Ann Landers: suckered again
Dear Abby's even-more-gullible twin sister was conned into passing another urban legend off as fact earlier this month when she printed a reader's letter on the subject of how "crazy" lawsuits are getting in the United States.
The item cited a "news story" about a woman who sued the pharmacy from which she had bought a tube of contraceptive jelly after she ate the product on toast and then proceeded to become pregnant anyway.
Get it?
Sorry to say, the item is unworthy fodder for the debate over American litigiousness. Not only has it become a well known urban legend, it is also one of the oldest bad sex jokes in the book.
Craig Shergold: 200 million cards and counting
Long ago and far away, a 9-year-old boy dying of a malignant brain tumor expressed a simple wish: to go down in the Guinness Book of World Records as the recipient of the largest number of get-well cards ever.
One year later, with the help of an organization called Children's Wish Foundation International, he had attained that goal. The charity had launched a worldwide chain letter campaign on Craig's behalf, netting millions of cards.
Now, eight years later, fully recovered from his illness and the permanent holder of the world record for sympathy cards, Craig Shergold still receives up to four sacks of mail per day. The total accumulation is currently (as of 1997) estimated at over 200 million cards.
Such is the awesome power of the chain letter in the digital age.
In one of its periodic updates on the phenomenon, the British press revisited the Shergold story last week, reporting that Craig is now a healthy 18-year-old young man and that his family would just as soon see the onslaught of well-meaning messages come to an end.
"We just want to get back to normality now," Craig's mother told reporters. She surely meant it.
But as anyone who's followed the story knows, every mention of Craig Shergold in the press simply kicks the juggernaut back into action. A new flurry of chain mail will now commence. Millions more well-meaning but misguided people will clog the postal services of the world with get-well cards addressed to a healthy, happy British teenager. There's no stopping the thing, now or at any time in the foreseeable future.
For the Shergold family, it would seem, normality is not in the cards.
(Sources: Chicago Tribune, BBC and ABC News)
Dear Abby's even-more-gullible twin sister was conned into passing another urban legend off as fact earlier this month when she printed a reader's letter on the subject of how "crazy" lawsuits are getting in the United States.
The item cited a "news story" about a woman who sued the pharmacy from which she had bought a tube of contraceptive jelly after she ate the product on toast and then proceeded to become pregnant anyway.
Get it?
Sorry to say, the item is unworthy fodder for the debate over American litigiousness. Not only has it become a well known urban legend, it is also one of the oldest bad sex jokes in the book.
Craig Shergold: 200 million cards and counting
Long ago and far away, a 9-year-old boy dying of a malignant brain tumor expressed a simple wish: to go down in the Guinness Book of World Records as the recipient of the largest number of get-well cards ever.
One year later, with the help of an organization called Children's Wish Foundation International, he had attained that goal. The charity had launched a worldwide chain letter campaign on Craig's behalf, netting millions of cards.
Now, eight years later, fully recovered from his illness and the permanent holder of the world record for sympathy cards, Craig Shergold still receives up to four sacks of mail per day. The total accumulation is currently (as of 1997) estimated at over 200 million cards.
Such is the awesome power of the chain letter in the digital age.
In one of its periodic updates on the phenomenon, the British press revisited the Shergold story last week, reporting that Craig is now a healthy 18-year-old young man and that his family would just as soon see the onslaught of well-meaning messages come to an end.
"We just want to get back to normality now," Craig's mother told reporters. She surely meant it.
But as anyone who's followed the story knows, every mention of Craig Shergold in the press simply kicks the juggernaut back into action. A new flurry of chain mail will now commence. Millions more well-meaning but misguided people will clog the postal services of the world with get-well cards addressed to a healthy, happy British teenager. There's no stopping the thing, now or at any time in the foreseeable future.
For the Shergold family, it would seem, normality is not in the cards.
(Sources: Chicago Tribune, BBC and ABC News)
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