Passenger throws coins into plane engine for ‘luck’

And other stories from the stranger side of life

A plane
(Image credit: SAM PANTHAKY/AFP/Getty Images)

A flight passenger has been detained by police after throwing coins into the engine of a plane in the hope it would bring him good luck. The male passenger was scheduled to fly from China on a Beibu Gulf Airlines flight when he threw a handful of coins into the engine. After noticing coins on the ground near the plane, safety workers managed to recover all the coins. However, the flight had to be cancelled over safety concerns.

Landlady, 91, toasts five decades at pub

A 91-year-old landlady has celebrated 50 years behind the bar of a Manchester pub. Nancy Swanick has been pulling pints at the Peveril of the Peak - known more commonly as The Pev - in Manchester for five decades. “I take no nonsense from anyone, if there was trouble say in the bar, I’d say: ‘OK, outside, have it outside, but you don’t have it in my pub and smash the place up’ and they’d go,” she said.

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Bomb squad discover ‘grenade’ is sex toy

German bomb squad officers called to investigate a suspected hand grenade in a Bavarian forest have concluded that the object was actually a rubber sex toy. After a jogger reported the find, the bomb squad arrived and inspected the contents of a bag. The presence of condoms and lubricant made officers suspicious and an internet search confirmed their theory. “There are actually sex toys in the form of hand grenades,” an officer said.

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Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.