Last month, General Patton, a five-year-old Staffordshire bull terrier, was having trouble standing up and needed to be carried everywhere by his owner Cassie.
The General was taken to a vet where it was diagnosed with a neurological disorder that caused “one of his intervertebral discs to apply pressure on his spine which if not taken care of will slowly paralyze him.”
Cassie needed $5,000 and fast in order to pay the for the surgery that was needed.
She went to WePay, a site for online payments, and in 13 days more than a hundred people donated enough money to cover General Patton’s operation.
“I wasn’t sure how to raise $5,000, and I knew my time was limited. I relied on my friends and family to spread the word that The General was in trouble. Hundreds of people reached out to provide support,” Cassie said.
Hungary hit the junk rating trifecta on Friday as Fitch, following Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, lowered its assessment of the country.
The shell-shocked Hungarian currency, the forint, has been on the canvas and out of the count for the past few months, the victim of – what is kindly called in financial parlance –“unorthodox” policies.
Still, though the Magyar economy and its currency are in a rather unenviable state at present, this is nothing compared to what went on in Hungary in the aftermath of World War II.
In 1946, Hungary experienced the worst case of hyperinflation in history.
Things got so out of control, so fast that the money printers could hardly keep up with the rate at which the value of then currency, the pengő, was declining. The currency denominations had to be spelled out because the number of zeros would not fit on the bank notes.
When it was all said and done in the summer of 1946, Hungary was issuing bills as high as 1 quintillion pengő.
An iconic statue of writer and journalist Marija Juric Zagorka had its very iconic-ness sawed off last week.
Vandals in the Croatian capital managed to detach the umbrella Zagorka is carrying from the statue – for reasons which must only be known to them. Further, the umbrella is closed, so it won’t be of much use during the cold and wet Balkan winter.
According to reports, the statue weighs between 400 and 500 kilograms, so we are guessing (conservatively) the umbrella comes in at about 20 kg.
Zagorka, who penned some 35 books in the first half of the last century, is one of the most widely read writers in Croatia.
Attila Ambrus, a former goalie who from 1994 to 1999 supplemented his meager income in the Hungarian professional ice hockey league by robbing banks, is set to be released from a jail in Satoraljujhely, Hungary on January 31.
Known in his heisting heyday as the “Whiskey Robber”, Ambrus achieved folk-hero status by pulling off a string of 27 straight robberies of banks, travel agencies and post offices before he was caught on January 15, 1999.
Ambrus, now 44, obtained his famous moniker because he was seen drinking a shot of whiskey at a pub near the site of each prospective caper.
His sealed his fame by giving flowers to female tellers, sending bottles of wine to the police and by not harming anybody during his escapades.
On July 10, 1999 he further cemented his legend by escaping from a Budapest prison and pulling another robbery shortly thereafter before being caught again a couple of months later.
His story has since been told in books, musicals and film.
Ambrus has made the most of his time behind bars by earning a degree in journalism, creating ceramic works of art and learning foreign languages.
Reports in the Hungarian press say he has a job lined up after his release at a used clothing shop in Budapest, though there is also speculation that he will find a position in the local media – perhaps covering Hungary’s notoriously fragile banking sector.
An ice hockey fan in Szekesfehervar, Hungary discovered you don’t need a pair of skates to get involved in on-rink fisticuffs during a European EBEL league match between Red Bull Salzburg and home team Sapa Fehervar AV on December 29.
According to Hungarian daily Blikk, as Red Bull’s Ron Davison and Sapa’s Andras Tenk came to blows with one another, a fan reached out over the protective glass and started hitting Davison on his helmet. (Photos here on Blikk. and Nemzeti Sport).
The EBEL didn’t take kindly to this sort of inter-game participation from the still-unknown fan and promptly fined the Hungarian team 8000 euros.
More passive supporters of Sapa decided this week to help the local club out and are collectively trying to pitch in to raise an initial 3000 euros to pay off the fine.
The club is asking for the public’s help in finding the perpetrator.
