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Lost & Found

escargot said:
Those keys- wonder what happened to them?

They're in a drawer at my parent's house. Theres about twenty odd ranging from tiny two inch keys to big six inch whoppers. At least some must be extremely old, maybe 2-300 years. I'm sure if the City museum knew we had them they'd want them, but in the late 60's nobody cared.
 
Car and More Found as Colorado Lake Drains

The Gazette, Colorado Springs, Colo. - May 11, 2004


Motor Trend

As the hulking metal skeleton of a Volkswagen bug peered out of receding Prospect Lake last week, Frank Kazee found his 14th gun nearby.

As the lake is becoming sand, it is revealing a prospector's paradise of guns, knives, class rings - even small German cars.
advertisement

City officials and amateur sleuths are scratching their heads, wondering how so much trash got to the bottom of a 50-acre lake last drained in 1953.

They expected to find some stuff. But it's been stunning what has emerged during the past three weeks the city has been pumping water out of the lake.

"There's shotguns and rifles and everything come up at that lake," said Kazee, a Colorado Springs, Colo., resident who's been prospecting the sand with his Bounty Hunter metal detector since 1969. "You name it, we've found it."

Kazee has discovered his 14 shotguns, handguns and rifles at the Memorial Park swimming hole since the water started receding in 2002. The city is draining Prospect Lake and wants to patch its leaks and refill it by next year.

The serial numbers have been filed off some of the guns, likely used to commit crimes, and most are too old to work. Still, Kazee and other members of the Pikes Peak Adventure Club for prospectors let police know when they dig up anything suspicious.

He's found rings and jewelry, too.

------------------------------
Most items sprawled across the lake Thursday were trash and junk that hasn't seen the light in decades: an ice cube tray; a 45 rpm record with its label missing; empty pull-tab cans of Colt 45, Coors and Hamms.

The most curious item is the Volkswagen, with its rusted top and broken front window protruding from the water near the east side of the lake.

As birds perched on its top Thursday, 8-year-old Angelica Zins strolled by and wondered aloud: "Are there people in there?"

"There could be," replied her father, Greg Zins.

City parks and recreation director Paul Butcher said his staffers haven't noticed any slimy skeletons but have pinpointed the bug as a model built in the late 1960s. When the water drops low enough to pull it out, they will examine it for a vehicle identification number or license plate and try to determine its history.

Butcher's theory is somebody drove the car onto the lake when it was frozen, causing it to fall through the ice and sink.

The city has pumped about 15 million gallons out of the lake and into Monument Creek. Butcher expects the area will be dry by early June.

http://www.motortrend.com/features/news/112_news11/
 
Woooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwww
I'd love to go there.


Seeing a lake drained was one of the things I was fascinated by as a kid, probably because of news about whole valleys being flooded to create reservoirs. Saw a TV prog about dams recently and realised that I know everything about the Aswan dam, having learned about it soon after it opened!

Those guns are very intriguing. They are probably crime weapons dumped in a panic. 14 of them. :eek:
 
I am fascinated by Lady Bower reservoirs in Derbyshire. A village was flooded to make them. When it is dry the levels drop and some of the ruined buildings can be seen at the side.

You can find pottery and glass in the mud. The kids love it (mind you last time we went they were more fascinated by a huge dead pike!!!)

Lady Bower is also the place where they tested the bouncing bombs and filmed Dambusters.
 
What happens to all the jewellery, thats what I'd like to know.
There is a lake in my hometown that gets dredged for stolen bikes every six months, that the police then sell off cheap at the local auctions. You can usually guarantee at least 30-odd.
 
Jun. 17, 2004. 01:00 AM


Hand found was from doll

Police initially said it was human

Discovery sparked land, water search


ROBERTA AVERY
SPECIAL TO THE STAR

WASAGA BEACH—A coroner's examination has ruled that a hand found on a popular beach and believed to be that of an infant or a baby actually came from a plastic doll.

The hand, which launched an intense police land and water search on Tuesday, was made of a spongy, synthetic material, said Dr. Jim Cairns of the chief coroner's office yesterday.

Cairns said a careful rinse of the mud and sand caked on the appendage had provided the right perspective." We looked at it in the appropriate light and it was quite obvious that it was a doll's hand," he said.

Cairns said the hand was so lifelike it had fooled him at first glance. He said he did not blame the officers, the local coroner or the person who found it for thinking it was human.

Standard procedure calls for the "remains" to be handled as little as possible, and for them to be packed up along with any surrounding soil or sand, he said.

The discovery was made by Alina Cimachowski of Woodbridge while walking along the beach with her 9-year-old son Lucas. After seeing the hand, she poked it with a stick.

Initially, it crossed Cimachowski's mind the hand could be that of a doll, but when she looked closely she thought the tiny fingernails and lines in the knuckles were so lifelike that she called police. "They were really human lines," she said.

First one officer and then another arrived to take a look. "They thought it was the real thing," said Cimachowski in a telephone interview yesterday.

Next digital photographs of the hand were sent electronically to the chief coroner's office. "Even they couldn't tell from the images," said Garland.

