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World’s Smartest Dog’ Dies Chaser the border collie knew 1,022 nouns A border collie that has been Front Page called “the world’s smartest dog” died Tuesday at age 15. Chaser, a black-andwhite pup given to Dr. John W. Pilley by his wife when the dog was 8 weeks old, learned to recognize 1,022 nouns thanks to Pilley’s training. e professor emeritus of psychology at Wo ord College in Spartanburg, SC, spent four to ve hours a day for three years training Chaser by showing her hundreds of objects, saying their names dozens of times each, then hiding them and asking her to nd them. As Pilley explained in a book published in 2013, the dog even understood sentences that contained a prepositional object, verb, and direct object. Her death, which her family says was due to natural causes, came the year a er Pilley’s death at age 89 last year. “She is buried with the other Pilley dogs, sprinkled with John Pilley’s ashes,” the family posted on Facebook. “What we would really like people to understand about Chaser is that she is not unique. It’s the way she was taught that is unique,” Pilley’s daughter, who helped her dad with the training. Chaser was featured in newspapers and magazines and appeared on TV shows with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Anderson Cooper. “ e goal of my father was to teach her human language, and in learning any new language, you need a vocabulary. So he began teaching her the names of her toys, which had value to her,” Pilley’s daughter tells GoUpstate.com. “He was able to further teach her verbs as independent behaviors from nouns and she was conceptually able to understand that words have independent meaning.” A statue of Chaser, with the bronze footprints of Dr. Pilley nearby, will be placed outside Spartanburg’s Children’s Museum of the Upstate next year, and a portion of a street nearby will be renamed Chaser the Border Collie Boulevard. Shop In RI 5
NBC Has a Replacement Show for Ellen DeGeneres’ time slot in 2022
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TOP 4 MOST VALUABLE SPORTS FRANCHISES Divers Off Maine Find US Ship Sunk by German Sub ey nally found the Eagle 56—a war grave o the coast of Maine. Divers discovered the wreckage of the USS Eagle PE-56, which was sunk by a German sub in the nal weeks of World War II, reports the New York Times. Forty-nine of the 62 people aboard were killed in the blast on April 23, 1945. e Navy initially A Massachusetts woman who accidentally blamed the sinking on a boiler explosion and didn’t formally change that contossed out a $1 million lottery ticket clusion until 2001, thanks to the research of naval historian Paul Lawton, per the eventually collected her winnings thanks AP. Video from the discovery, to be aired in an upcoming documentary on the to the kindness and honesty of the owners Smithsonian Channel, show that both of the ship’s boilers are intact. e ship’s of the store where she bought it. Lea Rose hull is broken in two and sits in water about 300 feet deep some ve miles from Fiega bought the $30 Diamond Millions Maine’s coast, in an area beyond the reach of recreational divers. scratch-o ticket in March at the Lucky Stop convenience store in Southwick near When we found her initially and found subsequent pieces later on, we were just where she works, the AP reports. in absolute awe and there was an incredible amount of respect for the sailors who are still entombed with the Eagle 56,” Ryan King, one of the divers, said. e Ea”I was in a hurry, on lunch break, and gle 56 was the last American ship to be sunk by a German sub in the war. A coujust scratched it real quick, and looked ple of weeks later, the sub now blamed for the attack was itself sunk o the coast at it, and it didn’t look like a winner, so of Rhode Island. When the Eagle 56 went down, it had been towing a practice I handed it over to them to throw away,” target to be used by bombers stationed nearby. e 13 survivors were pulled from she says. e ticket lay behind the counter the water by a Navy destroyer, and Lawton interviewed three of them decades for 10 days. ”One evening, I was going later as part of his research.
Kelly Clarkson’s talk show will take over DeGeneres’ time slot in 2022 Kelly Clarkson’s talk show will replace Ellen DeGeneres’ in its time slot on NBC Dallas Cowboys (NFL) when the latter’s show ends its 19-season run in 2022. e Kelly Clarkson Show, which is owned and produced by NBC’s syndication arm, launched in September 2019. ”By 2022, e Kelly Clarkson Show will be the star of our daytime entertainment schedules and an asset to our early a ernoon newscasts,” an NBCUniversal exec said. However, some of the stations currently airing DeGeneres’ show might opt to run news segments, which cost less, during that slot rather than Clarkson’s show. A source with DeGeneres’ show said that DeGeneres, who’s been dealing with allegations of a toxic workplace, is ”con dent” with her decision to move on. through the tickets from the trash and found out that she didn’t scratch the number,” Abhi Shah, the son of the store’s owners tells WWLP-TV. ”I scratched the number and it was $1 million underneath the ticket.” Fiega is a regular customer, so the family knew immediately who had discarded it. Shah went to see Fiega at work. She says he insisted she had to come to the store because his parents wanted to see her. ”I went over there and that’s when they told me,” she says. ”I was in total disbelief. I cried, I hugged them.” Fiega says overcoming a near fatal bout with COVID-19 in
New York Yankees (MLB) Value: $5.25 billion Five-Year Change In Value: 54% Purchased in 1973 for $8.8 million • Value: $5 billion • Five-Year Change In Value: 67% Purchased in1997 for $300 million
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Woman Checks Spam, Finds a $3M Treat Top 4 Super Bowls of All Time
2 4 Woman Throws Away $1M Lottery Ticket, Gets It Back is time, the ”grandparent scam” back red in a big way an on alleged scammer. Police on Long Island January was like “winning the lottery,” so she feels doubly fortunate. ”I mean, say a 73-year-old woman lured a man trying to con who does that? ey’re great people.her out of $8,000 to her home, where o cers arrested him, reports News 12. e case unfolded last week, when the Seaford woman, identi ed only as Jean, received a call purportedly from her grandson saying he needed $8,000 to get bailed out of jail for drunken driving. at seemed a little shy to the former 911 dispatcher, especially since none of her I am beyond blessed,” she says. e store gets a $10,000 bonus from the state lottery commission for selling the winning ticket. Fiega says she gave the family an additional reward. She’s saving the rest for retirement. grandsons are old enough to drive.
