Live Nativity Scene Lamb Born On Christmas Eve
by Korva Coleman | http://www.npr.org | December 27, 2011
It’s almost too charming to be true – a sheep that’s part of a live nativity scene at a Cincinnati park gave birth to a lamb on Christmas Eve. Really.
The baby arrived late on Friday night at the Krohn Conservatory, but only a night watchman was present to witness the event, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Both the sheep and the lamb – a female – are in good health.
December 18th is a little early for Santa. I was actually looking for a link to a local news story about UFOs and reports of strange footprints found on roofs especially near the chimney on the night of Dec. 25 when I found this story. The lights seen in the video are indeed mysterious.
UFO sighting in South Carolina: Witness says two objects were moving in tandem
Tracey Parece, Unexplained Phenomena Examiner | December 20, 2011 | http://www.examiner.com
Lake Murray, South Carolina was the site of a UFO sighting on Sunday, December 18, 2011. Two unidentified flying objects were recorded hovering above a home for at least 30 seconds before disappearing from sight.
“Two UFO’s moving in tandem seen last night at Lake Murray, SC. Orange colored glowing objects moved slowly in an easterly direction, eventually went out of sight. I don’t have any idea what these things were, definitely not an airplane or birds. Unbelievable.”
A local man captured the UFO sighting on camera. The orbs appeared to be glowing white or yellow in the footage, but the witness described them as orange.
The UFO pair moved very slowly above the home seen in the video. You can hear the man excitedly narrating the scene as he recorded it:
“Oh my . . . What is it? What are those things? I’ve never seen anything like it before. Wow, there’s two things, like, moving together. That’s not an airplane. Sure not a bird either. Oh my . . . What is that thing? Oh my gosh.”
There hasn’t been much reaction to this UFO video yet. It currently has only one comment on YouTube, and it’s not particularly favorable. The solitary comment reads: “Once again a bad quality video. Strange.” But the quality of the video really isn’t that bad compared to some grainy UFO videos out there.
Who would boo jolly old Saint Nick? Who could possibly throw snowballs at Santa right before Christmas? Philadelphia eagles Fans that’s who. It sounds like sports mythology but it is true. Don’t feel bad Santa, Philly don’t care much for Nicole Snooki Sneakers either.
Merry Christmas. Stay safe Santa!
Does the source of his fame bother Frank Olivo? "Well, naturally, I love it," Olivo said. "I'm the guy that wanted to be in show business, so this is as far as I got." Image Drew Hallowell for ESPN.com
Philly booed Santa, but Santa still smiles Frank Olivo, who was once pelted with snowballs, still loves fans in Philadelphia
By Elizabeth Merrill | ESPN.com | December 22, 2011
PHILADELPHIA — The old suit fell apart around the same time the old man’s body did. There have been a hundred stories written about Frank Olivo’s Santa costume, and most of them, he said, have been inaccurate. It was not a frumpy suit; it cost $100, which was big money back in the 1960s. It lasted nearly 40 Christmases, thanks to a lot of sewing and mending by his wife, but the corduroy finally gave, and Olivo sighed when the suit had to be put to rest.
A long time ago, before that suit became infamous, Rosalie Olivo swore she’d never end up with a guy like Frank. Italian men, she said, were not her type. They expected their women to mother them, to take care of them. But how could she resist when he came to her job at the luncheonette, reading tarot cards, saying she was destined to marry a fat barber? How could she know that years later, she’d quit her job to take care of him?
Frank Olivo is a romantic, but most of all, he is a ham. That’s why he used to show up for the Philadelphia Eagles’ final home game every season dressed in a Santa suit. He loved Christmas, loved his Eagles and loved the attention. And then one snowy day, Dec. 15, 1968, a halftime show was in jeopardy, a fan base was cold and discontented, and Olivo was summoned from the stands to walk the length of the football field and wave to the crowd and entertain them.
What happened in the next few minutes of this seemingly innocuous event became a staple of Philadelphia history. Santa was booed and pelted with snowballs, and a city cemented its reputation as the harshest place in sports. The story never died, and is still brought up 43 years later, every time a legend is jeered or a car with out-of-state license plates is trashed.
“Philadelphia sports fans have the reputation of being the worst in the country,” Olivo said, “and it’s bull. Because the Philadelphia sports fan, regardless of whether the team is good or bad, they will fill these stadiums, they’ll put their money out to go to these games, they’ll support the team.
“They’re smart fans. They live and die with their teams. I do.”