Then the local coroner arrived and ordered the hand to be sent for examination.

Meanwhile four members of the OPP's underwater search and recovery team staked out a grid search just off shore while two other officers dug into the middle of the 100-metre stretch of beach roped off as a crime scene.

Other officers searched the parking lot while a cadaver dog trained to sniff out bodies was brought in to search the popular tourist beach.

The search was called off at dusk and the area remained cordoned off overnight. The recovery team members were just pulling on their dive suits yesterday morning to resume the search when the call came from Cairns' office, said Garland.

Source
 
Staggering home drunkenly one night, I noticed a headless baby lying in some bushes. Was immediately shocked into sobriety! :eek:

It was of course one of those lifesize cloth dolls with soft plastic limbs.

Reminds me of the times when I've read about people finding real corpses which they've at first taken to be shop window models. :(
 
It does make you look at the idea of the Roswell aliens being parachute test dummies in a different light ;)

There are also those cases where people mistook toy jelly aliens for foetuses.

I suppose people see something, interpret it as being something horrid and then they go and find someone else to deal with it. Me I'd be prodding it with a pencil and seeing what it tasted like (which has got me into so much troop in the past ;) ).

Emps
 
Quote:
The safe made it on to the annual list of strange finds, which included a leopard-print lounge suite, a glass eye, dentures, a ukulele, garden gnomes and a pay phone.
Unquote

There's nowt so queer as folk . . .
:madeyes:

Carole
 
This is odd:

Marine uniforms on fence pose mystery

Are they meant as a tribute or simply castoffs?

By KEVIN DUGGAN
[email protected]



J.W. Weaver, who are you?

Where are you?

And why are your Marine Corps uniforms hanging on a lonely fence line in northern Larimer County?

For about 10 days, an assortment of Marine uniforms has been hanging on a fence just east of where the Buckeye Road exit of Interstate 25 (No. 288) connects with County Road 82.

Who the uniforms belong to and why they are there is a mystery to residents of the sparsely populated ranchland between Wellington and Carr.

"We're hoping for some answers ourselves," said Evelyn Davis, 6225 Ranchland Lane. "Nobody around here knows what this is about."

Davis first saw the uniforms June 11 while out for a walk. Other neighbors said they noticed the unusual display last week and wondered why it was there and what it meant.

"Somebody is sending someone up here some kind of message," said Barry Hagerman, 6525 Ranchland Lane.

The uniforms are on four black plastic clothes hangers. The hangers are hooked to the top board of a battered barricade that is part of the fence.

One hanger holds three khaki uniform shirts and a pair of dark green trousers.

Another holds a dress-blue coat and dark trousers. An American flag and a yellow plastic rose are tucked into the coat. A white hat rests atop the fence above the coat, which carries highly polished brass buttons sporting the Marine Corps emblem.

Another hanger holds a dark green jacket -- size 36 regular -- and the other a set of camouflage fatigues, as well as several brown or green undershirts. The fatigues appear to be worn and have a hole in the trousers.

The rank insignia of a lance corporal -- a single chevron stripe over two crossed rifles -- appears on the sleeves of the uniforms.

The only identification is "Weaver" on the fatigues' name tag and "Weaver J.W." stamped on a belt.

The display appears to be either a memorial or the purging of someone's closet.

The uniforms, while soaked by recent rains, have been undisturbed. The wind has blown the hat off into weeds and trash along the bottom of the fence, neighbors say, but it has been placed back on its perch.

Marine Corps officials could not immediately verify that a Lance Cpl. J.W. Weaver is currently on active duty with the service. The name does not appear on the list of casualties from the war in Iraq, officials said.

The Marine recruiting office in Fort Collins has no record of anyone named Weaver signing up through the office in the last three years, officials said.

A Cpl. Jack W. Weaver is stationed in Japan with the 1st Marine Air Wing, said Sgt. Matthew Holly, a public affairs specialist in Denver, but there is no telling whether he is connected to the uniforms.

And it's possible the uniforms were owned by a reservist or someone who was discharged from the Marines a few years ago, Holly added.

A Marine who is honorably discharged may keep his or her uniforms after leaving the service, Holly said. There is no protocol for disposing of uniforms after discharge, he said.

Mike Coronado, 6332 Ranchland Lane, said motorists frequently pull off the highway and stop near the fence line. Some people camp in the secluded spot overnight.

The display appears to be a tribute of some kind, he said.

"I'm just glad nobody has messed with it," Coronado said.

---------------------
Originally published Tuesday, June 22, 2004

http://www.coloradoannews.com/news/stories/20040622/news/695333.html

Emps
 
I love books and especially second hand books and I like this story - I especially like the idea of books collecting a new story during their 'life':

At Used-Book Stores, Unintended Mysteries Are Often the Best

Sellers Leave Love Letters, Cash Between the Pages; 2 Photos and a Train Ticket

By BARRY NEWMAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
June 22, 2004; Page A1

NEW YORK -- A book is a good place to stash personal, valuable, embarrassing stuff. Unless, forgetting all about the stuff, you sell the book to a used book store.

