Two Scottish women had just arrived to the US by boat when one said to the other, "I heard that the occupants of this country actually eat dogs."

"Odd," her companion replied, "but if we shall live in America, we might as well do as the Americans do."

Nodding emphatically, the first woman pointed to a hot dog vendor and they both walked towards it.

"Two dogs, please," said one.

The vendor was only too pleased to oblige and he wrapped both hot dogs in foil. Excited, the nuns hurried over to a bench and began to unwrap their 'dogs.'

The second woman was first to open hers, then, stared at it for a moment, leaned over to the other woman and whispered cautiously, "What part did you get?"

Pencil removed from woman's head after 55 years

Mon Aug 6, 9:08 AM ET

A 59-year-old German woman has had most of a pencil removed from inside her head after suffering nearly her whole life with the headaches and nosebleeds it caused, Bild newspaper reported Monday.

Margret Wegner fell over carrying the pencil in her hand when she was four.

"The pencil went right through my skin -- and disappeared into my head," Wegner told the newspaper.

It narrowly missed vital parts of her brain. At the time no one dared operate, but now technology has improved sufficiently for doctors to be able to remove it.

Most of the pencil, some three inches long, was taken out in an operation at a private Berlin clinic, but the tip had grown in so firmly that it was impossible to remove.

Marilyn Monroe is found dead

August 5, 1962

Movie actress Marilyn Monroe is found dead in her home in Los Angeles. She was discovered lying nude on her bed, face down, with a telephone in one hand. Empty bottles of pills, prescribed to treat her depression, were littered around the room. After a brief investigation, Los Angeles police concluded that her death was "caused by a self-administered overdose of sedative drugs and that the mode of death is probable suicide."

Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jean Mortenson in Los Angeles on June 1, 1926. Her mother was emotionally unstable and frequently confined to an asylum, so Norma Jean was reared by a succession of foster parents and in an orphanage. At the age of 16, she married a fellow worker in an aircraft factory, but they divorced a few years later. She took up modeling in 1944 and in 1946 signed a short-term contract with 20th Century Fox, taking as her screen name Marilyn Monroe. She had a few bit parts and then returned to modeling, famously posing nude for a calendar in 1949.

She began to attract attention as an actress in 1950 after appearing in minor roles in the The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve. Although she was onscreen only briefly playing a mistress in both films, audiences took note of the blonde bombshell, and she won a new contract from Fox. Her acting career took off in the early 1950s with performances in Love Nest (1951), Monkey Business (1952), and Niagara (1953). Celebrated for her voluptuousness and wide-eyed charm, she won international fame for her sex-symbol roles in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), and There's No Business Like Show Business (1954). The Seven-Year Itch (1955) showcased her comedic talents and features the classic scene where she stands over a subway grating and has her white skirt billowed up by the wind from a passing train. In 1954, she married baseball great Joe DiMaggio, attracting further publicity, but they divorced eight months later.

In 1955, she studied with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York City and subsequently gave a strong performance as a hapless entertainer in Bus Stop (1956). In 1956, she married playwright Arthur Miller. She made The Prince and the Showgirl--a critical and commercial failure--with Laurence Olivier in 1957 but in 1959 gave an acclaimed performance in the hit comedy Some Like It Hot. Her last role, in The Misfits (1961), was directed by John Huston and written by Miller, whom she divorced just one week before the film's opening.

By 1961, Monroe, beset by depression, was under the constant care of a psychiatrist. Increasingly erratic in the last months of her life, she lived as a virtual recluse in her Brentwood, Los Angeles, home. After midnight on August 5, 1962, her maid, Eunice Murray, noticed Monroe's bedroom light on. When Murray found the door locked and Marilyn unresponsive to her calls, she called Monroe's psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, who gained access to the room by breaking a window. Entering, he found Marilyn dead, and the police were called sometime after. An autopsy found a fatal amount of sedatives in her system, and her death was ruled probable suicide.

In recent decades, there have been a number of conspiracy theories about her death, most of which contend that she was murdered by John and/or Robert Kennedy, with whom she allegedly had love affairs. These theories claim that the Kennedys killed her (or had her killed) because they feared she would make public their love affairs and other government secrets she was gathering. On August 4, 1962, Robert Kennedy, then attorney general in his older brother's cabinet, was in fact in Los Angeles. Two decades after the fact, Monroe's housekeeper, Eunice Murray, announced for the first time that the attorney general had visited Marilyn on the night of her death and quarreled with her, but the reliability of these and other statements made by Murray are questionable.

Four decades after her death, Marilyn Monroe remains a major cultural icon. The unknown details of her final performance only add to her mystique.

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Labels: 1962, dead, marilyn monroe, Norma Jean Mortenson

32,000 quarters leak onto Wis. roads

Fri Aug 3, 4:53 AM ET

Imagine the ringing noise of 32,000 quarters hitting the pavement.

An armored car company reported losing $8,000 in quarters along highways in two Wisconsin counties last month. About half has been returned.

"I guess somebody found that and figured it was an early Christmas," Jefferson County Detective Sgt. Lawrence Lee said.

Eight-hundred dollars of loose quarters was found late last month in the Madison area and $3,200 in Jefferson County the next day.

Loomis Fargo officials told authorities that a truck headed for Madison carrying boxes of quarters broke down in the Pewaukee area, so they sent another one. The load was transferred, but someone forgot to secure the door.

The driver was issued a citation for failure to prevent a leaking load.

A Loomis official declined comment Thursday.

Labels: $8000, 32000, Loomis Fargo, quarters, Wisconsin

Armless man gets 5 years for driving

Fri Aug 3, 5:06 PM ET

A man with no arms and one leg who wouldn't stop driving despite a long list of traffic violations was sentenced to five years in prison Friday on felony driving and drug charges.

Michael Francis Wiley, 40, also was sentenced to 15 years of drug offender probation. He pleaded no contest in June to the charges.

"I'd just like to say I know what I did was wrong," Wiley said in court Friday. "I am truly sorry your honor. I am."

Wiley taught himself to drive after losing both arms and a leg in an electrical accident when he was 13. He has already spent more than three years in prison for habitually driving without a license, kicking a state trooper and other charges.

He once had a valid license, but it has been suspended several times since 1985, according to his attorney. He starts the car with his toes, shifts with his knee and steers with the stump of his left arm. He turns on the lights with his teeth.

In his most recent brush with the law last May, Wiley sped off in a Ford Explorer when police approached him at a convenience store, officials said. Officers pursued, but called off the chase after eight minutes because they did not want to put others in danger, police said.

Defense attorney John Hooker pleaded for leniency and a minimum sentence of 2 1/2 years. He cited his client's need for treatment for his many physical and mental health problems, including anxiety, panic attacks, depression and a pain disorder related to his amputations.

In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Wiley said he's done driving.

"I'm beat. The white flag is up," he said. "You can only bang your head against the wall so long before it hurts."

Labels: armless, jail, micheal francis wiley