IRISH TIMES ODDITIES:TAME GOLDFINCH: A goldfinch which Mr J Birdy, Mullinary, Carrickmacross, has is so tame that he need not close the cage door. The bird sometimes flies away and returns in a few days. In this way it attracts other finches to the cage, but they won't venture inside, and leave after a time. September 8th, 1937
HICCOUGHS
An unknown Italian has just died in a New York hospital after suffering from the hiccoughs for more than a month.
May 25th, 1907
ARMS AND THE DOG
It is news, according to an old maxim of the newspaper business, when man bites dog. Equally, it is news when dog shoots man. In Italy this week a Roman citizen called Melechiorre Antonelli was shot by his own dog. According to his doctors, Signor Antonelli, who now lies in hospital in Rome, will recover; but he has had a narrow escape. Signor Antonelli, it seems, was out with his dog, shooting game. He had gone into a stream to retrieve a bird, leaving his gun on the bank, when the dog jumped on the gun and discharged the gun.
September 26th, 1952
TORTOISE'S REVENGE
A medical student at St Thomas's sends the Daily Telegraph the following contribution to the history of anaesthetics: A pet tortoise, owned by a lady in South London, was badly worried by the house-dog, so the owner decided to have the maimed reptile put out of existence. A friend, a medical student, undertook to achieve the business of killing with a minimum of pain, so he placed the thing in a box along with a duster saturated with chloroform.
The next morning it was found that the dog, which had apparently jumped on the box with the idea of again mauling his victim, had been overcome by the fumes of the substance escaping out of a hole in the receptacle, and was lying dead, while the tortoise, which had been doomed to destruction, was alive and comparatively brisk in its movements, and looked as though it had considerably benefited by the chloroform.
July 17th, 1899
SUNRISE PREVENTS SUICIDE
A man here owes his life to a beautiful sunrise, writes Reuters' Tokyo correspondent. Tokyuei Kawano decided that death was the only way of escape from his domestic troubles, so he took a train to the Japanese Alps with the intention of doing away with himself there. Unable to find a suitable place where he could take his own life that evening, he spent the night under a rock.
At dawn he climbed to the summit of one of the mountains, and when he reached it he was so overwhelmed by the beauty of the scene as the sun rose over the snow-white peaks that he decided life was worth living after all. Not long afterwards he was on his way home.
November 14th, 1934
A SWARM OF GRASSHOPPERS
Seven tons of straw were used to protect 20 grass tennis courts from the ravages of a sudden invasion of grasshoppers at Bendigo, Victoria. With the help of voluntary labour, the courts were transformed within three hours into what resembled a harvest scene. So dense was the swarm, tells Austral News, that the streets looked as if they were filled with dust with the sun glinting on the insects' wings. February 16th, 1935