"I'd always have a book with me when I got arrested," said Richard Ryan on being told that his 1985 rap sheet had fallen out of a book at the Strand, a store on Broadway in Manhattan where anybody can flip through a heap of two million volumes. "Books end up as filing cabinets," Mr. Ryan says, remembering his days as a student apartheid protester. "I'm sure I got my arrest ticket and filed it in the book."

Clearing his shelves years later, he unloaded a few hundred hardbacks -- rap sheet inadvertently included -- into one corner of the book business that has lately been doing well. Americans bought 150 million old books last year, reports Ipsos BookTrends. Online used-book sales, Forrester Research predicts, could double and hit billion by 2007. The more books people dump, the more tittle-tattle they pass on to strangers.

Which is how the Strand's staff came to know that William Richard Ryan, at the age of 23, was charged with criminal trespass for a sit-in at Cornell University on Nelson Mandela's 67th birthday. He was acquitted, but his arrest record, with a nice set of fingerprints, still wound up on a pile of book-borne scraps at the Strand's information desk.

"It's about as definitive a trail as one can leave," says Mr. Ryan, who is now 42 and heads Verse Theater Manhattan, a group that puts on poetic dramas. Whether he likes it or not, the uncataloged archive of oddments that slip out of old books has acquired a fragment of his past.

At the Strand's main desk, Richard Lilly said, "Let this be a warning to those who don't look through books before they sell. Bored clerks see it all." He laid open a copy of "Diverse Images -- Photographs From the New Orleans Museum of Art." Lodged between pages 62 and 81 was a spent bullet. "Another piece of a life that can't be tracked," said Mr. Lilly, who runs the Strand's art department. "It could be worse. At least there's no blood."

Erin Thompson, who enters new buys into the Strand's computer, found a key in a book and wears it on a string around her neck. Ephemera drift up on her desk: the Louths' hand-drawn family tree. An ink sketch dated 1901 -- hidden in a 1969 Christmas card -- of a horse pulling a plow. A doctor's prescription pad with the following notations: "Wednesday -- mambo, lindy, spins. Thursday -- rumba or tango. At work -- angry. Really got angry. How to use?"

"Yesterday, I found this really cool picture of this naked wrestler guy," Ms. Thompson says. In the fiction department, Ben McFall says: "I have a collection at home, which I can't bring in, of men in negligees. How do these things get away from people?"


Easily. A letter from Mrs. Robert E. Lee once dropped out of an old novel at Main Street Fine Books in Galina, Ill., birthplace of Ulysses S. Grant. Books from the Crypt in Gaithersburg, Md., found a 1933 horse-race tip-sheet in a 1938 copy of "Astounding Stories." Christmas Every Day, a used bookstore in Dallas, acquires leftovers from Christmas dinners in leftover Christmas books.

At the Strand -- New York's oldest and biggest independent used-book seller -- the most gripping finds produce new enigmas. Adam Davis, a 25-year-old from Oregon, took a job as a Strand clerk when he came to New York three years ago to write fiction. One day, he opened a copy of Barbara Tuchman's medieval history, "A Distant Mirror," and discovered a birth certificate. The baby's father was listed as "not known." An attached rider, dated years later, named the father.

Wrapped inside the certificate was a snapshot of a woman posing nude in a motel room, and one, in black-and-white, of what appeared to be the same woman as a child. There were some traveler's-check receipts, and the stub of a train ticket, issued shortly after the date on the rider, for a trip to the town where the birth certificate was issued.

"It's as if the book picked up a new story," says Mr. Davis. "I'm not sure I want to know the whole truth. The suppositions are so interesting."
The fiction he has been writing since coming to work at the Strand, he says, has been about "the previous owners of books, based on the traces they left in them."

Novelist A.S. Byatt did the same in "Possession," which begins with a letter left in an old tome. Novelist David Bowman extended the theme: He deliberately filled a first edition of his novel "Let the Dog Drive" with letters from publishers rejecting it, and then sold it to the Strand. "They gave me a good price," Mr. Bowman says.

Used books often gain value from forgotten paper -- paper money, for example; the Strand's staff rakes in lots of that. They haven't yet found a "hell scene with fish monster," as Cristiana Romelli did two years ago at Sotheby's in London. The original Hieronymus Bosch sketch fell out of a client's old picture album and sold for 6,000. A few years earlier, her colleague Julien Stock found a Michelangelo stuck in a 19th-century scrap book. In 2001, that one brought its owner million.

The Strand did buy a doodled-over book of drawings by the Renaissance artist Ucello. The doodler was Salvador Dali. Fred Bass, the Strand's owner, once opened a book titled "The Bill of Rights" to find it was hollowed out. The bottom of the inside was signed, "Boo! Abbie Hoffman." Mr. Bass says he learned later from Mr. Hoffman that he had hidden a tape recorder in there during the Chicago Seven trial.

