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• Gary and Beth Machens moved into a historic home in Alton, Illinois, in December and uncovered more history to go with it when they found a 19th-century brick tunnel underneath the house.
Gary Machens discovered the entrance to the tunnel as he was doing some sidewalk repair.
The barrel-shaped tunnel, about 9 feet high and 60 feet long, is believed by local historians to have been built around 1840 -- 50 years before the house was constructed.
"Whatever they built this for, it took a lot of men and a lot of hours. You know, one guy didn't do this," Machens told KTVI-TV.
He believes the tunnel could have been used to store ice or carriages, or it could have been part of the Underground Railroad.
"There was a ferry here in the Alton area to the Missouri side, and it's possible it could have been used for that," he said. [KTVI, 4/13/2021]
• Brian Robson of Cardiff, Wales, was 19 years old in 1964, when he accepted a job on the Victorian Railways in Australia. He almost immediately regretted his decision and started scheming about how to get back home, but he didn't have enough money for the return trip.
That's when he had an idea: With the help of two Irish friends, Robson squeezed himself into a 30-by-26-by-38-inch wooden crate and shipped himself home in the cargo area of a Qantas flight.
"The first 10 minutes was fine," he told CNN. "But your knees start to cramp up when they're stuck up to your chest."
When the crate arrived in Sydney, it landed on the tarmac upside down.
"So now I'm sitting on my neck and my head," he explained, "and I was there for 22 hours upside down," until arriving next in Los Angeles, where two airport workers discovered him.
He spent six days recovering in a hospital as word of his story got out, and Pan Am airlines sent Robson home to London in a first-class seat.
Robson lost touch with the friends who helped him but now hopes to find them and reconnect. He's never been back to Australia. [CNN, 4/14/2021]