thedailytimes.com : Your 24/7 news source

We find many of the really insignificant news stories to be of interest. Many of them never make print. Here are a few garnered in recent weeks:

A lover of battleships, we were interested to note that four tugboats recently maneuvered the World War II battleship USS Missouri into drydock in Honolulu, Hawaii, where it will undergo a major refurbishment.

Known as "Mighty Mo," it was the last battleship built by the United States and was also the site of Japan's surrender in Tokyo harbor on Sept 2, 1945.

The Missouri has been moored for the past 11 years in Pearl Harbor where a Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941, prompted the United States to enter the war.

The 887-foot-long ship was coaxed from its Ford Island mooring and slowly nudged two miles to the huge Drydock 4, where is will sit until early January. In the meantime, it will be sandblasted and painted, and rusted metal will be removed at a cost of $18 million.

When it was safely within the drydock, the gates were closed and more than 50 million gallons of water were pumped out, leaving the 54,889-ton vessel sitting on 310 wooden blocks that weigh four tons each.

Now a memorial and a museum, the Missouri is normally anchored near the battleship Arizona memorial and is operated by the USS Missouri Memorial Association.

World's largest corn maze literally falls flat

Billed as the 2009 Guinness Book of World Records largest corn maze, the Cool Patch Pumpkins corn maze at Dixon, Calif., has fallen flat - literally.

Hit by a storm's powerful winds, the 11-foot tall cornstalks in the 43-acre maze were no match for Mother Nature.

Not to be outdone, the owner will continue to sell pumpkins until after Halloween.

Grieving buffalo, calf return through fence

A Nevada County, California, rancher had an interesting experience when his 900-pound female buffalo named Napini and her calf, Minko, broke through a fence and roamed the area free for 11 days.

Neighbors and strangers searched for the pair and they'd been spotted at least half-dozen times but they always disappeared before anyone could try to corral them. The owner was making plans to have them shot and slaughtered for food, partly out of concern for public safety.

One neighbor had seen the pair and even taken pictures but like others in the neighborhood, he feared they might be hit by a car or shot instead of being rescued in the rural area.

Then a neighbor called early one morning to tell the owner his two buffalo were back home. They had returned through the hole in the fence through which they had caused when they departed.

That's just part of the story.The mother buffalo had broken through the fence a few days after her mate died.

Why did the pair return? Some speculate they were just homesick. Others think Napini may have broken through the fence looking for her mate and then worked through her grief over losing her mate and returned home. She still seems to miss him, spending a lot of time in his stall, where he died.

Fifth Navajo Code Talker dies since May

Another member of the famed Code Talkers, Willard Varnell Oliver, 88, of Arizona died recently. He was at least the fifth Code Talker to die since May.

The Code Talkers confounded the Japanese during World War II by transmitting messages in their native language. They were part of an elite group of Navajo Marines who took part in every assault the Marines conducted in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945. Their valuable work was not declassified until 1968.

Oliver, who grew up between Shiprock and Farmington, New Mexico, served in the South Pacific with the Second Marine Division from 1943 to 1945. He was wounded during the battle of Saipan in 1944. His brother, Lloyd Oliver, was also a member of the group.

Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. ordered flags on the Navajo Nation be flown at half-staff in honor of Oliver.

German stealing coral sentenced in Oregon

Theft is an international matter.

A German has pleaded guilty to smuggling more than 40 tons of coral fragments from the Philippines to Oregon.

Gunther Wenzek, 66, appeared in federal court in Portland, Ore., on a plea agreement calling for him to pay more than $35,000 in fines and serve three years on probation

He was arrested at a Washington, D.C., airport in February, while he was en route to a pet industry show in Florida. He is owner of CoraPet in Essen, Germany.

It seems he got by rather light, considering the importance and value or coral.

Geographic diver dies in Britannic effort

Several weeks ago a member of a National Geographic team exploring the wreckage of Britannic, the Titanic's sister ship, in the Aegean Sea died of decompression sickness.

Carl Spencer, 37, was rushed to the Athens Naval Hospital after diving to film the wreckage of the Britannic, four miles off the island of Kea, southeast of Athens, Greece.

Spence, who showed symptoms of the illness widely known as "the bends," had been aboard the Belgian owned research vessel CDT Fourcault. He was flown to the hospital by helicopter but was unconscious upon arrival.

The team was spending nine days on an internal and external analysis of the wreckage. Spencer had led a similar expedition to the Britannic in 2003.

The technical diver also had taken part in an exploration of the Titanic wreckage as part of a Discovery Channel expedition led by filmmaker James Cameron, who directed the 1997 blockbuster "Titanic."

