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Nun over the eight
A Polish Benedictine nun is facing jail for driving a tractor into a car while drunk outside her convent in south-western Poland, police said. The 45 year old nun will be charged with drunk-driving and causing an accident, which carries a prison sentence of up to two years. Dariusz Waluch, police spokesman in the south western Polish town of Dzierzoniow, said the nun was 17 times over the country’s legal alcohol limit for driving, according to the local news agency PAP (submitted by Ian Scott; from Sydney Morning Herald, March 2004).
Electrifying New York
In January 2004 a student walking her dogs was killed by an electrified metal plate set in the ground in the east village area of Manhattan. In checking other sites the power company Con Ed found that 280 service box lids, manhole covers, and lamp posts had stray electric current in them. The amount of current varied from single digits to a lethal 140 volts on a lamp post in Queens. Con Ed is now checking 550 000 sites. The New York Times, in reporting this story noted that potentially deadly hazards has existed for an unknown period of time in some of the world’s busiest intersections (submitted by Ian Scott).