Quick Takes: Déjà vu dilemma

It was a car so nice, Ewan Valentine bought it twice. After thieves in February stole the British man’s dream car—a Honda Civic Type R—he collected the insurance money and began looking for something just like it. Valentine thought he hit the jackpot weeks later when he found at a local dealer a 2016 black Type-R that looked just like his old car. But after buying the vehicle, Valentine began noticing some odd features. First, his phone immediately connected to the car’s Bluetooth system. Next, he found his and his parents’ addresses already loaded into the vehicle’s satellite navigation. Although his new purchase had a different listed VIN than his previous vehicle, Valentine became suspicious. He took it to a Honda dealer where technicians located the car’s original VIN. It matched Valentine’s stolen car. In an April 23 social media post, Valentine revealed that police and Honda technicians were now convinced he somehow purchased his original stolen vehicle. “There was a surreal moment in Honda’s car park,” Valentine wrote on Instagram. “Myself, a police officer, and three Honda staff, all standing in silence, looking at the car in disbelief.” Valentine said police are investigating how the dealership acquired the car.

Mountain retreats

One mountain rescue wasn’t enough for a Chinese national studying in Japan. The 27-year-old student had been the subject of an emergency airlift rescue in April after he experienced altitude sickness near the top of the 12,388-foot-high Mount Fuji. Just four days later, though, the man returned to Japan’s sacred volcanic mountain in search of his ­cellphone. But his desperation to retrieve the phone exceeded his mountaineering skills: On April 26, the unnamed student had to be rescued a second time after again falling ill. Japanese emergency authorities did not say whether the man made it back with his phone after his second airlift.

Roosevelts on the road

A truck carrying coins for the U.S. Mint made an unscheduled deposit in a rural community northwest of Fort Worth, Texas. Texas Department of Public Safety officials said a tractor-trailer hauling dimes overturned after an accident in Alvord, Texas, just before dawn on April 29. The truck, carrying approximately 8 million freshly minted dimes worth $800,000, spilled its contents alongside U.S. 287. Workers had to shut down multiple lanes of traffic while they cleaned up the currency using industrial vacuums, brooms, and even their hands.

“Hi, I found some money of yours ...”

Sometimes it’s too good to be true. And sometimes, as one Michigan man learned, it really is true. According to Michigan State Police, a trooper found $5,000 in cash on a road in Monroe on April 26. Inquiring at a nearby bank, the trooper learned a customer had just made a withdrawal in the same amount. But when the officer tried calling the bank customer, the man hung up several times, thinking the calls were scams. Eventually the trooper was able to return the cash to the grateful man, who said the money must have fallen out of his pocket.

Blown out of the water

A pair of speedboat racers in Arizona didn’t stick the landing, but they won the race anyway. Brothers Ryan and Noah Olah of the Freedom One Racing team pushed their craft just beyond 200 mph before headwinds across the speedboat’s bow caused the vessel to sail into the air and perform at least two backflips April 26. The boat, which flew more than 40 feet above the water, crashed back into Lake Havasu and crossed the finish line having clocked a winning speed. Despite the hard landing, both drivers emerged with only minor injuries. “We literally landed on the finish line, upside down and backwards,” Ryan Olah told KSHB 41, “so it was definitely a wild way to win, and everyone at the event couldn’t believe that’s how it worked out.”

A beary close call

Some quick thinking and a bag of cookies helped a Florida woman survive a bear encounter near her Seminole County home April 25. Kristen Savage first thought a stray dog brushed up against her leg during an evening walk. But when she got a better look, Savage said, she saw a black bear eyeing her 13-pound chihuahua mix. While dangling the dog up in the air out of the bear’s reach, Savage remembered she was holding a bag of cookies she had picked up from her mother earlier on her walk. “I took the bag and I whacked the bear across the face with it, and then I threw it,” Savage told WKMG. While the bear was distracted by the discarded cookies, Savage and her dog fled to the safety of their front door.

Treasures in the trash

It wasn’t thieves who stole dozens of works of art from a Dutch municipal building. According to a monthslong inquiry that culminated April 24, investigators concluded the 46 missing art pieces most likely ended up in the trash after they had been improperly stored. Officials in Maashorst, Netherlands, first noticed that some art pieces were missing after a town hall renovation last year. Among the 46 missing works is a 1985 Andy Warhol silkscreen print of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands that is worth just over $17,000. “That’s not how you treat valuables,” Maashorst Mayor Hans van der Pas told the regional news ­station. “But it happened. We regret that.”