Times are tough all over America and the Census confirms that half the US population is broke or flat broke. However not everyone is suffering and some of the not broke people are going to K-Mart stores and paying off the holiday lay aways of the less fortunate, who planned ahead and wanted to avoid credit card debt. Apparently the act of kindness started in Michigan and has spread.
Laguna Beach, Sacramento and Costa Mesa CA, Englewood, CO, Oregon, North Carolina, Washington DC, Michigan, Indiana, Idaho, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Massachusetts and Connecticut K-Marts have all reported “Secret Santas” paying off the balances for people they most likely don’t know. Some Santas have not been so secret, and have come forward boasting of their good deed but far more kind hearted charitable people have quietly done a good deed without seeking any acknowledgement. Often a person comes to make a payment on their lay away, finds it has been paid and pays ANOTHER person’s layaway account.
I have not been able to find one single article that touches on this contagious act of charity. Instead, local markets cover the charitable act in their towns and that is what I’ve included below.
K-Mart with it’s decades old year round layaway plan is an integral part of this story. K-Marts are often located in working class neighborhoods and the increasingly rare lay away program is a way for people with a budget to plan their holiday shopping. Some stories have said donors have specifically asked to pay off balances of lay aways that are near delinquency
Sam Wright, of Allentown, a store manager at Kmart on Tighman Street in Allentown talks about Secret Santas that are paying off Kmart account balances throughout Lehigh Valley. Kmart layaway account balances are being paid off by unanimous people in Lehigh Valley Image MONICA CABRERA/THE MORNING CALL
Secret Santas: Anonymous people are paying off strangers’ layaway accounts at Kmarts Anonymous people are paying off strangers’ layaway accounts at Kmarts.
By Tyrone Richardson, Of The Morning Call | December 22, 2011
A woman walked into the Kmart on Tilghman Street in South Whitehall Township Thursday afternoon with one goal: Pay off someone’s layaway balance.
The Secret Santa or “layaway angel,” who wanted to remain anonymous, asked assistant store manager Sam Wright if she could help a customer who owed money on layaway toys. Wright sorted through a long list of names to find a match.
The woman explained what moved her to act: The night before, she said, she and her 11-year-old daughter walked away from a head-on collision with a drunken driver. Her car was totaled.
“I thought I better get out today and do something,” she said. “I figure we had an angel yesterday, and I wanted to make sure someone else would have one today.”
Similar acts of kindness have echoed through Kmart stores across the Lehigh Valley and nation in recent weeks. People aglow with the spirit of giving are walking into the stores, opening their wallets and offering to pay off strangers’ layaway account balances largely without any recognition in return.
They say vinyl is making a come back… I love how the stenciled message “Restricted Area-Keep Out” was enough to keep MOST people out.
Master Sgt. John Solane, a 611th Air Support Group Detachment 1 contracting quality assurance specialist, looks at a Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers Band album called “Sure Feels Like Love” at Wake Island Airfield, Wake Island, recently. The yellow sleeves in the cubbies around Solane contain AFRTS-distributed records, which are copyrighted to protect the artists who gave the military authorization to use their recordings overseas for free. Image-U.S. Air Force photo/Capt. Amy Hansen)
Vinyl treasure found on Wake Island
Capt. Amy Hansen, 11th Air Force Public Affairs | /www.af.mil | 12/5/2011
12/5/2011 – WAKE ISLAND AIRFIELD, Wake Island (AFNS) — In a tale straight from an adventure book, contractors here recently stumbled upon a vinyl record collection with an estimated value between $90,000 and $250,000.
The 611th Air Support Group’s Detachment 1 is now making a comprehensive effort to preserve the nearly 9,000 vintage vinyl records and ship them to their rightful owner, the American Forces Radio and Television Network in Alexandria, Va., according to Master Sgt. Jean-Guy Fleury, the detachment’s infrastructure superintendent, who took over the project from the former Detachment 1 commander, Maj. Aaron Wilt.
No digging was required to access this treasure, as the records were cataloged and neatly organized on shelves in a small room on the second floor of the Wake Island Airfield base operations building. The door was conspicuously stenciled with the name of a radio station, KEAD, and a “restricted area warning” sign, which kept most people out.
“That’s a locked room normally, but people in my department have known the records were there for years,” said Colin Bradley, the communications superintendent with Chugach Federal Solutions, Inc. CFSI is the contractor that currently manages operations on Wake Island with the oversight of Air Force quality assurance personnel.
