From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!seismo!presby!burdvax!psuvax!allegra!eagle!mhtsa!alice!rabbit!wolit
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Title: Re: interesting report [Greece fire]
Article-I.D.: rabbit.1198
Posted: Wed Mar  9 15:06:47 1983
Received: Sat Mar 12 04:05:29 1983

Although I'd rather not comment on that story about the floundering
freighter (smells fishy to me...), and don't have on hand any other
stories that "play on words" (as the author of that piece put
it -- but don't ALL jokes?), it DID remind me of a little item I
SWEAR I read in the New York Times several years back.  (You may be
familiar with how they fill blank spaces with very short (1" - 2")
stories they grab from the newswires.)

It seems there was this frieghter bound, I believe, from Malaysia to
some other place.  In one of its holds was a cargo of mahogany (sounds
reasonable so far); in another was a load of tapioca seed (ditto).
Well, a fire broke out in the mahogany hold.  (Wood burns, no?)
So they pump water onto the fire.  (Sensible, right?)  Unfortunately,
some water leaks into the tapioca hold.  (Well, nobody's perfect.)
The tapioca absorbs the water (tapioca will do that), and, heated by
the fire, begins to expand (ditto).  The expansion was such that, at
the time of the report, the captain was ordering the ship abandoned,
all on account of a Giant Tapioca Pudding!

Truth is Stranger than Fiction.

	Jan Wolitzky