Category: Bazaar News

(CNN) — Authorities in a North Carolina county where 40,000 customers lost power say two power substations were damaged by gunfire Saturday night.

A gate at one of the locations also appears to have been taken off its hinges, Mike Cameron of the Southern Pines Fire and Rescue Department told CNN on Sunday afternoon.

The power outage in Moore County is being investigated as a “criminal occurrence” after crews found signs of potential vandalism at several locations, CNN previously reported.

Moore County officials have scheduled a news conference for 4 p.m. Sunday.

Cameron said the area is experiencing increased emergency calls due to the lack of power, adding that auto accidents have occurred because traffic lights are out. People who rely on oxygen have placed emergency calls, he said.

Initially, local officials estimated power would be restored Sunday evening, but Cameron said after assessing the damage, they’ve determined it could take at least until Monday.

The equipment that was damaged is not easily replaceable and will have to be brought in to make the repairs, Cameron said.

A local supermarket is distributing ice to impacted residents, according to a news release from grocery chain Harris Teeter.

The power outage has also led officials to cancel Monday classes for all schools in the county. “An announcement will be made tomorrow evening to inform parents and staff of the status of schools for Tuesday,” Moore County Schools said in a tweet Sunday afternoon.

FBI has joined the investigation, congressman says

Several communities across the county began experiencing power outages just after 7 p.m. Saturday, the Moore County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post.

“As utility companies began responding to the different substations, evidence was discovered that indicated that intentional vandalism had occurred at multiple sites,” the office said.

At least two substations were vandalized “with criminal intent,” US Rep. Richard Hudson said Sunday morning in a release.

The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation and the FBI are responding, according to Hudson. He said the motive remains unknown.

Hudson, whose congressional district includes Moore County, said the Southern Pines Police Department has opened a community center for residents to charge devices.

More than 38,000 customers were without power across the county Sunday morning, according to the Duke Energy outage map. According to poweroutage.us, about 41,000 customers had lost power in Moore County and neighboring Hoke County.

“We are also investigating signs of potential vandalism related to the outages,” Brooks said.

Deputies and officers from other law enforcement agencies responded to the different sites to provide security, according to the sheriff’s office.

Gov. Roy Cooper on Sunday tweeted that state law enforcement would join the investigation.

“I have spoken with Duke Energy and state law enforcement officials about the power outages in Moore County. They are investigating and working to return electricity to those impacted,” Cooper said. “The state is providing support as needed.”

Moore County is in central North Carolina, about 50 miles northwest of Fayetteville.

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Are you planning on how to get from London to Oxford, UK? Oxford day trip is popular with those who would like to escape London for a bit and enjoy all the sites to see in Oxford which can conveniently be toured for one day.

You can reach Oxford from London by coach, train, rental car and boat. The road distance between London and Oxford is 94.4 kilometres or 58.7 miles while the direct distance is 83 kilometres or 51 miles. It takes about one hour and 46 minutes to travel this distance by car. 

Ready to see Oxford Castle? Imagining your stroll along Holywell Street? I am here to help you find the best transportation option from London to Oxford.

How to get from London to Oxford

OPTION 1: How to get from London to Oxford by Coach

• Travel Duration: about 1 hour and 36 minutes
• Travel Fare: from £12

Travel to Oxford from London via coach – the cheapest and easiest way to do so. The coach leaves from London Victoria Coach Station and arrives at Oxford Bus Station, Gloucester Green. 

There are many ways how you can book coach tickets ahead of time. You can check out Megabus and Flixbus for deals. Here’s a sample timetable which can help you in your planning:

Coach from London Victoria Coach Station to Oxford Bus Station, Gloucester Green

	ARRIVAL	DEPARTURE	DURATION	FARE
Earliest trip	12:25 am	2:01 am	1 hour 36 minutes	£12
Latest trip	11:55 pm	1:31 am	1 hour 36 minutes	£12

You can also buy tickets via the Oxford Tube. They offer discounted rates for students, children, over 60s and big groups. Coaches run every 10 to 20 minutes, making it convenient to catch one that follows your itinerary.

