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Lost & Found

baby-doll death plunge

escargot said:
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. :(

hehehe. My parents' house faces the promenade and me and my brother used to have fun on sundays throwing my baby-doll out the 3rd floor windows (accompanied by a dreadful scream). Then we'd peep out and look for horrified passers-by. Strangely, there were never any repercussions... :D
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story ... 18,00.html

10.30am

'Human ear' found in street

Press Association
Friday February 18, 2005

A severed human ear has been found in a city street, police said today.

The discovery has baffled detectives after builders came across the ear on a pavement near Strangeways Prison in Manchester.

Police have checked with hospitals but no-one has been admitted without an ear and no-one has come forward to claim it.

No other body parts were found after a search of the area.

A spokeswoman for Greater Manchester Police said: "Police were informed of what is believed to be a human ear discovered on Great Ducie Street, Strangeways.

"The item has been removed and initial visual identification indicates it may be a human ear.

"It has been sent for forensic tests."

Experts will now run tests to try to discover the owner of the ear.

Detectives want to make sure it is human ear after a similar find a number of years ago of what was thought to be a human finger turned out to be a sausage.
 
My wife is a registered nurse at a local hospital. Among her other duties, she's the CPR instructor. After a class, she usually cleans the detachable and very lifelike faces at the hospital. One evening she was running late and decided to wash them at home. She placed them in the microwave to keep the cats away from them and went to bed. I had already turned in for the night.

The next morning I opened the microwave to warm up my oatmeal. :shock: I don't think I've ever been quite right since.

Dib
 
Not sure where else to put this:

Human Hand Found

Paul Gleasman pulled into his driveway on West Old State Road yesterday and saw something strange sitting on the front lawn, a human hand. Unsure of just what to do with it, Gleasman waited until today to call police. Canines searched neighbor's backyards as well as a cornfield that connects to Gleasman's backyard...nothing turned up. Gleasman wished police would've found something, because now he's left wondering why his lawn was chosen as the spot to discard a human body part.

Source

Police: Hand is Actually a Bear Claw

Well the mystery is solved -- somewhat. That "hand" found Friday outside a Guilderland home is actually a bear claw! -- According to police.

A massive investigation underway last night after homeowner Paul Gleasman found the bloody appendage in a rubber glove on his front lawn -- police released the photos today -- but the hand is so real and bloody we decided not to show them. Even the experienced coroner -- who has over 30 years on the job thought it, was a real hand. But it was at 11 o'clock last night when lab tests showed otherwise. Police say it looks like a prank at this point -- but it certainly was no joke for most of the night.

Guilderland Police Inv. John Tashjian said, “It used a lot of manpower and time -- we were going on the assumption that a homicide may have occurred someplace and you only get one opportunity to do it.”

Guilderland Police say they still don't know who may have placed the bloody claw. If you have any information they urge you to call.

Source
 
Well the "human ear" of Strangeways turned out to be a pig's ear!

I'd hoped for a mad artist on the loose or at least an oxygen-addicted psychopath. :(
 
Lost Property List: Human Skulls, Horses Head

May 26, 2005, 10:47:51
Bizarre

Thats bizarre: Three human skulls, a preserved horse's head and over 6,000 mobile phones were put on display in Paris this week.

The objects are part of the hoard at the Paris Lost Property Office, or Service des Objets Trouves, which is celebrating its 200th anniversary.

Other curiosities at the Paris office include a funeral urn, two wedding dresses and several gold ingots.

Most surprising of all was the good Samaritan who handed in an envelope with GBP20,000 of French banknotes inside.

www.femalefirst.co.uk/bizarre/53912004.htm[/url]
 
Paris lost property reaches 200

One of the world's oldest lost property offices - in the centre of the French capital Paris - is celebrating its 200th birthday this week.
The Service des Objets Trouves receives 900 items from all over the city every day - usually small objects belonging to commuters, such as mobile phones, umbrellas, glasses, hats and wallets.

But some of the more unusual items have included a wedding dress, a skull, a wooden leg, and a 1kg solid gold bar - which remains unclaimed.

"As far as can I remember it was a taxi driver who handed the bar in - a very honest taxi driver," Abdourazak Bourhane, who has worked at the lost property office for the last nine years, told BBC World Service's Outlook programme.

"The odd thing was that nobody came to claim it. In that case, according to the rules here, the object can be returned to the finder.

"[The taxi driver] could in fact come and retrieve it."

A year and a day

The office manages to return around 43,000 objects a year to their rightful owners.

