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Oops! The Silly Mistakes Thread

Catastrophic error.

Armed police and a helicopter were scrambled to reports of a tiger on the loose in the countryside - only to find the wild animal was a life-size model.

Officers responding to the call in Underriver, Kent, on Saturday were met by the sculpture's creator.

"I took them down to the sculpture where they all had a good laugh and took a lot of photographs," artist Juliet Simpson, 85, said.

Kent Police said it found there was "no animal and no risk to the public".

Told by a neighbour that police were investigating reports of a loose big cat, Mrs Simpson set off up the lane near her home.

"Out of the field opposite came a whole crowd of armed police, who by then knew that it was all a false alarm and I said 'would they like to be introduced to my real live tiger?'" she told BBC Radio Kent.

"It looks quite real, it's meant to look real and it is about 30 metres from the footpath so you can't see it very closely."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-kent-52520773

We striped quadrupeds have that effect on people. ;)
 
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Liverpool fans miss Champions League win over Genk after travelling to Ghent

Source: BBC News
Date : 24 October, 2019

Two Liverpool fans missed their side Champions League win over Belgian side Genk on Wednesday - because they travelled to Ghent by mistake.

Rob, from London, and Lee, from Leicester, spent around £200 each on train and match tickets only to mistakenly end up 95 miles from where the match was being played.

"When we arrived we didn't see any Liverpool supporters, which kind of aroused our suspicions," Rob told BBC Sport.

"Then we were sitting having dinner about an hour before kick-off and we said to one of the waiters, who was a Gent supporter, 'we are playing you guys tonight' and he went 'no you're not', and that was when we realised the error of our ways.

[...]

It may ease their embarrassment to know that they are not the first people to have been on the wrong end of a location-based sporting misshap.

In 2015, a group of Belgium supporters were driving to watch their country's Euro 2016 qualifying match against Wales in Cardiff, but after typing "Wales" into their sat-nav they ended up in a village close to Rotherham called Wales - 200 miles away from the Welsh capital.

Earlier this month, former world snooker champion Neil Robertson had to forfeit his World Open qualifier because he drove to the Gloucestershire village of Barnsley, 170 miles away from the Yorkshire town where his match had been due to take place.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/amp/football/50166371
 
I did a silly mistake of my own last week. I wanted a pizza so looked up the pizza place down the road online and called them.
The guy answering mentioned the pizzeria was in norra, meaning northern in Sweden. Fair enough, it's in the northern part of town.
It was only just before I went to pick it up I noticed the address, the pizzeria was actually in Nora, a town 400 km away.
 
I did a silly mistake of my own last week. I wanted a pizza so looked up the pizza place down the road online and called them.
The guy answering mentioned the pizzeria was in norra, meaning northern in Sweden. Fair enough, it's in the northern part of town.
It was only just before I went to pick it up I noticed the address, the pizzeria was actually in Nora, a town 400 km away.

The upside? lf it doesn’t arrive within 30 minutes, it’s free.

maximus otter
 
Catastrophic error.

Armed police and a helicopter were scrambled to reports of a tiger on the loose in the countryside - only to find the wild animal was a life-size model.

Officers responding to the call in Underriver, Kent, on Saturday were met by the sculpture's creator.

"I took them down to the sculpture where they all had a good laugh and took a lot of photographs," artist Juliet Simpson, 85, said.

Kent Police said it found there was "no animal and no risk to the public".

Told by a neighbour that police were investigating reports of a loose big cat, Mrs Simpson set off up the lane near her home.

"Out of the field opposite came a whole crowd of armed police, who by then knew that it was all a false alarm and I said 'would they like to be introduced to my real live tiger?'" she told BBC Radio Kent.

"It looks quite real, it's meant to look real and it is about 30 metres from the footpath so you can't see it very closely."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-kent-52520773
Interestingly I had a very vivid dream concerning a Tiger and the police a few days before this happened ( see the very vivid dreams thread ).
 
I know a FOAF tale of a lorry driver who had to deliver a load to Gillingham in Dorset. He delivered it to Gillingham in Kent. This was before Satnav.
The famous Book of Heroic Failures mentioned the possibly apocryphal story of the entire set of props of a Wagnerian opera being sent to Beirut instead of Bayreuth.
 
