Friday Snippets and Soundbites

If this edition of "Snippets and Soundbites" simply isn't enough news of the weird for you, check out page 38 in the May (and every!) issue of ec. We've got all the strange news you can handle!

Now, on with the show:

• Wednesday must have been a weird day for Charles Patrick Sherlock. That's because he watched the ship he'd served on as a telemetry technician sink into the sea—and it was all on purpose. On Wednesday, the Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, a WWII-era former U.S. Air Force missile tracking ship, was purposely sunk into the ocean near the Florida Keys. The ship joined other purposely sunken ships at the bottom of the ocean and will be used to create an artificial reef. The ship is now the second largest vessel in the world to be sunk to create a reef. It took one minute and 54 seconds to sink the ship. To learn more, stop by here.

• Everyone knows getting a good picture on your driver's license is pretty much next to impossible. And it just got a little harder in four states. That's because DMVs in Arkansas, Indiana, Nevada and Virginia are now requiring driver's license use "neutral facial expressions." Which basically boils down to fewer huge, cheesy smiles. Officials are quick to point out that you can still smile, just maybe not as big. The states aren't just putting the new regulation into affect because they like bad driver's license pics, though. These states are using facial recognition software to identify people trying to assume another driver's identity and the software can't do the job as well when the facial expressions are too dissimilar. Read all about it here. For info on how to take a better driver's license pic, check out this link.

• It's always disappointing to open your drive-thru order and realize you didn't get everything. But most of us wouldn't consider that an emergency, right? Not so for one Oregon man. The guy had gone to McDonald's and ordered an orange juice, among other things. When he didn't get the OJ, he called 911 to complain that the McDonald's employee was rude and to report the missing drink. The 20-year-old man was arrested and spent Memorial Day in jail, accused of improper use of an emergency phone number. To make things even more interesting, he appears to have made all the calls from the drive-thru lane, since while he was on the phone complaining about his OJ, a McDonald's employee also called 911 to report that the guy and his friends were blocking the drive-thru lane and knocking on the restaurant's windows. Read more here.

• Who hasn't met a little dog who thinks he/she is the biggest thing in the room? (ec's editor Mandy has an 8-pound poodle who thinks she owns the world.) Well, sometimes that kind of delusion seems to actually work for the best. Take the story of Chiquita the Chihuahua and Rosie the border terrier who chased off a cougar that strayed into a small town in Oregon. The cougar pinned down Rosie who squealed and yelped, but Chiquita barked ferociously and the big cat fled. Read all about it here.