OPTION 2: How to get from London to Oxford by Train

• Travel Duration: about 52 minutes
• Travel Fare: from £5.40

If you are in a hurry to reach Oxford, you can catch a train from London and arrive there in a matter of one hour. The train leaves from London’s Paddington and Marylebone stations. The train then arrives at Oxford Station. 

Travelling by train can get very expensive, and advanced booking is key to getting the best fare. Make sure to browse through the deals in Trainline days before your travel so you can see which timing gives you the most competitive rate. 

Look out for the best deals so you can save money, and see if you can qualify for any Railcards Discounts.

Train from London to Oxford

	ARRIVAL	DEPARTURE	DURATION	FARE
Earliest trip	5:05 am	6:07 am	1 hour 2 minutes	£30
Latest trip	11:33 pm	1:35 am	2 hours 2 minutes	£28.90
Cheapest fare	6:09 am	7:31 am	1 hour 22 minutes	£5.40
Fastest duration	10:50 am	11:42 am	52 minutes	£24.10

OPTION 3: How to get from London to Oxford by Rental Car

• Travel Duration: about 1 hour and 52 minutes
• Travel Fare: from £102.48

Explore the idea of driving yourself to Oxford with a rental car. This takes a little less than two hours to travel from London via M40 and A40.

The cost to rent a car in London with Europcar starts at £102.48. Honestly, this is a steep price – but if this enables you to maximize your itinerary and have a more comfortable way of getting to and from local spots, then this will prove to be worth it.

As an alternative, you can also browse different car rental deals with Discover Cars here. Just make sure to research ahead of time if you are considering driving to Oxford from London. If you have driven in the UK before, then this may not be much of a challenge. 

However, if this is your first time, I suggest you read my tips about driving in the UK.

OPTION 4: How to get from London to Oxford by Boat

• Travel Duration: about 4 days
• Travel Fare: Varies

It is possible to take a boat from London to Oxford. A narrowboat can take you there in about four days – it can even reach six!

While the rowing part is easy, the long trip may not be. I suggest you make a full itinerary out of all the stops along the way which are worth resting in.

More about Oxford, United Kingdom

FAQs on How to Get from London to Oxford

Jonathan the Tortoise has seen some things. More than any of us. And that’s because the big guy just celebrated his 190th birthday!

Jonathan the Tortoise’s birthday

A while back we told you about Jonathan, and at that time, no one really seemed to know precisely how old he was since he was brought to – a sanctuary in Saint Helena, a British territory in the Atlantic Ocean off the coasts of Angola and Namibia – at an unverifiable age.

Take a look:

Since then, it looks like it’s been decided that Jonathan is 190 as of this year. We can’t begrudge the guy a party, so we’ll go with it.

Jonathan’s party

CBS News reports that Jonathan the tortoise’s birthday party was quite a bash when it was held in early December 2022.

“The island held an official birthday bash over the weekend, celebrating the longest-living chelonian at the island’s governor’s residence. Along with hosting broadcasts about Jonathan’s significance, the island also held a ‘main event’ in his honor on Sunday [the 4th], where people could get Jonathan stamps and other Jonathan-themed souvenirs.”

Throughout the weekend, the world’s oldest land creature was hailed as a “national treasure” and indulged in a cake made of his favorite vegetables.

According to CBS News (cited below) “Jonathan’s long life has earned him two Guinness World Records – one in 2019 for becoming the world’s oldest land animal and another this January for becoming the oldest living chelonian, a term encompassing turtles, terrapins and tortoises.”

While the sanctuary where he lives lists his birth year as 1832, Guinness believes he could be older. That’s because he wasn’t discovered until 1882, when he was already fully mature. Clearly, some significant years had already passed. We just don’t know how many.

Regardless, Jonathan has survived two World Wars and was even alive when the first telephone call was made in 1876. We feel wiser just looking at him. — WTF fun facts

Source: “World’s oldest land animal, Jonathan the tortoise, celebrates 190th birthday” — CBS News

In September 1978, 15-year-old Mary Vincent accepted a ride from a man named Lawrence Singleton — who then kidnapped, raped, and maimed her.

Mary Vincent was a 15-year-old runaway heading to Los Angeles when she met Lawrence Singleton in September 1978, hitchhiking along the interstate after leaving her family’s home in Vegas.

