Friday Snippets and Soundbites

Yay! Friday is finally here! We know you're probably thinking the same thing as your school year draws to a close. But you have to rest your brain from all that studying, final prep, big decisions, paper-writing, and everything else you've got going on at some point. We hope you take some time out to enjoy the randomness that is "Snippets and Soundbites." And if today's edition isn't enough, as always, check out page 38 of this month's (and every month's) ec.

That's not a parking spot.
We've featured stories about people driving their cars into buildings here before, but none of those stories quite matched this one in strangeness. Apparently, a Connecticut man drove his car into a stone wall late last week, went airborne, and landed on the roof of an accountant's office before coming to a complete stop in a yard. The car flipped several times after going airborne, punching a hole in the roof of Barry Gould's (the accountant) office. After inflicting damage upon the office, the car came to a stop in the yard, taking down power lines on the way. Utility crews ahd to cut the power to those lines before the driver could exit the car. The good news is that the driver was not seriously injured and Gould is referring to the hole in his office building as a skylight. The bad news is that the driver may face charges after the police complete their investigation of the event. To read all about it, go here.

Park it!
Perilous parking tales continue in this week's "Snippets and Soundbites." This Wednesday, a 67-year-old Oklahoma man had a scare when he backed his car through the exterior wall on the seventh floor of a high rise parking garage in downtown Tulsa, managing to stop just in time. The driver says that his foot got stuck between the accelerator and the brake in his Mercedes as he was backing into the parking space. The car burst through the wall, spraying debris onto the parking lot below. The trunk and back tires were visible for awhile, until officials safely drove the vehicle back inside. The driver was not injured and will not be ticketed. Check out the whole story, including pics, here.

The man from Diamond finds a diamond.
It just seems perfectly ironic that a man from Diamond, Mo., recently discovered a 4.89 carat diamond. The man, a retired minister, was visiting Crater of Diamonds State Park in nearby Arkansas. Crater of Diamonds State Park is the only diamond-producing site in the world where visitors can search for diamonds. The policy at the park is that if you find a diamond, it's yours to keep. When Mack Evans found his diamond, he wasn't even sure it was a diamond and almost threw it away. The 4.89 carat diamond is about the size of jellybean, is grayish white, and is a "Ghost Diamond," meaning that instead of forming as a single crystal like most diamonds, it formed as an aggregate. To read all about it, go here.