Uncovering the truth

It got past the school board. It got past the teachers. But a newly hired principal’s list of academic credentials couldn’t get past the cub reporters of a Pittsburg, Kan., high school. Reporters at The Booster Redux, the school newspaper for Pittsburg High School, discovered that new principal Amy Robertson had gained the job by listing a diploma mill on her resumé. Students published a March 31 article discrediting the principal’s advanced degree from Corllins University, an institution without any accreditation. By April 4, the school board announced that Robertson had resigned.

Them bones

One sure-fire method of finding how many hipsters live in your city: check the price of bones. According to broth-maker Tressa Yellig, the price of beef bones has risen from roughly $1 per pound to $4 per pound in parts of the Pacific Northwest. Yellig, who makes bone broth at her Portland, Ore., company Salt, Fire & Time, says demand for beef bones has been spiking due to an increased interest in making homemade broths and soups. One Virginia farmer told NPR the bones she used to throw away she now packages and sells for $2 per pound.

Leaves thieves

In an official statement released April 4, police in Hamilton, Ontario, asked residents to “romaine calm” after thieves made off with a refrigerated trailer containing $45,000 worth of lettuce. Investigators believe the truck was probably stolen April 1 and are asking the public to “lettuce know if you have any tips.”

Unmanned essay

A single word separated Northern Arizona University English major Cailin Jeffers from a better grade on a recent essay. Jeffers says her professor, Anne Scott, marked her down a point on her essay for using the word “mankind” instead of a gender-neutral synonym. In an email about the returned paper, the professor called Jeffers’ language choice a “political and linguistic statement,” but also offered to allow the student to revise the paper in order to earn the point back.

Repeat offender

Everyone near Sonia Bryce of Willenhall, England, knows her favorite song is Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You.” She won’t let them forget it. Police repeatedly warned her about playing loud music, but that didn’t stop her from blaring the song over loudspeakers on repeat. Police arrested her in March after she disrupted an entire neighborhood for over an hour with the Sheeran hit on a loop blasting from her stereo. In December, a judge had sentenced her to six weeks in jail for the same offense. This time, the judge handed down an eight-week sentence.

Lying down on the job

Got some time to kill? A group of French scientists want to pay fit, healthy young men to lie flat on their backs for two months. The researchers at the nation’s Institute for Space Medicine and Physiology say they want to study the effects of long-term weightlessness on the subjects in exchange for a $17,000 payday. According to the job listing, research subjects are expected to wash, eat, and take care of body waste all while keeping at least one shoulder in contact with the bed.

Baker beware

One potential ingredient in the recipes found in actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook didn’t make it on the page: salmonella. According to scientists at North Carolina State University, the chicken recipes in Paltrow’s 2015 cookbook, My Father’s Daughter, give home cooks bad directions. The scientists criticized Paltrow in the February edition of the British Food Journal for telling readers to wash raw poultry—an outdated practice—and failing to provide readers with the final temperature for each dish in order to kill bacteria that lead to food poisoning.

Accidental assault

In 2002, the Royal Marines of the United Kingdom accidentally invaded Spain. That revelation came from Alan West, a retired senior officer of the Royal Navy, who acknowledged the incident in a BBC interview in April. West explained that the marines were attempting to stage a landing exercise on Gibraltar, the tiny peninsula south of Spain and controlled by the United Kingdom, when they got lost and invaded a foreign country. “I had a phone call from the military commander saying, ‘Sir, I’m afraid something awful’s happened,’” he told the BBC. “I thought, ‘Goodness me, what?’ And he said, ‘I’m afraid we’ve invaded Spain, but we don’t think they’ve noticed.’” West said he then informed Spanish government officials, who chose to let the misdeed pass.

Language art?

Hoodlums in Cambridge, England, have tagged a local housing development with graffiti—in Latin. The vandals spray-painted “locus in domos” and “loci populum” on new houses recently erected on the site of a beloved pub. “This is a bit hard to translate,” Cambridge classics professor Mary Beard told the BBC. “But I think what they’re trying to say is that a lovely place has been turned into houses.”