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Lost & Found

What is it about class rings that everyone's so keen to be rid of them?
 
What is it about class rings that everyone's so keen to be rid of them?

They're emblems of accomplishment and / or affiliation, both of which fade as one moves on into adulthood. In other words, they become symbolically irrelevant. This irrelevance is exacerbated by the fact that class rings are typically heavy / bulky objects that aren't all that comfortable to wear on the finger and are easily snagged on external things (sometimes painfully or even causing injury).
 
A Pennsylvania woman unexpectedly found and recovered the cat she'd lost 8 years earlier ...
Pennsylvania woman reunited with lost cat after 8 years

A Pennsylvania woman whose cat ran away from home eight years ago was reunited with her long-lost pet when she discovered the feline was up for adoption at a local cat cafe.

Kristen Williams said Snickerdoodle, a tortoiseshell cat, ran away from her home in Watsontown about eight years ago, and despite searching and calling around to local shelters, she was never able to locate her missing pet. ...

Williams said she was on Facebook a couple weeks ago when her attention was grabbed by a post from the Scratching Post Cat Cafe in Lewisburg.

The post included a photo of a for-adoption cat that Williams immediately recognized as her long-lost Snickerdoodle.

The cat, now named Maria, bore all the same markings as the cat in Williams' photos, as well as sharing her old pet's obsession with hanging out in sinks.

Williams said she hadn't been looking to adopt a cat at the time, but she couldn't resist the opportunity to bring her long-lost pet home. ...

Williams said Maria has already laid claim to the kitchen sink in her home.

SOURCE: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2020/1...ed-with-lost-cat-after-8-years/9811605720885/
 
An Ontario library has received an overdue book which seems to be on the order of 80 years overdue at the very least.
Returned library book could be up to 100 years overdue

Officials at an Ontario library said a book recently dropped into its return bin is believed to be up to 100 years overdue.

The Fergus Library said a copy of Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens was recently dropped into the book return bin by an anonymous person. ...

Library officials said they don't have records of the book, but it bears a Fergus Library name plate inside the cover, indicating it might have been from the facility's original collection when it opened in the 1900s.

Officials said they aren't sure of when the book was last checked out.

"We're guessing from 100 to maybe 50 years ago," chief librarian Rebecca Hine told CTV News. ...

Officials said they have no intention of trying to find the person who checked the book out to charge fees. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2020/1...uld-be-up-to-100-years-overdue/9201605815270/
 
Dog found 300 miles away reunited with family after eight years

Kavik the Malamute-German Shepherd cross disappeared after escaping with his brother Konan from the family home in Hamilton, Lanarkshire, in May 2012.

Owner Stevie Rodger found both of his dogs in a nearby field full of sheep but was left devastated when an irate farmer shot both animals.

Konan died in the field but the injured Kavik bolted, sparking a huge search that went on for months.
But Stevie, partner Sarah Moonie, 45, and his three children are now ‘over the moon’ after Kavik – now 10-years-old – turned up almost 300 miles away in Birmingham.

Stevie received a phone call on Tuesday from Lost Dogs Scotland saying an animal matching Kavik’s description was being held at a dog shelter in the city.

‘I jumped in the car in the morning and drove all the way to Birmingham still not sure if it was my boy.

‘But when I got there I knew instantly it was him and I just burst into tears.

‘He came running over to me and started licking me like he’d seen me just yesterday. It was a very emotional reunion.

Kavik was found in an undernourished state looking for food at a pet store in Birmingham and was taken to the dog home after staff took pity on him.

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A New York couple brushed off the folklore about their century-old house being built by a Prohibition-era bootlegger. They found the lore more plausible once they undertook remodeling and started finding multiple caches of whiskey hidden in the walls and beneath the floors.
Couple finds more than 66 bottles of Prohibition-era whiskey hidden in the walls of their New York home

When a New York couple was told their over 100-year-old home was built by a notorious bootlegger, they passed it off as small town legend.

But during a recent home renovation, the couple discovered something that revealed the legend could be true.

In early October, Nick Drummond and Patrick Bakker said they found more than 66 bottles of whiskey from the Prohibition-era hidden within the walls and floorboards of their home, which was built in 1915. ...

Drummond, a designer and historic preservationist, told CNN he was removing outside skirting along the bottom of the mudroom attached to the house when a mysterious package fell out. ...

"I'm like holy crap. This is like a whiskey stash. And this is like, all of a sudden, the whole story of the bootlegger." ...

