Ontario Breaks a Tied Election With an 1883 Wedding Hat

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There are a lot of ways to settle a tied election. Ontario keeps a hat.

Norfolk County's Ward 4 council race ended with incumbent Chris Van Paassen and challenger Jeni Lambert at exactly eight hundred fifty-eight votes each. A recount on Thursday produced the same number, and under Ontario law, a tie after a recount gets decided by lot. So that evening, the county clerk put two cards into a black top hat from 1883.

The county archivist picked the hat. It belonged to a local farmer who wore it at his wedding, and the archivist told CBC he chose it because it was "in excellent condition." Which is the right priority. Nobody wants a candidate slipping out through the lining.

The clerk has run elections for thirty-five years, and this was his first tie. He drew Van Paassen, whose reaction was: "I was only prepared for having Jeni's name pulled." Turnout was thirty-three percent. About two out of three eligible voters could have saved that hat a lot of attention.

Kentucky had a tie this week too. A Robertson County magistrate race finished ninety-one to ninety-one and was settled with a coin toss. The hat is classier. The coin is faster.

Let's proceed to Peru, where customs officers at Lima's airport noticed that some socks in a suitcase were moving.

Inside three suitcases bound for Germany were more than three thousand live tarantulas, tucked into socks. AFP reports the haul ran from eggs to full-grown adults, and a wildlife official said some of the species haven't even been described by science yet. Two Germans and a Polish citizen were detained right before their flight, and Peru's wildlife service says one of them is a well-known tarantula researcher. So this was a professional. A professional who went with socks.

Each spider sells for around five hundred sixty dollars in Europe, which puts the luggage near one point seven million. The tarantulas are going to a licensed breeding facility. The passengers are going toward criminal charges.

In South Korea, the army's 1st Airborne Special Forces Brigade held an event called the "K-Walking Performance Military Festival." Tall women believed to be models, in camouflage outfits and high heels, taught elite special forces soldiers to walk a runway. The walk, the turn, the pose. The soldiers copied them in rows, then took turns.

The unit called it training for posture and "basic military bearing." A lawmaker said the military should answer for "the humiliation these elite soldiers must have felt," and the Army admitted the content "was inappropriate." Fair enough. But somewhere in that brigade is a man who can now hit a perfect pivot at the end of a catwalk, and no review board can take that from him.

In Ireland, RTÉ's Prime Time reports that Tom Felle, a journalism professor at the University of Galway, has been billed for years as "Doctor Tom Felle," including in a submission to a parliamentary committee. He told the program he earned a PhD from City, University of London in 2022. City said none of its journalism PhDs those years matched the kind he described, and its library has no thesis from him. Felle couldn't remember his thesis title, and said there was no supervisor and no exam. He didn't answer follow-up questions, and several "Doctor" references have since vanished from the university's website.

His area of expertise is fake news. Every outlet in Ireland found room for that in the headline.

Two piglets escaped in Beaufort, South Carolina, and two police officers chased them down the street while a bystander filmed. Police nicknamed them the Bacon Bits, said they'd been detained for "fleeing and squealing," and returned them to their owner. The statement closed with: "No ham was done." Someone in that department has been waiting their entire career for this.

And in Hoke County, North Carolina, farmer Richard Wood was fixing his fence when he spotted a fence post that didn't belong. In his words: "Lo and behold, it wasn't a fence post; it was a snake." A six-to-seven-foot boa constrictor that had been missing for a month from a house four doors down. Wood held the head, his daughter grabbed the tail, and they put it in a Rubbermaid bin. A month on the run, and its whole plan was to stand very still and look like lumber. It almost worked.

Reddit spent yesterday on a practical question: what do you say when you're in a public bathroom stall and someone knocks?

The top answer came from someone whose high school Spanish kicks in every time: "OCUPADO!" A fifty-three-year-old Irish commenter does the same thing and has no idea why. Someone else says "Occupada" in the men's room, just to confuse people. Another offered "Estoy poopin'."

One person just says "Come in," and replies suggested doing it in the Mrs. Doubtfire voice: "Help is on the way, dear!" Another goes with "Come back with a warrant." A British commenter automatically says "Sorry!" and admitted to rarely being sorry.

The best one was a dad in a campground's shared showers at night. Someone knocked and called out "cleaning lady." He didn't know the protocol, so he shouted back his profession: "Food scientist."

Another thread asked which popular brands have died that people barely remember. Gateway computers got love for the cow-spotted boxes. Someone remembered No Fear, and how wearing it in the nineties made you the toughest guy on the block, "or bravest sixth grader on the cul-de-sac, whatever." Somebody mentioned SoBe's piña colada flavor, and the reply was just, in all caps: "GIVE ME BACK MY LIZARD MILK." And when someone mourned Quiznos, another person reported there's still one at the Las Vegas airport, Terminal D. So it isn't dead. It's waiting at the gate.

Alright guys, That’s all I have for you today. Have a great day. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow!