Swimming with sharks, Heart of stone, All hands on deck

last updated 8 January 2015

Swimmers at a pool in Sydney were startled to find themselves sharing the water with a 3-foot-long shark. The shark was “just swimming happily up and down at one end of the pool,” said a spokeswoman for the Cronulla Surf Lifesaving Club, whose pool is just a few dozen yards from the ocean. A large wave apparently washed the shark into the pool sometime in the middle of the night. “We have swimmers who come here at 6 a.m. to do laps,” the spokeswoman said. “It was dark then and they must not have even noticed it was there.”

Sharon Stone is in trouble with animal-rights groups, says the New York Post. In a new autobiography, actor Ernest Borgnine recalls that Stone once refused to appear in a scene with a “very large” tarantula spider unless its pincers were cut off, so the crew obliged. “She chose to make a tiny insect an amputee,” said Ingrid Newkirk of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. “Perhaps she should change her name legally to ‘Heart of Stone.’”

A team of German firefighters tackling a burning building called police after discovering a drunken imposter in their ranks. The 38-year-old man, dressed in a firefighter’s uniform, told police he had rushed to the fire station upon hearing the alarm and was helped into his gear by other firefighters. When questioned as to his motivation, the man responded, “When fire breaks out, it’s all hands on deck.”