Unexpectedly Employable Animals
Seeing-eye dogs, police dogs, and cutting horses: they have nothing on these unexpected employable animals. Some animals have very dangerous jobs. Well, certainly more dangerous than mine!
Since the late 1950s the U.S. military’s Marine Mammal Program has been working with dolphins and sea lions to see if they could be employed for the purpose of national security.
The dolphin’s echolocation and high intelligence make them ideal in detecting mines, patrolling harbours, guarding boats against unwanted underwater incursions and aid in the retrieval of lost equipment.
From the Upcoming
ueue, submitted by Nightcrawlerx.
Money is the Root of All Evil T-Shirt

Money is the Root of All Evil – $11.95
You’ve heard the common saying "Money is the root of all evil," and now it’s been conclusively proven with mathematical precision. From the Neatorama Shop: Link | More Geektastic Science T-Shirts
Darth Vader Conducting an Orchestra Performing the Imperial March
(YouTube Link)
Darth Vader did not approve of how the conductor of the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra was leading a performance of The Imperial March, so he stepped in to do the job himself.
In the links, you’ll find a longer video of this event from CNN.
via Topless Robot | CNN Video | Orchestra Website
5 Frightening (But True) Space Stories
There are no aliens in these stories from NASA and the Soviet space program, just true tales of how being an astronaut is no picnic. Decompression? Landing in the wrong place? Using the toilet without a toilet? Not pleasant!
On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard wet his pants aboard Freedom 7, but Apollo bathroom facilities would get a lot worse before they got any better. I don’t think I’m the only guy to find something fundamentally frightening about a urinal that consists only of a “condom-like fitting,” a valve and the empty void of outer space. I keep thinking about that scene from “Goldfinger.”
Fun With Flies in Frankfurt
How do you liven up the Frankfurt Book Fair, and simultaneously get your company’s name out there? Publisher Eichborn (with a fly as its logo) released 200 flies with lightweight banners, attached with wax. No flies were harmed, and the result was spontaneous smiles and laughter.
Lightsabers Make Everything Cooler

So says Mathue Shell of Geekstir, who is (presumably) the creator of this photoshop. It’s an adaptation of John Trumbull’s 1795 painting “The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton”, owned by the Yale University Art Gallery.
A Giant Version of Guitar Hero Played with Soccer Balls
(YouTube Link)
This video is a promotional gimmick for the British rock band Kasabian. It begins with craftsmen creating enormous functional buttons on the wall of a London warehouse. These and additional visual effects make a giant version of the video game Guitar Hero. Participants play by kicking soccer balls at the buttons in the right order to the tune of one of Kasabian’s songs.
via The Ampersand
Periodic Picnic Table

In 2003, Wake Forest University students Nazila Alimohammadi and Anna Clark built this picnic table in the shape of the periodic table of elements. From a campus newspaper:
The two women students created the sculpture as part of a public art course taught in the fall by David Finn, associate professor of art. Students in the class were paired up and assigned to work with campus organizations in creating works for public display. “We wanted our project to be fun and functional without a lot of emotional or political content,” Clark says. An aspiring dentist, Alimohammadi had taken several chemistry classes and suggested working with that department. They devised their “Periodic Table” concept — a pun of the familiar Periodic Table of Elements configuration — and the department responded enthusiastically. Alimohammadi did the structural steel work and Clark hand-painted the surface tiles. The piece, which was dedicated in an informal picnic ceremony on April 15, is accurate in every detail, right down to the auxiliary lanthanides and actinides tables that constitute the table’s bench.
Link via Make | Image: Anonymous Make reader
Lo! The Internet Turns 40
UCLA’s Leonard Kleinrock remembers sending the first message over the Internet 40 years ago this week; the first word sent host-to-host was supposed to be “login,” but the receiving computer crashed after the first two letters. So the Internet’s first word was “Lo!” Soon came the first denial of service, and the first spammer.
In honor of the occasion, Asylum’s Tommy Christopher compiled the Top Ten Signs the Internet Has Turned 40.
10. Hangs around at clubs using cheesy, outdated pickup lines like, “All your base are belong to me, baby!”
9. Starts referring to YouTube videos as “talkies.”
8. Still uses MySpace, and thinks of Heather_69 as a “friend.”
7. Stays in the left lane of the information superhighway with its blinker on.
6. Google mysteriously changes its name to “Google, She Wrote.”
5. Star Wars Kid now on his second divorce after nailing his secretary.
4. Starts believing that Al Gore invented it.
3. Inexplicably purchases a Chrysler Sebring convertible.
2. Swears it goes to Pornhub.com for the articles.
1. Has to call its kids for tips on how to use itself.
I’ll add a bonus one: Uses the file menu to shut itself down…all seven open windows of itself. Any more ideas out there?
Halloween Math Lecture
Professor Matthew Weathers went the extra mile for his math lecture Wednesday at Biola University. Who says math isn’t fun? -via Cynical-C
Detailed Cut Paper Maps of New York City