This task is easier with items that have an identity printed on them, such as credit cards. In these cases, a letter can be quickly sent to the owners.

The office will write to anywhere in the world, if they have a clue as to who the owner might be.

One recent case saw a number of diamonds, which had been found in a public area, returned to their owner - an American woman - after she was tracked down.

"We wrote to her, and she came especially here to retrieve the diamonds," Mr Bourhane said.
"She was very surprised."

However, not everything can be traced, and the more unusual items that go unclaimed reside in a small museum at the office.

These include a dead lobster, which was found at Charles de Gaulle airport and handed in, dental plates and false teeth, and the funeral ashes of a cremated person, identity unknown.
"We found two urns," Mr Bourhane explained.

"One was claimed by its owner, and we still have the other one here."

For unclaimed items, a time limit is applied to determine how long it is kept.

Items worth less than 50 euros (£34) are kept for three months, whereas items worth more are kept for a year and a day.

After this time, the item is handed to a special office at the finance ministry and sold at auction.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/w ... 584601.stm
Published: 2005/05/27 14:44:39 GMT

© BBC MMV
 
Re: Dude, Where's My H-Bomb?

Mr. R.I.N.G. said:
Federal Scientists Search for Lost H-Bomb
By RUSS BYNUM, Associated Press Writer

SAVANNAH, Ga. - Spurred by what appear to be unusual radiation readings offshore, the U.S. government is sending a team of 20 scientists to try to find a hydrogen bomb lost off the Georgia coast in 1958. Scientists from the Pentagon (news - web sites) and the National Labs met on Wednesday with Derek Duke, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who has searched for the missing 7,600-pound nuke over the past five years.

Duke has detected what he believes are unusual radiation readings in Wassaw Sound near Tybee Island. A B-47 bomber dumped the H-bomb into the Atlantic Ocean 46 years ago after the plane collided with a fighter jet during a training flight. Navy divers searched the shallow, murky waters near Tybee Island for nearly 10 weeks before declaring the bomb irretrievably lost.

Source



Air Force finds 'no evidence' of lost nuke

Friday, June 17, 2005 Posted: 11:24 AM EDT (1524 GMT)


SAVANNAH, Georgia (AP) -- The first government search in decades for a nuclear bomb lost off the Georgia coast in 1958 failed to uncover any trace of the sunken weapon, the Air Force said in a report Friday.

The report released nine months after scientists tested radiation levels in waters off Tybee Island concluded the 7,600-pound bomb cannot explode and should be left at sea.

"The best course of action in this matter is to not continue to search for it and to leave the property in place," said the report by the Air Force Nuclear Weapons and Counterproliferation Agency.

A damaged B-47 bomber jettisoned the Mark-15 nuke into a sound about 15 miles from Savannah in February 1958 after colliding with a fighter jet during a training flight.

The military never recovered the bomb and gave up searching for 46 years until last year, when a retired Air Force pilot claimed his private search team had detected unusually high radiation levels in the sound.

Government scientists investigated the claims, taking radiation readings and soil samples from a football field-sized area of water September 30. The report said varying radiation levels were observed, but they were from natural elements in the sediment on the sea floor.

The Air Force has said the bomb contains an undisclosed amount of uranium and about 400 pounds of conventional explosives, though it lacks the plutonium capsule needed to trigger a nuclear blast.

In a July 2001 report, the Air Force declared the bomb "irretrievably lost" and estimated it lies buried beneath 8-to-40 feet of water and 5-to-15 feet of mud and sand.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/06/17/georgi ... index.html
 
http://www.11alive.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=65716
Missing Student Found in Jail

A Clark Atlanta University student reported missing this past weekend was in police custody, authorities told 11Alive News Tuesday. Chasity Nicole Lewis, 22, was reported missing last week by her mother, Karen Theresa Lewis, after she did not show up as expected in San Francisco last Tuesday.

Atlanta police told 11Alive News the 22-year-old was arrested June 26 on a charge of breach of peace in a West End neighborhood. Chasity used to live in the neighborhood. She moved recently. She was reportedly screaming and cursing at people. “I guess she got mad at them 'cause they didn't speak to her,” said Sharhonda Walker, a witness.

“All I saw was the cops put her in handcuffs and walked her down the steps,” said Terry Smith, a neighbor. The 22-year-old refused to give her name to authorities, and since she had no identification on her when she was arrested, she was booked as a “Jane Doe” at the Atlanta Detention Center.

Smith talked to the mother days after the arrest. “I told her the cops had her...told her to call the different jails,” Smith said. The mother did so, but could not find her since there were several “Jane Does” in the system. Karen Lewis said she first thought her daughter simply missed her flight to San Francisco, and sent a friend over to her daughter’s house to check on her.

When the friend couldn’t contact Chasity, Karen Lewis decided to fly to Georgia to check on her daughter’s off-campus residence in the 2100 block of Burroughs Avenue.

She grew alarmed after she found her daughter’s credit cards, cell phone, and passport at the residence. Police were notified and a missing person’s report was filed Saturday. The mother plans to fly to Atlanta to get out Chasity out of jail Wednesday.

"As soon as I can get a flight out, I'm going to go 'cause he said he's going to hold her until I get there, so I have to get there as soon as possible,” she said. "There's a lot of questions that need to be answered. I mean I'm happy but I'm angry too. I want to know more and I have to be there for her, regardless of what the case is.”
 
Chasity? One for the weird names thread, methinks!

I thought at first it was a typo for Chastity, a Puritan-style name, but it was repeated several times as Chasity...
 
Wayward wallet worth the wait
40 years later, man gets his stolen billfold back
Friday, October 21, 2005

By Moustafa Ayad, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Robert Gibson had time for a hot shower before his bus was due to leave the Pittsburgh Greyhound station. He locked the door to the entrance of his private stall and left his Air Force uniform in an area just two feet away.

As he lathered up, someone rifled through his pristine dress uniform and stole his wallet.

Inside it were Mr. Gibson's identification, baby picture, $300, family photos and even a Communist sighting report given to Cold War era soldiers stationed in Germany.

That was in 1962.

Yesterday, Mr. Gibson, who now lives in North Carolina, got a call from an Army captain stationed in Pittsburgh.

"Before he could even say a word, I said, 'You found my wallet,' " said a now 70-year-old Mr. Gibson, in an interview from his home in Linwood, N.C.

"How it got where [it was found], I don't know. I haven't taken a shower in a bus station since."

An asbestos removal technician found Mr. Gibson's black leather wallet on Wednesday at the former bus station that is slowly becoming a pile of rubble.

Covered in dust and asbestos, the wallet had laid undisturbed all this time since a criminal hand lifted it from Mr. Gibson's shower stall 40 years ago.

The wallet survived the Cold War, man landing on the moon, a 1980s real estate boom and a stock market bust, 9/11 and nine U.S. presidents, one of whom was impeached. And just as a second Gulf war drew to a close, Mr. Gibson was once again reunited with his wallet.

"You will find some stuff, but nothing as interesting as this," said LeRoy Fillmore, the asbestos removal worker from Laborers Local 373 who found the wallet. "It runs the whole gamut. My friend once found a Nolan Ryan card."

Mr. Fillmore found it on the ground near some pipes he was inspecting and clearing of asbestos early Wednesday morning.

The wallet seemed inconspicuous on the surface, but as he looked it over and stared at the yellowed photographs and the Air Force identification card dating to the early 1960s, Mr. Fillmore knew this was something someone had missed.

He called the local Army recruiting office and got in touch with Capt. Jason Hearn. Capt. Hearn was able to track down Mr. Gibson through Army records and called him.

Mr. Gibson yesterday recalled that his brief stop in Pittsburgh occurred while he was going home on leave after serving almost a year and half in Germany as a staff sergeant repairing airplanes. He decided to take a hot shower before boarding his bus to Clarksburg, W.Va., in 1962.

Mr. Gibson left the station with his bus ticket, but no wallet, no identification and no way of proving his time in the service besides the uniform on his back.

He even went back to the bus terminal in Pittsburgh a few weeks after the wallet was stolen in an elaborate attempt to lure the bus terminal pickpocket into an ambush.

He sat near the running shower and pretended to sing while waiting in the shower's steam to give whomever dared to test the accomplished serviceman's patience a "$200 butt-whuppin."

The whuppin never happened, but more than 40 years later, Mr. Gibson is just happy to have his wallet back.

"I want it for sentimental reasons," said Mr. Gibson. "It's not every hip 'n' stitch that someone finds the wallet they lost 40 years ago."

source
 
My friend once found a Nolan Ryan card

:?:

I'm guessing a cigarette card of some sports star.

(A star that has probably set by now.)
 
I was right - NOLAN RYAN

A baseball player. (Baseball was my first guess, actually, although I thought I'd keep my options open! Would still have been scuppered if NR had turned out to be a B-list film star or something!)
 
Here is the best Lost & Found site I've ever seen. The link was posted on the Boingboing site.

This guy collects old cameras and often there are films still inside them. Remarkably, he can often retrieve the images that were never seen by their makers.

http://westfordcomp.com/updated/found.htm

Poignant stuff. Some of it is quite astonishing, such as the ten reels of pictures taken by a US soldier in occupied Italy. The floating Grandmother is of some Fortean interest - maybe.

Enjoy! I've just spent a couple of hours browsing the site and many of those pictures have more content than any empty feature film. :D
 
Thanks to that, James.

Fascinating. It distracted me from processing my own old photos for far too long!
 
Excellent, JamesW - well found.

What wonderful photos...

Thank you for posting that link
:D
 
Roto-Rooter Lists Weirdest Items Found In Plumbing

Reported by: AP/PRNewswire
Web produced by: Mark Sickmiller
Photographed by: 9News
First posted: 12/28/2005 10:32:30 AM

Cincinnati-based Roto-Rooter surveyed its field technicians throughout North America to find the strangest items recovered from pipes, toilets and trenches over the past year.

The result was a laundry list of items ranging from live animals to precious valuables. Of those items, five in particular rose to the top of the "unusual list."

1. Explosive Situation
# Vicksburg, MS - On April 22, a Roto-Rooter crew excavating a residential sewer main dug up a live Civil War cannon shell. It was believed to be leftover from the 1863 siege of Vicksburg. An Army Ordnance disposal team later removed it.

2. Nine Lives
# Greensboro, NC - Bruce Shockley and crew rescued a cat from a storm sewer. "Angel" jumped from her elderly owner's arms into the sewer. She became disoriented and couldn't get out. Angel spent 24-hours underground before the crew excavated through earth and concrete to rescue her.

3. GI Joe Rescue
# Bloomington, IL - Roto-Rooter's Michael Woggon was sent to repair a toilet. Apparently a 3-year old at the residence had been training his GI Joes in deep-water rescue techniques. He sent one down the toilet and when it didn't come back he sent a few more in after it. When none of the Joes returned, the boy flushed several Matchbox cars to find them. Needless to say the GI Joes weren't exactly Navy SEAL material. Altogether, fifteen toys were recovered from the drainpipe.

4. Smuggler's Blues
# Hamilton, Ontario, Canada - Police called Roto-Rooter to recover a large stash of drugs and cash that a suspect flushed down a toilet just as the cops came in the front door. It took Plumber John Dekker only minutes to recover all of the evidence.

5. Tiny Bottles
# Sacramento, CA - Roto-Rooter's Brek Ritzema and Scott Chapman were called to a business with a backed-up sewer main. Toilets and sinks were over-flowing so the plumbers went to work on the clog. Finally, their equipment started pulling out myriad of empty miniature liquor bottles - the kind they serve on airlines. An employee was apparently in the habit of drinking on the job and flushing the evidence.

www.wcpo.com/news/2005/local/12/28/roto.html
 
A couple of lost & founds:

Dream car returned, 37 years on

The owner of a Corvette sports car stolen when it was brand new in 1969 is to be reunited with the vehicle after it was finally found, 37 years later.

Alan Poster's prized possession went missing in New York, but was found 3,000 miles away in California, just as it was about to be shipped to Sweden.

"We can call this a miracle," Mr Poster told the New York Times.

The car had just been sold to a Swede, who was not aware of the car's past, for $10,000 (£5,700).

However, because Mr Poster had not insured the car, he was not compensated when it was stolen and is entitled to it back.

The Corvette Mako Shark, which was originally painted blue with matching upholstery, is now silver with a red interior.

It has had a new engine, but is missing some vital parts and does not run, a spokesman for the homeland security department said.

Mr Poster, who is now 63, said it was "probably the only car I've ever really loved".

Needle in a haystack

He said said he bought the car as a wild indulgence after his divorce, when he was a guitar salesman living in Queens, New York.

"That car and my new life started together," he said.

They're going to have to kill me to get this car
Alan Poster


He went on to move to California, and so, unbeknown to him, did the car.
"Up until this moment, I thought it was chopped up and shipped away," Mr Poster said after learning it had been found. "It's in great shape, I understand."

The car was found during a customs check as it was being loaded onto a ship to be taken to Sweden.

New York police spent a month sifting through about 10,000 archived stolen car reports to find the original owner.

"It was the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack," said Detective William Heiser of the New York Police Department [...]

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/a ... 620914.stm
Published: 2006/01/17 19:29:22 GMT

© BBC MMVI


Diver returns keepsake 1958 Sloan grad lost in lake 47 years ago

For 47 years, since the middle of the second Eisenhower administration, Ron Witkowski's 1958 Sloan High School ring sat undisturbed at the bottom of Lake Erie.

