Miscellany, Dec. 27, 1937

Frozen

From a hotel in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, to catch a train for Flin Flon, Manitoba, rushed a salesman with coat flying, bag in one hand, hotel water jug in the other. Accused of stealing the crockery, he cried: "I know, but my teeth are frozen in this durn jug."

Stunt

In snowless Miami Beach, Fla., Pressagent Steve Hannagan hired a local Santa Claus, sent him to sea on an aquaplane.

Self-Defense

In Equality, Ill., when Robert Micas, a deaf-mute door-to-door magazine salesman, knocked at the home of Mrs. Lucille Shaghuey, she picked up a shotgun, asked through the closed door what he wanted. "If you don't answer," she cried, "I'll shoot." Receiving no reply, she shot Deaf-Mute Micas dead.

Mathematics

In Salem, N. J., Negro Luther Moore was tried for cutting the throat of Negro Peter Asbury in a quarrel over the right answer to this puzzle: If a man aged 35 married a girl of 15, how long would it be before she is half as old as he is?*

Finger

In Chicago, Leon A. Mitchell, onetime official greeter for the Hotel Sherman, asked $5,000 damages from Commonwealth Edison Co. and Charles Kelly, greeter for the company. Reason: when Greeter Kelly shook hands with Greeter Mitchell in an office building, Greeter Kelly "did violently, vigorously and firmly seize and squeeze with such force that the third phalanx of the first finger of the plaintiff's right hand was broken."