I see this image and I imagine somewhere the Lorax is crying…
Image of Massive driftwood tree Photo: Philip Lachman via Our Amazing Planet
Epic driftwood: Monster tree washes ashore Flooding, high tides and blasting winds worked together to land a massive drift log taller than a single-story house. Shea Gunther | mnn.com | Nov 19 2011
Check out the size of that thing!
We have driftwood where I live in Portland, Maine, but nothing like what washes ashore near Washington state’s Olympic National Park, where this photo was taken. The tree most likely fell into a river after flooding and floated out to sea. High tides and strong wind then pushed it back on shore.
It should be noted that the woman standing in front of the tree is six feet tall.
Little boys grow up and become big boys. Hooray for fun! Congratulations Mr. Foust on a good safe stunt.
Team Hot Wheels and Tanner Foust Make Record Jump
motortrend.com | Jason Udy | May 31 2011
Remember the orange Hot Wheels V-Drop Super Velocity Track Set you played with as a kid – or maybe over the past weekend? You know the one that you attached to the back of your bedroom door and fantasized about going down inside in a real car? Well you’re not the only one.
Team Hot Wheels built a life-size version of the orange V-Drop Super Velocity Track Set at the “IZOD Presents Hot Wheels Fearless at the 500” for the 100th Anniversary of the Indianapolis 500, Sunday May 29, 2011. The Mystery Yellow Driver, later revealed as Tanner Foust, set a new world record with a 332 foot jump with a four-wheeled vehicle. Foust broke the previous record by 31 feet.
“Fans witnessed not only a record-breaking jump today, but also an incredible childhood fantasy come to life which engaged multiple generations,” said Simon Waldron, vice president of marketing for Hot Wheels. “Hot Wheels has a deep and rich history in racing that spans over 40 years and there was no better global stage than the Indy 500 to create this once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
Foust, known at the time merely as the Mystery Yellow Driver, dropped down the 90 foot ramp of the life-size V-Drop Super Velocity Track Set, which was suspended to a 10-story high door, on his way to the record-setting jump. Foust was revealed as the mystery Team Hot Wheels™ Yellow Driver moments after the jump.
“As a kid playing with Hot Wheels I could only dream of experiencing something as outrageous as a life-sized V-Drop track set, and today it became reality,” said Tanner Foust, Team Hot Wheels Yellow Driver. “There’s a lot that goes into being on Team Hot Wheels and the training and testing leading up to the jump gave me the confidence needed to push the mechanical and mental limits of the challenge and land the world-record title.”
As the amount of space junk in orbit increases, falls of metal like this seem less mysterious. However, the FAA has determined the metal did NOT come a spacecraft. So what is it and where did it come from?
It seems that even though the FAA gets involved in “metal hunk fall from the sky stories” not often do their determination of the origin get much publicity. Please see the FALLS category for more stories about things that fell.
Click an image to enlarge.
Image www.wickedlocal.com
Image www.wickedlocal.com
Broken ceiling tiles on the floor of the warehouse. The FAA confiscated the piece of debris before workers could take a picture of it, one employee said. Image Michaels Wholesale Furniture Distributors
The falling debris drove a hole into the warehouse roof and knocked out ceiling tiles below. Image Michaels Wholesale Furniture Distributors
UPDATE: Mysterious metal cylinder crashes through Plymouth warehouse roof
By Rich Harbert | Wicked Local Plymouth | Dec 02, 2011
PLYMOUTH —Employees of a local furniture business scrambled to make roof repairs and buy lottery tickets Thursday after a chuck of metal harmlessly crashed through the roof of their offices.
The cylindrically shaped piece of solid steel tore a hole through both the roof and ceiling panels of Michael’s Wholesale Furniture Distributors in Camelot Industrial Park sometime Wednesday or Thursday.
A company employee found the three- to five-pound chunk of metal lying amid broken ceiling tiles on the floor of a storage room early Thursday afternoon.
“He just happened to go in and all the ceiling tiles were blown out. It came right through the ceiling and was lying right on the floor,” Michael Facchini, owner of the import furniture business on Mary B Way, said. “We’re lucky no one got clunked on the head. It would have hurt…I’ll have to play the lottery tonight.”
In this Nov. 30, 2011 photo, Richard Figueiredo poses with a lobster trap in Pembroke, Mass. Figueiredo lost hundreds of lobster traps in what came to be known as "The Perfect Storm" in 1991. Rosemary Hill of County Kerry, Ireland, found one of his lobster pot tags on a beach in 2010, and wants to return it to him. Image AP Photo/The Patriot Ledger, Gary Higgins
Lobster tag lost in ‘Perfect Storm’ hops Atlantic
December 02, 2011 | www.patriotledger.com
A tag from a lobster pot lost two decades ago in what came to be known as “The Perfect Storm’’ has washed up 3,000 miles away in Ireland.