Friday, the ring found itself under the glare of newspaper and television cameras at Erie Basin Marina, following a bizarre series of events that put it back into its rightful owner's hand.


In describing all the commotion, Tony DiLeo, the scuba diver who found it last summer, picked up on the old Andy Warhol line: "We're all going to get our 15 minutes of fame. This was my turn."

Incidentally, DiLeo, 47, was born in 1958, the year that Witkowski lost his ring.

DiLeo got his turn Friday because of two strange events, starting in the summer of 1958, when Witkowski, now a retired General Motors engine plant worker, lost his high school ring.

Celebrating their high scores on a pre-college IQ test, Witkowski, then 17, and his buddy, Norm Andrzejewski, went swimming at Sherkston-Elco Beach in Ontario.

Andrzejewski dived under water, opened his eyes and promptly lost his contact lenses.

A week later, the two teenagers decided to conduct a little experiment in the same area.

"We thought that if we dropped the ring in the water, we would find the general direction of where the current would take it," Witkowski said.

Instead, a wave broke, sending the untethered ring out of view. Of course, the two boys - no longer reveling in their high IQs - never found the contacts or the ring.

That all changed last summer, when DiLeo, a steamfitter from Buffalo's Riverside area, found the ring among the rocks and zebra mussels while scuba diving off Sherkston, about 200 yards out and 30 feet down.

He tucked it in his vest pocket and later saw it was from the old Sloan High School, class of 1958, inscribed with the initials R.A.W.

An online search proved fruitless. But with the help of Channel 4's "Call 4 Action" and a Cheektowaga-Sloan school official, DiLeo learned that the R.A.W. was Ronald A. Witkowski of Sloan.

When Witkowski fielded the phone call about the ring, he thought it was a scam. But it turned out to be true, and the ring exchange was done Friday.

Afterwards, Witkowski couldn't wait to contact Andrzejewski. For years, the lost ring had been their little secret.

"Every time we'd see each other, we would toast [the ring and the lenses]," Witkowski said. "We didn't think anyone else should know about it."

The grateful Witkowski offered DiLeo a finder's fee. But DiLeo wouldn't take it.

"That would have taken all the fun out of it," DiLeo said. "The smile on his face was ear to ear.

"It was priceless."


source
 
The grateful Witkowski offered DiLeo a finder's fee. But DiLeo wouldn't take it.

"That would have taken all the fun out of it," DiLeo said. "The smile on his face was ear to ear.

"It was priceless."
Death to Capitalism! 8)
 
Madrid 'mislays' Serra sculpture

A leading Spanish museum has admitted it has lost a massive steel sculpture which weighs 38 tonnes. The Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid bought the huge Richard Serra sculpture in the 1980s at a cost of more than $200,000.

The museum says that in 1990 it put the sculpture in a warehouse belonging to a company that specialises in storing large-scale artwork.

But when it sought to put the sculpture back on display a few months ago, no-one knew where to find it.

The police are now investigating its disappearance.

The museum, one of Madrid's largest, commissioned the sculpture by American artist Mr Serra in 1986 and acquired it a year later.

The company that was supposed to be holding the sculpture - comprising of four steel slabs - was dissolved in 1998, daily newspaper ABC has reported.

The piece's disappearance only came to light when the museum's director Ana Martinez de Aguilar decided to put it on display again.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/w ... 626502.stm
Published: 2006/01/19 01:37:38 GMT

© BBC MMVI
 
'Message through time’

By Randy Boswell

Saturday, March 25, 2006 - 07:00

Local News - Nearly 65 years after her father died in the sinking of a Canadian troopship in the Second World War, a Kingston-born woman who has lived most of her life in the U.S., finally took possession yesterday of a long-lost piece of her family’s history and truly began grieving the loss of a man she never knew.

Vicki Brown’s baby ring a tiny copper keepsake carried to war by her father, William Caldwell, washed ashore in northern Scotland with the wreckage of the S.S. Nerissa, then mislaid in an Ottawa archive for six decades was returned to the tearful retiree on the eve of her 65th birthday, during a ceremony in the state capital attended by U.S. and Canadian government officials.


It was a bittersweet event, marked by the joyous return of a rediscovered heirloom and the sombre sense of a death freshly felt.

“Canada never forgets its war dead,” remarked Lt.-Col. Jamie Robertson, military attache at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, who spent much of the ceremony giving comfort to a weeping Brown.

He described the ring as “a message passed through time” that conveyed two important facts about Caldwell: “that he loved his daughter and that he loved his country enough to be willing to die for the freedoms we enjoy today.”

