1. Police in Wichita, Kansas, arrested a 22-year-old man at an airport hotel after he tried to pass two (counterfeit) $16 bills.
2. A man in Johannesburg, South Africa, shot his 49-year-old friend in the face, seriously wounding him, while the two practiced shooting beer cans off each other�s head.
3. A company trying to continue its five-year perfect safety record showed its workers a film aimed at encouraging the use of safety goggles on the job. According to Industrial Machinery News, the film�s depiction of gory industrial accidents was so graphic that twenty-five workers suffered minor injuries in their rush to leave the screening room. Thirteen others fainted, and one man required seven stitches after he cut his head falling off a chair while watching the film.
4. The Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits.
5. A bus carrying five passengers was hit by a car in St. Louis, but by the time police arrived on the scene, fourteen pedestrians had boarded the bus and had begun to complain of whiplash injuries and back pain.
6. Swedish business consultant Ulf af Trolle labored 13 years on a book about Swedish economic solutions. He took the 250-page manuscript to be copied, only to have it reduced to 50,000 strips of paper in seconds when a worker confused the copier with the shredder.
7. A convict broke out of jail in Washington DC, then a few days later accompanied his girlfriend to her trial for robbery. At lunch, he went out for a sandwich. She needed to see him, and thus had him paged. Police officers recognized his name and arrested him as he returned to the courthouse in a car he had stolen over the lunch hour.
8. Police in Radnor, Pennsylvania, interrogated a suspect by placing a metal colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine. The message �He�s lying� was placed in the copier, and police pressed the copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn�t telling the truth. Believing the �lie detector� was working, the suspect confessed.
9. When two service station attendants in Ionia, Michigan, refused to hand over the cash to an intoxicated robber, the man threatened to call the police. They still refused, so the robber called the police and was arrested.
10. A Los Angeles man who later said he was �tired of walking,� stole a steamroller and led police on a 5 mph chase until an officer stepped aboard and brought the vehicle to a stop.
October 6
In 1927, The Jazz Singer, the first full-length talking picture with both music and dialogue synchronized on disk, opens in New York. The Warner Brothers film stars Al Jolson, and is based on Sampson Raphaelson�s 1922 short story, �The Day of Atonement,� a tale of popular music and intergenerational conflict among Jewish immigrants. The widely successful �talkie� wins Jolson international stardom, and brings an end to the era of the silent film.
In 1961, U.S. president John F. Kennedy, speaking on civil defense, advises American families to build or buy a bomb shelter to protect them from atomic fallout in the event of a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. Kennedy also declares that the U.S. civil defense program will soon begin ensuring such protection for every American. Only one year later, true to Kennedy�s fears, the world hovers on the brink of full-scale nuclear war when the Cuban Missile Crisis erupts over Soviet placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba. During the tense six-day crisis, many Americans across the country prepare for nuclear war, buying up canned goods and completing last-minute work on their nuclear shelters.
In 1973, Hoping to win back territory lost to Israel during the third Arab-Israeli war, Egyptian and Syrian forces launch a surprise attack against Israel on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. Egyptian troops sweep deep down into the Sinai, while Syria struggles to throw Israel out of the Golan Heights. Israel eventually reverses the initial Arab gains, but suffers heavy losses before a cease-fire takes effect two weeks later. On October 17, Western support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War leads eleven Arab oil-producing nations, with the support of OPEC, to begin a crippling oil embargo against the U.S., Great Britain, and several other nations.
All Over the Globe is published by IPA House.
© 1998 IPA House. All Rights Reserved.