This Post contains stories and links from Randy Cassingham's This is True

The Oregon Humane Society was flooded with calls after the news broke on a Portland's KEX radio: a new state law went into effect April 1 that requires pet dogs, cats and ferrets to wear seatbelts when riding in cars, or the driver will be subject to a $150 fine. No warnings, either: the state had already collected more than $89,000. Then the station put "listeners" on the air to say how they had been caught by the law, including one man who said his Seeing Eye dog "was taken into custody" for not being belted in. "You'd think people would realize it's April Fools when we said a blind person was driving a car," said host Dave Anderson, but the Humane Society reported that one of the calls was from the local sheriff's office, who wanted to know if the report was true. "There are a lot of people very upset and angry," said co-host Mark Mason.
From the Portland Oregonian

Official U.S. Time. You can see what the time is in any U.S. time zone, and there's more: there are Time Exhibits, which outline the "history of time" and humanity's attempts to measure it more and more accurately. And, of course, the history of Daylight Saving Time [While you're there, check out WebExhibits.]
Also, NIST's "Time Exhibits" links to Britannica.com, the University of Wisconsin's Why Files, and the Smithsonian

Head on over to the Wacky Warning Labels site. You'll see a real label on a 5" fishing hook with three huge barbs that warns, "Harmful if swallowed", and a drain cleaner which warns: "If you do not understand, or cannot read, all directions, cautions and warnings, do not use this product." But this site has a serious intent: prooduced by Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch, it also helps bring attention to the idiocy generated by the persistent threat of lawsuits: the ridiculous warnings dictated by attorneys trying to shield clients from frivolous lawsuits.


Harmful if swallowed - D'oh! 

While on routine patrol, Lt. Brent Rumfelt of the McDowell County (N.C.) Sheriff's Office stopped a vehicle. When the driver asked why he had been stopped, Rumfelt told him, "Because you're driving my car." The white Honda, normally driven by Rumfelt's sister, had been stolen earlier in the week. The driver and passenger were arrested. Rumfelt said the car was in "good condition".
From the McDowell News

Note: An Honorary Unsubscribe refers to the report of a notable figure whose death, for some reason, went virtually unnoticed. Here are two.

Julia Compton Moore
The wife of an Army colonel during the Vietnam era, Moore was appalled by the way the military notified families of soldiers' deaths: by sending a telegram to the family via taxi. She demanded of the base commander a list of families who would get telegrams, and followed the taxi around so no one would be alone when they got a notice. Her successful campaign to change the notification method was chronicled in a 2002 movie "We Were Soldiers", based on a book {and here} she wrote with her husband. She died April 18 from cancer. She was 75.
From the 7th Cavalry (Airborne) Forum:
Born at Fort Sill, Oklahoma on February 10th 1929, Julia ("Julie") Compton Moore was the only child of Army Colonel Louis J. Compton and Elizabeth Boon Compton ... Her early and lifelong experience with separation and the risk of loss in war provided her a unique empathy with, and understanding of, the lives of families in war.
In 2002, Mrs. Moore wrote:

I was a stay-at-home Mom, volunteering with the Red Cross and Army Community Service. My main love and focus has always been the Army family and especially our Child Care Centers. Not very exciting when I write it down but I have loved every minute (well maybe not every minute, like when the dog throws up on your carpet just as the doorbell rings with the General arriving for dinner, or a child falls out of the tree and breaks his arm minutes before you are due at a reception in your honor, or the movers lose all the trousers to your husbands uniforms etc. etc.) and wouldn't trade with the wife of any other profession.

In lieu of flowers, donations should be sent to the Ia Drang Scholarship Fund, 302 N. Main Street, Copperas Cove, Texas 76522.
This Viet Nam veteran has a tear in his eye .

Richard Lynn Varco
On Sept. 2, 1952, Dr. Varco's team, led by Dr. C. Walton Lillehei (and here) and Dr. F. John Lewis,performed the first successful operation on a beating human heart, saving a 5-year-old girl who had been born with a heart murmur.
In 1954, Dr. Varco took part in the first cross-circulation heart operation: in a single circulating system, a heart-lung machine did the work of the patient's heart while a living donor supplied blood.
Dr. Varco was an innovator throughout his career. He performed the university's first organ transplant in 1963 and was a co-founder of its bioengineering department. With Dr. Buchwald, he created the first implantable drug-infusion pump, a predecessor of a device that is used today to deliver insulin to diabetics and pain medication to the spinal cord.
He died May 3 at a hospital near his home in Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia. He was 91.
© 2004 This is True,
reprinted with permission.