A different Ironman: Inga Kosak won the first World Extreme Ironing Championship in Munich in September, beating 80 contestants (from 10 countries), who are judged on the degree of difficulty they can create for themselves in order to iron. One ironed while bouncing on a trampoline, another while surfboarding on a river, and another hanging upside down from a tree. Enthusiasts have photos of themselves ironing in remote mountain locations, where power for the steam iron must come from a generator (or a very long extension cord). The activity’s founder, Phil Shaw, says he does it because ironing itself is particularly boring.
Democracy in action: Mike Rucker, running for county commissioner in Tallahassee, Fla., apologized for urinating in a voter’s yard in October, attributing it to a prostate problem and not anger that the voter had moments earlier refused to post Rucker’s campaign sign.
Clothing trends: From an October Wall Street Journal dispatch from Seoul: an aloe vera bra and underwear set to continually lubricate the skin for up to 40 washings (from Triumph International in the UK); menstrual-pain-reducing pants (from the B.L. Korea Co.); Ki business suits, with charcoal and jade powder sewn into the armpits and crotch, to block computer-screen radiation and boost energy (from Cheil Industries Inc.); and “yellow earth” boxer shorts, with a sewn-in special soil that supposedly emits infrared rays that cut odor and improve circulation (from Kolon Corp.).
Petty change: Michael Carroll, 19, of Norfolk County, England, won that country’s national lottery (equivalent: (U.S.) $41 million) in November and said he hopes the money will be an incentive to overcome the life of petty crime he has led for the last several years (examples: drunk and disorderly, vandalizing a school bus, car theft, other theft, driving without a license). He cannot now celebrate his win at a pub, nor drive his new car, because judicial restrictions are still in force from his last sentence.
Latest Rights: In October, Australian serial killer Ivan Milat complained to a state commission, asking the equivalent of (U.S.) $22,000, for a violation of his human rights. Milat, serving seven life sentences for seven murders, had swallowed some razor blades in a 2001 incident and now complains that prison officials’ releasing his X-rays to the media was an invasion of his privacy. (Milat had complained previously about the air quality in his cell.)
Plane crush: In October, Virgin Atlantic Airways agreed to pay passenger Barbara Hewson the equivalent of (U.S.) $20,000 for injuries she suffered on an 11-hour flight when an obese woman sat in the seat next to her and apparently crushed part of her body. Hewson said the squashing caused a blood clot in her chest, torn leg muscles and acute sciatica, requiring her to be bedridden for a month.
Least competent criminals: And Baptist minister James Andrew Smith, 42, was arrested in Fort Worth, Texas, in November for a September graphics presentation (to a logistic company) that he was making with his computer; he had clicked the wrong line and inadvertently called up a photograph of a nude boy, which led to a search that police said yielded much child pornography.
Derring-duel: In September, Peru congressman Eittel Ramos, feeling insulted, challenged Vice President David Waisman to a duel using pistols (which would be the country’s first political duel since a 1957 presidential candidates’ fight with swords). And British motorcyclist Leon Humphreys, angered at a vehicle registration problem, challenged an unidentified bureaucrat to a duel with unspecified weapons (Suffolk County, November).
Thinning the herd: A 28-year-old man stopped his truck on a road in the Mojave Desert near Needles, Calif., in September, grabbed some beer, and went hiking in the midday sun (and died of dehydration). And a 32-year-old man was killed in October in Santa Cruz, Calif., when he fell from a hotel balcony, from which he had been hanging while shouting to his friends, “Look at this.”
This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2002.
