ABSTRACT
Tales of mishap tend to get handed around, gathering the exotic detail and shedding the prosaic; nevertheless, even apocryphal accidents can make a point, if only to remind manufacturers that the unexpected can happen. The story of a little old lady who thought to dry her rain sodden cat in the microwave oven may be apocryphal, but the following tale seems probable. A young Australian golfer tried to dry a golf ball in a microwave oven. The ball exploded, broke his nose and deposited bits of rubber all over the kitchen. In 1889 the Great Eastern was broken up for scrap and the public were eager for the mystery to be cleared up. Elsewhere a fire broke out in the basement of an office block called Furnace House, while a sinuous dance routine by a Moscow State Circus ‘snake girl’ is said to have caused the spontaneous combustion of an Orthodox Priest’s cassock.
