Watercooler Stories

Museum accepts miner's aging orange

STAFFORD, England, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- An orange that had been the intended snack of a British miner who died after an 1891 explosion has been donated to a Staffordshire, England, museum.

The Potteries Museum said the dried-up orange had been packed in the lunch box of Joseph Roberts on the day he was injured in the explosion at a Stoke-on-Trent colliery, the BBC reported Tuesday.

Roberts succumbed to his injuries in a hospital.

The lunch box was kept by the family and handed down through the generations to great-granddaughter Pam Bettaney, who donated the box and its citrus contents to the museum.

Museum spokeswoman Deb Klemperer said the story behind the fruit made it a perfect fit for the museum.

"(Roberts') death was just one of many of the tragedies of the time. He was just one of many who died while working down the mines," Klemperer said.

Compost raises stink among neighbors

LEWES, England, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- A British man has been fined for spreading dirt about his neighbors in a dispute that arose over a compost pile.

The court Monday ordered Tobi Butler to 200 hours of community service and pay about $2,400 in court costs after he released a letter mistakenly delivered to his home about his neighbors being in arrears in their mortgage payments, the Daily Telegraph reported Tuesday.

Butler, head of a sports equipment company, photocopied the letter and sent it to friends, neighbors and colleagues of Marc and Anna Koska in an attempt to humiliate them after they argued about the lawn waste heap, the British newspaper reported. Butler was accused of putting "foul-smelling" compost near the Koskas' front door and creating noise nuisance.

The Koskas, in fact, weren't delinquent and the letter mailed erroneously, they told the Lewes Crown Court in East Sussex.

During sentencing, the Judge Anthony Scott-Gall told Butler, "This was a very mean, nasty little thing to do. You circulated this letter to those in business with him, friends and neighbors to show him up as a man of straw."

Dead deer in restaurant kitchen's a no-no

GREENCASTLE, Ind., Oct. 30 (UPI) -- An Indiana restaurant was ordered temporarily closed and faces a fine for allowing employees to haul the carcass of a dead deer into the kitchen.

Putnam County, Ind., health inspectors were called last week to the La Charreada restaurant in Greencastle, west of Indianapolis, after an electrician spotted the animal, which had been skinned and beheaded after being hit by a car, the Greencastle Banner Graphic reported.

Restaurant spokesman Socrates Montano told the newspaper the employees weren't butchering the carcass in the kitchen but said they have been fired regardless.

The inspection report said the deer posed a "gross unsanitary occurrence and condition," and the restaurant was ordered throw away all food that had been present and to sanitize the kitchen before it was allowed to reopen last Friday.

La Charreada will be on probation for six months and receive a fine, which has yet to be determined, the report said.

Red Sox have tall fan at Franklin Park Zoo

BOSTON, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- The fan base of the World Series champion Boston Red Sox grew by one at the Franklin Park Zoo, where staff named a new baby giraffe "Sox."

Born Oct. 25 -- the day of Game 2 of the Sox's four-game sweep of the Colorado Rockies -- inside the giraffe barn at the Zoo, Sox weighed 154 pounds, and measured 6 feet, 2 inches, the zoo said in a release. Her parents, Beau and Jana, among the two most genetically valuable Masai giraffes in captivity in North America, were brought together in 2004 to breed.

“Our beloved New England institutions -- Franklin Park Zoo and the Red Sox -- both have a reason to celebrate," said John Linehan, Zoo New England president and chief executive.

Beau and Jana were bred as part of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Giraffe Population Management Plan.

“We’re proud of Jana, for a delivery as perfect as (Boston pitcher) Josh Beckett’s!” Linehan said.