A Saturday Smorgasbord

It's been a while since I posted a set of odd news stories, so my collection has gotten fairly big. Here are some of the best ones I've seen in the past week or so:

• A woman in Israel decided to do her mother a favor and buy her a new mattress and even discard the old one for her, all while the mother was away from home. What she didn't know was that her mother kept all her savings in the old mattress, to the tune of one million dollars.


• A teenage girl learning to drive accidentally broke her mother's legs when she hit the gas pedal instead of the brakes (Mom was sitting on a nearby fence at the time).


• Speaking of cars, do you know which car sold more than any others in the U.S. last year? It's small and very fuel-efficient, but it isn't a Toyota or Honda, or even a Smart Car; it's this.


• If you're an anti-nanny stater like myself, this one will drive you bonkers: In Canada, a woman was handcuffed and fined for the egregious offense of--get ready--not holding the handrail on a train station escalator.


• A resident of Boston's Back Bay Area just paid $300,000--not for a condo, but for a parking space.


• And finally, an umpire at a high school baseball game in Iowa--thinking the fans were getting too unruly--ejected the entire crowd from the stadium--yes, all of them.

I plan on catching up on some unfinished posts tonight, and I'll link them tomorrow on one big page.