24th-century tourists, Prom rage

Good week for:

24th-century tourists, after engineers said recent efforts to stabilize the leaning tower of Pisa would keep the monument at its current angle for at least 300 years.

Getting a ticket, after an Illinois man was stopped by police and fined $25 for failing to wear a seat belt. Half an hour later, Tim Ignasiak’s jeep was hit by a car that ran a red light; his seat belt saved him from serious injury. “I’m happily paying that ticket,” he said.

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Divine intervention, after two New Zealand pilots ran out of fuel in midflight and prayed for God’s help. The microlight plane came to a safe landing next to a 20-foot sign that said “Jesus is Lord.”

Bad week for:

Michel Fournier, the French adventurer who failed in his bid to break the world’s skydiving record when the helium balloon that was to have lifted him 130,000 feet into the air floated away without him.

Land shark attacks, after 14-year-old Sam Hawthorne of Britain sleepwalked into the jagged teeth of a souvenir shark jaw mounted on the wall of his family’s home. Hawthorne woke with a blood-curdling scream, and careened around the house with the open jaws stuck to his bleeding face. “It was like something out of a horror film,” said his mother.

Prom rage, after a Trenton, N.J., teenage girl set fire to the home of a boy who didn’t ask her to the senior prom. The home burned to the ground, with the boy’s family escaping by climbing out the windows.