Following the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912, the hull of the 53,000-ton Britannic was redesigned and it was launched on Feb. 26, 1914.

It was never used as a commercial trans-Atlantic liner because of World War I. It was requisitioned as a hospital ship in November 1915 and sent to the Middle East and Aegean fronts.

On its sixth trip, on its way to pick up wounded soldiers from the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, it was sunk on Nov. 21, 1916. Of the 1,066 passengers aboard, 30 died.

For years, the cause of Britannic's sinking - whether by a torpedo or a mine - was unclear. Spencer's 2003 expedition provided conclusive evidence of a single mine blast.

Oklahoma robber spotted from Philippines

Three people who tried to rob a man's suburban Oklahoma City apartment were caught by his wife in the Philippines who saw them on the webcam the couple uses to communicate while they are apart.

Midwest City police Chief Brandon Clabes said officers nabbed the three burglary suspects after Maribel Chouinard spotted them and called her husband, an Air Force master sergeant at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City.

The husband called police who found two teens near the apartment and later found the third suspect. All three were identified from a photo lineup e-mailed to Chouinard in the Philippines.

Master Sgt. Jim Chouinard met his wife overseas and she's waiting for her visa to be processed.

Mozart may have died from strep infection

For two centuries, the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has endured as has the mysterious cause of his death at age 35 on Dec. 5, 1791.

Was the wunderkind composer poisoned by a jealous rival? Did he have an intestinal parasite from an under cooked pork chop? Could he have accidentally poisoned himself with mercury used to treat a suspected bout of syphilis?

Researchers have looked at death records in Vienna during the months surrounding his death and compared causes of death with the previous and following years.

There was a spike in swelling-related deaths among younger men in Vienna at the time of Mozart's death compared with other years studied, suggesting a minor epidemic of streptococcal disease.

The cause of his death recorded in the official register was "fever and rash," though even in Mozart's time those were recognized to be mere symptoms and not an actual disease.

He apparently fell ill not long before he died, suffering from swelling so severe, his sister-in-law recalled, that the composer was unable to turn in bed. Other witnesses reported the swelling as well as back pain, malaise and rash, all symptoms that indicate Mozart may have died of kidney disease brought on by a streptococcal infection - possibly strep throat - that led to kidney failure.

William Blount name tarnished in Alabama

An Alabama resident bearing the name of the man for which our county is named has not brought favorable recognition to our county.

William Blount, an investment banker, recently pleaded guilty in Tuscaloosa, Ala., to bribing Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford.

Blount admitted giving Langford thousands of dollars in exchange for Langford using his influence to send millions in bond financing business to Blount. Langford was on the Jefferson County Commission at the time.

Blount pleaded guilty to bribery and conspiracy and in return for cooperating with prosecutors a lighter sentence of four years and three months in prison and forfeiture of $1 million. The mayor says he is innocent.

The William Blount for which Blount County is named was the first governor of the Territory South of the River Ohio which included what is now the state of Tennessee.

Chewing, dipping is no safer than smoking

Researchers have found that taking a chew of tobacco or a dip of snuff is no safer than smoking.

Taking one pinch of smokeless tobacco delivers the same amount of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) as smoking five cigarettes.

PAHs are common envi- ronmental contaminants that are formed as a result of incomplete burning of wood, coal, fatty meat or organic matter, according to the American Chemical Society.

Overweight non-smokers shouldn't chuckle because PAHs also form during the grilling of meats. Some are known carcinogens.

The latest information adds to existing evidence that smokeless tobacco contains two dozen other carcinogens that cause oral and pancreatic cancers, scientists say.

Fossil pit at Gray is well publicized

A recent issue of Blue Ridge magazine contained interesting and thorough coverage of the fossil pit at Gray, a couple of miles off Interstate 26, midway between Kingsport and Johnson City.

Elizabeth Hunter tells how between 4.5 and 7 million years ago there was a waterhole at the site that attracted the various wild animals. They included pot-bellied rhinos, tapirs, red pandas, alligators, badgers, peccaries, short-faced bears, sabre toothed cats, ground sloths, camels without humps and three-toed horses the size of dogs.

This ancient watering hole was discovered when road builders accidentally uncovered this wide area of black sediment in an area of red clay. It eventually led to Gov. Don Sundquist, now of Townsend, rerouting the highway to avoid the area rich in fossils.

The 140-foot deep sink hole had once been a five-acre lake where over the years the animals had come in search of water.

A museum has been established at the site and is a most interesting and informative place to visit.

Dean Stone is editor of The Daily Times.