Would you die for a stranger?

On Wednesday the 19th. November 1997, the M.V. Green Lily ran aground on Bressay, near Grut Wick. After loading a cargo of approximately 3000 tonnes of frozen fish, bound for Las Palmas in the Canary Isles, the Croatian-born captain decided to set sail in foul weather, in spite of warnings from the Harbour Master not to leave the port at Lerwick, Shetland. Shortly after leaving the harbour, the ship suffered engine failure in a force 9 gale forecast to reach force 11 imminently and was left drifting in 50ft. waves, eventually running aground off Bressay.

April Fool’s Day

Have you ever fallen for an April Fool's joke or prank? I know that, as a child, some classmate was always pulling a prank on someone, with the rest of us in on it, watching that poor soul make a fool of themselves by believing the prank. There have been some rather dubious April Fool's Day pranks on a national scale. Maybe you even fell for one of these April Fool’s Day hoaxes yourself.

On 1 April 1957, the British news show Panorama broadcasted a three-minute segment about a bumper spaghetti harvest in southern Switzerland. The crop's success was attributed to an unusually mild winter and the "virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil." The audience heard Richard Dimbleby, the show's highly respected anchor, discussing the details of the spaghetti crop as they watched video footage of a Swiss family pulling pasta off spaghetti trees and placing it into baskets. The segment concluded with the assurance that "For those who love this dish, there's nothing like real, home-grown spaghetti."