Not Quite A Celebrity Death - Fredric Baur - May 4, 2008

Fredric Baur - May 4, 2008

The designer who invented the Pringles tube was so proud of his achievement that he's been buried in one.

Fredric J Baur asked for some of his ashes to be put in a tube and interred in a grave in his home city of Cincinnati. Baur, who died May 4th at the age of 89, created the tube and the curved system for stacking the potato snacks inside it in 1966.

Baur's children honored his request to bury him in one of the cans by placing part of his cremated remains in a Pringles container in his grave. The rest of his remains were placed in an urn buried along with the can.

My Pants Are Ablaze with Furious Anger

Polish police are baffled after a cyclist was badly burned when his pants burst into flames.

Mieczyslaw Jasinski, 55, told doctors he smelt burning and looked down to see his pants had caught fire.

He jumped off his bike and rolled on the ground trying to douse the flames but suffered second degree burns to his legs, back and stomach.

Passers-by spotted him lying at the side of the road in Koroszczyn, still smoking from the tattered remains of his pants and groaning in pain.

A police spokesman said: "Witnesses said he was like a flaming human torch cycling along the road.

"We do not know how it happened but we have heard that it could have been caused by a reaction between friction as he cycled, sweat and the material of his pants."

Valentine’s Day Cuddles to the Saudi Religious Police

Religious police (clearly in need of some attention) in Saudi Arabia are banning the sale of Valentine's Day gifts including red roses. The Saudi Gazette (!!!) quoted shop workers as saying officials had warned them to remove all red items including flowers and wrapping paper.

Black market prices for roses were already rising, the paper said.

Saudi authorities consider Valentine's Day, along with a host of other annual celebrations, as un-Islamic.

In addition to the prohibition on celebrating non-Islamic festivals, the authorities consider Valentine's Day as encouraging relations between men and women outside wedlock.

"Sometimes we deliver the bouquets in the middle of the night or early morning, to avoid suspicion," one florist was quoted as saying.

Others were planning to travel to the more religiously liberal neighboring countries, Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, to celebrate.

Saudi Arabian authorities impose a strict Islamic code that prevents men and women from mixing.