Watercooler Stories

Woman's body found in Chicago morgue

CHICAGO, June 19 (UPI) -- The case of a missing body at the Cook County morgue in Chicago was solved Tuesday when the woman's body was found behind another larger woman's body.

"Apparently she was overlooked," said Rosemary Fogell, a cousin of Rosalie Schultz, whose body had been missing for a day.

Staff at the medical examiner's office called area funeral homes and searched high and low for the 64-year-old woman's body only to find it where it was supposed to be -- on a top shelf in the refrigeration room, the Chicago Tribune reported.

She had been found dead Thursday in her apartment and was taken to the morgue for autopsy. It was determined she died of heart disease and heat stress.

"Rosalie would have laughed at all this," Fogell said. "Of course, she would have reacted emotionally at first, but then she would have laughed and seen the humor."

Body ID'd after a year in morgue

MADINAH, Saudi Arabia, June 19 (UPI) -- The mystery of a Saudi cab driver missing for more than a year has been solved with the identification of his body in a morgue where it had been all along.

The family of Eid Hamad Salim Al-Arawi, 55, said he simply disappeared one day, Arab News reported Tuesday. It turns out he had fallen ill and died suddenly at Madinah's King Fahd Hospital but officials there were unable to track down his relatives and his body had been lying in a refrigerator in a morgue until this week.

"The problem was due to the fact that an employee had misspelled the name of my uncle. Instead of 'Hamad,' he wrote 'Ahmad' and the body stayed in the morgue for a whole year," a nephew was quoted as saying by Al-Madinah newspaper.

He said the family had gone to police, who checked area hospitals without any luck finding Al-Arawi.

The nephew said the error not only caused the family distress and financial hardship but also three of Al-Arawi's daughters were unable to marry because he was their legal guardian and since he was listed as "missing" and not "dead" they couldn't acquire permission to marry.

Scottish janitor's piano talent surfaces

GLASGOW, Scotland, June 19 (UPI) -- A janitor at a Scottish university turned out to have a hidden talent when staffers used a Web cam to capture him practicing on the chapel piano.

Aleksander Kudajcyk, who began studying at the age of 4, turned out to be so good that faculty at Glasgow University would log on to their computers when he practiced, the BBC reported. It turns out he was a professional musician in Katowice, Poland, even though he had to clean floors in Glasgow.

"I couldn't believe it -- he was playing the most amazing music," said Joan Keenan, secretary to the chaplaincy.

Kudajcyk now practices for up to six hours a day in the chapel. He was to give his second performance at Glasgow's West End Festival Tuesday, playing pieces by Frederic Chopin, the Polish master of the piano.

Vatican considers: How would Moses drive?

VATICAN CITY, June 19 (UPI) -- The Vatican, surrounded by Rome, a city with some of the world's most aggressive drivers, issued a "10 commandments for motorists" Tuesday.

The document from the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerant People warns that the car can be "an occasion of sin" -- something pedestrians trying to cross a busy Rome street are well aware of. The council suggests Roman Catholics make the sign of the cross before putting the key in the ignition, the BBC reports.

Among the warnings, which are intended for drivers worldwide, are "Thou shalt not drink and drive" and "Thou shalt not make rude gestures from behind the steering wheel." Drivers are also urged to be courteous, observe speed limits and help crash victims.

"We know that as a consequence of transgressions and negligence, 1.2 million people die each year on the roads," said Cardinal Renato Martino, who heads the council. "That's a sad reality, and at the same time a great challenge for society and the Church."