Drummond went on to find more packages of smuggled whiskey under the floorboards after entering the mudroom through a uncovered hatch inside the floor. He said the couple continues to find more bottles. ...

The liquor is a brand of Scottish whiskey labeled Old Smuggler Gaelic whiskey, which is still made today. Each bottle was wrapped in tissue paper and straw and bundled in a package of six, said Drummond. ...

The couple plans to leave the bottles they found empty or evaporated preserved in the home -- and sell the bottles they found full. The full bottles are estimated at a value of around $1,000 each, said Drummond. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/25/us/whiskey-bottles-found-new-york-home-walls-trnd/index.html
 
An Ontario man's wallet went missing 54 years ago. It turned up in a couch and has been returned to him.
Ontario man reunited with wallet lost 54 years earlier

An Ontario, Canada, man who lost his wallet 54 years ago had the item returned to him after another man found it in an old couch.

Darcy Major, 86, of Port Dover, said his wallet went missing in 1966, and he never found out what happened to it until Christopher Camacho got in touch with his children. ...

Camacho found the wallet in an old couch and got Major's name from the documents inside, which included a driver's license, an old check and a dog license.

Camacho wrote ... on Facebook that he had fished the wallet out of an old couch and was trying to find its owner.

Commenters on the post helped Camacho get in touch with Major's children, who informed their father that his wallet was found.

"It was unreal, where's it been for all those years," Major told the Simcoe Reformer. "It must have been a good couch."

Major said he was grateful to Camacho for tracking him down.

"It's quite a thrill, even though everything is outdated," Major said. "There's honest people out there to return it. He could've put it in the garbage, and it's so nice that there's people like that."

FULL STORY: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2020/1...h-wallet-lost-54-years-earlier/4031606942774/
 
Divers discover Nazi WW2 enigma machine in Baltic

German divers searching the Baltic Sea for discarded fishing nets have stumbled upon a rare
Enigma cipher machine used by the Nazi military during World War Two which they believe was thrown overboard from a scuttled submarine.

EnigmaMachineLabeled.jpg


Thinking they had discovered a typewriter entangled in a net on the seabed of Gelting Bay, underwater archaeologist Florian Huber quickly realised the historical significance of the find.

“I’ve made many exciting and strange discoveries in the past 20 years. But I never dreamt that we would one day find one of the legendary Enigma machines,” said Huber.

The Nazi military used the machines to send and receive secret messages during World War Two but British cryptographers cracked the code, helping the Allies gain an advantage in the naval struggle to control the Atlantic.

At Bletchley Park codebreaking centre, a British team led by Alan Turing is credited with unravelling the code, shortening the war and saving many thousands of lives.

Shortly before Germany’s surrender in May 1945, the crews of about 50 submarines, or U-Boots, followed an order to scuttle their ships in Gelting Bay, near the Danish border, to avoid handing them to the Allies. Destroying encryption devices was part of the order.

“We suspect our Enigma went overboard in the course of this event,” said Huber.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-g...w2-enigma-machine-in-baltic-sea-idUKKBN28D257

maximus otter
 
Wedding ring found five years after being lost on British beach

Source: upi.com
Date: 1 December, 2020

Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Officials in southern England said a platinum wedding ring found on an area beach was returned to its owner, who revealed the precious item had been lost five years earlier.

The Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council posted a photo to Facebook on Monday showing a platinum wedding band found by a crew excavating a timber groyne on a Bournemouth beach.

[...]

https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2020/1...er-being-lost-on-British-beach/9381606841770/
 
Man discards wallet in the trash; city official and trash collection workers find it after sifting through tons of trash.
Crew digs through tons of trash to find Indiana man’s wallet

A northern Indiana man whose cash-filled wallet was accidentally thrown out got it back last week after a crew waded through tons of trash and found it, wet and smelly, near the bottom.

Logansport resident Robert Nolte said his wallet ended up in the trash Thursday when he asked a friend to throw out a pair of green camouflage pants that were covered in white paint. After his trash was hauled away, Nolte realized his wallet was missing and that it had been in the discarded pants.

At his wife’s urging, he called a city code enforcement officer, Johnny Quinones, and explained the situation. ...

“I originally told the caller that there would be no way to find it,” Quinones told the (Logansport) Pharos-Tribune. ...

Quinones nonetheless worked with a crew from trash-hauler Republic Services to search for the pants after determining which driver had collected Nolte’s trash. They made their way through 9 tons (8 metric tons) of garbage dumped onto a concrete slab, looking for the pants, which Nolte’s friend had rolled up and placed, unbagged, on top of Nolte’s trash.

