Saturday, March 22, 2008

Mustang: Lost in 1970, found in 2008...

A man in Los Angeles is getting his stolen Mustang back 38 years after it was taken.

The vehicle has an extra 300,000 miles (482,780 kilometres) and a different paint job, but Eugene Brakke's 1965 Mustang is evidently running just fine.

Brakke reported the car stolen to Burbank police in May 1970. One month later, a Long Beach teenager named Judy Smongesky received the car as a high school graduation gift from her father, who had bought it at a used car dealer.

Smongesky, who now lives in San Diego, said Thursday she had been driving and maintaining the car for nearly four decades and only learned that it had been stolen when she recently prepared to sell it. San Diego police verified the car was hot.

"It's his car, even though he had it for four years and I had it for 38," Smongesky said. "He seems like a real nice gentleman, though."

Brakke found out Smongesky had twice rebuilt the engine and painted the Mustang from its old gold colour to silver-blue.

"He wasn't too happy with that," Smongesky said. The pair planned to meet up to transfer the car soon. "It was hard but it was the right thing to do," Smongesky said. "I haven't really cried yet, but when he drives it away, I think I'll fall apart."

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Hopes go up the air...quite literally

It is the one moment every man wants to get right -- and which London floor-fitter Lefkos Hajji could hardly have got more wrong.

The luckless 28 year-old's dreams of giving his sweetheart, Leanne, 26, the ultimate proposal have literally vanished into thin air. Hajji, of Hackney, east London, had concealed a $12,000 engagement ring inside a helium balloon.

The idea was that she would pop the balloon as he popped the question. But as he left the shop, on March 14, a gust of wind pulled the balloon from his hand and he watched the ring -- and quite possibly the affections of his girlfriend -- sailing away over the rooftops. "I couldn't believe it," he told The Sun newspaper.

Book returned after more than 100 years!

A Finnish library-goer apparently thought 'better late than never' and quietly returned a book on loan for more than 100 years to a library in Vantaa, in southern Finland.

The library had long since lost track of the loan but welcomed back to its collections the bound copy of a 1902 volume of Vartija, an active religious monthly periodical at the time. "We are unclear when exactly it was borrowed and who returned it. There weren't any documents with it," librarian Minna Saastamoinen said.

"There is an old note attached to the book which says there is a fine of 10 pennies a week for late returns," she added. The library sticker inside the cover, and the old-fashioned handwriting on it, showed the book was last officially loaned out at the beginning of the last century, she said.

Man releases fish, catches it 25 years later...

Some people catch fish and release them. Bill Wengert releases them and then catches them a quarter-century later.

In April 1983, Wengert and other state Game and Fish Department biologists stocked some 12,000 young trout in the Flaming Gorge Reservoir in southwest Wyoming, USA.

Game and Fish spokeswoman Lucy Wold said Wengert was ice fishing recently on the 91-mile (146-kilometer)-long reservoir and caught a 23-inch (58-centimeter) Mackinaw trout, a type of lake trout.

Wengert noticed the trout's right pelvic fin had been clipped, indicating it was a hatchery fish that had been stocked. Examining historical stocking data, Wengert determined the fish was stocked on April 14, 1983.

I may have actually clipped the fins on this very fish, and I know I was driving the barge when the fish were stocked, nearly 25 years ago," Wengert said.

Wengert, a 35-year veteran of the agency, estimated the trout was 26 years old because stocked fish spend a year in a hatchery before being released. But he said it was very skinny, weighing only 2.5 pounds (1.13 kilograms), compared to another trout released at the same time that weighed 17 pounds (7.7 kilograms) when it was caught in 2004.

He said the trout will allow fishery biologists "an opportunity to learn more about fish genetics, age and growth of lake trout in the reservoir."

Winemaker's nose insured for $8 million...

The Lloyd's of London insurance market has insured the nose of a leading wine maker and taster for 5 million euros ($7.9 million), covering the Bordeaux producer against the loss of his nose and sense of smell.

Lloyd's is famous for creating policies for giant corporations but also for insuring celebrity limbs, from Fred Astaire's legs to the hands of Rolling Stones' Keith Richards.

It said on Tuesday that Ilja Gort, the Dutch owner of Chateau de la Garde in Bordeaux, producer of Tulipe Wines, said his nose could distinguish millions of different scents and was essential to guarantee the quality of his wines. "The nose and sense of smell of a winemaker are as important as the fingers of a chef," Jonathan Thomas, lead underwriter at Watkins Syndicate who co-insured the policy.

Lloyds worked with Allianz Nederland and British reinsurance broker Benfield to create the policy, co-insured by Watkins.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Priti and my 18th Wedding Anniversay photographs...taken on Sunday, March 16th, 2008...



Priti and my marriage has entered adulthood today (Sunday, March 16th). We are celebrating our 18th Wedding Anniversary today.

There has been a miraculous improvement in Priti's health between today and exactly eight weeks ago when (on Sunday, January 20th) she was admitted to Apollo Hospital ICU in a very critical condition and put on life support. She was on life support for the next four days.

We are celebrating our marriage anniversary today because of Priti's miraculous recovery caused by the prayers, wishes and support of hundreds of friends, relatives and office colleagues - and due to the dedicated efforts of our team of doctors and the wonders of modern medical science. After five weeks in hospital and three weeks on dialysis thereafter, she is completely cured of septecemia and recovering her strength gradually. Hopefully, her kidneys will also recover in due course.

I am thankful for all the support my family has received that has enabled us to see this day...and enabled our family to be together to take the attached photographs.