Fun_People Archive
18 Oct
Excerpts from WhiteBoard News, 10/17

Date: Tue, 18 Oct 94 16:39:57 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: Excerpts from WhiteBoard News, 10/17

This item comes by way of Vince LaPoint:

West Seneca, New York:

A runaway, unmanned bulldozer rumbled over railroad
tracks, barely missed a video store and two sets of
power lines, and plowed through 16 cars in an
Oldsmobile-Subaru dealership.

"What a mess," said Ron Corbo, who left his dealership
Saturday just a few minutes before the bulldozer showed
up. "There's a half-a-million dollars worth of cars
right there."

No one was hurt by the bulldozer's half-mile trip,
which began shortly after construction workers left a
demolition site.

Police said someone started up the bulldozer, drove it
for a while and then jumped off.

The vehicle then took a path of its own. After passing
within 15 feet of a Blockbuster Video store, it
disappeared in some underbrush, reappeared climbing a
hill and headed toward Corbo's dealership.

It first ripped into a Subaru, then pushed another car
on top of a Honda that had been taken in on a trade.
The bulldozer then moved down the line, climbing cars
and crunching them flat or ripping off their back ends.

Among the casualties were two Subarus bought by a
father and his son one hour before the accident and a
fully loaded, $32,000 Oldsmobile 98 that was flattened
into a 3-foot-high metal pancake.

Finally, someone jumped onto the bulldozer and shut off
the ignition.

No arrests had been made. Corbo said it could have been
worse.

"Another two feet to the left," he said, "and it would
have gone right through this garage door, wiped out
this car on the lift and gone right out the other
side."
==========

This item comes by way of Tom Glaab:

Phoenix, Arizona:

White-water rafters confronting Quartzite Falls on the
Salt River could swallow their fear and take the
plunge, or get out and carry their boats around it.
Eight men, prosecutors say, took a third route: They
dynamited it.

The wildest rapid on the river has been reduced to a
mild thrill ride.

A federal grand jury on Thursday charged a river guide
and seven other men with conspiracy and destruction of
federal property by means of an explosive.

Conspiracy carries up to five years in prison and a
$250,000 fine.  Destruction of property is punishable
by 20 years and a $250,000 fine.

The rapid spanned the bottom of the Salt River Canyon
in the Tonto National Forest about 100 miles northeast
of Phoenix.  Quartzite Falls was what rafters call a
Class 6 rapid, the most challenging.
==========

New Delhi, India:

New Delhi's Press Club has become the home of a large
wounded hawk with an injured wing after the city's only
bird hospital refused to treat the predator because it
is a meat eater.

The clinic, managed by a strictly vegetarian Jain
community, only cares for "vegetarian" birds like
pigeons, sparrows and parrots.

The hawk seems content in its new home, where it is
kept uncaged.  It is allowed to spend afternoons under
a silk tree, and sleeps in a mulberry bush.  The hawk
has recovered enough to attempt short flights after
being fed an unspecified diet.
==========

Arlington, Washington:

Welcome Michelle Carrera Anzures, born about 4:00 AM
Monday in her parents' 1987 Porsche.

Julie Anzures and her husband, Robert, were enroute to
a birth center in Arlington when the baby decided she
was ready to meet her parents.  She joins brother
Jeffrey, 5, and sister Lindsey, 9.  Both of those
children were delivered after longer labors, Julie
Anzures said.

Soon after the Anzures left I-5 headed towards
Arlington, Julie told her husband she was trying to
hold on, but might not make it.  Michelle, who weighed
7 pounds, 5 ounces, was delivered in one swoosh, thanks
to large maternity pants Anzures was wearing.

She was sitting in the front seat and caught the baby.

"It was so nice," she said.  "Nobody else was there."

The couple continued to the birth center and went home
later that day.

By the way, the baby's middle name is in honor of the
car, a Carrera model, that Julie Anzures gave her
husband to note their recent 10th wedding anniversary.
==========

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© 1994 Peter Langston