Photo: KMO Studio
This item has already sold on Etsy, but you can still see images of KMO Studio’s enormous and detailed cut paper maps of all five boroughs of New York City. When the four sections are put together, the map measures six by eight feet.
Link via Make | Artist’s Etsy Shop
A Chair Made Out of Drinking Straws

Photo: Scott Jarvie
But I wouldn’t suggest sitting in it — it’s an art piece rather than functional furniture. Scott Jarvie made the Clutch Chair out of 10,000 drinking straws after “a microscopic observation of the structural composition of trees and the directional properties of Capillary tubes….” You can view more pictures at the link.
Rolling Skis as a Personal Mobility Device

Photo: Robonable
This is Nissan’s prototype for a personal mobility device. Just step on to the footpads and lean in the direction that you want to go:
The device has two foot boards, both of which are balanced on two wheels. The device’s tilt sensors detect when you shift your weight to turn, traveling at a maximum rate of about 5kph. The foot boards have handle bars attached to help you maintain balance, and can be connected in a variety of positions or separated.
When separated, the device only moves forwards and backwards. To turn, you simply lift and turn your leg as if you were wearing stilts. The overall effect is one of ski-less skis.
Caves of the Deep South

Photo: Stephen Alvarez / National Geographic
NatGeo photographer Stephen Alvarez took this amazing shot of the Stephens Gap Cave in Alabama. As you can see, you’d need to rapel down the sunlit entrance to the left, or simply walk down the dark entrace to the right.
Mark Jenkins of National Geographic went spelunking for this fascinating article:
I’m about to back out when my shovel breaks through. I feverishly round out the hole and cram my head through. There is a low, triangle-shaped crawlway ahead of me. Surging with adrenaline, I try dragging myself into this new passage, but my chest gets stuck.
From the beginning I have been hyperfocused on digging in order to stave off dark, horrifying feelings of claustrophobia. But now, stuck like a rat in the throat of a snake, a sickly anxiousness sweeps over me. I violently kick my legs, but to no avail: I’m swimming in dirt. I realize that by not using the drag tray to remove the dirt, I’ve buried myself.
I try to calm my racing thoughts, but my mind is preoccupied with the millions of tons of rock above me. I’ve been told that caves seldom collapse, and yet here I am, trapped at the bottom of a breakdown, in a cave that obviously did collapse. I try to slow my frantic breathing because I’ve also been told that hyperventilating expands one’s lungs and only tightens the squeeze, which is exactly what’s happening. Suddenly I’m thrashing shamelessly, kicking and clawing and writhing. I manage to knock off my headlamp, and everything goes black.
The Worst Disguise Ever: The Permanent Marker Disguise

This has got to be the worst disguise ever: Carroll, Iowa police apprehended two men who decided to color their faces with permanent marker in order to disguise themselves!
Police received a call Friday night that two men with hooded sweatshirts and painted faces had tried to break into a man’s home in Carroll, Iowa.
When police stopped a vehicle matching the caller’s description blocks away, they were stunned by the men’s disguises.
There were no ski masks or stockings pulled over their heads; instead, Matthew Allan McNelly, 23, and Joey Lee Miller, 20, streaked their faces with permanent black marker.
Previously on Neatorama: Duck Tape Robber
Sleepless in West Virginia

