Did these events actually occur, maybe last week?

Factual Questions
1

Having just passed a long holiday weekend in these parts, there were lots of people in the house and much conversation.

At any such gathering there are always people spreading curious stories, things they’ve heard, the latest urban myth, the strangest news story of the week, I’m sure it’s the same at your house.

Now always there’s one person that we all know better than to believe (urban myth, almost always), and usually a couple who’s veracity is never in question.

So, among the conversational topics in my house this past weekend were two news events, apparently from last week, which I must have overlooked. I’m busy, don’t always read the paper and sometimes miss the news so, as I’m overhearing these tales I’m thinking, “No way, that can’t be true, must be Urban Myth spreader.”

Only, surprise it was someone who I would tend to believe extremely unlikely to repeat something they did know to be true.

Keeping in mind I overheard these tales from the other room, forgive me if I’m light on exact details.

  1. Some bonehead pilot in a small aircraft, out for a little fly about I assume. Flew his plane under one of the US / Can border bridges. Y’know, between the river and the bridge. It might have been the Peace Bridge. Not once, but twice! And the kicker, though it was caught on tape, (blurry, grainy, etc) they cannot identify the call letters or whatever they are called on planes. If I hadn’t been in the kitchen I’d have called BullSh*t on this one. It just seems so unlikely in the times of increased homeland security and all that followed 9/11.

  2. At some base in North Carolina, Special Ops gathered together in a training group. The Government had hired two Indonesian’s to give them language lessons. (Y’know, to get on the ground in Bali and fight terrorism). Only it turns out the two people they hired, who conducted a few classes first, were actually hanging about Amerika just waiting to be deported for having terrorist leanings. Now, it seems, they are all scrambling as these two wily terrorists can now identify all the Special Ops guys from that base. Again in a post 9/11 world this also stretches credibility.

I am not a savy enough researcher to begin to know where to look to confirm these highly dubious stories. Also, as you can see, I have only the sketchiest of details and no idea which day last week they may have happened.

So I’m hoping you may have heard tell of one or both of these stories and can tell me whether or not they are true.

Thanks for your help.

2

I suggest google news (as opposed to the web search). A quick check with “pilot canadian bridge” yields a bunch of stories like these:

http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/CityandRegion/2005/10/08/1253617-sun.html
http://www.wzzm13.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=45206

Apparently, some idiot flew under the Blue Water bridge over the St. Clair river. Security cameras didn’t catch the ID number, and the authorities are looking for the culprit.

I’ll leave the second as an exercise for the student.

3

I took your instructions and ran with them, thanks for the learning.

Indeed, both of these unlikely events did occur. Wow.

(Next I’ll figure out how to linky link!)

Grasshopper, not ready yet master, but soon…

4

Easiest thing to do is simply cut and paste the URL from your browser. When vb sees the leading http**://… it creates a link. If the URL has funny characters in it, it might chop part of it off, and the link won’t work, but at least people can still see what you were trying to link to. If you’re ambitous you can use the vb url tag to customize the text displayed, but for a lot of this stuff, the bare URL is as good as anything.