Officials are preparing to tear down a rather large torii, a gate traditionally found at Shinto shrines, at an intersection along Highway 407 in Shizuoka City, Japan, for safety reasons. The problem is, such structures are considered to be gateways to the afterworld, and tearing it down would unleash mysterious and deadly spiritual forces.
SO WE’RE PRETTY SURE WE KNOW WHO HE IS: After showing his driver’s license to the clerk at a Walgreens in Omaha, Neb., to prove he was old enough to purchase cigarettes, a 21-year-old man jumped over the counter, grabbed the cash out of the register and ran out. The clerk gave a copy of the license to police. You know the rest.
IS THERE A PROBLEM, OFFICER? A man, apparently high on crack cocaine, wandered into the yard of a house in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, and passed out on the back deck. He was awakened some time later by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer who owns the home.
MOM! I’M RECORDING HERE! A young woman was filming herself singing at her parents’ home in New York in preparation for a musical theater school audition. Meanwhile, her mother was “banging around” in the attic above the room looking for suitcases when the ceiling partially collapsed, causing her mom’s leg to appear suddenly hanging down from above.
OK PICASSO, STEP OUT OF THE CAR: Police pulled over a driver in Millersburg, Ky., because he had hand-drawn the license plate on the back of his car. He did a pretty good job, but the cops said he forgot to draw the registration sticker.
I’LL BE OUT IN A MINUTE! … WHAT THE…! A powerful storm with 70 mph winds roared through Albuquerque, N.M., causing power outages, flooding and downed trees, and sending a large porta-potty flying down Central Street.
HEY, DO YOU FEEL LIKE WE’RE BEING WATCHED? Two men stole a semi-truck with a trailer in Cleveland, and abandoned it later. What they didn’t know was that the owner had installed a GoPro camera inside the cab, and it was recording the thieves the whole time.
HEH-HEH, NO COP CAN CATCH ME! A man, who had just purchased a $120,000, high-performance Audi RS7, was driving it to Myrtle Beach, N.C., to “show it off,” and roared through a work zone on Interstate 95 in Four Oaks at 187 mph. He crashed the car into bushes along the side of the road attempting to avoid the stop sticks placed there by state troopers.
SOMETHING IS NOT QUITE RIGHT HERE: An 18-year-old rapper in Virginia sat patiently for two hours while the words “dream chaser” were tattooed on his forearm. He realized only later that the words were backward, and could be read only in a mirror.
SWAT! SWAT! KA-BOOOM! A man in his 80s, unaware that a there was a leak from a gas canister, tried to kill a fly with an electric swatter in his home in in the village of Parcoul-Chenaud in southwestern France, setting off an explosion that destroyed part of the house.