When I was about 7, my school teacher made me read out a few lines of Rock A Bye Baby as part of something the class were doing about nursery rhymes.

I read out the line 'when the bough breaks', but I pronounced it as 'when the boff breaks'. It was the early 80s, and the only time I'd seen the word 'bough' was in the credits of GrandStand after watching Frank Bough.

You know what? Even now, all these years later, I still pronounce it 'boff' whenever I see it. Looking for a book earlier on, I found my copy of the Silver Bough and thought 'oh, the Silver Boff'.

Btw, the teacher flew into a rage at me when I read it out loud as 'when the boff breaks', the miserable old get.
 
I'm going to start saying "boff," too. Fun sound.
 
When I was about 7, my school teacher made me read out a few lines of Rock A Bye Baby as part of something the class were doing about nursery rhymes.

I read out the line 'when the bough breaks', but I pronounced it as 'when the boff breaks'. It was the early 80s, and the only time I'd seen the word 'bough' was in the credits of GrandStand after watching Frank Bough.

You know what? Even now, all these years later, I still pronounce it 'boff' whenever I see it. Looking for a book earlier on, I found my copy of the Silver Bough and thought 'oh, the Silver Boff'.

Btw, the teacher flew into a rage at me when I read it out loud as 'when the boff breaks', the miserable old get.

Outrageous to get angry at a little kid for a simple mistake! And it was funny too. One teacher of mine went ballistic when I forgot the words to The Twa Corbies. I couldn't see what the big deal was, but was suitably admonished.
 
Five years ago my father in law (who is Irish) took our youngest son (20 at the time) on a 5 week trip to England, back to the homeland to visit family, ostensibly for the last time and Scotland.
The FIL cannot use a computer and has always traveled with the view of simply turning up somewhere and finding accommodation once he arrives there.
My wife, his wife and I explained months before they left that people really don't travel like this anymore, hotels, cars, ferries all must be booked in advance particularly in the high season, which it was.
Therefore, they set their itinerary, gave us a budget and things were booked in advance to make their journey as smooth as possible.
Three days before travelling my FIL came down with the worst flu he's ever had and being a stubborn man, continued working right until the morning of their departure. He spent most of the flight vomiting and the first week in England and Wales in bed.
Once in Ireland, they were staying with family.
However, he wanted to show our son around and insisted on taking him to Blarney Castle to kiss the Blarney stone.
Not being particularly clear headed, they started off in Mullingar and ended up in Killarney rather than Blarney due to the misreading of some road signs.
This resulted in a frantic middle of the night (our time) phone call from our son to us, eliciting the reply ''What the fuck do you want us to do about it?''
 
Well, Frank Bough* was a fun guy, by all accounts.

*- I read his autobiography, Cue Frank, once. It wasn't the worst book I've ever read.
He's still around.
 
There was a joke in Belgrade, Serbia that all the NATO bombings were supposed to hit Baghdad but there was a dyslexic in NATO HQ...

The joke grew thinner as bombs multiplied
 
There's something odd about leaving a bag of gold on a train and not taking action to recover it ...
Swiss search for owner of gold haul left on train

While many of us have left something on a train - a phone, a wallet, headphones - it's highly unlikely you've wandered onto the platform leaving a bagful of gold behind.

Well, one person in Switzerland has. And the authorities would quite like to find them.

Efforts are being made to track down the owner of more than 3kg of gold that was left in a carriage last October.

The hoard, worth around £152,000 ($191,000), was found on a train between St Gallen and Lucerne.

The owner has five years to stake their claim at the prosecutor's office in Lucerne, an official statement said.

The discovery is only being made public now after efforts to track down the owner were unsuccessful.

It's unclear how authorities will verify the claims of anyone who comes forward to say the gold is theirs.

SOURCE: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53041884
 
Come to think of it ... Given the recent lockdowns and people taking advantage of home delivery of all types, it's surprising we haven't seen more misdirected delivery stories ...
Authorities in Texas were called to a family's home when they received an unexpected package containing 32 bags of marijuana.

The Harris County Sheriff's Office said deputies were called to a Houston home after the residents reported receiving a package they hadn't ordered that was filled with cannabis.

"If it is yours please contact the Harris County Sheriff's Office to claim it," the sheriff wrote in an Instagram post.

SOURCE: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2020/0...ijuana-delivered-to-wrong-home/8551592337122/
 
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