A pistol reported to have belonged to notorious poisoner Dr Crippen has been handed to police as part of a gun amnesty.
Hawley Harvey Crippen was hanged at London’s Pentoville Prison in 1910 for murdering his wife, Cora. Crippen, who was born in the United States, is believed to have used hyoscine to kill Cora at his London home before attempting to flee to Canada.
Devon and Cornwall Police were given the tiny pistol, which the owner claimed once belonged to Crippen, during a two-week firearms amnesty last month. It was one of 446 weapons surrendered to police along with 15,721 items of ammunition, which will now be passed to the army’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal team.
Pickpocket who hypnotises victims
A pickpocket who apparently hypnotised his victim is being hunted by police.
The thief took cash from a shopkeeper in north London while his victim “remained motionless and unable to resist the robbery taking place”, Scotland Yard said. Police have released CCTV footage of the crime, showing the thief, who claimed his wife was pregnant and needed water, in action.
Detective Sergeant Dave Bullock said: “The victim in this incident said that he was momentarily unaware of what had happened to him. The suspect’s distraction tactics appeared to have worked as he robbed the victim of cash from his pocket.”
Chinese names for London landmarks
To the Chinese, London landmark the Gherkin (pictured right) is Xiao Huang Gua (the pickled little cucumber) while Stonehenge is Ju Shi Zhen (the huge stone clusters).
Now the Chinese are being invited to put names to 101 British points of interest not yet given Chinese names as part of a £1.6 million tourist campaign by VisitBritain.
Names with an oriental flavour are needed for such things as Beachy Head, Trooping the Colour, the kilt, Kensington Palace and the Cornish pasty. The Chinese will also be asked to come up with names for King’s Cross St Pancras station, Dartmoor, the Highland Games and Sherwood Forest.
Undercover guards go naked
Undercover naked security guards have been deployed following reports of hanky panky in a gym sauna.
Staff at Parkbad fitness centre in Linz, Austria, had had enough of people getting too steamy in the steam room, according to the Heute newspaper. This apparently led them to hire enforcement officers to sit inside the heated rooms so they could catch culprits in the act.
The security guards had to be naked because of the unspoken rule in Austria that you should be in the naked while in the sauna. The undercover officers have already risen to the occasion after catching two couples “at it”, who have been told not to return to the gym.
No human rights for chimpanzee
A New York appeals court has said a chimpanzee is not entitled to the rights of a human and does not have to be freed by its owner.
The three-judge Appellate Division panel was unanimous in denying “legal personhood” to Tommy, who lives alone in a cage in upstate New York. A trial level court had previously denied the Nonhuman Rights Project’s effort to have Tommy released.
The group’s lawyer, Steven Wise, told the appeals court in October that the chimp’s living conditions are akin to a person in unlawful solitary confinement.
But the court said there is no precedent for treating animals as people and chimps do not have the legal duties or societal responsibilities that give rights to humans.