IRISH TIMES ODDITIES: SOLD HIS WIFE FOR £23: Vincenzo Marvasi, a 35-year-old Neapolitan, sold his wife, Ciara, to a friends for 40,000 lire (about £23).
His friend Rino Vinceguerra, after several days, decided he wanted his money back. Marvasi refused, so both men, taking Ciara with them, went to a magistrate in Naples. Marvasi displayed a "bill of sale", receipted with postage stamps. The magistrate said the sale was illegal - there was only 70 lire worth of stamps on the bill instead of 80.
February 6th, 1950
SAILOR KILLED IN HOLD
At the inquest in Cork last Saturday on Asagiro Sugetsugu (22), unmarried, who was killed the previous day on board the steamship Kinkasau Maru, being buried under a shifting bulk of grain while working in the corn hold, a verdict was returned in accordance with the medical evidence, the jury finding that no one was to blame for the accident. Dr WJ Shorten stated that death was due to suffocation. Mr AC Home, who was present on behalf of the owners of the vessel, said that the deceased man was the first Japanese subject to be interred in Ireland.
March 28th, 1927
SAT ON A BOX OF DYNAMITE
James McLaughlin of Jonquires, Quebec, aged 35, father of a family, was sitting on a box of dynamite, when he carelessly dropped a cigarette end into a box of powder nearby, with fatal results.
March 14th, 1925
OWL STOPS TRAIN
The Vologda-Leningrad express has been stopped en route by a most singular agency. The train was travelling at between thirty-five and forty miles an hour when it suddenly came to a stand-till. Investigation showed that a big owl in flying by had caught the cock of the Westinghouse brake and turned it, with the result that the brakes were put on.
February 14th, 1928
BOY STARTED A £300,000 FIRE
A £300,000 fire caused by the carelessness of a seven-year-old boy yesterday almost completely wiped out the small town of Shimokawa, on Hokkaido, northern Japan, police reported. More than 200 of the town's 350 houses, and two schools, were destroyed by the fire. One person was killed. The fire started when the boy, giving a "party" for his friends, made a fire on the floor out of old newspapers.
May 8th, 1956
COLLIE DOG'S SAGACITY
A few days ago Mr John Ryan, victualler, Emmet Street, Tipperary, gave away to a friend in the Hollyford district a collie dog which had been his possession for the past five years. The dog wandered into Tipperary along with Free State troops when they captured the town in the Irish civil war. The dog was conveyed a distance of some 20 miles in the bottom of a car to Hollyford.
Two days afterwards when Mr Ryan came downstairs in the morning to open up his premises he found the collie on the doorstep, bearing unmistakable evidence of having made a long, toilsome journey through the night.
August 27th, 1928
COUPLE JAILED FOR KISSING
A Genoa court sentenced Vito Maria (23) and Agnese Marisi (20) to two months' imprisonment yesterday for kissing under a tree in a street on a September night. They were seen by a policeman, who charged them with "acts contrary to public decency". The court found them guilty in spite of Vito's plea: "We were doing no harm and were getting married in March anyway." The prosecutor had asked for five-month terms for both. The couple were appealing.
January 28th, 1960
Culled from the archives ofThe Irish Times , available online at www.ireland.com/archive