Re: humorous if off topic (follows on to: Byte Magazine: 18 Vintage issues...)

["donald tees" <donald@willmack.com>]

I worked for a Gold mining company in northern Ontario (Canada) for a while,
and the VP told me rather amusedly about the fuss their auditors had just
raised.  It seems that one of their mines in the northern bush smelted the
gold down to about 80% pure and it was then shipped south for final
refining.  When asked as to shipping method, they were told the mine manager
put it in the back of his pickup truck (about 1500 pounds at a time), put a
tarp over it, and drove it south at the end of each month.

He drove alone, parked the truck in hotel parking lots over night, (two day
trip), and had been doing so for years.  I suppose that a 1500 pound chunk
of solid gold would be rather hard to scoop into ones pocket ...


Charles Richmond wrote in message <37AB822E.F032BB60@plano.net>...
>Charles E. Fox wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, 04 Aug 1999 22:36:25 GMT, gumby@zembu.com (D. Henkel-Wallace)
>> wrote:
>>
>> >   From: Michael Black <blackm00@CAM.ORG>
>> >   Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1999 11:58:16 -0400
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> .Back in the late '50s someone stole an air express package that
>> contained the North American supply of rubber belts for Philips tape
>> recorders.
>> They probably thought they were getting a radio. Since belts werre the
>> weakness of those tape recorders, it made servicing a problem for
>> months.
>> Also Bell & Howell at one time shipped their service parts in
>> obsol;ete camera boxes, but had to quit because so many shipments went
>> missing.
>>
>I guess they are learning the trick to *not* getting things stolen.
>
>In the US there's a TV show called "Live It's Saturday Night".  They did
>a skit involving a *new* car that could be safely parked in a high crime
>area.  To update it a bit, the car might be called a Chameleon 2000.
>
>The car on the inside was very luxurious, with all sorts of electronic
>gadgets and stereo equipment, etc.  On the outside, it looked like a
>broken down 20 year old car, with the paint chipping, one headlight
>broken, and a "simulated" oil leak coming from the engine compartment.
>
>Kind of like the Hope Diamond.  The Hope Diamond is one of the largest
>diamonds in the world in a single chunk.  About 20 years ago, the guy
>who owned it decided he would donate it to the Smithsonian museum.  The
>problem was he lived in New York City, and the Smithsonian was hundreds
>of miles away in Washington, D.C.  So how could he safely ship the diamond?
>
>He decided to wrap it up in a pasteboard box and *mail* it to the
Smithsonian.
>Just sent it via regular mail, and I doubt that he insured it since it
would
>be worth *millions* of dollars.  And geuss what...it got to the Smithsonian
>just fine.  So when you go to see it, you will see a cardboard box in the
same
>case with the diamond.  That's the box it was shipped in.  (The Smithsonian
>keeps everything...they are very anal-retentive.)
>
>--
>+-------------------------------------------------------------+
>|     Charles and Francis Richmond     <richmond@plano.net>   |
>+-------------------------------------------------------------+