Freebsd Fortunes 6

The Least Successful Animal Rescue
        The firemen's strike of 1978 made possible one of the great animal
rescue attempts of all time.  Valiantly, the British Army had taken over
emergency firefighting and on 14 January they were called out by an elderly
lady in South London to retrieve her cat which had become trapped up a
tree.  They arrived with impressive haste and soon discharged their duty.
So grateful was the lady that she invited them all in for tea.  Driving off
later, with fond farewells completed, they ran over the cat and killed it.
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"

The Least Successful Collector
        Betsy Baker played a central role in the history of collecting.  She
was employed as a servant in the house of John Warburton (1682-1759) who had
amassed a fine collection of 58 first edition plays, including most of the
works of Shakespeare.
        One day Warburton returned home to find 55 of them charred beyond
legibility.  Betsy had either burned them or used them as pie bottoms.  The
remaining three folios are now in the British Museum.
        The only comparable literary figure was the maid who in 1835 burned
the manuscript of the first volume of Thomas Carlyle's "The Hisory of the
French Revolution", thinking it was wastepaper.
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"

The Least Successful Defrosting Device
        The all-time record here is held by Mr. Peter Rowlands of Lancaster
whose lips became frozen to his lock in 1979 while blowing warm air on it.
        "I got down on my knees to breathe into the lock.  Somehow my lips
got stuck fast."
        While he was in the posture, an old lady passed an inquired if he
was all right.  "Alra?  Igmmlptk", he replied at which point she ran away.
        "I tried to tell her what had happened, but it came out sort of...
muffled," explained Mr. Rowlands, a pottery designer.
        He was trapped for twenty minutes ("I felt a bit foolish") until
constant hot breathing brought freedom.  He was subsequently nicknamed "Hot
Lips".
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"

The Least Successful Equal Pay Advertisement
        In 1976 the European Economic Community pointed out to the Irish
Government that it had not yet implemented the agreed sex equality
legislation.  The Dublin Government immediately advertised for an equal pay
enforcement officer.  The advertisement offered different salary scales for
men and women.
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"

The Least Successful Executions
        History has furnished us with two executioners worthy of attention.
The first performed in Sydney in Australia.  In 1803 three attempts were
made to hang a Mr. Joseph Samuels.  On the first two of these the rope
snapped, while on the third Mr. Samuels just hung there peacefully until he
and everyone else got bored.  Since he had proved unsusceptible to capital
punishment, he was reprieved.
        The most important British executioner was Mr. James Berry who
tried three times in 1885 to hang Mr. John Lee at Exeter Jail, but on each
occasion failed to get the trap door open.
        In recognition of this achievement, the Home Secretary commuted
Lee's sentence to "life" imprisonment.  He was released in 1917, emigrated
to America and lived until 1933.
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"

The Least Successful Police Dogs
        America has a very strong candidate in "La Dur", a fearsome looking
schnauzer hound, who was retired from the Orlando police force in Florida
in 1978.  He consistently refused to do anything which might ruffle or
offend the criminal classes.
        His handling officer, Rick Grim, had to admit: "He just won't go up
and bite them.  I got sick and tired of doing that dog's work for him."
        The British contenders in this category, however, took things a
stage further.  "Laddie" and "Boy" were trained as detector dogs for drug
raids.  Their employment was terminated following a raid in the Midlands in
1967.
        While the investigating officer questioned two suspects, they
patted and stroked the dogs who eventually fell asleep in front of the
fire.  When the officer moved to arrest the suspects, one dog growled at
him while the other leapt up and bit his thigh.
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"

The less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag.
                -- Kin Hubbard

The less time planning, the more time programming.

THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10 -- SIMPLE

        SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming
Language Environment.  This language, developed at the Hanover College
for Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write
code with errors in it.  The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN,
END and STOP.  No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make a
syntax error.  Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful, thus achieving
the results of programs written in other languages without the tedious,
frustrating process of testing and debugging.

THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #12 -- LITHP

        This otherwise unremarkable language, originally developed in San
Francisco, is distinguished by the absence of an "S" in its character set;
users must substitute "TH".  LITHP is thaid to be utheful in protheththing
lithtth.