleaner would enter the ward, remove the plug that powered the patient's life support system, plug her floor polisher into the vacant socket, then go about her business. When she had finished her chores, she would plug the life support machine back in and leave, unaware that the patient was now dead. She could not, after all, hear the screams and eventual death rattle over the whirring of her polisher.
"We are sorry, and have sent a strong letter to the cleaner in question. Further, the Free State Health and Welfare Department is arranging for an electrician to fit an extra socket, so there should be no repetition of this incident. The enquiry is now closed." BTW, the headline of the newspaper story was, "Cleaner Polishes Off Patients."

Police in Belgium does not bother to catch street racers – there are radars with cameras installed on the roads and when someone speeds on the road – the camera takes a picture of the car and its license plate. Then, the ticket is sent by snail mail to the driver’s home address.
Sometime ago, a radar showed that a car was speeding at 200 miles per hour! Of course, the police wanted to see what kind of car that was and checked the picture, but it was empty. The car was too fast for the camera – it drove away before the camera could snap the image.

American military forces analyzed their fights with the Japanese in the second world war and noticed that, in battles where they had fewer forces compared to the Japanese army, they won in more than 50% of them. After further research, they found what made them be so successful: the average length of English words is 4.5 sounds – both vowels and consonants, whereas the average length of Japanese words is around 12.3 sounds. Thus, American commanders were able to direct their armies quicker than their Japanese counterparts. Since then, Americans started giving short names to their military equipment (planes, ships, rockets, etc.), as well as to their adversaries’ military equipment.

In 1873, Christopher Scholes invented the first typewriter. However, it had a flaw – if the typist went too fast, the typewriter would jam. So, in order to solve this issue, Scholes did not try to improve the machine. Instread, he came up with the idea of slowing down the typists’ speed. Thus, the QWERTY keyboard was invented.
So, nowadays, we all use a keyboard that is supposed to make us type slower.

Moviemistakes.com have done a great job at noticing mistakes in movies, specifically things that change as the movie goes on, or things that were overlooked by producers. I have noticed 2 mistakes that need a little analysis:
In “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets”, Dumbledore – the main sorcerer (sorcerer = a male witch, right?) – greets Severus Snape by yelling “Merry Christmas”. This would be equivalent with a priest yelling Satanist greetings…
In “Brother Bear” the moose says “Oh, Jee!” – several hundreds of thousands or even millions of years before Jesus was born. You see, the subject is about times when there were still mammoths on Earth...

In the US, dealing in the exotic wild animals is big business – estimated at about 15 billion annually. These animals are extremely expensive and, even though there are not many people buying them, this amount sounds real.
A guy bought a very young Komodo dragon as a pet. The “pet” kept eating meat and was growing up very fast. Komodo dragons reach 6 feet in length and can weigh up to 150 pounds. Once, the guy came home and was in good mood. He started petting it, but apparently the dragon did not appreciate this and bit the guy’s foot. The bleeding was strong and would not stop, but the guy bandaged the foot and did not worry about it. He noticed, however, that the dragon would follow him everywhere he would go. The stupid guy thought the dragon feels sorry because of the earlier incident . The night after, the guy almost died – the leg swelled and the fever was really bad. Fortunately for him, he called 911 which literally saved his life. You may want to know why the dragon was following the guy around the house? This is the way they hunt. If the prey is too big – they bite one of its legs and then follow it until it dies later. Dragons’ saliva is a combination of very deadly bugs, but they developed immunity against them.
Honestly, I don’t understand people who have lions, tigers, poisonous snakes and other deadly animals as pets. And pay ridiculous money for them. But it’s their choice, of course…

From a state where drunk driving is considered a sport (I won’t tell you which one), comes a true story. A routine police patrol parked outside a local neighborhood tavern.
Late in the evening, the officer noticed a man leaving the bar so intoxicated that he could barely walk. The man stumbled around the parking lot for a few minutes with the officer quietly observing.
After what seemed an eternity and trying his keys on five vehicles, the man managed to find his car which he fell into. He was there for a few minutes as a number of other patrons left the bar and drove off.
Finally he started the car, switched the wipers on and off (it was a dry night), flicked the indicators on then off, tooted the horn and then switched on the lights.
He moved the vehicle forward a few inches, reversed a little and then remained stationary for a few more minutes as some more vehicles left.
At last, he pulled out of the car park and started to drive slowly down the road.
The police officer, having patiently waited all this time, now started up the patrol car, put on the flashing lights, promptly pulled the man over and carried out a breathalyzer test.
To his amazement the breathalyzer indicated no evidence of the man having consumed alcohol at all!
Dumbfounded, the officer said, "I'll have to ask you to accompany me to the police station. This breathalyzer equipment must be broken."
"I doubt it," said the man. "Tonight I'm the designated decoy."

From Chile:
On a weekend, a young Chilean woman was at home and decided to take care of her look. She put on hair rollers, a strawberry cosmetic mask on her face and cucumbers on her eyes. Suddenly, someone rang the doorbell. She did not want to open the door because she was not expecting anyone and also she did not look her best at that moment. In a short while, she heard that someone is trying to unlock her door, and then the door opened. She understood that this was a robber, got very scared and quickly hid in a closet. When the robber opened the closet, she started screaming as hard as she could. The guy got so scared that he dropped dead of a heart attack.

I lived in Philadelphia for about 4 years. I worked in the downtown (in Two Liberty Place – Philadelphians know it). One summer, I could not manage to get a delivery from UPS because I could not be at home before 5 PM, so I decided to pick up the parcel from their warehouse. The warehouse is located on Oregon Avenue (South Philly), near the Delaware River.
It was a nice sunny afternoon, I had plenty of time and nothing to do after work, so I decided to walk down to Oregon Avenue from work (about 40 blocks) – to “see the city”. As I was walking south, I noticed that the houses were getting uglier, and the neighborhood did not look very safe. Luckily, I saw a police officer and I approached him with just one question: “Is it safe to walk between between this place (where the officer was) and Oregon Avenue”? To which he replied: “Well, Oregon Avenue is ok, but between here and that street you’re gonna get robbed and killed. Better get a cab or catch a bus”… Well, I was a little shocked by his honest response and caught a bus as fast as I could. This is half of the story ;)
As I was walking on the sidewalk along Oregon Avenue, I heard a woman screaming and saw that a young guy was pulling her purse from her hands. He finally got it and started walking towards me. I decided to get the purse back, so I looked him straight in the eyes and with my look I let him know that I was going to confront him (stupid decision). He understood my intentions and ran across the street. I ran after him and another guy from the other side of the street also started running with me after the robber. As we were about 10 feet from him, he suddenly pulled a gun with his right hand but did not turn – he just kept running…
Of course, as soon as we saw the gun, we stopped and turned back screaming to other people on the sidewalk “He’s got a gun! He’s got a gun!” – because they also started to run after the guy.
Needless to say, now I am really careful about the places I walk in…