It must be true ... I read it in the tabloids

last updated 8 January 2015

Matthew McKnight of Pittsburgh has set a world record that may never be broken. Next year’s edition of the Guinness Book of World Records will feature his accomplishment under the heading, “Greatest Distance Thrown in a Car Accident.” McKnight’s inclusion has been pending since 2001, when he was hit by a car traveling at 70 mph and thrown 118 feet through the air, breaking his pelvis, a shoulder, a leg, and his tailbone. McKnight, now 29, says he’s confident the record will stand. “It’s not something that someone wants to try to beat.”

Britney Spears has been caught on film shoplifting a cigarette lighter, says People. The erratic multimillionaire—who was accused of taking a wig and four coats last month—was exiting a California gas station when she picked up the lighter, valued at $1.39, and walked out the door. When paparazzi pointed out that she hadn’t paid for it, she replied, “Stole something? Oh, I’m bad.” The gas station owner, Jatinder Kaur, says he won’t press charges. “It’s still not right for her to steal the lighter,” Kaur said. “I’m hoping maybe the next time she comes back she will pay for it.”

A Chinese woman has opened a hotel that looks like a mausoleum, to give guests a foretaste of being dead. The hotel, in Jiangsu province, is located in a field full of ancient graves, and the beds in each room are shaped like coffins. Staying at the Mausoleum Inn, owner Jiao Meige brags, is uncannily like being dead. “There are no services at night,” she says, “and the guest can go nowhere, since outside is just a vast graveyard.”