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us AIM A kitschy suburban Chicago landmark that made a cameo in the movie will be dismantled. The Spindle, the towering sculpture of eight cars impaled on a steel pipe became famous for its appearance in the 1992 comedy starring Mike Myers as Wayne and Dana Carvey as his buddy Garth. Despite years of rust and layers of bird droppings, the Spindle -- also known as the "Car Kabob" and the "Eight Car Pileup" -- still draws movie fans to a shopping center parking lot in Berwyn.
The sculpture will be removed this summer to make way for a Walgreens. It could be moved elsewhere, but the cost of doing so probably would be high. California artist Dustin Shuler, who built the piece in 1989, called the dismantling "a loss for Chicago.
" "I would have moved the Walgreens and left the Spindle where it is," he said. Folk medicine takes a step back in time For decades, villagers in central China dug up bones they thought were from flying dragons and used them in traditional medicines. Turns out the bones are of dinosaurs.
Now, scientists are doing the digging. Over the years, villagers had dug up about a ton of bones, said scientist Dong Zhiming, a professor with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The fossils had been sold in Henan province as "dragon bones" for 25 cents a pound.
The calcium-rich bones were sometimes boiled with other ingredients and fed to children to treat dizziness and leg cramps. They also were made into a paste applied to fractures and other injuries, Dong said. He said villagers donated 440 pounds to the team for research.
When ya gotta go, this is the place They're flush with pride in Chongqing, China, where a new porcelain palace features an Egyptian fa ade and more than 1,000 toilets covering 30,000 square feet. Officials in the southwestern Chinese city plan to ask Guinness World Records to have the free four-story public bathroom listed as the world's largest, state-run China Central Television reported July 6. "We are spreading toilet culture.
People can listen to gentle music and watch TV," said Lu Xiaoqing, an official with the Yangrenjie tourist area where the bathroom is. "After they use the bathroom they will be very, very happy." Some urinals are uniquely shaped, including ones inside open crocodile mouths or topped by the bust of a woman resembling the Virgin Mary.
Family name is a heck of a problem The Hell family has protested to a Catholic school in Australia after it objected to enrolling their son because of his name. Officials said Max Hell, 5, had been offered a place at St. Peter the Apostle school in Melbourne after discussions among the principal, the parish priest and the family about his last name.
But Alex Hell, 45, said he would rather send his son elsewhere because the school balked at taking the boy because of his family name. Hell said he had Austrian heritage, and that the name means "bright." Hell, a Roman Catholic, said he and his wife offered to enroll Max using his mother's maiden name, Wembridge, but they changed their minds.
Hell said the school withdrew its enrollment offer but backed down when Hell went to the media. The Krause family's cherry pit-spitting dynasty might be under siege by a 17-year-old girl. Fourteen-time world champion Rick "Pellet Gun" Krause repeated as winner of the 34th annual International Cherry Spitting Championship, held Saturday at the Tree-Mendus Fruit cherry orchard in Eau Claire, Mich.
, with a spit of 58 feet, 11/2 inches. Krause, 58, needed all three attempts in the championship round to outdistance upstart Amanda Jennings, who finished second in the otherwise all-male championship event with 52 feet, 51/2 inches. Jennings, of Sault Ste.
Marie, Ontario, won the women's division, beating five-time women's champion Maureen Krause, Rick's wife, with a spit of 47 feet, 61/2 inches. Rick Krause's son, six-time winner Brian "Young Gun" Krause, 29, took third place with a spit of 49 feet, 61/2 inches. He holds the world record: 93 feet, 61/2 inches in 2003.
A man fishing for catfish reeled in a fish that flashed its teeth and bit his knife. Jerry Melton, 46, was fishing in the Catawba River near Mount Holly, N.C.
, in June when he caught a piranha, a South American carnivorous freshwater fish. When Melton opened the fish's mouth with a pocket knife, he said, the fish bit down and left an impression on the blade. Melton said he is keeping the 1 pound, 4 ounce piranha in his freezer until he can have it mounted.
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