Not getting enough sleep? If you live in West Virginia, there’s a good chance that you’re part of the 20% of the population who suffer from insomnia:
West Virginians’ lack of sleep was about double the national rate, perhaps a side effect of health problems such as obesity, experts said.
Nearly 1 in 5 West Virginians said they did not get a single good night’s sleep in the previous month. The national average was about 1 in 10, according to a federal health survey conducted last year and released Thursday.
Tennessee, Kentucky and Oklahoma also were notably above average in their reported lack of sleep. In contrast, North Dakota had fewer problems sleeping, with only 1 in 13 reporting that degree of sleeplessness.
Health officials do not know the exact reasons for the differences.
Alphabet of Computing

Every geek knows that "A" is for Apple, but I bet not many know that Apple had a "third founder" who gave up his stake for $800 (it would've been worth at least $17 billion today). Or that Cisco was named for San Francisco. Or that Twitter used to be called twttr? Let's take a stroll through the A to Z of computing trivia, Neatorama style!
If you think that Apple was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, think again: there was a "third founder" of Apple. In 1976, Ronald Wayne gave up his 10% stake of the fledgling company for $800 because he was worried that the company would fold and that he would be liable for debts incurred by the other partners (at the time Apple wasn't a corporation yet). Of course Apple became the big company, and Wayne's stake could've been worth as much as $17 billion today.
Originally, Research in Motion wanted its wireless messaging device to have the word "e-mail" in its name. When RIM hired Lexicon Branding to do a little research, they found out that people associate "e-mail" with work and therefore can raise blood pressure. Someone said that the buttons look like small berries, so they decided to name it BlackBerry.

Evolution of Cisco logo, by Design Maven via Speak
Up
Cisco System was named after the city San Francisco (the founders of the company worked for Stanford University, which is just a couple of town over). Indeed, first Cisco System's logo was the Golden Gate Bridge. (See also: Evolution of Tech Logos)

Ben Curtis, in his very first
Dell commercial
In 2003, after three years of playing the Dell Dude, actor Ben Curtis was arrested while attempting to buy a bag of marijuana. People immediately parodied his tag line "Dude, you're getting a Dell" to "Dude, you're getting a cell." Though charges were dropped, Dell canceled the Dell Dude commercials. Curtis was working as a waiter in 2007 but he's making a come back with a (supposedly) upcoming play "Dude! I'm Going to Hell"
In 1977, the US Postal Service recognized that email would pose a serious challenge to its monopoly on delivering mail. At first, it wanted to ban emails (like it did mails delivered by underground pneumatic tubes), but the FCC objected and the Postal Rate Commission refused. So it created an experimental email service called E-COM ("Electronic Computer-Originated Mail"). The idea was simple: You send the emails, which the post office would then print out and deliver as physical letters at the price of 26¢ each (it was said that it actually cost the USPS $5 to deliver the message). Oh, and the service was one-way. If something went wrong, you'd get an error message delivered two days later ... in form of a letter! Needless to say, E-COM failed.
John Backus, the inventor of FORTRAN programming language, said this about his invention: "Much of my work has come from being lazy. I didn't like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701 (an early computer), writing programs for computing missile trajectories, I started work on a programming system to make it easier to write programs."
When Paul Buchheit started the Gmail project at Google, he named it "Project Caribou" after a Dilbert cartoon strip.
HP could've easily have been PH. In 1939, when Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard formed HP in a Palo Alto garage, they flipped a coin to decide the name of the company. Packard actually won the toss, but decided to name it Hewlett-Packard instead of Packard-Hewlett.
In 1999, Al Gore was asked by Wolf Blitzer what distinguished him from other contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, and he famously said: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Gore was immediately ridiculed for claiming to have invented the Internet. Not to be outdone, Dan Quayle said "If Al Gore invented the Internet, I invented spell check."
JPEG stands for the Joint Photographic Experts Group, who created the method of compression for photo images. Like all image processing algo, JPEG was tested on the standard test image of "Lenna", a cropped photo of a 1972 Playboy magazine centerfold Lena Soderberg.