Mining the dusty stacks, browsers can strike gold too: a signed photo of Bette Davis; a dried four-leaf clover; a ripped-out flyleaf from a first edition with a poem scrawled on it: "A plague upon/ and to perdition/ the Hun who mars/ a first edition..."

Harvey Frank wasn't pleased, though, to learn that a personal note he wrote had landed in a customer's hands at the Strand. Mr. Frank had slipped it into a copy of his own self-published book of poetry, "My Reservoir of Dreams," before sending it to WOR Radio host Joan Hamburg. "I thought I would bring her into my life," says Mr. Frank, who is 80. Ms. Hamburg remembers the book, vaguely. "I was sort of touched," she says. "I put it on my desk. Or somewhere." She says she has no idea how it ended up in a used-book bin.

Perhaps "Linda" would say the same about the postcard signed "XXXX" mailed to her from Nantucket on July 29, 1965. "I mean, do you love me?" it said. "Please write me. I miss you terribly..." And maybe "Sarah" wouldn't recall how the copy of "Art & Illusion" she was given on her 21st birthday made its way to the Strand with this card inside: "I love you! I hope you enjoy this present. I love you and only you. Yes I do. You. You. You. With love from Nick."

Snippets caught in books never solve these mysteries, but a while ago, Will Bobrowski did add up some clues. He was shelving a book on the Third Reich when an envelope dropped out. Two letters were inside: one from a woman to a Dr. Muller in America; and one signed by an Albert Kesselring. There were two snapshots: one of a group of Nazi officers standing at a table, and another showing one of them leaving a building with Benito Mussolini.

"I went crazy doing research," Mr. Bobrowski says. Soon he knew that Field Marshal Kesselring led Hitler's forces in Italy, was convicted of war crimes in 1947, was pardoned in 1952 -- and was the man walking out of that building with Mussolini.

Mr. Bobrowski thinks these letters and photos may be valuable. He says he might someday give them to an academic institution. Until then -- for safekeeping -- he has tucked them inside an old book.

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB108785738519943459-Ihjf4NklaN3np2vZoKIaaeFm5,00.html
 
Worst thing I ever left in a library book was a paper working model of Gillian Taylforth doing that thing she does. Allegedly. :blush:
 
my dad buys a lot of secondhand books, and if often fascinated by how far the previous reader got. He has what he claims is a particularly crap DH lawrence novel (forgotten which one) for which a double page is completely blackened, apparently because the previous reader had got up to there, stopped reading and just left it open for years.
 
Jul 6, 12:36 PM EDT


R.I. Man Finds ,000 in Coins in Stove

CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. (AP) -- A landlord is sure glad he looked in an old stove before he threw it out. Inside were vintage coins and nearly ,000 worth of gold and silver bars.

Vincent Bilotti came across the stove when he was cleaning the Broad Street apartment of Ben Mizera, a longtime tenant who had died recently. He pried open the coal-burning chamber and found several wrapped parcels and canisters.

The cans had plastic bags with ancient pennies - wartime zinc, Indian head and wheat. The brown paper packages had 133 one-ounce gold and silver bars. There were also five-dollar bills minted in 1851 and solid-silver dollars from the 1880s.

Bilotti said he'll make sure the valuables get to either Mizera's wife or a relative.

"It's possible that they had forgotten about it years ago," he said.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/COINS_IN_STOVE?SITE=VTBUR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
 
Its easy enough to lose your drink in a pub, by putting it down and not keeping an eye on it, but losing an entire pub looks a bit careless.

Officials 'lose' demolished pub

A pub which was dismantled to make way for a ring road has been lost by officials.

The White Lion, an imposing timbered building, was lovingly broken down piece by piece in the late 1970s so that it could be rebuilt.

Drinkers had decided not to oppose the planned road - on condition their cherished pub was replaced on another site in Stafford.

But it has emerged that officials have mislaid the materials.

Now, Staffordshire County Councillor Robert Simpson wants to see it rebuilt and has launched a hunt for the pub's parts.

'Someone must know'

"It's been put in storage somewhere," he said. "Now everyone's forgotten where.

"I've made some inquiries and so have local residents, but no-one is any the wiser.

"Someone must know. Someone should have records somewhere. The search goes on."

Local historian Joan Anslow is also at a loss to know where the pub has disappeared to.

"The White Lion was an attractive building, used by many residents of Stafford," she said. "They used to hold fairs in the back yard, selling geese and turkeys."


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/england/staffordshire/3546358.stm

Published: 2004/08/08 13:26:56 GMT

© BBC MMIV

I'd be checking on any ex-councillors or council workers who've gone into the architectural salvage business
 
Makes you wonder what treasures are lying around government warehouses...


Like the last scene of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark...
 
I saw a TV prog which said that the wooden doorframe which took several bullets during the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy in 1968 was carefully taken down, put into storage.... and thrown away. :eek:
 
Found Magazine is an online resource devoted to weird discoveries.
It usually seems more melancholy than amusing to me but it is
well worth a browse.

http://www.foundmagazine.com/

Try Find of the Week for 11th July to see something slightly disturbing
found between the pages of a book. :rolleyes:
 
Emperor said:
There are also those cases where people mistook toy jelly aliens for foetuses.

