How Do You Plead?

   A Virginia law requires all bathtubs to be kept out in the yard, not inside the house.
   According to a British law passed in 1845, attempting to commit suicide was a capital offense. Offenders could be hanged for trying.
   Celebrating Christmas was once illegal in England.
   Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
   Impotence is legal grounds for divorce in twenty-four American states.
   In a tradition dating back to the beginning of the Westminster system of government, the bench in the middle of a Westminster parliament is two-and-a-half swords lengths long. This was so the government and opposition couldn't have a go at each other if it all got a bit heated.
   In Alaska, it is illegal to shoot at a moose from the window of an airplane or other flying vehicle.
   In Athens, Greece, a drivers license can be taken away by law if the driver is deemed "unbathed" or "poorly dressed."
   In Baltimore, it is illegal to wash or scrub a sink, regardless of how dirty it is.
   In Cleveland, Ohio, it is illegal to catch mice without a hunting license.
   In England during Queen Victoria's reign, it was illegal to be a homosexual but not a lesbian, the reason being that when the queen was approving the law, she wouldn't believe that women would do that.
   In Hartford, Connecticut, it is illegal for a husband to kiss his wife on Sundays.
   In Helsinki, Finland, instead of giving parking tickets, the police usually deflate tires.
   In Italy, it is illegal to make coffins out of anything except nutshells or wood.
   In Jasmine, Saskatchewan, it is illegal for a cow to moo within three hundred kilometers of a private home.
   In Kentucky, it is illegal to carry ice cream in you back pocket.
   In Sweden, although prostitution is legal, it is illegal for anyone to use the services of a prostitute.
   In Texas, it is illegal to put graffiti on someone else's cow.
   In the United Kingdom, there is no Act of Parliament making it illegal to commit murder. Murder is only illegal due to legal precedent.
   It is against the law to stare at the mayor of Paris.
   In Singapore, it is against the law to urinate in an elevator.
   In Sweden, it is illegal to train a seal to balance a ball on its nose.
   In California, it is illegal to eat oranges while bathing.
   In Bladworth, Saskatchewan, it is illegal to frown at cows.
   It is illegal to grow or sell pork in Israel.
   In Arizona, it is illegal to hunt camels.
   In Malaysia, it is illegal for restaurants to substitute toilet paper as table napkins. Repeat offenders go to jail.
   It used to be law in France that children's names had to be taken from an official government list.
   In Iceland, it was once against the law to have a pet in a city.
   I one city in Switzerland, it was once against the law to slam your door.
   Mailing an entire building has been illegal in the United States since 1916, when a man mailed a forty-thousand-ton brick house across Utah to avoid high freight rates.
   Pennsylvania was the first colony to legalize witchcraft.
   A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in South Bend, Indiana.
   According to the United States Refuse Act of 1899, every industrial discharge into bodies of water since 1899 has been a crime.
   Every citizen of Kentucky is required by law to take a bath at least once a year.
   If you live in Michigan, it is illegal to put a skunk in your boss's desk.
   In Hartford, Connecticut, you may not, under any circumstances, cross the street walking on your hands.
   In Idaho, a citizen is forbidden by law to give another citizen a box of candy that weighs more than fifty pounds.
   In Indiana, it is illegal to ride public transportation for at least thirty minutes after eating garlic.
   In Minnesota, it is illegal for women to be dressed up as Santa Claus on  city streets.
   In Morrisville, Pennsylvania, women need a legal permit before they can wear lipstick in public.
   In some parts of Alabama, it is illegal to carry a comb in your pocket.
   In the Rhode Island legislative during the 1970s, it was proposed that there be a tax of $2 on every act of sexual intercourse.
   In Oklahoma, it is against the law to hunt whale.
   It is illegal for boys in ninth grade to grow a mustache in Binghamton, New York.
   In Omaha, Nebraska, it's against the law to burp or sneeze in a church.
   In Kansas, it's against the law to catch fish with your bare hands.
   It's against the law to ride down the streets of Brewton, Alabama, in a motorboat.
   Most burglaries occur in the winter.
   The state legislature in North Dakota has rejected a proposal to erect signs specifically warning motorists not to throw human waste on the roadside. Maintenance workers report at least twenty incidents of road crews being sprayed with urine after rupturing urine filled plastic bottles that became swollen in the hot sun. Opponents of the measure say they're afraid the signs would discourage tourism.
   Under the law of Mississippi, there's no such thing as a female peeping Tom.
   in 1976, a Los Angeles secretary named Jannene Swift officially married a fifty-pound rock. The ceremony was witnessed by more than twenty people.