Knuth reward check, photo via Upto11.net
Legendary computer scientist Donald Knuth offers to pay a reward of $2.56 for the first finder of errors in his books. Why $2.56? Because 256 pennies is one hexadecimal dollar, which is sort of a joke that only a programmer can appreciate. But that's okay since that's Knuth's target audience anyhow. Indeed, Knuth reward checks are "among computerdom's most prized trophies," according to MIT's Technology Review. If the name Don Knuth sounds familiar, that's because we've featured his Potrzebie System of Weights and Measure before on Neatorama. (see also: Fun and Unusual Units of Measurements)
At first, Linus Torvalds wanted to name his new operating system Freax, a portmanteau of "freak," "free," and "x" (for Unix). A co-worker thought that it was a horrible name and renamed it Linux without telling him.
In 1996, Monty Widenius and David Axmark created MySQL, a relational database management system that would later become one of the most widely used software in the world, powering many of the web's largest sites (WordPress, Neatorama's blogging engine, uses it). What most people don't know is that the "My" in MySQL doesn't refer to "me" - it's actually the name of Monty's daughter My.
The
term newbie or noob, originally thought to be from British
public-school and military slang "new boy," was first spotted
in the Usenet newsgroup talk.bizarre as an insult to a clueless newcomer.
(N
is for Newbie Onesies/Kids T-Shirt at the Neatorama Shop)
In 1977, Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates were working on a CIA-funded project codenamed Oracle (because the CIA believed that it would give them answers to all questions). The project failed, but Larry and friends took the idea and used it to create a company that would later become the Oracle Corporation.
The most common passwords in the world are:
1. password
2. 123456
3. qwerty
4. abc123
5. letmein
6. monkey
7. myspace1
8. password1
9. link182
10. (your first name)
And you thought you were clever to do a derivative of Blink-182 as your password!
The keyboard you're using now is most likely set in a QWERTY layout (named for the first 6 characters of the top row of letters). This layout was invented by Christopher Sholes in 1874 because people were typing too fast on typewriters back then, thus causing the machine to jam. Sholes did frequency analysis on letter-pairs and separated pairs of letters that tend to cause mechanical jams when typed in quick successions like TH. Sholes' new layout was designed to slow down typists (technically, he aimed to improve typing speed by reducing jams - and indeed, that's exactly what happened.)
ROT13: Jung qbrf Whyvhf Pnrfne unir nalguvat gb qb jvgu zbqrea qnl Vagrearg? Pnrfne vairagrq n fvzcyr rapelcgvba zrgubq gung orpnzr dhvgr cbchyne va Hfrarg arjftebhcf nf n zrna gb uvqr fcbvyref, chapuyvarf naq chmmyr fbyhgvbaf. Gur vqrn vf fvzcyr: ercynpr n cvrpr bs grkg jvgu yrggref 13 cynprf shegure nybat va gur nycunorg ("ebgngr ol 13 cynprf" be EBG13). Gur travhf bs gur zrgubq vf gung orpnhfr gurer ner 26 yrggref va gur Ratyvfu nycunorg, gur fnzr rapelcgvba zrgubq jvyy qrpelcg n ebgngrq grkg!
Before Digg, there was Slashdot. The technology-related news website was so huge that getting linked from it meant a massive increase of traffic that would cripple smaller web servers. Webmasters call this the Slashdot effect, which is the granddaddy of similar terms Digg effect, Farked, or Drudged.

The very first Twitter message was sent by its co-creator Jack Dorsey on March 21, 2006: "just setting up my twttr." That's not a typo - twttr was the original codename for the project (inspired by Flickr). At least twttr was better than one of the first names they were considering for it: twitch.
I'm including USB (Universal Serial Bus) here so I can play this awesome "Intel Star" commercial starring Ajay Bhatt, the co-inventor of the USB. Watch it and weep:
Before the World Wide Web, there was Gopher (note: it's gopher://, not http:// - you'd need Firefox to see it) and Veronica was its search engine. Why Veronica? It's because the first search engine of the Internet, a tool that indexes FTP archives, is called Archie. Officially, Veronica is an acronym for "Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computer Archives."
Call it user-generated content, Bubble 2.0, millionth-word in the English language or whatever you want, but know this: Web 2.0 is trademarked by CMP Media (who partnered with O'Reilly in producing the Web 2.0 conference) in 2004. In 2006, they sent a cease-and-desist nastygram to the Irish non-profit organization IT@Cork for using the word in the name of their conference and sparked a kerfuffle over the ownership of "Web 2.0"
What's the company that invented the personal computer, graphical user interface, the computer mouse, but didn't bother to market them because it couldn't see their commercial potentials? Yep, Xerox. In 1979, Steve Jobs of Apple visited Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and saw the Xerox Alto workstation. Several years later, Jobs brought the Apple Macintosh to market.
When YouTube was sold to Google for $1.7 billion, the spotlight was on Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. But did you know that there was a third YouTube founder? That's right: Jawed Karim left the company to become a graduate student at Stanford University. He did, however, fare better than Ronald Wayne - Jawed got about $64 million worth in stock. Jawed also uploaded the very first video on YouTube on April 23, 2005:
If you own a PC in the late 80s/early 90s, then you're savvy about the ZIP file format. Back then, disk space was at a premium (a regular 3-1/2" HD floppy disk can only hold 1.44 MB worth of data) so compression was a big thing. In 1986, Phil Katz created PKZIP (Yep, PK is his initials) and released it as a shareware. He chose the name "zip" to imply that his software was faster than other compression formats available at the time. Sadly, Phil, the alcoholic computer genius, died alone in a cheap hotel cradling an empty bottle of peppermint schnapps.
24 Hour Tombstones

