MAN WAKES UP FROM COMA, THINKS HE’S MCCONAUGHEY
In August 2012, Rory Curtis, 25, was in a car accident near his home in Redditch, Great Britain. He spent six days in a coma after suffering a brain hemorrhage in the crash. When Curtis came to, he was so dazed and confused that he was convinced he was McConaughey. “I cannot remember much but I know in my head I thought I was Matthew McConaughey,” he said, according to the Daily Mail. “When I went to the toilet I went to look in the mirror and I was shocked because I didn’t look like him, I didn’t know what I was looking at. Then slowly over time it eventually clicked and I thought ‘He is an actor, what am I on aboutIJ’”
Still, there were times before his release in November, that Curtis would be in the hospital wishing he could go back to making movies. He could also suddenly speak French fluently. “I don’t remember coming round but my family said one of the nurses was from Africa and spoke French and I was having conversations with her,” he said, according to the Mirror. “I was just casually chatting away about how I was feeling in this perfect French accent.”
Curtis left the hospital in November, 2012, no longer thinking he was a famous Hollywood actor, but still needing months of rehab. Even after his recovery, Curtis retained his ability to speak French. Now he’s training to be a barber and is trying to lead a normal life.
(The Huffington Post)
STOlEN MUSTANG FOUND 28 YEARS lATER
A California woman said being reunited with her 1967 Ford Mustang 28 years after it was stolen was “like winning the lottery.” lynda Alsip of Hollister said the car was stolen from her apartment complex in Salinas when she went out of town for a week with some friends in 1986. The California Highway Patrol said the car was found in the possession of a Salinas man who had attempted to have it registered. The man told police he purchased it as a project car in 1991 and only just got around to having it registered.
Police said they are still looking into whether the man knew the vehicle was stolen. Alsip, who paid $800 for the car in 1986, said she’ll be keeping the car locked in her garage from now on whenever she isn’t driving it.
(UPI)
ITAlIAN CIRCUS ACCUSED OF PASSING OFF DOGS AS PANDAS
An Italian circus is facing possible criminal charges for allegedly trying to deceive the audience with two chow chows painted to resemble pandas. ‘Two white furred dog cubs, a male and a female of chow chow breed, were camouflaged as pandas and shown to the public, particularly children, to take photos demanding payment,” Italy’s state forestry police said, according to theInternational Business Times. Wildlife activists of the Animal Protection Party who initially visited the circus to check for possible animal abuse discovered the pups.
“Our volunteers realised the animals had nothing to do with the East Asian bears but were chow chow dogs painted as pandas,” APP chairman Fabrizio Catell said, according to Elite Daily. “We believe it’s unacceptable to ridicule animals for entertainment and profit.” The circus owners now face charges of animal abuse and defrauding customers who paid to pose for pictures with the pretend pandas.
(The Huffington Post)
US HElPED JAIlED CUBAN SPY ARTIFICIAllY INSEMINATE WIFE
The United States helped a Cuban spy imprisoned in California artificially inseminate his wife back in Cuba, a goodwill gesture while Washington and Havana were engaged in secret talks on restoring diplomatic ties, U.S. officials said. Now Gerardo Hernandez and his wife, Adriana Perez, are expecting his baby in two weeks, even though he was locked up for 16 years without conjugal visits. It will be a girl called Gema, Cuban official media said.
Hernandez was serving a double-life sentence at the U.S. federal penitentiary in Victorville until his release last as part of a prisoner swap, which was completed the same day the US and Cuba announced they would restore diplomatic ties after more than 50 years. The United States freed Hernandez and two other Cuban agents in exchange for US foreign aid worker Alan Gross, a Cuban who had been spying for Washington, and 53 unidentified prisoners.
Hernandez, 49, was one of five Cuban agents captured 16 years ago and given long prison terms, all of them hailed as “antiterrorist heroes” in Cuba for infiltrating Cuban exile groups at a time when anti-Castro extremists were bombing Cuban hotels. When the so-called Cuban Five were honored in a ceremony at Cuba’s National Assembly on Saturday, Perez appeared alongside Hernandez with an obvious baby bump, raising questions about how she became pregnant. Hernandez patted her belly and smiled, a signal of harmony within the marriage. later that day, Hernandez told Cuban television she became pregnant through “remote control” but gave no details.
(Reuters)