SIDELINES...

SAVED BY PREMONITION

On 21 March 1958, film star Kirk Douglas was due to fly to New York on a private plane owned by Mike Todd, to meet the former president, Harry Truman. The night before, Kirk’s pregnant wife Anne told him she had a “strange feeling” about the trip and pleaded with him not to go, leading to a fierce argument. The following morning they learned that Todd’s plane had crashed in New Mexico, with no survivors. “I would never doubt her intuition again,” said the centenarian star. Sunday Express, 2 April 2017.

FAKEDATTRACTION

Bullet holes marking the spot where Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, shot dead her lover in 1955, turn out to be a hoax. The two holes in the wall of the Magdala pub in Hampstead, north London, were made with a drill, in a ruse cooked up by the pub’s landlady, Mary Watson, during a drunken lock-in with regulars in the 1990s. Her brother wielded the drill. This has been revealed by Neil Titley, 71, an actor who was in the pub that night. D.Telegraph, 19 May 2017.

BLAME IT ONTHE BADGER

Staff at a McDonald’s restaurant in Falkoping, Sweden, asked a man to leave after he walked in with a dead badger under his arm. He then started attacking parked cars with the badger, and the police were called. They confiscated the badger and told the man to shove off. <i> 2 Aug 2016.

BALKAN CUSTOM

Montenegro’s last known ‘virgina’ or sworn virgin died last August in her mid-80s. Stana Carovic had promised her father she would spend her life unmarried and dressed as a man in order to serve as head of the family after her two brothers died young without issue. She did men’s work, including woodcutting, while living on her own. The tradition dated back centuries. <i> 3 Aug 2016.