Watercooler Stories

Suit: Supers moved woman's underwear

NEW YORK, March 6 (UPI) -- A New York woman claims in a $10 million suit against her former landlords that they rifled through her personal belongings, including her underwear.

Navah Meller, 22, said she left her apartment after she caught building super Ilona Biro, 79, in her apartment without permission, the New York Post reported Thursday.

Meller said Biro, and possibly her husband George Biro, 84, had been entering her apartment while she was not home and reorganizing her belongings. She said she found a tube of toothpaste had been rolled up, care packages from her mother had been opened and put away and laundry -- including her underwear -- had been folded and put in her drawers, the New York Daily News reported Thursday.

"My unmentionables were moved," Meller said. "I felt dirty knowing they had been handled by strangers."

George Biro called Meller's allegations "impossible." He said she had given him a copy of her key so he could fix leaks in the apartment's pipes.

"I don't know anything about her underwear," he said. "She gave me the key and said I could go in."

Man switched at birth visits 2 families

DUNEDIN, New Zealand, March 6 (UPI) -- A man who discovered at age 57 that he had been switched at birth with another baby in a New Zealand hospital says he feels lucky to have two mothers.

Fred George, who now lives in Massachusetts, flew to New Zealand this week to surprise his birth mother, Helen Churchman, on her 82nd birthday, the (Dunedin, New Zealand) Otago Daily Times reported.

George and Jim Churchman, born Christmas Eve 1946 in the same hospital in Dunedin, somehow got assigned to the wrong mothers. Both sometimes wondered in childhood why they were so unlike their siblings -- George a blonde in a family of dark-haired Lebanese and Churchman dark in a family of fair-haired Scots.

Five years ago, DNA testing uncovered the mix-up. George has since written a book, "Switched at Birth: My Life in Someone Else's World."

He plans to spend time this week with all of his relatives, with a big party planned for the Georges and Churchmans, including the two changelings.

"I feel I've two families," George said. "And I've been so lucky to have had two mothers."

Man says he was pulled over for laughing

LIVERPOOL, England, March 6 (UPI) -- A British motorist said he missed an important appointment when he was pulled over by a police officer for laughing behind the wheel.

Gary Saunders of Liverpool said he was talking to his brother-in-law on a hands-free phone and laughing at a joke when he saw a traffic officer flash police lights and signal for him to pull over, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Saunders said he was asked to get out of his car and the police officer said: "Laughing while driving a car can be an offense."

He said the officer questioned him for half an hour before letting him continue driving.

"I couldn't believe it when he told me I'd been pulled over for laughing," he said. "I definitely wasn't speeding so I asked what the problem was and he told me I was laughing too much."

Saunders said the officer took up half hour of his time by ordering him to take his driver's license and other documents to the police station.

"It went from ludicrous to unbelievable. He definitely had a bee in his bonnet about something and I got the brunt of it," he said. "In the end he reluctantly admitted that he had nothing he could accuse me of, but still required me to take my documents to the station."

Survey: Britons lie about reading

LONDON, March 6 (UPI) -- A survey released to coincide with World Book Day suggests two-thirds of Britons have lied about reading classic books such as Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace."

The survey of 1,342 people, commissioned by the organizers of Thursday's World Book Day, found 42 percent of those who admitted lying about reading had claimed to have read George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" without actually cracking it open while 31 percent lied about having read "War and Peace," The Daily Telegraph reported.

An additional 25 percent of the admitted literary liars said they had read "Ulysses" by James Joyce, 24 percent claimed to have read the Bible and 16 percent claimed to have read Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary."

Jonathan Douglas, director of Britain's National Literacy Trust, said people claim to have read books so they can seem more intelligent to potential mates.

"Research that we have done suggests that the reason people lied was to make themselves appear more sexually attractive," he said. "People like to be seen to be readers. It makes them look good. They said they were prepared to lie about what they'd read to impress people, particularly when it came to potential partners."