Thursday Breakfast Bender
Welcome to April 3! On this date 35 years ago, according to Wikipedia, Motorola researcher Martin Cooper placed the first ever call on a handheld mobile phone.
Here is your Thursday Top 5:
5) Whacking Day Down Under?
Australian MP Shane Knuth calls them "the most disgusting creature known to man," and he thinks the citizens of Queensland should do something about it. So, taking a page from The Simpsons, Knuth is proposing a special day for residents to hunt and kill the poisonous cane toad, according to reports. He is calling it Toad Day Out and says people should use "humane" means of killing the creatures, like putting them in the freezer.
4) Smithsonian Not Smarter Than 5th Grader
Washington's beloved museum of natural history has been shown up by an 11-year-old. According to the Kalamazoo Gazette, Kenton Stufflebeam of Allegan, Mich., was the first person to notice that a notation in the museum's Tower of Time mistakenly identified the Precambrian as an "era." I know! Like most of us, however, I was too distracted or polite to point out that the Precambrian, as the Smithsonian admitted in a letter to Stufflebeam, denotes not a specific era but a "dimensionless unit of time, which embraces all the time between the origin of Earth and the beginning of the Cambrian Period of geologic time." Stufflebeam noticed the glaring error during a family trip over Christmas break.
3) Double Divorce
They say a marriage takes a lifetime to build, but apparently it can take less than five minutes to tear down. Malaysian businessman Roslan Ngah and his two wives were successfully divorced in three minutes flat on Tuesday, according to the New Straits Times. Yes, Tuesday was April Fool's Day, but reports indicate that the divorces are for real.
2) And That's the Way It Was
Though considered a venerable and respected news magazine, it turns out 60 Minutes was pretty hardcore back in the day. According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, the show's creator, Don Hewitt, once ordered Dan Rather to attack and rob Abraham Zapruder, who filmed the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Hewitt admitted to telling the former CBS newsman to "'sock him in the mouth,' 'grab his film' recording the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, make a copy, apologize to him and then give it back."
1)Strong, Proud and Loud
A man in southeastern England after has been fined for grunting too loudly and dropping his weights during a workout. Giran Jobe was reportedly ordered to pay $140 after neighbors complained his exercise routine was in violation of a noise abatement order he had been served in 2007. "I don't play loud music, I don't have parties and I don't stamp around," the 36-year-old was quoted saying. "All I do is exercise and work out with my weights. I am trying to keep fit. I cannot believe I got taken to court for exercising." According to witnesses, noise levels reached 100 decibels, or as loud as a rock concert.
And for dessert, here is your Moment of Schadenfreude:
By Emil Steiner | April 3, 2008; 6:00 AM ET | Category: OFF/beat