Time is tight if you are just starting to make Halloween decorations, but this one can be ready in a day. Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has instructions for making your own concrete tombstone! It might not be fancy enough for an actual grave, but it is sturdy and customizable for Halloween. Link
Your Prefix of the Day: Yotta-
Mr. Dalton Chiscolm sued Bank of America for $1,784 billion trillion dollars. That’s $1,784,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. In the International System of Units this amount would be expressed as 1.784 yottadollars.
The range of SI unit prefixes is shown above; “yotta” is the largest accepted prefix, used to measure things like the diameter of the known universe (in yards).
U.S. District Judge Denny Chin, who heard the case in Manhattan’s federal court, presided over the Bernie Madoff trial, and thus is familiar with large amounts of money – but even he was impressed by the size of Mr. Chiscolm’s claim. If every person on earth had as much money as Bill Gates, that total wealth would still only be 1/1000th of the amount requested.
The plaintiff was asked to provide further evidence to support his claim.
Reliving Radio History This Halloween

This Halloween marks the 71st anniversary of the night The Mercury Theater aired a live production of the H.G. Wells story of a Martian invasion, The War of the Worlds.
At least two websites are offering streaming versions of this historic event that “panicked America.” Produced by and starring Orson Welles, the chilling tale was told as though the radio broadcasters themselves were part of the story at first.
Soon, the conditioned ears of the listeners took the news events coming out of their radios as the truth, and, while there is some speculation of reports like this:
[P]anic ensued, people fleeing the area, others thinking they could smell poison gas or could see flashes of lightning in the distance.
It’s still fascinates to this day. The actual 1938 broadcast of the show is going to be streamed live at WarOfTheWorldsTribute at 8:00pm EST on the 30th of October, and it’s really worth a listen.
Also, on Halloween night, student radio station WKNC will do the same with a modernized version here at 7:00pm.
via kottke. | Photo: Orson Welles (Wikimedia Commons)
Top 11 Oddball Tax Deductions
People have deducted swimming pools, breast implants, and body oil from their income for tax purposes -and the IRS allowed it! You can deduct anything if you can justify it as a legitimate business expense. Eleven people did just that in this article from Kiplinger.
1. Pet food. A couple who owned a junkyard were allowed to write off the cost of cat food they set out to attract wild cats. The feral felines did more than just eat. They also took care of snakes and rats on the property, making the place safer for customers. When the case reached the Tax Court, IRS lawyers conceded that the cost was deductible.
(image credit: Flickr user play4smee)
Fantasy Bookplates

Will at A Journey Around My Skull asked readers to create bookplates in the style of the early-20th century magazine Der Orchideengarten (previously at Netaorama) for a contest. They were to include orchids and other flowers, corpses, giant insects, monsters, or diseases. The entries are quite interesting! Memphis artist Michelle Duckworth was the overall winner. Pictured is the bookplate by Ellis Nadler. Link
Flammable Ice
(YouTube Link)
High school science teacher “Mr. Kent” has a YouTube channel full of neat chemistry demonstration videos. In this one, he sets ice on fire. Here’s how:
Ice is added to a dry Pyrex bowl. When the Ice melts the water reacts with the calcium carbide (place on the bottom) to produce acetylene gas and calcium hydroxide. The acetylene gas then explodes into flames when a match is place on top. It will continue to burn even as the ice melts because it keeps producing acetylene until the calcium carbide runs out.
via Urlesque | Mr. Kent’s Chemistry Page | YouTube Channel
The Largest Mona Lisa in the World

