A stash of cash landed in the trash when a woman in Israel dumped her mother's mattress not knowing it was stuffed with the equivalent of about one million dollars. Media reported that the 40-year-old woman showed up at a garbage dump in a panic on Tuesday, looking for the valuable bedding.
She had bought a new mattress for her mother and, wanting the gift to be a surprise, threw away the old one. She then found out the decades-old mattress contained her mother's life savings.
Workers are helping her search the garbage, but have found no sign of the cash so far. (AFP)
Fisherman nets live guided missile
He thought he'd netted a big one, but after reeling it in, a Florida fisherman found he really did have a live catch on his hands - a very unstable air-to-air guided missile, police said Tuesday.
Commercial fisherman Rodney Salomon never panicked, and kept long-line fishing aboard his "Bold Venture" boat in the Gulf of Mexico for another 10 days before returning to port.
"I had it strapped to the roof of my boat as we rode through lightning storms," he said.
The bomb squad from a military base said the heavily corroded eight-foot-long missile could have exploded at any moment while a bomb squad from McDill Air Force base said the missile "was live and in a very unstable state."
The sheriff's office said the find was an "American made air-to-air missile".
A spokesman at Eglin Air Force Base said it was an "AIM-9 missile, it was released by an F-15 in August 16, 2004 during an exercise conducted in Panama City."
Mr Salomon asked the bomb squad if he could keep the missile as a souvenir after made safe, but the request was denied. He said it wasn't the first one he and his crew picked up. Days after the find, Mr Salomon nabbed another. That one was beeping so he decided to let it go. (AFP)
Missing gold at Canada's mint
Canadian police will investigate why the Royal Canadian Mint seems to have lost some of its gold and other precious metals. Media reports say more than $9.1 million in gold and other assets are missing.
"I have instructed the mint to call in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to (do) a full investigation," junior government minister Rob Merrifield told reporters, declining to say how much was missing.
The mint says its plant in Winnipeg, Manitoba, produces over one billion circulation coins each year. It also says its vaults are "an exceptionally secure facility". (Reuters)
Police station turns into snakepit
Law enforcers in Sierra Leone are used to slithering low life but the invasion of a police station by hundreds of hissing serpents has left even some of the toughest officers afraid to go to work.
An estimated 400 snakes, mostly cobras and vipers, have infested the station in Gerihun in Sierra Leone's southern Bo district. Residents are complaining that they are too afraid of the snakes to go there to report crimes.
"(The snakes) have been in the... police station since January and despite fumigating exercises carried out by officials of the Ministry of Health, many of the reptiles have not been dislodged," Town Chief Momoh Fornah said, adding the authorities are now looking to bring in army sharp-shooters to dispatch the unwelcome guests.
Police officers at the station said the presence of the snakes had left many of them too afraid to work from their desks. (AFP)
It's raining tadpoles
The rainy season has just started in Tokyo, but residents in a small coastal town have reported a different phenomenon - tadpoles dropping out of the sky.
An office clerk in Nanao said he first noticed the anomaly when he heard a dull thud in a parking lot last week. Looking around, he saw about 100 dead amphibians splattered on car windshields and the ground.
More reports followed from bewildered residents in Nanao.
"People speculate that a waterspout picked them up and dropped them from the air," an official at a local weather observatory said. "But from a meteorological point of view, I have to say it is most unlikely. We have checked the weather conditions of last week, thinking gusts of wind might have hit the area but confirmed no damage," he said. "I don't think it was anything caused by a weather condition."
Similar events have been reported around the world, with whirlwinds passing over water bodies and picking up frogs, jellyfish or other animals before dumping them back to earth. (AFP)