And still people keep stumbling across these things:

ALIEN TOY SPARKS DUMPED BABY ALERT

Published on 09/08/2004

A SUPERMARKET car park was cordoned off after a child’s toy was mistaken for a dumped foetus.

Dalton Co-op staff were distressed by the find on Saturday.

A nurse doing some shopping alerted store manager, Joanne Dunne, that she had found a foetus lying in the Market Street supermarket’s car-park, close to the recycling bins.

Ms Dunne said: “She said that it was about 12 weeks old. When we touched it with a stick it looked like a baby because its skin was all squashy. The nurse said it looked fresh.”

Staff cordoned off the area and called police at 11.25am.

Police officers and CID were called to the Co-op — but they still thought that the baby was real, so a doctor was called.

The doctor eventually identified the foetus as an Alien Cosmolight.

The £3 children’s toy is an alien foetus encased in a plastic egg which flashes when jolted.

http://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/viewarticle.aspx?id=122940
 
Tue, August 10, 2004

Lost cat found 18 years later
By CP

SELKIRK, Man. -- After someone mistakenly let her cat out 18 years ago, Leslie Dumas thought she would never see her precious pet again. But when the Winnipeg Humane Society called her father last Wednesday, the 41-year-old was reunited with her long-lost Seagulls.

"How long do most cats live? He survived a fire, he survived being lost for all these years," said Dumas, whose 20-year-old cat was identified by a tattoo in its ear.

After her own home was destroyed by fire, Dumas was living in her boyfriend's mother's house outside Selkirk in the winter of 1986 when the cat ran away.

Until the malnourished cat gets his strength back, Seagull will be dining on pickerel fillets. "He deserves it," said Dumas.

http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/CalgarySun/News/2004/08/10/575812.html
 
School Bus Lost For Hours With School Kids Onboard

DeKalb School Bus Lost for Hours

Elaine Reyes Reports

A DeKalb County school bus carrying dozens of special needs school children lost its way Monday after the bus driver grew disoriented. After missing for several hours, the bus and children were found in Forsyth County.

A teacher at Flat Shoals Elementary School noticed five of her special needs students were missing Monday morning and an investigation was launched soon after. Dannie Reed, the head of transportation for DeKalb schools, said the bus driver, Mary Taylor, was contacted around 10 a.m. morning and she told him she was lost. The bus was turned around and headed towards the school, but an hour after the initial call, it still did not make it to the school.

“Each of our special needs buses carries a cell phone for the specific reason of calling 911. It's the only number it will call. None of that had taken place,” Reed said.

Police in surrounding counties were notified and at 1:30 p.m., more than six hours after it was last seen, the bus was found in Forsyth County near Highway 9.

Police said the driver was disoriented and still searching for the school. Officials said they do think alcohol or drugs were a factor. Taylor was later taken to Northside Hospital. Her condition was not confirmed.

Flat Shoals is a year-round school and Monday was not their first day of school as it was for most of the metro area. Taylor was not new to the route. The students were fine and returned to their parents.

STORY
 
From artificial legs to pythons, bizarre things left behind in public places

Sunday, September 12, 2004 By JENNIFER MASTROIANNI


Guess what was found in front of the stage after the Quiet Riot concert at the 2003 Hall of Fame Ribs Burnoff?

Twelve bras. Yep. In all styles and sizes.

This colorful tidbit of local lore got us wondering: What other strange stuff is lost and found in public places across the county, state and country?

Oh, the items people lose and find. Big bras. Big cash. Big reptiles.

But nothing more unusual than body parts.

Imagine this scenario: You are strolling past one of the death-defying roller coasters at Cedar Point Amusement Park, stuffing cotton candy in your mouth, minding your own business and something catches your eye. You look closer. Is that ... could that possibly be ... an eyeball?

It is! A prosthetic human eyeball!

Which might cause you to wonder: Is the owner looking for it? Does he or she carry a spare, or is the owner walking around with an empty socket? Should I keep walking, or pick it up?

“Twice we have had glass eyes,” said Janice Witherow, public relations manager at the amusement park in Sandusky. “Those are among our more oddball items. We’ve also had toupees and wigs. These things are usually located under the high-speed roller coasters.”

In both cases, kind souls turned the eyeballs in to the park’s lost and found. The rightful owners claimed them later the same day.

No eyeballs at Geauga Lake in Aurora. But the same phenomenon occurs on their breakneck thrill rides.

“We’ve found dentures and retainers and hair extensions,” said park spokeswoman Lexi Robinson.

Some doozies have been lost by fans at Tribe games. “The oddest thing we found was a set of dentures,” said Jacobs Field representative Bob DiBiassio. “Somebody’s dentures fell onto the warning track during a post-season game. Obviously, somebody screaming and yelling too loud. We found them pretty quickly.”

