Burglar Sheldon Reece, 32, was shot in the abdomen by home-owner Abel Sisneros in Fort Worth, Texas, in December. According to a report in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, to enter the house, Reece had to boldly disregard two signs outside: "Warning. Nothing inside is worth risking your life for. Owners of this property are highly skilled to protect life, liberty and property from criminal attacks" and "No trespassing. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again." [Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 12-21-06]

Some British and German drivers have over-relied on their cars' satellite-navigation devices, according to a December Reuters dispatch, sometimes with tragic (or hilarious) results. A 53-year-old German man thought the device's instruction to turn "now" meant not at the next corner but right that second, and he crashed into a building. Another followed instructions but ignored a prominent "closed for construction" sign and plowed into a pile of sand. Said an exasperated German auto club spokesman, "It's not as if people are driving in a tank with only a small slit to see out." (In November, an ambulance in London went 400 miles to make a 20-minute trip, and in May another took 90 minutes to take a crash victim to a hospital 10 minutes away, both due to faulty "sat-nav" programming.) [Reuters, 12-22-06]

Don Karkos heroically regained sight in his right eye in November after 65 years. A 1941 Navy submarine explosion had knocked him out, and doctors had told him many times that he would never see with that eye again, but Karkos, 82 (a retired horse farmer who works as a security guard at New York's Monticello Raceway), was butted in the head by a horse in November and awoke the next day with sight regained. He told the Times Herald-Record of Middletown, N.Y., in December that the blow he took from My Buddy Chimo was even harder than the one from the concussion. [Times Herald-Record, 12-13-06]

Because of recent government campaigns to protect wildlife, snake charmers in India's Rajasthan state are increasingly unable to work with live snakes but nonetheless hope to continue earning tourists' money by performing the same rituals, except without snakes.[Reuters, 12-26-06]

After a domestic tiff, Steven Rautio took the Christmas tree that he and his girlfriend had just decorated, cut it into pieces with a chainsaw, and burned it in a wood stove, but the stove overheated and burned his house to the ground [Mining Journal (Marquette, Mich.), 12-20-06]

The U.K. Noise Association and a British labor union suggested in December that they might take legal action against the "torture" of retail clerks by stores' forcing them to listen to continuous holiday music.[United Press International, 12-24-06]

Painstakingly researched by Jayne.
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