Bread-throwing girl costs robber his dough
A would-be robber armed with a knife in a supermarket in the UK met an adversary he hadn’t counted on — an 11-year-old girl wielding a loaf of bread. As seen on security footage at an Express Supermarket in the city of Worthing, the girl and her father, who were shopping when a man pulled out a knife, threw squash and a loaf of bread at him. The man, who had just demanded staff empty the register, appears to make one last attempt to grab some cash, but is forced to flee empty-handed. Unfortunately, the robber isn’t the only one who failed to get what he wanted — police still haven’t caught up with him, and he’s still at large. The girl and her father, however, were heralded for their bravery.
Burning love
Firefighters in Nebraska responded to a third floor apartment fire earlier this month only to discover that the fire had been caused by a woman burning love letters from an ex. The Lincoln Police Department said police and firefighters responded to the fire just after 4:30 p.m. There were no injuries, but the flames did cause about $4,000 worth of damage. The 19-year-old woman who started the fire told police she fell asleep while the letters were smoldering on the carpet. She then awoke to the sound of a smoke alarm in her home. The woman was cited for negligent burning.
A noodley blessing
The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is spreading its noodly appendages over a community in Alaska following an effort to exclude people of certain faiths from providing invocations before public meetings. A pastor of the Pastafarian faith, which was established in 2005 as a response to Kansas education hearings on teaching evolution in schools, called upon the Flying Spaghetti Monster to “rouse himself from his stupor and let his noodly appendages ground each assembly member in their seats.” Members of the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly had previously passed a policy barring people of faiths not represented on the Kenai Peninsula from giving invocations, a policy that was found to be unconstitutional, as they used it to bar an atheist, a Jewish woman, and a Satanic Temple member. The Pastafarian pastor concluded his invocation by saying, “Ramen.”
Old school DUI
Police in North Bloomfield, Ohio, had an interesting interaction at 1 in the morning — two Amish people drinking and driving a horse and buggy. The Trumbull County sheriff’s deputies pulled over the vehicle, and the two Amish men fled. In the buggy, the officers found a 12-pack of Michelob Ultra, several open bottles of alcohol, and a stereo system. What were the Amish people doing with the stereo system? Police don’t appear to have divulged this, but we like to imagine that they were bucking their faith to blast loud music across town at that late hour. The buggy was towed and the deputies found someone to take care of the horse until its owner came forward.
Taking on a tough guy
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has been talking tough ever since he became the country’s leader in 2016, as he’s since declared war on drug users and dealers and other criminals and openly supported extrajudicial killings of many of these people. But of late a few things have been getting in Duterte’s face. A noisy gecko was the latest wildlife contributor to an address by the president, interrupting him last week as he launched into another tirade at human rights groups critical of his bloody war on drugs. The reptile’s persistent screeching sparked laughter in the crowd, made up primarily of soldiers, causing Duterte to stop and look to his left to see what the off-camera commotion was. “You brought a gecko here?” he asked an official sitting behind him. In two other speeches earlier this year, Duterte was interrupted by a fly buzzing in his face and by a giant cockroach scuttling on his arm.
A whiff of cannabis, then something else
A British man arrested for drug possession was later strip-searched and told by cops to bend over — and that’s when he retaliated by ripping a fart and asking officers “How do you like that?” Law enforcement officials said the 28-year-old man was picked up by police in Aberdeen after he crashed his car and officers responding to the scene got “a strong whiff of cannabis.” Once placed in handcuffs, the suspect allegedly became belligerent, displaying “aggressive body language” and making a “lewd remark” to police before “intentionally flatulating” in their direction. His defense counsel said her client felt police had overreacted to his minor car crash and smoking cannabis, but the judge wasn’t having any of it: He sentenced the man to 75 hours of unpaid community service work.
Disappointing attendance at Area 51
Although millions responded to the public Facebook event “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us,” only about 40 people had the gall to show up at the highly classified Air Force facility. Long rumored to house evidence of extraterrestrial life, Area 51’s secrets will remain out of reach to tin-foil hat theorists and stargazers alike — for now, at least. According to Lincoln County Sherriff’s office, one arrest was made on the night of the event for public urination. Ten days before the planned raid, two Dutch tourists were arrested for trespassing on land near Area 51. The two were well aware they were defying no trespassing signs but “wanted to look at the facility” anyways, according to the sheriff’s office. The two men were arrested and sentenced to a year in county jail, which was suspended in favor of a three-day imprisonment and a monetary fine.
The UFO videos formerly known as classified
The U.S. Navy just confirmed that three UFO videos that were leaked two years ago are authentic and weren’t meant to be shown to the public. The military listed the weird sightings as unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) instead of UFO, but regardless of which acronym the military prefers, they still don’t have a clue as to what the UAPs actually are in the three videos. Two years ago, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and other news publications revealed that the video was obtained by the To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science, a private research and media firm co-founded by former pop punk rocker Tom DeLonge of Blink 182. In one of the videos, two Navy pilots track an object off the East Coast in 2015, with one of the pilots saying, “Wow! What is that, man” Look at that flying!” In another video, an object called the “Tic Tac,” which was shaped similar to the candy, was spotted descending 60,000 feet to 50 feet in just a few seconds off the coast of California in 2004.
Hair-raising crime
A small band of thieves made off with upwards of $90,000 in merchandise from a wig shop in Miami. Three to four people were involved in a heist earlier this month when they broke into Prime Trading Hair and Wigs by smashing a U-Haul truck into the shop’s warehouse in the early hours of the morning. The shop’s owner said some of the wigs took four months to arrive from India and were worth $2,000. Surveillance footage shows the truck smashing into the warehouse three times and the thieves ransacking the stock room within five minutes before fleeing the scene. The owner said he is insured for his losses and police are investigating the incident.