Lots of jewelry is lost. “We had one case of an engaged couple, and the fiancée threw the ring at the guy. A few innings later, she bummed out and couldn’t find it,” said DiBiassio. “And once we had a guy end up getting up and walking off without his crutches.”

DiBiassio had heard about the lost glass eyes at Cedar Point. “We had the glass eye scenario, too,” he said. “Wonder if it’s the same guy.”

Talk about a jolt of a find. In June, volunteers who tend beach habitats on Florida’s Shell Key encountered more than bird nests. In the sand was a prosthetic left leg, complete with a white sports sock and a snazzy Reebok sneaker.

The group placed a found ad in the local newspaper, hoping whoever was missing the limb would claim it. Someone did.

Turns out Dave Dixon of Orlando was tubing when his artificial leg (from the knee down) hit the water and came off. When he went to retrieve it, a boat sped by and the limb disappeared under the waves. He figured it floated out to sea. (We wondered, would a shark be enticed?)

Dixon already had been fitted for a new leg when he heard about the ad.

“We’re just going to keep that in the car as a spare,” Dixon’s girlfriend, Cindy Hendron, told the St. Petersburg Times.

Countless items have been lost during events at the Canton Memorial Civic Center. In 26 years as a maintenance technician, Larry Hilton of Louisville has found many personal items. After this summer’s rainy-day visit by President Bush, a couple of dozen umbrellas were left behind. Through the years, Hilton has found love notes, birth control pills, jewelry and cameras.

But nothing surprised him like the purse left behind after a convention.

“This was probably 18 years ago,” said Hilton, 51, who is now the facility’s main technician. “We had an Amway convention here. I found a purse with about $34,000 in it.”

“I was in total shock” Hilton said. “It was mostly large bills, $100s and $50s.”

Inside was an ID. Managers called the Barberton woman who owned the handbag.

“The next day, she came and got it,” Hilton said. “There was no ‘Thank you.’ She told us, ‘At least it’s all there.’”

Most of the public places contacted said cell phones are the No. 1 lost item, followed by glasses, umbrellas and small articles of clothing such as hats.

Oddly, that is not the accessory that turns up most at the Akron Canton Regional Airport.

“We’ve got a stack of men’s belts and that just blows my mind,” said Linda Decker, an executive assistant in the airport administration office. “If there is ever a fire, I can always use belts to get out of the window.”

One theory is that the belts are taken off and forgotten at security screening. Another is that they are removed for relaxation in the waiting area.

“It’s amazing that they don’t remember they took them off,” said Decker, of Jackson Township. “I guess their pants aren’t falling down, or they would be coming back.”

Personal items frequently are forgotten in hotel rooms. Philip Dumot, general manager of Belden Village Holiday Inn, discovered a shocker a few years ago when he was the manager of a Sandusky hotel.

“Housekeeping called me and said, ‘Mr. Dumot, we have an issue. A guest left something behind. Maybe you want to come down and have a look.’”

“I went in to look, pulled back the sheets and guess what it was. A 9-foot white python.”

No one claimed the snake.

“We looked at the registration card and (the name) was erroneous,” Dumot said. “My chef took it home for a pet.” That was the second time Dumot encountered a mammoth snake on a hotel property. The other was a Burmese python that had slithered out of its owner’s room and was found in a hotel pool.

Blossom Music Center’s lost and found is loaded with cell phones, said operations manager Mark Girton.

“Those that aren’t claimed we end up giving to a battered women’s shelter at the end of the year,” he said.

Car keys get lost a lot, too. At least a set every concert. They aren’t too easy to find in the grass. In the dark. After a few libations.

“We don’t let people stay overnight, so they have to get someone to come pick them up or take a cab. Most of the time, a guest or cleaning crew finds them that night or the next day.”

About those 12 bras at the Quiet Riot show ...

Apparently, zealous female fans tossed their bras on stage.

“Twelve women went home without their bras. That is, that we know of,” said a Hall of Fame Festival spokesperson who preferred to remain anonymous. Exhausted festival volunteers discovered them during cleanup and, in their fatigue, got a little slap-happy.

“One of the volunteers was a size 2, and she found a bra that was about a 40DD,” the source said. “She put it on over her golf shirt and was wearing it around when we tore down.”

Weird items even turn up at the Stark County District Library.

“We used to find underwear in the book drop,” said Brenda Momirovic, circulation manager.

The explanation?

“I have no idea. I have no idea,” she said. “I wouldn’t even venture to guess. Maybe there is no explanation. Maybe that’s the explanation.”

You can reach Repository writer Jennifer Mastroianni at (330) 580-8304 or e-mail:

[email protected]


Lost and Founds:

Akron Canton Regional Airport

Frequent finds: Cameras, passports, CDs, Gameboys, shoes.

Happy ending: A passenger found a diamond ring, saying she would keep it until someone called her directly to describe it. Five months later, an older woman called the airport saying she may have lost a ring during a layover; it was a $10,000 heirloom from her deceased mother. Airport staff arranged for the two women to talk. They then met, went to dinner and the loser gave the finder a $1,000 reward.


Cedar Point

Frequent finds: Cameras, cell phones, jackets.