They eventually discovered the pants at the bottom of the trash pile, with the cash-filled wallet still in one of its pockets. Quinones thanked Republic Services for allowing the search then summoned Nolte, turning the wallet over to him. ...

“I took out a $100 bill to give to Johnny for finding my wallet. He refused it. Johnny, being the nice guy that he is, wouldn’t take the money,” Nolte said. “He just said, ‘God will do me better down the road.’”

SOURCE: https://apnews.com/article/crew-digs-trash-for-indiana-man-wallet-c7a69a342a46b9675c125b6f894c2fc1
 
That Indiana man better appreciate all that work!
 
A businessman transporting a valuable surrealistic painting to Israel screwed up and left the painting back at the Dusseldorf airport. Oops!
Valuable painting left behind at airport found in the paper recycling

A painting worth about $340,000 was forgotten at a German airport by a businessman flying to Israel, and police rescued the misplaced artwork from the recycling.

Dusseldorf Police said the businessman arrived in Tel Aviv after his Nov. 27 flight and discovered the painting, a surrealist work by Yves Tanguy, had been left behind at the Dusseldorf Airport. ...

The businessman contacted the airport, but officials were unable to locate the flat cardboard box containing the painting.

The man's nephew, who lives in Belgium, traveled to Dusseldorf to join in the search and sought help from the local police.

Police contacted the cleaning company contracted by the airport and an investigator ended up searching through the waste paper recycling with a company manager.

The painting was found at the bottom of the recycling container. It was returned Wednesday to the businessman who had misplaced it.

SOURCE: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2020/1...t-found-in-the-paper-recycling/3431607705441/
 
This Doncaster woman is eternally thankful for getting her cat Laddo microchipped. No explicit agreement from Laddo yet ...
Lost cat found one year later, 75 miles away

A British woman whose cat went missing in November 2019 was reunited with her pet more than a year later when the feline turned up 75 miles away.

Sybil Gillatt, 70, of Doncaster, England, said her long-haired black cat, Laddo, went missing from her home in November 2019. ...

Gillatt said she searched for Laddo and put up posters bearing his pictures, but there was no sign of her beloved cat.

It turned out Laddo had turned up in April in the garden of Karen Rice, who lives 75 miles away in Snodgrass. ...

Rice said she had borrowed a microchip scanner to check the status of the chips in her own cats, and she decided to try it on the cat living in her garden.

"I couldn't believe it when he was chipped. I contacted my local Cats Protection branch, gave them the chip number and the next day they phoned to tell me that the owner had been traced. She was over the moon that her cat had been found," Rice said. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2020/12/11/Lost-cat-found-one-year-later-75-miles-away/5341607715257/
 
Sometimes a cigar box holds more than cigars.

A lost artefact from the Great Pyramid of Giza has been found in a chance discovery at the University of Aberdeen.

It is one of only three objects ever recovered from inside the last remaining wonder of the ancient world. Curatorial assistant Abeer Eladany, from Egypt, was reviewing items in the university’s Asia collection when she came across a cigar box marked with her country’s former flag. Inside she found several wooden splinters, which she then identified as a fragment of wood from the Great Pyramid that has been missing for more than a century.

“The university’s collections are vast – running to hundreds of thousands of items – so looking for it has been like finding a needle in a haystack. I couldn’t believe it when I realised what was inside this innocuous-looking cigar tin,” she said.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/wor...giza-found-in-cigar-box-in-scotland-1.4438394
 
A California chihuahua is back home after a 5-year disappearance ...
Chihuahua dog missing for 5 years in California is found

A Chihuahua dog named Sweet-Pea who went missing five years ago in Southern California has been found and is back home.

The tiny dog was reunited with her owner on thanks to microchip identification ...

Sweet-Pea went missing in the city of Compton in 2015. The Inland Valley Humane Society found her about 30 miles (48 kilometers) away in the community of Covina.

Sweet-Pea appeared to have been well-cared for during her long absence, KNBC-TV reported. There were no immediate details disclosed about where the dog stayed while away from her owner. ...

SOURCE: https://apnews.com/article/california-dogs-02580639da2b9e255a25546dc7b16ed2
 
Went to the supermarket this morning and I put one of those 3 packs of microwave vegetables in the trolley and unloaded them with the rest of the food.
When I got home they were not in any of the bags so I thought perhaps I had left a bag behind.
On checking the docket however they were not even on it.
There was nothing left in the trolley and I'd put a divider behind my groceries, so I don't know where they flicked off to.
 
