In July, a Jackson Center, Pa., woman reported that someone used a ladder to climb into the second story of her home and that all that was missing was $10 worth of diapers, despite the presence of jewelry and antiques in the same room.
Fort Erie, Ontario, Constable Paul Fletcher told reporters in December that a man armed with a club tried to force a woman to drive him home with her to get money for him, but that when he waited for her to unlock the passenger door from inside, she sped away.
Dennis Payne, 30, was arrested as a pickpocket at a Jersey City, N.J., train station, his 135th arrest in New Jersey and New York City since 1978. Police said it took a computer more than a half-hour to print out Payne's arrest record.
FBI and Florida authorities arrested Paul E. Flasher, 45, who had been sentenced to five years in prison in 1980 for grand theft but who had never been jailed.
Flasher said he had gone home from the sentencing hearing in Tampa and "sat tight," just as his lawyer had instructed, waiting for notification to report to prison. Authorities forgot him for 12 years.
James Macdonals and William Shoesmith, both 26, were sentenced to five years in prison for bank robbery. According to his lawyer, Macdonald hated his robbery work and had to drink before each job.
For what was to be the pair's last job, he got fall-down drunk and had to be carried by Shoesmith into the bank to pull off the heist. The two were soon captured.
Raleigh, N.C., police charged Vernon Edsel Brooks, 34, with robbing a Radio Shack in July, despite his foresight in disabling a video surveillance camera by taking the camera with him as he fled.
Because he forgot to take the recorder to which the camera was connected, police found a tape containing a full facial shot of Brooks reaching for the camera.
The Associated Press reported that the village of Sodom, Conn., disappeared, like its biblical namesake.
Though it appears on maps, the AP writer interviewed residents of Sodom Road and the Sodom Corner intersection, both hallmarks of the village of Sodom, and discovered that everyone claims now to live in North Canaan.
A survey of home burglars' work preferences published in Whittle Communications' Special Report magazine revealed that 32 percent like to browse through family photographs while on the job, 27 percent like to raid the refrigerator, and 7 percent watch TV.
Seventy percent of the 191 imprisoned burglars reported they like to limit their jobs to a 20-minute maximum, 17 percent wondered what their victims were like, and 59 percent said a dog in the home was the most effective burglary deterrent.
Escondido attorney Ben Echeverria filed a $2 million lawsuit in August against Texaco Inc. and a local gas station manager because station attendants were pumping gas for women at self-service prices, but not for men.
The station almost immediately stopped its practice and forced women to start pumping for themselves.
In 1989, a Union Bridge, Md., high school permitted a female student, Tawana Hammond, 17, to try out for its football team under the pressure of a federal statute that bars school discrimination on the basis of gender.
On her first scrimmage, Tawana, a running back, was tackled and suffered massive internal injuries.
In October 1992, she filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against the county board of education for its alleged failure to tell her how dangerous football is.