Happy ending: This summer, a Michigan guest lost the diamond out of her wedding ring. One of the employees found it in the ice skating theater and turned it in.


City of Canton, Police Property Room

Items turned in here are lost or stolen, but strange things that turn up are lawn mowers, wheelchairs, newspaper racks, lawn ornaments, floodlights, car washes’ change machines, cash registers and lots of bikes.


Cleveland Browns Stadium

Frequent finds: Glasses, jackets, binoculars. “Lots of volume but nothing really special,” said Browns rep Nathan Boudreaux.


Cleveland Hopkins International Airport

Frequent finds: Laptop computers, cameras, keys.

Surprise finds: Purses and satchels of cash. “We’ve had substantial amounts of cash left behind,” said Richard DeChant, assistant federal security director for screening operations. “People walk off and leave a handbag with $4,000 to $5,000, because they are going to Las Vegas. Fortunately, we usually connect people with their items.”


Jacobs Field

Frequent finds: Lots of binoculars and ball gloves. Unclaimed gloves are donated to Cleveland youth sports programs.


Palace Theatre

Currently in Lost and Found: Diary, rain jackets, golf cap, Tupperware container, single earrings, a dozen eyeglasses and a cellophane name tag with little girl’s name on it. “That is in case she gets lost,” quipped staff member Jackie Mitchell. “God knows where she’s at!”


2004 Professional Football Hall of Fame Festival

Found this year: 12 items. Eyeglasses, umbrellas, mugs.


Stark County District Library

Frequent finds: Drivers’ licenses, personal photos and documents left in copy machine.

Happy Ending: “An older lady said she left a tax-return check in a book,” said circulation manager Brenda Momirovic. “She knew what book she had read, the problem was, we had multiple copies. It was for $2,300, and we found it. She was so happy.”


Stark County Fairgrounds

Found items after this year’s fair: Hats, keys, cell phones, pagers, wallets, a stroller. “Nothing juicy,” said Pat Schafrath from the fair office.

Source
 
Odd ‘finds’ are normal in author’s daily life

Sunday, September 12, 2004

By JENNIFER MASTROIANNI




Breakup letters scrawled on airsickness bags. Ransom notes. A baby eel preserved in formaldehyde with a note attached that reads “Flaky and Self-conscious.”

Such finds are Davy Rothbart’s stock-in-trade. Now, the creator of Found magazine has published “Found: The Best Lost, Tossed and Forgotten Items from Around the World” (Simon & Schuster).

The book offers a voyeuristic, poignant and often hilarious glimpse into other people’s lives through lost notes, missives, letters, photos and strange stuff.

On Sept. 28, Rothbart will be in Cleveland Heights as part of his 50-state “Slapdance Across America 2004.”

We caught up with the chatty 29-year-old last week as he was leaving a signing in Alaska.

Q. What is one of the weirdest finds in your collection?

A. The eel. And a door that somebody mailed from England. It was spray-painted on the side “I got you Hayes.” My friend found it on the side of the road.

What sparked this love of finding things?

I was 7 or 8 and would walk through the field to get to the bus. I was always finding stuff like notes. It’s amazing how you can connect with someone just through half a page of a love note blowing across the grass.

Any great finds yourself?

I was living in Chicago and came out to find a note on the snowy windshield of my car. It said, “Mario, I (obscenity) hate you. You said you had to work, why is your car here? I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. Amber. PS. Page me later.” They were such complicated emotions. So angry but still in love and hopeful.

What made you decide to turn this into an occupation?

People knew I collected this kind of stuff and would give it to me. It seemed a shame that the only people who saw it were the ones who traipsed through my kitchen and saw it on my fridge. So I put a magazine together for people to share it. (Found is published yearly.)

Where do you get the strange things featured on Find of the Week on your Web site?

People find weird stuff and send it in.

Do you find it creepy reading other people’s lost notes?

No. Part of the fun is the mystery. It’s like finding the ninth page of a letter, and you have to kind of guess what happened. I like how finds are the fragment of a story, each with its own little riddle.

What is your book signing/show like?

I just get up there with a stack of favorites and read them out loud. It’s a rowdy reading. My brother, Peter, plays the guitar and writes songs based on the notes.

What is the worst thing you’ve ever lost?

My journal.

Have you found anything huge, like say, the love of your life?

No, but I have 38 states to go. Maybe I’ll find someone on this trip.

-----------------------
Rothbart’s appearance is at 7 p.m. at Mac’s Backs Paperbacks, 1820 Coventry Rd. in Cleveland Heights The phone is (216) 321-2665. Visit

http://www.foundmagazine.com

http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=181809&originalStoryID=181810&r=
 
Dog walker discovers penny worth thousands
Fri September 10, 2004 09:04 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - A routine walk with his dog has turned into a profitable excursion for one man, who discovered a 1,200-year-old gold penny during the stroll and now expects to sell it for thousands of pounds.