“I knew he was a real scammer,” she tells CBS New
York. ”I just knew he wasn’t going to scam me.” Jean played along in the call and in subsequent phone calls from others who said they were lawyers or
Usually when an email in your spam folder announces you’ve won millions of dollars, it’s a scam.
Luckily for Michigan’s Laura Spears, she 1 believed the email in her spam folder that appeared to have come from the Michigan Lottery and is now $3 million richer as a result. ”I de nitely added the Michigan Lottery to my safe senders list just in case I ever get lucky enough to receive another email about a huge prize,” Spears, of Oakland County, tells Michigan Lottery Connect. e 55-year-old had purchased a Mega Millions lottery ticket online for the New Year’s Eve drawing a er reading that the jackpot ”was getting pretty high,” she says. ”A few days later, I was looking for a missing email from someone, so I checked the Super Bowl LI spam folder in my email account.” New England Patriots 34 Atlanta Falcons 28 Spears says that’s when she spotted an email from Houston, TX - Feb. 5, 2017 Michigan Lottery. ”I couldn’t believe what I was reading, so I logged in to my Lottery account,” she notes. ere, she saw her $2 ticket matched the ve white balls drawn Dec. 31, which was enough for the $1 million second-place prize. She’d also paid an extra $1 for the Megaplier, which meant her prize was multiplied to $3 million, per NBC News. ”It’s all still so shocking to me,” says Spears,
per Michigan Lottery Connect. She 3 picked up her prize last week and is now planning an early retirement, per CNN. e jackpot for Tuesday’s Mega Millions drawing—the 27th since a $432 million jackpot was won in New York in September— stands at $396 million, with an estimated $273.6 million cash option.
Grandma Outsmarts Her Would-Be Scammer
court o cials. But she also called police, and o cers who were sent to her home heard some of the calls for themselves, per Newsday. When Jean told her alleged scammer that she had $8,000 in cash at home, he told her a bail bondsman would stop by to pick it up. In reality, she handed him ShopInRI 5 wrapped-up paper towels, and police tackled him as he le her house. ”She’s not afraid of these guys,” says Nassau County Police Com-
Super Bowl XXV New York Giants 20 Bu alo Bills 19 Tampa, FL - Jan. 27, 1991
Super Bowl XLIX New England Patriots 28 Seattle Seahawks 24 Glendale, AZ - Feb. 1, 2015
Little Casey Hathaway can now check “hung out with a bear” o his bucket list. Top 4 Super Bowls At least, that’s according to the 3-year-old himself, who of All-Time says that’s what he did while he was missing in the woods of North Carolina for two days, the Charlotte Observer reports. “God sent him a friend to keep him safe,” his aunt posted on Facebook ursday, noting the preschooler was “healthy, smiling, and talking” a er his ordeal. Casey was found ursday in the woods of Ernul, caught up in briars, a er wandering away from his grandmother’s home. He was located less than a half-mile from where he’d rst gone missing. Authorities were able to locate Casey a er a woman walking her dog heard Casey crying out and called 911. Casey’s bear story is raising some eyebrows— one Facebook commenter notes “anyone who truly believes that a bear cared for him and fed him knows nothing about bears”—but his aunt reposted one observer’s comments on the matter: “It may not have been a real live bear but an image or a dream sent by God to keep that baby moving and to keep him from giving up.” Casey spent time in the hospital getting checked out, “eating Cheetos, nuggets, and watching Paw Patrol,” his aunt wrote on Facebook. She adds that, due to request, the family will set up a PO box for him so well-wishers can send him notes and gi s. “Both him and his big sister have endured so much over the last three days so we thank you for wanting to be so kind to them,” she wrote. Super Bowl XIII Pittsburgh Steelers 35 Dallas Cowboys 31 Miami, FL - Jan. 21, 1979
rontPageF Sweethearts—those chalky little candies with messages on them—won't be on store shelves this Valentine's Day, the AP reports. e New England Confectionary Co.—or Necco—had been making the popular candies since 1886. But the company led for bankruptcy protection last spring. Ohiobased Spangler Candy Co. bought Necco in May. But Spangler said ursday that it didn't have time to bring Sweethearts to market this Valentine's season. CEO Kirk Vashaw said Spangler wants to make sure
Michigan’s Laura Spears was a big winner in Mega Millions draw; notice went to spam folder Super Bowl LI Super Bowl XXV
Sorry, Sweethearts Fans: Iconic Candy Won't Be Super Bowl XLIX Super Bowl XIII
Sold This Year Sweethearts "meet customer expectations" when they return to market. He didn't say what changes Spangler plans to make or missioner Patrick Ryder. ”She knows what she had to do, and when they'll go back on sale. CompetitorsGod bless her.” e man arrestlike Brach's are still making conversationed is 28-year-old Joshua Estrelhearts. But online retailer CandyStore.com la Gomez, who is charged with says Sweethearts were by far the most popular brand, commanding 80% of the US market for candy hearts. attempted grand larceny in the thirddegree. e Washington Post notes that scams targeting senior citizens victimize millions of people a year, and the number of such cases have risen during the pandemic. e FBI estimates that people over 60 lost a combined $1 billion to scams in 2020, a gure that has since tripled.