Brown and her ring were reunited after Library and Archives Canada, CanWest News Service and a North Carolina newspaper collaborated last year to trace the current whereabouts of Anne Victoria Caldwell, a baby girl born March 25, 1941 just days before her ill-fated father was shipped overseas at the height of the German U-boat campaign in the North Atlantic.

Warrant Officer William Caldwell and more than 200 others perished when Nerissa was torpedoed on April 30, 1941.

On a twine cord that also held his army identification tags, Caldwell had looped the little ring as a reminder of his newborn child.

The items were somehow recovered after the sinking and sent back to Canada to be given to Caldwell’s widow, Alice, and daughter “Vicki.” But they were apparently misfiled by a military clerk, and went undiscovered until an archivist combing through old files found them in 2000.

Last spring, as the Archives was preparing to display the artifacts in a new exhibition exploring the impact of war on families, the baby ring’s original owner was located in Louisburg, N.C. a small town north of Raleigh. Brown’s visit to the Ottawa exhibit, Written by War, attracted national media attention in June. She agreed to reclaim the relics when the exhibition ended in 2006.

The reuniting of Brown and her ring has become a showcase achievement for Library and Archives Canada, part of a mission that assistant deputy minister Doug Rimmer described yesterday as “making history first-person singular” helping individual Canadians “connect with the documentary heritage of the country” and giving the grand sweep of Canada’s historical narratives “a personal focus.”

Louis Boisvert, chief of the Canadian consulate in Raleigh, also described the “extraordinary story” of the ring and its return to Brown as a symbol of the friendship and shared history of Canada and the U.S. “Events such as this touching ceremony will serve to enhance that relationship.”

But it was clear, too, that the handover of the artifacts was an occasion to mourn. Rimmer thanked Brown for sharing “such an intense and personal moment” with the assembled dignitaries and news media.

“I feel like I’m having the grief for my father that I never experienced,” Brown said afterwards, the ring and dog-tags in a small case on her lap. “I didn’t miss not having a father, because I never knew any different. I didn’t think it would bother me this much, but every time I think about it today I feel sad.”

But there are no regrets, she said. The ring and ID tags have given her a tangible link to her father, and news of the discovery has reunited her with a host of Caldwell cousins in Canada.

“That’s just what I was looking for.”

Source
 
Urn-usual find reunites brothers

A funeral urn has been reunited with its guardian after five years in a lost property office.
With only a name and a date to go on, Transport for London (TfL) staff spent years searching for John Ross's family.

They tracked down his brother, Peter, who told them the ashes had been in a bag stolen at Heathrow Airport.

TfL worker Ted Batchelor said such lengths to return lost items were unusual but "lose your brother and we'll try really hard to help you".

Mr Batchelor, who works in the lost property office, said some German words on the urn led him to an Austrian crematorium where he obtained Peter Ross's address.

False teeth

It transpired that Mr Ross had flown out to Austria to collect his brother's ashes.

The bag containing the urn was stolen while he stopped to make a phone call at the airport.

The urn was returned to the family in December 2005.

It was among some 147,000 items handled by the lost property office in the last year.

Some of the more unusual items recovered down the years include false teeth, eyes and limbs, breast implants, human skulls, an inflatable doll, a jar of bull's sperm and a vasectomy kit.

Workers do attempt to trace owners but any property not claimed after three months is sold at auction, with all proceeds going toward running costs of the lost property office.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/e ... 887642.stm
Published: 2006/04/07 16:06:22 GMT

© BBC MMVI
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/e ... 887642.stm
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Treasure, skulls and 25 years of the Beano in UK's waste tips

Martin Wainwright
Monday May 15, 2006
The Guardian

"If you're going to make rubbish, be the best rubbish in it," said the actor Richard Burton, and Britain's waste disposal habits seem to bear him out. An audit of bizarre finds in the country's dumps has turned up stashes of jewellery, £200,000 in takings from a travel agency and the secret blueprints of a proposed new aircraft carrier for the Royal Navy.

The haul at 100 waste transfer stations also includes a mattress stuffed with £5,000 in banknotes, a pet tortoise (contentedly hibernating in a green recycling bin) and the entire contents of a man's wardrobe including dinner jackets and a set of golf clubs. This turned out to have been dumped by his outraged wife, who threw the lot out after she found out that her husband was cheating on her.

"People will literally throw anything away, whether intentionally or by mistake," said James Bennett, managing director of Hippowaste refuse disposal, which organised the survey after years of curious reports from its staff.

He had just surfaced from browsing through a collection of 25 years of the Beano comic, flung away along with several artificial limbs and a suitcase full of skulls and other human bones. The bones were fortunately traced to absent-minded staff at a university biology lab, rather than a scene of crime. But another depot discovered a complete police evidence bag from a serious court case, and a hoax bomb also turned up in the survey.

The most frequent oddities include passports, artificial legs and anti-aircraft shell cases, the last partly dug up in gardens in wartime blitz cities and partly flung out by families whose mantelpieces have become too cluttered to dust.

The country discards an estimated 434m tonnes of rubbish annually - nine times the combined average bodyweight of all its citizens - a rate which would fill the Albert Hall every two hours.

Returning mistakenly dumped goods is a big part of the contractors' work, particular after finds such as the £200,000, which was found in several black plastic sacks on a Thames landfill barge. Thanks to scraps of paperwork, it was returned to its owners, as was the tortoise which had made a nest in old newspapers.

A family out for a weekend stroll in Cheltenham meanwhile found a stash of dumped necklaces, rings and bangles after "seeing something twinkling" in the river Chelt, which runs through a local park. The hoard, which also included a camera and a bag of old 5p pieces which are no longer legal tender, was covered in silt. The police are comparing it with items reported missing after burglaries during the last decade.

www.guardian.co.uk/waste/story/0,,1774823,00.html
 
What a great find!!

Hello. My name is Amir Massoud Tofangsazan and i live in Barnet. I'm 19 but pretend to be a lot older and like to pretend that I'm a big businessman when I'm not actually that clever. on 29th November 2005 I sold a laptop on eBay. You can view the auction below. (Do you like the picture of me I took with my webcam?).

...

Although the buyer paid the £375 total within a few days, it took me nearly two months before i bothered to post the laptop. What the buyer didn't know was that it differed slightly from its description on ebay. Rather than having 2Gb of RAM, it only had 512Mb. It also didnt have a DVD-RW as described. Perhaps most importantly of all, the laptop didn't actually work! haha genius! Selling a 'working' laptop that doesn't work! Despite polite requests from the seller, I denied anything was wrong and refused to refund his money, then i agreed to but of course didn't. Then I claimed to have moved to Dubai and hoped he'd forget about it.

But he didn't forget about it. He took the hard disk out and behold! one laptop crammed with pictures that I really should have deleted before trying to sell it!

Not work safe:
www.amirtofangsazan.blogspot.com
 
May 26, 2006 6:27 pm US/Central

Naperville Man's Wallet Found After 35 Years

(CBS) WHEATON, Ill. A Naperville man is reconnecting with part of his past now that a wallet he lost 35 years ago has been found.

Gary Karafiat was a 9th grader when he lost the wallet at a basketball game at St. Francis High School in Wheaton.

Earlier this week, crews at St. Francis removed bleachers for a renovation project.

In the process of the renovation, workers found Karafiat’s wallet, complete with his Social Security card, a Stroh’s calendar, and a hall pass, among other things.

“I about fell out of my chair when I got the call because it's one of those things when it happens five minutes after that you've forgotten about it.,” Karafiat said.

Also inside the wallet was a mystery autograph. Karafiat assumes it is from a sports figure, but he cannot remember a name or recall why it was so important back in 1971.

With video news report:
http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/local ... 93134.html
 
Serindipitous finds are totally the best!
I was in my local uni washroom a couple of weeks ago, and a CD had been left there of what appeared to be totally random urban/electronic music by a group I had never heard of. I quickly ran up to my room with the CD, copied the music onto my computer and then brought it back down to lost property.

I love coming across random bits of other people's lives....it's such a joy to experience life from another person's perspective.
 
Ring lost in 1969 found in garden

The ring was lost while Mrs Coleman was gardening
A woman who lost a ring given to her on her silver wedding anniversary by her husband has been reunited with it - 37 years after it disappeared.
Joan Coleman lost the white gold ring while doing the gardening in her house in Chepstow in 1969.

This week, the present house owner Terry O'Brien uncovered the ring and contacted Mrs Coleman to check whether it had ever belonged to her.

He said it was "very pleasing" to hand the ring back to its owner.

Mr O'Brien had initially contacted the police to see if the ring had ever been reported missing but was told it had not been.

It was very pleasing to see the smile on the face of a lady who genuinely had lost a treasured possession

Terry O'Brien

He had the ring valued and discovered it was worth between £450 and £600.

However, knowing the woman they had bought the house from had lived there for 40 years, he contacted her son to find out if she had ever lost a ring while living there.

