Monday 11/16/09

Human Interest News — Posted on November 16, 2009

Heavyweight contender
It’s probably not on the menu, but Nonni’s Italian Eatery in Concord, N.H., broke a month-old world record by creating a 222.5-pound meatball on Nov. 1. The previous record, set by Los Angeles-based talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, was 198.6 pounds. The record prior to that one, set in Mexico in August, was 109 pounds. Regional pride was apparently a motivator for Nonni’s owner Matthew Mitnitsky, who told the Associated Press that he wanted “to bring the meatball back to the East Coast because that’s where it originated.”

Unusual car loan
It wasn’t going to go unnoticed forever. And even though Sarah Gaspar said she told the University of Notre Dame three times, she said university officials didn’t respond to her claim that she had been overpaid on a tip by nearly $30,000. In April, Gaspar, a Granger, Ind., resident, received a $29,387 paycheck from the school after catering an event. She should have been paid $29.87. When university officials didn’t respond to her solicitation, Gaspar used the cash to buy a 2002 Volkswagen Jetta. Finally noticing the mistake, Notre Dame sued Gaspar. But according to the settlement, Gaspar will only be forced to repay $17,000 in $50-a-month increments for the next 28 years.

Whiskey on the rocks
More than 100 years ago, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton cached some belongings at a hut he built at Cape Royds, Antarctica. Now, a century later, a team of conservators is heading back to the abandoned hut to try to recover something the British explorer left behind: two cases of Scotch whiskey. Members of the Antarctic Heritage Trust, the group in charge of preserving the historic home base for Shackleton’s 1907-1909 attempt to reach the South Pole, discovered the Scotch in 2006. But despite the ever-present sun of the Antarctic summer, the crates were frozen solid underneath the hut and couldn’t be moved. When conservators from the trust return this January, they’ll use special drills to try to break the whiskey free. Richard Patterson, a master blender at Whyte & Mackay, which donated the cases to Shackleton in the early 20th century, said the Scotch should taste just fine provided the corks haven’t been dislodged by decades of freezing and thawing in the Antarctic.

Eating hazards
Belying the prim and genteel mystique, about one half of Britons have been injured by cookies eaten during tea breaks. A survey titled “The Biscuit Injury Threat Evaluation” found Britons’ haphazard eating of tea time cookies, called biscuits, has led to chipped teeth on particularly hard bites, scalded fingers from mis-dunking treats into hot tea, as well as an assortment of other bizarre cookie-related incidents. Nearly a quarter of respondents reported having accidentally choked on cookie crumbs at least once, while 7 percent surveyed said they had been bitten by an animal trying to abscond with a treat from their hand. Three percent of Britons said they had accidentally poked themselves in the eye with their snack.

Crab dance
Thousands of crabs got a second chance at freedom when a box truck carrying the crustaceans flipped over alongside I-64 east of Richmond, Va., and spilled its payload on Oct. 23. State police were forced to shut down westbound traffic on the interstate in Croaker, Va., for hours as cleanup crews wrangled the skittering crabs back into their crates.