The coin weighs just 4.33 grams and was discovered on a public footpath beside the River Ivel in Bedfordshire. It is the first new Anglo-Saxon gold penny to come to light in nearly a century and the only known gold coin with the name of Coenwulf -- a king who ruled over the region of Mercia.

London auctioneers Spink estimate the coin will sell for 120,000-150,000 pounds when it goes under the hammer in October. But Richard Bishop, an auctioneer at Spink, said the coin's excellent condition might help the price rise beyond the top estimate.

"It's obviously going to be far in excess of anything that the average guy would expect to find when he's out walking his dog," said Bishop.
© Reuters 2004
 
Last Update: Saturday, October 30, 2004. 9:43am (AEST)

Australian sets diving record, finds skeleton

An Australian deep-water diver attempting a world-record dive in South Africa found the skeletal remains of a fellow diver who disappeared down the same sinkhole 10 years ago, South African radio reported Friday.

David Shaw did however break the previous record of 242 metres for diving with special equipment rather than using the normal scuba gear and took nine-and-half hours to resurface, spending most of the time decompressing.

He found the remains of Deon Dreyer, who died at Boesmansgat in the arid Northern Cape province in 1994, at a depth of 271 metres, SABC radio said.

The Australian said he wanted to go deeper, but decided to stop after making the grisly discovery.

Boesmansgat is described by several websites as an ancient watering hole for bushmen roaming the Kalahari Desert and warned it should only be "dived by experienced divers with some caving and sinkhole experience."

-- AFP

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200410/s1231275.htm
 
The Australian said he wanted to go deeper, but decided to stop after making the grisly discovery.
I bet he did. :(
 
City to decide fate of Jesus statue

07:35 AM CST on Monday, December 6, 2004

Associated Press

EAGLE PASS, Texas - A life-size fiberglass statue of Jesus Christ that was found in the Rio Grande has ended up in a police department's evidence room, but law officers say it can't stay there much longer.

Officials in this border city say they will decide Tuesday what to do with the statue, which has attracted thousands of the religious faithful for a glimpse.

"We see every day a steady flow of people coming in and paying homage to it," Police Chief Juan A. Castaneda said. "We've had them come from different parts of the country."

He said more than 3,000 visitors have viewed the statue of the crucified Christ lacking a cross. Some call it "The Jesus Christ of the Undocumented."

Border Patrol agents found the statue on a sandbar in the river Aug. 31. When agents first saw that statue from the air, they thought it was a body and launched a rescue attempt.

Police have kept it for 90 days, waiting for an owner to come forward. They say it now must be disposed of as unclaimed property.

Several churches have written letters asking city officials to donate the statue to them. A dentist who is Catholic wants to take it home to his Maverick County ranch to share with his prayer group, which has grown to more than 100 people.

City Manager Jesus M. Olivares says the city has decided to donate the statue to someone who could share it with the public. He placed the issue on the City Council's agenda for Tuesday.

"Basically, we're just waiting to see what position the council will take on this matter," said Castaneda.

Source - requires (free) registration.
 
Cat's gravestone fetches £200,000 at Sotheby's
By Will Bennett, Art Sales Correspondent
(Filed: 11/12/2004)

A stone marking a pet cat's grave fetched more than £200,000 at Sotheby's yesterday after experts said it was a 1,100-year-old Anglo-Saxon carving.

The relief depicting St Peter was found in a salvage yard 20 years ago by a stonemason, Johnny Beeston, who took it back to his home in Dowlish Wake, Somerset, where he and his wife Ruth decided it would make a headstone for their cat Winkle.

After Chris Brewchorne, an amateur archaeologist from the town, realised its significance as he walked past, experts identified it as probably part of a Christian cross from 900AD.

Yesterday an anonymous bidder paid £201,600 for Winkle's gravestone, four times the pre-sale estimate.

Telegraph. co.uk
 
Baby and harp among items left in cabs

Mon Jan 24, 2005 01:55 PM GMT


AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - An estimated 11,300 laptop computers, 31,400 handheld computers and 200,000 mobile telephones have been left in taxis around the world during the last six months, according to a survey.

Taxi drivers in nine cities also said they had found a range of other items left by passengers, including a harp, 37 milk bottles, dentures and artificial limbs. One driver said he even found a baby in his taxi.

The survey of some 1,000 taxi drivers said that passengers had lost three times more handheld computers in the second half of 2004 than in 2001, when the research by security software company Pointsec was first carried out.

Most of the items were returned to their owners, cab drivers said. Four out of five mobile phones and 19 out of every 20 computers found their way back, they said.

Londoners appear more careless than others with their laptops, while Danes are most likely to forget their mobile phones, the survey found. In Chicago in the United States, passengers often left behind handheld computers on the back seat.

The survey's findings were extrapolated to reflect the total number of taxis in each city.

One customer, who later turned out to be the girlfriend of actor Hugh Grant, left her iPod music player, mobile phone and purse. When the lady taxi driver was asked to deliver the items to Grant, she received an autograph as a thank-you.

--------------------------
© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.

Source

A Hugh Grant autograph?? Wooooooo. No cash???
 
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