Mr O'Brien said: "It turns out that for Mrs Coleman's silver wedding anniversary, her late husband had bought her a ring.

"In 1969 they were weeding the garden and cutting the holly bush and she noticed it wasn't on her finger.

"They looked for it but couldn't find it. The thing was the ring had gone from the back garden to the front garden with the rubbish.

"I've moved about 20 tonnes of stuff from my garden since I've been here, so it's just amazing."

'Kind'

Mr O'Brien was able to reunite Mrs Coleman, who is now 84, with her ring within four days of finding it.

He said when she Mrs Coleman saw the ring she started crying initially and he knew straightaway it was hers.

Mrs Coleman said: "I just couldn't believe it. Terry could have said nothing about it, but he's just such a kind person."

Mr O'Brien added: "It was very pleasing to see the smile on the face of a lady who genuinely had lost a treasured possession to be re-united with it."


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wale ... 159476.stm
 
Lobster's snappy return of wallet

A Plymouth man is celebrating the snappy return of his wallet after it was found being clutched by a lobster.
The wallet was lost when Paul Westlake, 30, took a swim in Plymouth Sound with his brother after drinking in a pub.

It was handed in a few days later to Mr Westlake's hairdresser by a diver who had caught the lobster and found the creature firmly grasping it.

But he will be unable to thank the lobster who hung on to his wallet as it has now been eaten.

Bank cards working

The wallet vanished when Mr Westlake was swimming with his 31-year-old brother, Paul Westlake.

It came to light again when the diver got in touch with the Associates hairdressing salon in Plymouth, which Mr Westlake uses.

The diver, whose identity so far remains a mystery, handed the wallet in to the salon after finding a salon business card among the contents.

Mr Westlake collected it and found that the bank cards in it still worked despite immersion in sea water and the crush the lobster had on it.

He said he had never eaten a lobster and now never would, and that he intended to keep the wallet because its return was a good luck omen.

After being reunited with the wallet via the salon, Mr Westlake, from Milehouse, also said he wanted to meet and thank the diver.

Brothers 'are nuts'

Amy Harvey, who has worked at Associates for two years, said it had been the talk of the shop, and that they were as keen as Mr Westlake to find out who the mystery diver was.

She said: "We were contacted by a diver who said that he had found a wallet with our details inside.

"We actually thought it was a joke when he rang. He said it was found in the claw of a lobster."

Paul Westlake's mother, Elizabeth Westlake, said the family was very surprised after the wallet was recovered.

She said: "I didn't believe it in the first place."

She added of her sons' late-night swim: "That was typical of them. They are nuts, they take after their mother!"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/4781243.stm
 
Fair unearths 'Dietrich earring'

Dietrich became a US citizen and entertained Allied troops in WWII
An earring lost by late movie legend Marlene Dietrich more than 70 years ago at Blackpool Pleasure Beach is thought to have been found at the resort.
Workmen found the pearl and gold earring while dredging a lake as part of construction work for a new ride.

"We have compared it to pictures taken at the time of her visit and it certainly looks like one of hers," said a resort spokeswoman.

The German-born star visited the site in 1934. She died in 1992, aged 90.

The actress and singer is thought to have lost the earring while on the park's new wooden rollercoaster, The Big Dipper.

She is said to have written to the amusement park later requesting a search for the item, which proved unsuccessful.

The resort spokeswoman said the earring "appears to have withstood the test of time quite well".


Tales of the star's visit have been passed down at the family-run park
Also among the items found with the dredging of the lake were three sets of false teeth, a glass eye, wig and bra.

"It has been a real eye-opener as to what people lose when they are having fun," the spokeswoman said.

Dietrich found international fame playing a cabaret singer in the 1930 German film The Blue Angel, and went on to become the highest-paid actress in Hollywood in the 1930s.

She was Oscar-nominated for her performance in Morocco (1930), while later successes included Shanghai Express, Destry Rides Again opposite James Stewart, Witness for the Prosecution and Judgment at Nuremberg.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6248143.stm
 
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Fair unearths 'Dietrich earring'

Workmen found the pearl and gold earring while dredging a lake as part of construction work for a new ride.

Also among the items found with the dredging of the lake were three sets of false teeth, a glass eye, wig and bra.
Anyone else smell bullshit here? If Blackpool need the publicity so much, I'm surprised they don't claim the bra as belonging to Marilyn Monroe, or suddenly "remember" that Sammy Davis Jr's eye popped out while on the big dipper in 1960.

Sorry, but I'm calling "bluff" on this one.
 
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