Under the direction of artist Katy Webster, children painted an enormous copy of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa at a shopping mall in Wales:
Dozens of adults from community groups and youngsters from Wrexham schools coloured 82 vinyl tiles to make the paint-by-numbers portrait.
It is on show at Eagles Meadow, and will be used to raise money for the children’s hospice charity Hope House.
At 17.5m across, and covering 240 sqm, it is some 50 times the original.
Video at the link (preceded by a commercial).
Link via GearFuse | Image: My Modern MET
The Hot Air Lanterns of the Chiang Mai Yi Peng Festival
(YouTube Link)
The Chiang Mai Yi Peng Festival is an Buddhist holy day in Thailand. That evening, celebrants send send burning lanterns aloft, floating on hot air. According to YouTube user bugzila:
[...]it is the great festival of Lanna duly succeeded from ancient age. “Yi Peng” or full-moon day of second lunar month of Lanna villagers is corresponding to the full-moon day of 12th month of central region during the end of raining season and beginning of cold season when the climate is very nice and fair. One tradition of Lanna other than Loi Kra Thong on the river is to light up the lantern and float up in the sky based on their belief that to pay worship to Phra Ket Kaew Julamanee in the heaven or to relief one’ bad luck for more auspicious life.
Via Urlesque
An Interactive Illustration of the Size of Atoms
The Genetic Science Learning Center at the University of Utah has created an interactive feature that allows you to see the relative size of small objects, starting with a coffee bean and magnifying down to a carbon atom. Click on the link and use the sliding bar at the bottom of the application to zoom in.
Link via Radley Balko | Image: U.S. Department of Energy
The History of Birth Control

Newsweek presents a pictorial history of birth control methods. We’ve come a long way since the Greek philosopher Aristotle recommended olive oil as a spermicide! Link -Thanks, Steadyburn!
The Silverware Swallower
A Dutch medical magazine asked its readers to send in their stories of strange medical cases. One respondent told the tale of Margaret Daalman, who came in to the hospital 30 years ago complaining of a stomach ache. An x-ray found 78 forks and spoons inside her!
When she went in for her surgery, Ms Daalman, a secretary in a local estate agents, told doctors: ‘I don’t know why but I felt an urge to eat the silverware – I could not help myself.’
Medics also revealed it was not the first time that she had been treated for eating the cutlery.
They said she had been diagnosed as suffering from a borderline personality disorder that left her with an urge to eat forks and spoons.
She never ate knives, however – and could not explain why not.
The photos and x-rays were not made public until now. Daalman went into therapy after the surgery and is said to be doing well today. Link -via Unique Daily
Geologists: Experts in the Art of Subduction

Geologists: Experts in the Art of Subduction – $11.95, modeled by Zac.
Ever been seduced by a geologist? No? Well, you can’t blame them – though they’re not well versed in seduction, they are experts in the art of subduction. Y’know, tectonic plate movements and such. And in case you’re going to get it on with a geologist, remember that subduction zones can result in absolutely volcanic … er, eruptions.
Design by Chris Murphy.
Available from the Neatorama Shop: Link – Don’t forget to check out our wide selection of Science T-Shirts and Scientists Do It T-Shirts
Lost Luggage
Remember Dave Carroll of the group Sons of Maxwell who wrote the song United Breaks Guitars after seeing his guitar abused? He flew United Airline again on Sunday on his way to speak to a group of customer service executives. Then he spent an hour at the baggage claim because United lost his luggage!
In an interview, Mr. Carroll said that for more than an hour on Sunday, he was told he could not leave the international baggage claim area at Denver International Airport, where he had flown from Saskatchewan. He said he had been told to stay because his bag was delayed, not lost, and he had to be there to claim it when it came down the conveyor belt.
“I’m the only person pacing around this room,” Mr. Carroll said, recalling how he was caught between an order from United staff members to stay and collect his bag, and a federal customs official telling him he had to leave the baggage claim area. The bag never showed.
Carroll got his bag back on Wednesday. Link -via YesButNoButYes
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