He seemed friendly enough at first, but the façade didn’t last long. Not long after picking up the young Mary Vincent, Singleton would assault her, rape her multiple times, and then cut her arms off before dumping her off a 30-foot cliff into the Del Puerto Canyon.

That should have been the end for Vincent, but the teenager worried so deeply the same thing might happen to another girl that she, against all odds, pulled herself out of the ditch and found her way to the road where she was discovered and taken to the hospital.

She had survived a harrowing ordeal, but her story was just beginning.

Lawrence Singleton’s Attack On Mary Vincent

Mary Vincent was hitchhiking along the interstate headed towards Los Angeles, California. 15 years old, leaving her family’s home in Las Vegas after her parents divorced, she was young and looking for a new start.

It was on this stretch of road that Lawrence Singleton found her. He was a 50-year-old merchant mariner at the time, and apparently had a friendly face. According to Film Daily, Vincent in fact felt so comfortable when she met Singleton that she fell asleep in his van after he picked her up.

When she awoke, however, she noticed they were traveling the wrong way on the road. As uneasy feelings grew within her, Singleton decided to pull over at a rest stop to take a bathroom break. While he was gone, Vincent prepared to run away but noticed her shoe was untied.

She stopped and bent over to tie it — then Singleton hit her in the back of the head with a sledgehammer. The next time she came to, she was in the back of Singleton’s van, each of her arms bound to opposite walls. He raped her multiple times that night.

In the morning, she begged to be let go. Singleton looked at the young girl and told her, “If you want to be set free, I’ll set you free.” Then he took an axe and hacked each of her arms off.

As she slipped in and out of consciousness, she recalled being taken to a concrete culvert near Sacramento and thrown over the edge, nude and still bleeding from her severed arms.

“He destroyed everything about me,” she later said. “My way of thinking. My way of life. Holding onto innocence… and I’m still doing everything I can to hold on.”

Mary Vincent Is Found Walking Along The Road — And Identifies Lawrence Singleton

Naked and at the edge of consciousness, Vincent managed to crawl out of the culvert and make her way back to the edge of the road. She held what remained of her arms straight up so that the blood and muscles would stay inside.

Per the Los Angeles Times, the first car that saw her turned around and sped away, frightened by the sight of her. Fortunately, the second car stopped and drove her to a nearby hospital.

After intense surgery to save her life, she was fitted with prosthetic arms — a change which would take years of physical therapy for her to adjust, in addition to years of psychotherapy to help her cope with the trauma.

“I’d have been lead dancer at the Lido de Paris in Las Vegas,” she said. “Then Hawaii and Australia. I’m serious. I was really good on my feet… but when this happened, they had to take some parts out of my leg just to save my right arm.”

10 days after she entered the hospital, Mary Vincent was able to identify Lawrence Singleton and charge him with his crimes.

California, however, had extremely lenient criminal laws at the time. Singleton was found guilty of rape, attempted murder, and sex offenses and sentenced to the maximum number of years allowed at the time — a measly 14.

What’s more, Singleton was released from prison early on good behavior, after serving just over half of his sentence, SF Gate reported, despite his psychiatrist saying, “Because he is so out of touch with his hostility and anger, he remains an elevated threat to others’ safety inside and outside prison.”

Vincent, then, received no comfort from Singleton’s brief stint in prison. In fact, upon his release, she was more afraid than ever before — and with good reason.

While Singleton and Vincent were in court, she had to walk past him as she left. Before she could leave, however, he stopped her and whispered something in her ear. She ran out of court, the only person who ever knew what he said.

Years later, she revealed what he told her: “I’ll finish the job if it takes me the rest of my life.”

The Murder Of Roxanne Hayes

Vincent lived her life in fear, worried that Singleton would follow through on his promise one day.

She struggled, got married and then divorced, opened a small bike repair store with her second husband, had two children, and eventually founded the Mary Vincent Foundation to help victims of traumatic crime.

But Singleton was still out there. And as long as he was free, Vincent could never feel secure.

By the late 1990s, Singleton had moved to Florida after nearly every town in California refused to house him upon his release from prison. Everywhere he tried to parole, angry citizens gathered to make it abundantly clear that he was not welcome.

