News of the Weird
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
According to 2005 transcripts made public by The Wall Street Journal in September, a British Airways 747 flew its entire 10-hour-plus route from Los Angeles to Manchester, England, even though the pilot knew that one of its four engines had caught fire and burned up 30 seconds after take-off. The pilot surprised the Los Angeles tower by radioing his decision to fly on “as far as we can” (after checking with BA headquarters, which might have been mindful that returning to Los Angeles would have meant dumping $30,000 worth of fuel and possibly incurring $275,000 in European Union fines for the delay). The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration initially proposed a fine for BA but recently closed its investigation.
Even though protests grow against Wal-Mart for supposedly treating its employees badly, Kellie Guderian is not fazed. In October, she and her husband won Iowa’s $200 million Powerball lottery, but she cheerfully said she was keeping her job at the Fort Dodge Wal-Mart. Guderian, said her husband, “loves her job, and the people she works with are like family.”
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or [email protected] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD
