Junkie steals 100-year-old morphine, doesn’t get high

by Sean McLachlan on


There’s nobody quite as determined or stupid as a junkie.

Maybe it’s hard to buy a hit on the streets of Cashmere, Washington, or maybe this particular junkie was short of cash. In any case, someone with a craving for drugs broke into the Cashmere Historic Museum and Pioneer Village and made off with a bottle of morphine pills dating back to World War One.

A doctor interviewed by the Wenatchee World newspaper said that the century-old pills would have long since lost their potency and wouldn’t have any effect at all, good or bad.

The intruder left a trail of destruction in his or her wake, as junkies usually do. Museum officials found a broken fence, a broken door, and a trashed display case. The case was a rare original from a period doctor’s office dating to 1890. Volunteers are now cleaning up the office so they can reopen it to the public.

This isn’t the first time the museum has been broken into. Its historic saloon has been burgled a couple of times by drunks looking for booze. There’s no alcohol in the saloon, and the folks at the Cashmere Historic Museum and Pioneer Village may want to rethink having real medication on display in their doctor’s office, even if it hasn’t been able to get anyone high since Burroughs was in short pants.

[Morphine cure ad c.1900 courtesy Mike Cline via Wikimedia Commons]

Video shows the cause of Newark Airport shutdown – a couple in love

by Katie Hammel on
On Sunday, thousands of passengers ended up stuck at Newark airport for several hours, forced to evacuate the terminal, go through security again, and wait for the many flight delays and disruptions that happened as a result.

Some passengers tried to make the best of the situation. Many probably expressed frustration with the TSA employee who allowed a mystery man to walk the wrong way through a security checkpoint. And others may have wondered who the man was who caused them to suffer through the ordeal.

Was he a terrorist checking out the security system? Was he a man who made an Innocent mistake? No, as the just-released video footage of the incident suggests, he was a just a guy in love, looking for a few more minutes with his sweetheart. On the video below, you can see him hanging out by the security desk. He’s asked to move and does so, but when the guard leaves his post just a few seconds later, the guy takes that opportunity to duck under the rope and join his lady friend.

Ah, love. Cute, right? No. Not even a little. As a result of this guy breaking the law, and of the TSA employee’s failure to do his job, thousands of people were needlessly evacuated from the terminal. Time and money were wasted. And a few hundred people probably missed important connections or meetings, or at least had their vacation get off to a really bad start.

This guy wasn’t a terrorist (just an idiot), but the next person who tries and succeeds in getting past security could be. More than just frustrating travelers going through Newark on Sunday, the incident exposed just how insufficient TSA security is. What good are X-ray scanners and full-body pat-downs when a guy can simply breeze past an empty guard desk? It looks like our biggest threat to security may not be underpants bombs, but rather the lax attitudes of some employees within the TSA.

The TSA employee has been placed on administrative leave. The man who slipped past security has not been identified.

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Check out these other stories from the airport checkpoint!

Woman makes bomb threat to delay boss’ plane

by Katie Hammel on

At some point, most travelers will either come close to missing a flight, or actually miss it and have to wait for the next one. It’s not a fun situation to be in – praying that you make it, or that your flight is delayed just a few minutes so that you can get on it, and then sitting in the airport for hours if you do miss the plane – but it’s certainly not one that justifies faking a bomb threat.

Yet that’s exactly what one woman is accused of doing in order to help out her boss, who was running late to catch his flight from Miami to Honduras.

Officials at the Miami Airport received a call and an email on Wednesday saying there was a bomb on the American Airlines plane. They searched the plane, but found no bomb, and then traced the email to 31-year old Claudia De La Rosa’s computer. She was arrested and is now being held on $7,500 bail.

During questions, the woman said that she had made her boss run late and, worried that he would miss his plane, she decided to call in the bomb threat. She figured the bomb search would delay the plane long enough for her boss to arrive and get on the flight.

A little lesson for the over-achieving assistants out there: no job is worth getting arrested for and calling in a bomb threat is never a good idea. Just let your boss miss his plane.

[via USA Today]