So instead, he was living in a trailer in Florida, an overweight alcoholic rapidly losing his hair. He’d had a brief stint in a psychiatric ward for attempting suicide, and had been home for just over a week when he hired a young sex worker named Roxanne Hayes.

Hayes was a 31-year-old mother of three, doing what she had to do to provide for her children, but unfortunately her life came to an untimely end when she entered Singleton’s trailer — and her fate might have remained unknown if not for a house painter working next door who observed the scene through the trailer’s window.

While the details of their conversation are still a mystery, whatever happened apparently caused Singleton to fly into a murderous rage. The house painter called the police, and when deputies arrived at Singleton’s door, they found him wearing a blood-spattered shirt and Hayes’ body on the floor nearby.

The End Of Lawrence Singleton’s Life

Per Criminally Intrigued, Mary Vincent flew from California to Florida when she learned of Singleton’s arrest to testify on Roxanne Hayes’ behalf.

In court, she detailed her own story to highlight just how depraved a man Lawrence Singleton was — and why he should be sentenced to death.

“I was raped,” she told the jury. “I had my arms cut off. He used a hatchet. He left me to die.”

Singleton was sentenced to death on April 14, 1998. He spent three years in prison awaiting his death, which greeted him early at the tail end of 2001 when he died of cancer at age 74.

And, finally, Mary Vincent was given some peace, which she has found in her home of all places, caring for her family and no longer living in fear that Singleton may one day return.

“I’m a Hobbit at home,” she said. “Always wanting to serve, looking after everybody, cooking things, that’s my therapy. As well as knowing everything has a way of working itself out.”

---

After reading about Mary Vincent’s amazing survival, learn about Kevin Hines’ miraculous survival after jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. Or, read the story of Beck Weathers and how he survived being left on Mount Everest.</em<

In the last WTF Fun Fact, we told you about the invention of sliced bread. Now, we’re here to tell you about something so delicious it actually pre-dated automatic slicers – the first PB&J, or peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Inventing sandwiches

Whether it was the Earl of Sandwich or someone else who decided to first put things between bread, some would have you believe that the PB&J is an integral part of history.

History.com (cited below) says “After English speakers adopted the word “sandwich,” they began coming up with new words and phrases to describe different types, from meaty Sloppy Joes to the layered club sandwich.”

We understand that desire to put meat and vegetables into a sandwich, but we’re still stumped on what made someone decide to create a sandwich out of what are largely considered to be two condiments.

“The first known recipe for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich appeared in 1901 in ​​The Boston Cooking School Magazine of Culinary Science & Domestic Economics. During the 1920s, companies began to mass-manufacture peanut butter in the United States, and targeted children as potential new consumers. This helped make the PB&J a common school lunch.”

Standardized in Home Ec and rose to fame via school lunches? Ok, we could have guessed that.

How the PB&J came to be

So we can date the formal sandwich itself back to 1901, but did it exist in some form before that? Well, the answer is we’re not sure, but it’s unlikely.

Smithsonian Magazine has the answer to how the PB&J came to be, and if you guess “because of vegetarians,” you are correct!

Around the late-19th century, ladies’ luncheons were popular, and tiny tea sandwiches were often served. Alongside the cucumber and cheese option was one that contained no animal products at all. In addition, “health food advocates like John Harvey Kellogg started promoting peanut products as a replacement for animal-based foods (butter included). So for a vegetarian option at these luncheons, peanut butter simply replaced regular butter.”

Peanut butter wasn’t created for mass manufacture until the 1920s. And at that point, it was marketed specifically to target children.

Smithsonian also reports that it was cookbook author Julia Davis Chandler who wrote, “some day try making little sandwiches, or bread fingers, of three very thin layers of bread and two of filling, one of peanut paste, whatever brand you prefer, and currant or crabapple jelly for the other. The combination is delicious, and so far as I know original.”

Ladies took the sandwich idea from the garden party to their children’s lunch boxes in the 1920s when they could finally get mass produced peanut butter (with hydrogenated vegetable oil and sugar to make it tasty).

And no one was happier than Skippy, the first brand to target children “as a potential new audience, and thus the association with school lunches was forged.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “Who Invented the Sandwich?” — History.com