The pot that held the tag with Richard Figueiredo’s name on it was one of hundreds he lost when the storm struck off Cohasset, Mass
Rosemary Hill of County Kerry found the tag on a beach last year. Last week she decided to try to contact Figueiredo and found him through his son’s Facebook account.
Oceanographer Curt Ebbesmeyer tells The Patriot Ledger (http://bit.ly/sVKBd3) that the tag’s 20-year drift is unusually long. He theorized it was buried before drifting and catching the Gulf Stream.
The storm was made famous by Sebastian Junger’s book “The Perfect Storm’’ and was made into a Hollywood movie.
Oh the dangers of living in a Mc Mansion near a petting zoo.
click to embiggen
Zebras roam Leesburg neighborhood
By Autria Godfrey | November 29, 2011 | www.wjla.com
A pair of zebras went galloping through a Loudoun County neighborhood Tuesday.
Neighbors in Leesburg were shocked when they saw the wild animals on their street.
“I think I’ve had too much coffee today, I think I’m seeing zebras in front of the house,” Dianne Murphy posted on Facebook when she awoke to the graceful animals grazing in front of her yard.
“It was just a little chaotic and surprising and they’re very beautiful animals but you’re kinda thinking where are they going to go?” Murphy said.
The two zebras had roamed less than a mile from the Leesburg animal zoo when a maintenance worker accidentally left a gate open.
A turkey flies into a restaurant on Thanksgiving Day….no seriously.
The turkey did not survive his Thanksgiving Day adventure.
A death most fowl: Turkey crashes into Pa. eatery
6abc.com | 2011.11.25
A wild turkey smashed through a plate glass window at an empty western Pennsylvania restaurant and ended up where millions of its fellow gobblers did on Thanksgiving: a dining room.
Penn Hills police Officer Bernard Sestili tells the WTAE-TV the feathered fowl didn’t survive impact when it barreled into the dining room of the Eat’n Park in Penn Hills on Thursday afternoon. The restaurant was closed at the time.
Thanksgiving is one of the biggest travel holidays in the United States and this year AAA predicts more people will be traveling than in years. Alas, for some drivers on the venerable Pennsylvania Turnpike things took a turn for odd and awful thanks to a leaky tanker truck.
A rental car sits in the parking lot of the Fairfield Inn in Cranberry. Hotel staff spent the morning cleaning up a tar-like substance from the parking lot, hotel carpet, floors and more following a chemical spill last night on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Tom Fontaine | Tribune-Review
A car with its wheels covered in driveway sealant sits in a parking lot in Harmar, Pa., after exiting the Pennsylvania Turnpike Tuesday night, Nov. 22, 2011. A flood of the gooey material dropped from a tanker truck disabled more than 100 cars and damaged an unknown number of other vehicles along a nearly 40-mile stretch of the Turnpike, officials said. (AP Photo/Valley News Dispatch, Erica Hilliard) PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE OUT; BUTLER EAGLE OUT
Sticky mess: A vehicle's tyre is covered in a black substance on Wednesday near Oakmont, Pennsylvania, after a flood of gooey black muck dropped from a tanker truck disabling about 150 cars
Leak: Corporal Mike Corna, of the state police barracks that patrols the pike near Pittsburgh, said the truck driver will be cited for not properly securing his load
Pa. Turnpike estimates hundreds of cars damaged by sticky mess
By Myles Snyder | Nov 23, 2011 | www.abc27.com
PITTSBURGH -The holiday rush home came to a sticky stop Tuesday evening in western Pennsylvania after a tanker truck leaked driveway sealant on 39 miles of the Turnpike from New Castle to the Allegheny Valley Exit.
Turnpike officials said they estimate the sticky muck damaged hundreds of cars when the tar-like substance covered their tires and wheels.
Drivers told WTAE-TV that they couldn’t see the substance on the eastbound lanes because it was dark when the spill occurred at around 7 p.m.
“We got on the Turnpike and we noticed all these cars pulled over,” Lynn Snitzer said. “Our car was driving rough and it was like it was going in to a flat.”
“It’s been a long day for me,” Bruce Kephart said. “I’m a little frustrated and I wish I was home with my kids, but I’m sitting here in the rain looking at tar on my tires.”
Turnpike spokesman Carl DeFebo said maintenance crews used snow plows along with sand, salt and cinders to clean the substance from the lanes.