  
  

Hell Hath No Fury

   One of the strangest tales in American history is recorded in the diary of Elizabeth Geer. She and her husband and their seven children set out in a covered wagon from Indiana headed for California in 1847. The wagon train with which the Geers were traveling reached the half way point by September 15. On the morning of the 16th, one of the men reported that he was having trouble.
   His wife was angry at him for trying to drag her half way across the continent and refused to take another step west. Not only would she not budge, she wouldn't allow her children to go either. Her husband had his oxen hitched up to the wagons for three hours and had been coaxing her to hop aboard, bit she wouldn't stir.
   Elizabeth told her husband what was taking place, and he gathered three male companions and went to consult with the recalcitrant woman. When she steadfastly refused their entreaties to join them, they grabbed her young ones and crammed them in the wagon. Her husband then drove off and let her sitting.
   As the wagons rolled west, the abandoned woman got up, took the back track and traveled out of sight. Meanwhile, the husband sent his oldest son back to where they had camped to retrieve a horse that he had left. In less than an hour, having cut across a bend in the road, the wife overtook her husband. When he saw her he asked, "Did you meet Son John?"
   "Yes" was the reply, "and I picked up a stone and knocked out his brains."
   Her stunned husband went back to ascertain the truth, and while he was gone, she set his wagon, which was loaded with all of their store-bought goods, on fire. The cover was completely burned, as were some valuable articles. When the man saw the flames, he came running back to put them out. According to Elizabeth, when this was accomplished, The husband finally mustered spunk enough to give his wife what she needed: a good flogging."
   Unfortunately, Mrs. Geer doesn't tell us what effect the whipping had on the woman, but one has to wonder if it did any good. After all, anyone who would set fire to her own wagon probably would not be deterred by a few blows from her husband.

Amelia Earhart's Private Side

   In July 1937, a gallant and skillful pilot vanished over Howland Island in the Pacific. Her name was Amelia Earhart, perhaps the best known aviatrix in the history of flight. If her public thought that she was the epitome of determination, they ought to have seen her private side. The woman had icewater running through her veins.
   Earhart had only been flying for two years when she set an altitude record for women by soaring to 14,000 feet, and she did it in a little open-cockpit plane powered by a three-cylinder air-cooled engine. Later she became the first woman passenger to cross the Atlantic by plane, and in 1932 she made history by being the first woman to actually fly solo across the Atlantic. The year before, she shocked the world by getting married. Would this be the end to America's dare-devil darling? Would some man tame her? Not a chance. The same iron will that she exhibited in public also reigned in her private life.
   Amelia's intended was George Palmer Putnam, and while they were waiting in his mother's home for the justice of the peace to arrive, the bride handed the groom a letter. In it, Amelia let George know just what she expected out of the marriage.
   At the outset. Amelia, although she did love George, expressed some reluctance to marry. She was afraid that it would interfere with her own ambitions. "In our life together," she wrote, "I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me, nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly. Please let us not interfere with each other's work or play. In this connection," she continued, "I may have to keep some place where I can go to be myself now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinements of even an attractive cage." In closing, Amelia exacted what she called a cruel promise. "You must let me go in a year if we find no happiness together."
   Nobody knows how Amelia's marriage to George Putnam really worked privately, but one suspects that she charted her own course in the air and on the ground. She always had and she always would.
In public or in private, Amelia Earhart apparently loved her independence more than life itself.