CHANGING COURSE

This is the transcript of the ACTUAL radio conversation of a US naval

ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland.

Canadians: Please divert your course 15 degrees the South to avoid

a collision.

Americans: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees the North to

avoid a collision.

Canadians: Negative. You will have to divert your course 15 degrees

to the South to avoid a collision.

Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again,

divert YOUR course.

Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course.

Americans: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS LINCOLN, THE SECONDLARGEST SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES' ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE 15 DEGREES NORTH, I SAY AGAIN, THAT'S ONE FIVE DEGREES NORTH, OR COUNTER-MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP.

Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

 

EPITAPHS

On the grave of Ezekiel Aikle in East Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia:

Here lies

Ezekial Aikle

Age 102

The Good Die Young.

 

In a London, England cemetery:

Ann Mann

Here lies Ann Mann,

Who lived an old maid

But died an old Mann.

Dec. 8, 1767

 

In a Ribbesford, England, cemetery:

Anna Wallace

The children of Israel wanted bread

And the Lord sent them manna,

Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife,

And the Devil sent him Anna.

 

Playing with names in a Ruidoso, New Mexico, cemetery:

Here lies

Johnny Yeast

Pardon me

For not rising.

 

Memory of an accident in a Uniontown, Pennsylvania cemetery:

Here lies the body

of Jonathan Blake

Stepped on the gas

Instead of the brake.

 

In a Silver City, Nevada, cemetery:

Here lays Butch,

We planted him raw.

He was quick on the trigger,

But slow on the draw.

 

A widow wrote this epitaph in a Vermont cemetery:

Sacred to the memory of

my husband John Barnes

who died January 3, 1803

His comely young widow, aged 23, has

many qualifications of a good wife, and

yearns to be comforted.

 

Tombstone, Arizona:

Here lies Lester Moore

Four slugs from a .44

No Les No More.

 

In a Georgia cemetery:

"I told you I was sick!"

 

John Penny's epitaph in the Wimborne, England, cemetery:

Reader if cash thou art

In want of any

Dig 4 feet deep

And thou wilt find a Penny.

 

On Margaret Daniels grave at Hollywood Cemetery Richmond, Virginia:

She always said her feet were killing her

but nobody believed her.

 

In a cemetery in Hartscombe, England:

On the 22nd of June

- Jonathan Fiddle -

Went out of tune.

 

Anna Hopewell's grave in Enosburg Falls, Vermont has an epitaph that

sounds like something from a Three Stooges movie:

Here lies the body of our Anna

Done to death by a banana

It wasn't the fruit that laid her low

But the skin of the thing that made her go.

 

Someone in Winslow, Maine didn't like Mr. Wood:

In Memory of Beza Wood

Departed this life

Nov. 2, 1837

Aged 45 yrs.

Here lies one Wood

Enclosed in wood

One Wood

Within another.

The outer wood

Is very good:

We cannot praise

The other.

 

The grave of Ellen Shannon in Girard, Pennsylvania is almost a consumer

tip:

Who was fatally burned

March 21, 1870

by the explosion of a lamp

filled with "R.E. Danforth's

Non-Explosive Burning Fluid"

 

Oops! Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, New York:

Born 1903--Died 1942

Looked up the elevator shaft to see if

the car was on the way down. It was.

 

In a Thurmont, Maryland, cemetery:

Here lies an Atheist

All dressed up

And no place to go.