I'm thinking you put them in someone elses trolley
 
There wasn't anyone else in the frozen aisle and we have social distancing at the checkout. The cashier puts the goods into our bags and they go into our trolley. Maybe the cashier put it to the side when she was packing, but it hadn't been scanned.
 
Did you DEFINITELY put them in the trolley, Iris?

I've done this on a number of occasions and it's nearly always been that I've had something in my hand and meant to put it in the trolley, been distracted by something else (usually someting that I might want to buy instead), so I've put the original item back on the shelf, decided not to purchase the other item and walked on firmly of the opinion that I had 'bought' the first item.

That or it fell on the floor from an overloaded belt.
 
I'm sure I put it in the trolley because i read the ingredients to make sure I had the one we like. It may have fallen, but I would have thought the man who was behind me at the register would have picked it up. I can remember thinking that I would use some of it tonight instead of preparing the vegetables as usual.
I still finished cooking some in a cheese sauce.
 
A lost engagement ring turned up in a Saskatchewan mall's parking lot 6 months later ...
Lost engagement ring found in mall parking lot six months later

A shiny object a man spotted in the snow near his car in the parking lot of a Saskatchewan mall turned out to be a woman's engagement ring that had been lost for six months.

Steven Zoerb said he went back to his car outside the South Hill Mall in Prince Albert on Sunday morning because he forgot his mask. ...

"When I went to open the door of my car, out of the corner of my eye I caught this sort of sparkle ..."

The object turned out to be a diamond ring, and Zoerb posted photos of the item on Facebook in the hopes of attracting the owner's attention.

The post was shared by a friend of Alison Cameron, who immediately recognized it as her ring.

Cameron said she had lost track of the ring, which she received upon her engagement on Christmas Day 2013, about six months earlier, and two months after that she scoured her house for the missing object and determined it had been lost. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2020/1...l-parking-lot-six-months-later/4331608236673/
 
Construction workers in Ontario have unearthed a WW1-era German 77 field cannon originally set up as a war trophy monument but moved, buried and eventually forgotten over the subsequent decades.
World War I-era cannon found buried under Canadian baseball field

Construction crews digging up a baseball field in Ontario made a surprising discovery -- a World War I-era German cannon buried under the pitcher's mound.

Officials in Amherstburg said crews were digging up the ballpark, which is to become the site of a new public school, on Monday when they discovered the forgotten cannon that was formerly on display at Centennial Park. ...

City officials said the cannon was brought to the town in 1922 and was displayed alongside a cenotaph at General Amherst High School. The cenotaph was moved to Centennial Park in 1971 to make way for an expansion to the school and the cannon, which was determined to be in poor condition, was buried underneath the monument.

The cannon was forgotten when the cenotaph was moved again in the 1980s and the area was turned into a baseball field with the gun still buried underneath. ...

SOURCE (With Video): https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2020/1...-under-Canadian-baseball-field/4611608323984/
 
I've just been alerted to the following story, which ticks a lot of boxes for me:

Henri-Paul Lecorre was a Frenchman who had served in the French Foreign Legion. He subsequently emigrated to Canada where, at the beginning of the Great War, he "answered the Empire's call" and joined the British Army. He was issued with a Lee-Enfield rifle, the legendary SMLE or "Smellie".

Against King's Regulations, Henri began to decorate the stock of his rifle by carving it with a penknife. He began by christening it "Rosalie", then added a carved star to represent the name Stella, after the name of a lady penpal of his.

As the war went on, he added the names of the many battles in which he fought. He also added to the list of discipline charges for "defacing military property" recorded in his paybook. Twice Rosalie was confiscated from him and scheduled for destruction; twice Henri managed to wangle it back at considerable risk.

After adding the names Arras, Passchendaele, Cote 70, Lens, Lievin, Piericour, Neuville, St.Vaast, Sully Grenay, Courcelette, Zillebeke, Hoodge, St. Eloi, Kemmel and Vimy to his list of engagements, Henri's luck ran out. He was badly gassed trying to rescue injured comrades, and woke up in hospital days later sans Rosalie.

38 years passed.

In 1956 Henri's old regiment had set up a museum in Quebec. One day an old soldier happened to visit it, to be told of a strangely-decorated rifle which was on display. The old soldier was Henri-Paul Lecorre; the rifle was his long-lost Rosalie.

Here's the excellent Ian McCollum on his Forgotten Weapons YouTube channel showing us a replica of Rosalie:


Rosalie's story and travels.

Another version.

"There were giants in the earth in those days."

maximus otter
 
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