Dan Seitz

Wal-Mart can drive anyone over the edge. It’s a huge place with lots of noise, sometimes surly employees, and always surly customers. On the other hand, Jacquetta Simmons let it get to her a little too much and she could spend seven years in jail because of it.

The Olympics are the pinnacle of human athletics achievement. Hundreds of millions will tune in to root for their heroes and witness sports miracles. Some of us, however, just could not care less.

We’re going to take a wild shot in the dark here and assume Ronald Hetzel of Las Vegas was not having a good day when police first appeared on the scene after getting reports of objects being thrown inside Hetzel’s house. He was sitting on the curb screaming with no shirt on. And then it got worse, especially for his neighbor.

We don’t generally associate Sweden with carjacking. But Kortedala, a suburb of the city of Gotenberg, was nonetheless the site of one of the strangest car thefts we’ve ever read. It involves a toy gun, a nine-year-old  and an electric car.

Rodney King, the man videotaped being beaten by LAPD officers in 1991, has died today. He was 47.

Eighty years is a long time to wait, but for Ann Colagiovanni, the wait was worth it. This 97-year-old grandma’s road to a diploma spans eight decades and is simultaneously incredibly sad and utterly heartwarming.

Many parents insist their child is a genius. Emmelyn Roetteger, however, has the paperwork to prove it. She scored a 135 on an IQ test, and was thus accepted into MENSA. She is, on the other hand, still a toddler, as this bit from the Today Show shows us.

Any police officer will tell you that dealing with a drunk driver can be extremely strange. After all, drunk people aren’t noted for their calm, reasonable reactions to a stressful situation, or their refusal to engage in ridiculous hijinks. Still, one drunk driver might take the cake, considering that he had a monkey for the officers.

Far be it from us to engage in political theory, but we’re pretty sure that paying your road workers in just enough bread to survive results in crappy roads. Fortunately, we have some anecdotal evidence that proves our point, right here. Just skip to about 15 seconds into this video, and you’ll see what we mean.

Chemistry is widely seen as a high school chore. Why do we have to learn acids and bases, reactions, stoichiometry…when are we going to use this? When we want to be awesome, that’s when. As this video, collecting the chemistry demonstrations of Professor Paul Hunter of Michigan State University, shows us.