UPI NewsTrack Quirks in the News

Freed Chilean miner to visit Graceland

MEMPHIS, Oct. 13 (UPI) -- Edison Pena, the 12th miner freed after 69 days underground in Chile, kept morale up by singing Elvis Presley songs; now he's going to Graceland.

Pena, who led Elvis singalongs for the miners, got a special invitation to visit Elvis's Graceland estate around Christmas, CNN reported Wednesday.

"A trip to Graceland in Memphis could be just the escape he needs after such a long period of time underground," Kevin Kern, a spokesman for Elvis Presley Enterprises told the cable news broadcaster.

The all-expenses paid trip to Tennessee for two is a gift from the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau. Kern said the Christmas decorations will be up at Graceland from Nov. 19 through Jan. 9, the day after the anniversary of Elvis's birthday.

Elvis Presley Enterprises sent Elvis music to Chile for Pena, a mining consultant who also passed the 69 days by jogging two miles a day in accessible tunnels.

Grinch steals kids' pumpkins

INVER GROVE HEIGHTS, Minn., Oct. 13 (UPI) -- Like Christmas displays in stores, the Grinch came early this year, stealing pumpkins grown by a class of Minnesota third-graders, their teacher says.

Lori Gustafson, a teacher at Salem Hills Elementary School in the St. Paul suburb of Inver Grove Heights, said she had to break the bad news to her students last week that someone had stolen the pumpkins they had been nurturing and looking forward to harvesting.

"I felt kind of sad, maybe a little mad at whoever did it," 9-year-old Maya Merritt was quoted as saying in a St. Paul Pioneer Press story Wednesday.

"We were going to carve the pumpkins," 8-year-old Jacob Lindberg added.

One of the missing pumpkins was called "Pump," so-named because Jacob had started etching the word pumpkin on its surface only to be interrupted by rain after the first four letters.

Pump "was very special to all of us," Gustafson said.

Teachers and students at the school are now figuring out where they'll get more pumpkins for their Halloween-season class projects.

Costume based on job-quitting steward

NEW YORK, Oct. 13 (UPI) -- A New York retailer is selling a Halloween costume based on the job-quitting stunt of a JetBlue flight attendant.

Ricky's NYC said the costume, based on former flight attendant Steven Slater's August jump down the emergency slide after grabbing a beer from the plane, includes a shirt, tie and a bandage to represent the head wound Slater reportedly incurred from a passenger's carry-on luggage, USA Today reported Wednesday.

"Don't forget to grab a few beers on the way out," Ricky's said in the online ad for the $39.99 costume.

Family branches tie Obama, Palin, Limbaugh

PROVO, Utah, Oct. 13 (UPI) -- The family tree for U.S. President Obama shows he's related -- distantly -- to two of his harshest critics, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, Ancestry.com said.

Obama and Palin -- the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2008 -- are 10th cousins, related by a common ancestor named John Smith, the family history resource based in Provo, Utah, said on its Web site Wednesday.

Richard Terrell is the common link between Obama and conservative talk show host Limbaugh, who are actually 10th cousins once removed.

In another instance of quirkiness, Ancestry.com researchers said Palin, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and conservative author Ann Coulter are cousins through Englishman John Lathrop, exiled to the United States for becoming a minister of an illegal independent church.

Obama's family tree also extends to former President George W. Bush, Ancestry.com said. The two are 11th cousins through common ancestor Samuel Hinckley.

"It is not unusual," Ancestry.com genealogist Anastasia Tyler said, "to find family members on different ends of the political spectrum. This election season is an ideal time to look into the family trees of our candidates and their critics to learn more about the ties that make them all part of this great country."