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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. The professor emeritus of psychology at Wofford College in Spartanburg, SC, spent four to five 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 find 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 after 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. “The 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.
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 They finally found the Eagle 56—a war grave off the coast of Maine. Divers discovered the wreckage of the USS Eagle PE-56, which was sunk by a German sub in the final 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. The 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. The 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 five miles from Fiega bought the $30 Diamond Millions Maine’s coast, in an area beyond the reach of recreational divers. scratch-off 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. The 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 off 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. The 13 survivors were pulled from she says. The 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
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. The Kelly Clarkson Show, which is owned and produced by NBC’s syndication arm, launched in September 2019. ”By 2022, The Kelly Clarkson Show will be the star of our daytime entertainment schedules and an asset to our early afternoon 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 ”confident” 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
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
He Solved the Clues, Won a Candy Factory TOP 4 HAUNTED ATTRACTIONS IN RI
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Find the golden ticket, win a candy factory.
It’s not merely the fictional tale of Willy
Wonka, however. A similar contest just played out for real. David Klein, founder of the Jelly Belly Candy Company, and his partner Stephanie Thirtyacre, hid their golden tickets—actually necklaces—in all 50 states and doled out $5,000 prizes to those who found them after solving treasure-hunt clues. They gave the clues for the grand prize, a candy factory:
The clues: ”Don’t have an instant idea, for a treasure diehard/We see witches nearby, two stand guard/Go Solve and Search, as low as our toe/Why find a nut and walks are no foe”
The solve: Andrew Maas, a 39-year-old father of two from Colorado, cracked the code. He explains in detail in this 3 4
Facebook post. The ”treasure diehard” referred to Indiana Jones, telling him the winning necklace was in that state. Looking at a map, he struck upon the city of Kokomo because of the Beach Boys song that refers to ”take it slow.” (A play New York Knicks (NBA) FC Barcelona (Soccer) • Value: $4.76 billion • Five-Year Change In Value: 34% Purchased - Unknown on the first line of the clue). He looked at Woman Throws Away $1M Lottery Ticket, Gets It Back Kokomo parks and found one with two gazebos that looked like witches’ hats. Maas flew there and soon enough zeroed January was like “winning the lottery,” so she feels doubly fortunate. ”I mean, in on a covered bridge at the park, and who does that? They’re great people. found his treasure buried at the foot of it. I am beyond blessed,” she says. The
The resolution: Klein did indeed offer store gets a $10,000 bonus from the
Maas ownership of a factory in Florida, state lottery commission for selling but Maas decided he couldn’t move the winning ticket. Fiega says she gave his family across the country. The two the family an additional reward. She’s settled on a compromise in which Klein saving the rest for retirement. gave the factory to him, then bought it back. Neither is divulging the price, but as Maas tells the Tribune, ”It’s money we didn’t have.” He adds: ”The excitement and adventure was the real reward. The money is the gravy on top.” 1 2
Haunted Labyrinth Cranston, RI
are to that effect, featuring dark lighting, a creepy doll, and streaks Not afraid of ghosts and things of lightning. that go bump in the night? The purportedly haunted Rhode Island “Legend has it, the home is haunted farmhouse that inspired the 2013 by the presence of Bathsheba horror movie The Conjuring hit Sherman, who lived in the house in the market Thursday for the scary the 1800s,” said the agency, which price of $1.2 million—almost three released a video featuring an actor times the 2019 selling price, per posing as Sherman’s ghost. “To this the AP. Mott & Chace Sotheby’s day, countless happenings have International Realty is leaning into been reported.” The Conjuring the legend, calling the 14-room, wasn’t filmed at the home, but was 3,100-square-foot home on 8.5 based on the experiences of the acres in Burrillville ”one of the most Perron family that lived there in the well-known haunted houses in the 1970s. The home last sold in 2019 United States.” Its listing photos for $439,000. Shop In RI 5
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