Etc...

Lost and found at Disney

It has to be the glass eye.

Or maybe the color television set.

Or the child's potty trainer.

In Central Florida, where the world loves to vacation, people lose an incredible amount of stuff - at Disney, at Universal, at the hotels, at the airport. And much of it they never bother to claim.

Each morning, a truck arrives at the Lost & Found storeroom outside the Magic Kingdom, bearing the detritus collected the day before. Baby strollers, from cheap umbrella strollers to expensive jogging strollers, are one of the most commonly lost items. Cell phones, once exotic and rare, are shooting into the top 10 list. Cameras, both expensive and disposable, also pile up, along with another popular gadget of late - two-way radios.

Yet every day brings a laugh to Kim Lauver, a "Disney operations hostess," and her crew. Recently, an electric razor appeared in their daily stash, leading the staff to wonder who would shave at a theme park. Once, they discovered a full-size color television in the parking lot.

Cake? He'll take the whole bakery!

Angelo Gallina beat the odds and then some.

In a single day, he won the $17 million SuperLotto Plus jackpot and the $126,000 Fantasy 5 top prize.

"I think I'll eat cake," Gallina, of Bemont, Calif., said after his Nov. 20 wins. He said he would also buy a new car and a home for his grown children.

State lottery officials put the odds for the SuperLotto contest win at 1-in-41 million. The odds of winning the separate Fantasy 5 contest were 1-in-575,000.

Figuring out the odds of one person winning both draws on the same day requires a calculator and lots of zeros.

"One in 23 trillion," said Mike Orkin, a professor of statistics at California State University at Hayward, who arrived at the number by multiplying 41 million by 575,000.

Not for the faint of heart. Or stomach.

Hold onto your chopsticks: China plans to put a restaurant on the world's tallest Ferris wheel that will grace Shanghai's skyline by 2005.

The 660-foot wheel - which will overtake the London Eye as the world's tallest - will offer diners a revolving view of Shanghai's Bund waterfront and the spiky steel-and-glass towers of the city's financial district.

Diners need not fear flying entrees or cutlery, a state newspaper quoted Shanghai city officials as saying.

"With state of the art technology and interior design, passengers will glide gracefully and dine undisturbed," the official China Daily said.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
QR Code to Etc...
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1213/p25s03-nbgn.html
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe