Weird Stuff: Car trouble leads to $100,000 lottery prize

Car trouble leads to $100,000 lottery prize

A Missouri man said car trouble led to his making a stop at which he bought a lottery ticket and won $100,000.

The player told Missouri Lottery officials he made an unplanned stop recently at Casey's General Store in Doniphan because his car was overheating.

While there, he bought a Fun 5s scratch-off lottery ticket. The man scratched off the ticket and handed it back to the clerk to scan.

"She told me I won $100,000, and I was like, 'Sweet mother, Jesus'," the player recalled. "I guess it was my day."

Constipated scorpions inspire scientists

The sex lives of constipated scorpions, cute ducklings with an innate sense of physics, and a life-size rubber moose may not appear to have much in common, but they all inspired the winners of this year's Ig Nobels, the prize for comical scientific achievement.

Held less than a month before the actual Nobel Prizes are announced, Thursday's 32nd annual Ig Nobel prize ceremony was for the third year in a row a pre-recorded affair webcast on the Annals of Improbable Research magazine's website.

The winners, honoured in 10 categories, also included scientists who found that when people on a blind date are attracted to each other, their heart rates synchronize, and researchers who looked at why legal documents can be so utterly baffling, even to lawyers themselves.

Google deposits $249,999 into man's account

A Google spokesperson said a nearly $250,000 payment placed in the account of a confused cybersecurity professional was the "result of human error".

Sam Curry, a staff security engineer at Yuga Labs and a self-described 'hacker', said on Twitter that Google sent $249,999 into his bank account without explanation and he was unable to get a response from the company after three weeks of contact attempts.

A Google spokesperson confirmed the payment was an error and said the company is now taking steps to correct it.