Day: August 7, 2013

Hoping to overcome the stereotype of the obnoxious, ignorant American abroad? An unidentified U.S. tourist who snapped a finger off a 600-year-old statue in an Italian museum hasn’t helped the cause.

(MORE: Fake Transit Cop Spooks Bike Thieves)

No, the tourist wasn’t drunk, being belligerent, in a brawl, dangling from the statue wearing nothing but his skivvies or whatever other wild imagery your brain might conjure: The reportedly 55-year-old Missouri native was simply trying to measure the statue’s pinky finger, holding his own hand up to the statue’s outstretched one. But the museum — like most museums that harbor centuries-old works of art — has a no-touching rule that the tourist allegedly flouted, leading to the tragic act of digital disfigurement.

“In a globalized world like ours, the fundamental rules for visiting a museum have been forgotten, that is, ‘Do not touch the works’,” said museum head Timothy…

In a stunt that seems like every claustrophobe’s worst nightmare, a daredevil successfully escaped from handcuffs and a locked box dropped from an airplane 14,500 feet in the air Tuesday — in less than a minute.

Here’s how it worked, according to the Associated Press: a plane took off in Ottawa, Illinois, southwest of Chicago. When it reached about 14,500 feet, Wisconsin escape artist Anthony Martin, 47, was helped into the box, and his hands were handcuffed to his belt. Then he was locked inside with a prison door lock that doesn’t have a key.

(PHOTOS: Feet of Strength: Daredevil Nik Wallenda Tightropes 1,500 Feet Above Grand Canyon)

A small parachute called a drogue attached to the top of the box was “tossed” from the door, pushing the whole thing out of the aircraft. The box was supposed to be plummeting at 140 mph. While two men…

In what looks like a teaser for a sequel to Sharknado — or at least a Shark Week marketing stunt — a dead shark was found on a New York City subway train early Wednesday morning.

A passenger who was in the same car as the shark told Gothamist that the “stench” signaled to her that something “fishy” was going on. Photos obtained by the New York City news website also show a passenger posing with the creature. Another shows the dead animal with a cigarette in its mouth and flanked by a Metro Card and a can of Red Bull (there are already Twitter parodies). NYU student Brandon Sanchez, 20, uploaded a photo to Instagram of the shark under a row of seats:

Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) confirmed to The Huffington Post and Gothamist that the conductor of a Queens-bound N train was alerted to the situation…

CNN’s Brooke Baldwin talks with CNN’s Chad Myers about NASA’s Curiosity Rover and what it has collected in the past year.

Was it worth US$2 trillion to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein and his two sons? No, I don’t think so. It would have been far cheaper to pay them a ransom of $5-$10 billion each to vacate Iraq with their lives than to spend so much US treasure, kill 200,000, injure countless more Americans and Iraqis, and wreck Iraq just to replace a Sunni regime with a Shiite one aligned with Iran. How stupid can the American government be? Pretty darned stupid if it’s GW Bush listening to his Neocon advisers, and backed by a spineless media.

Related articles

• Iraq and Gulf Wars (jenniferelysemorales.com)
• US Returns Saddam Hussein Sword to Iraq (voanews.com)