things people said:

*I work as a guide at a local cave. At a certain point on my tour, I turn off all the lights to illustrate the concept of total darkness. One day at this juncture, amid the typical oohs and ahs, one of the more impressed members of the group exclaimed, "Wow! Can you imagine what this place must be like at night!"

* Police in Wichita, Kansas, arrested a 22-year-old man at an airport hotel after he tried to pass two counterfeit $16 bills.

* A man in Johannesburg, South Africa, shot his 49-year-old friend in the face, seriously wounding him, while the two practiced shooting beer cans off each other's head.

* Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits.

* A bus carrying five passengers was hit by a car in St. Louis but by the time police arrived on the scene fourteen pedestrians had boarded the bus and had begun to complain of whiplash injuries and back pain.

* A convict broke out of jail in Washington DC then a few days later accompanied his girlfriend to her trial for robbery. At lunch he went out for a sandwich. She needed to see him and had him paged. Police officers recognized his name and arrested him as he returned to the courthouse in a car he had stolen over the lunch hour.

* Police in Radnor, Pennsylvania, interrogated a suspect by placing a metal colander on his head and connected it with wires to a photocopy machine. The message "He's lying" was placed in the copier, and police pressed the copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn't telling the truth. Believing the "lie detector" was working, the suspect confessed.

* When two service station attendants in Ionia, Michigan refused to hand over the cash to an intoxicated robber the man threatened to call the police. They still refused so the robber called the police and was arrested.

* A Los Angeles man who later said he was "tired of walking" stole a steamroller and lead police on a 5 mph chase until an officer stepped aboard and brought the vehicle to a stop.

*A doctor who spoke limited Spanish was rushed to a car in the ER parking lot to find a Spanish woman in the process of giving birth. Wanting to tell the woman to push he started yelling "Puta! Puta! Puta!" At this the grandmother started to cry and the baby's father had to be restrained. What the doctor should have been saying was "Puja!" (Push!). Instead, he was saying, "Whore! Whore! Whore!"