Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe SUFFERING SUCCOTASH -- APRIL FOOLS The Aldrich Beef & Ice Cream Parlor in Fredonia, N.Y., treated customers to free tastes of its annual April Fools' Day gag flavor Tuesday -- succotash ice cream. Advertisement The Buffalo News reports it's a 20-year tradition for the restaurant to serve up offbeat ice cream flavors on April 1. Owner Scott Aldrich mixed corn and lima beans with vanilla ice cream and threw in pimentos for color for this year's treat. Past flavor flings included sauerkraut, bacon and eggs, creamed corn, pork and beans and beef gravy. CHECKING ACCOUNTS MORE COSTLY Checking accounts cost more to open, require higher balances to avoid fees and pay less in interest than they used to, according to Bankrate.com's semiannual checking survey. The average minimum balance required to open an account and earn interest is $832.09. That's a 25 percent jump since October 2000 and 14 percent above the $727.62 minimum just six months ago. On average, it requires a minimum balance of $2,964.10 to avoid fees in an interest-bearing checking account and $409.79 in a non-interest account. That's a 14 percent increase in both account types since last fall. The average yield on interest-bearing checking accounts dropped from 0.57 percent to 0.47 percent since last fall's study. Advertisement HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE ELEVATOR The Otis Elevator Co. marked the 150th birthday of the invention of the modern elevator Tuesday. When Elisha Otis starting selling elevators 150 years ago, the thought of a frayed hoisting rope sending riders plunging to their deaths aroused so much dread circus pioneer P.T. Barnum saw an opportunity to astonish a skeptical public. Barnum paid Otis $100 to demonstrate his new "safety" elevators at the 1853 New York Exhibition of Arts and Industry, alongside other cutting edge technology such as the telegraph, the lead pencil, and the latest steam engines and sewing machines. Otis, dressed in a top hat and tails, climbed onto a platform loaded with crates and barrels and was lifted 20 feet into the air. The inch-thick hoist rope was cut. With a snap and a loud crash, the platform fell -- about an inch. Otis's exhibit was pronounced a "showstopper" by the scientific literature of the day, says Kenneth Woronoth, an Otis test tower manager from Connecticut. "In its day, it was very high tech. What exists in elevators today is a refinement of the concept." BONES FOR PEACE The monthly satirical magazine Titanic has encouraged readers to mail bones to U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Fla., in response to her proposal that remains of American soldiers buried in France and Belgium be exhumed and returned to the United States, the Tampa Tribune reports. Advertisement The magazine encouraged readers to send bones with the message: "The boys are coming home." Brown-Waite filed the American Heroes Repatriation Act because she was upset France wouldn't support the United States in its war with Iraq. A smelly package of bones arrived at Brown-Waite's Florida office in Brooksville. A bomb technician X-rayed the package, postmarked from Germany where the magazine originates, and saw what appeared to be chicken bones.
