Friday Snippets and Soundbites

Welcome to Friday! And you all know what that means: “Snippets and Soundbites”!

If this week's edition isn't enough for you, remember to check out page 38 in the January (and every issue) of ec. And now, let's see what happened this week. . . .

The skinny

New York City's skinniest house has sold—for $2.1 million dollars. Sure, million dollar house deals aren't that extraordinary, but they are newsworthy when the house being sold is only 9.5 feet wide. See, the townhouse, dubbed NYC's skinniest house, was built on the land between two buildings that had previously been an alley. It's 9.5 feet wide and 42 foot long. The house was also the home of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay  in its past. To learn the whole story, go here.

Good people

Just when you'd lost hope in honest people in today's whatever-goes world, we came across this story: an Italian woman visiting New York City recently left her purse in a cab. It contained traveling money for her and her traveling companions, $21,000 worth of traveling money. When she reported the lost purse to the police, they advised her not to get her hopes up that it would be returned. But apparently, she left her purse in the right cab. The driver, Mukul Asaduzzaman, drove 50 miles to a Long Island address he'd found in the purse. No one was home, so he left a note, then later came back to return the money. Read the rest of this nice story here.

Say what? 

This one's just a weird story. Apparently, a Pennsylvania man wearing a hospital gown recently stole $50 from his ex-girlfriend at Wal-Mart, then attempted to escape on one of the store's motorized shopping scooters. In case you're wondering, he was caught and faces robbery and disorderly conduct charges. The man had been in the hospital recovering from injuries sustained in a domestic dispute and was released the morning of the robbery, which is apparently why he came to the store still wearing his hospital gown. To read all about it, go here.