Stranger Than Fiction

In what could easily be confused for a comic book story plot from the 1950s or 60s, British rescue boats and a helicopter were sent last Wednesday on a bogus rescue mission. The culprit? A faulty telly.

The coast guards scrambled after a rescue coordination center in Scotland picked up what it believed to be a distress signal coming from the sea off southern England.

But communications experts later traced the signal to the digital television set-top box in the home of 67-year-old Mary Donaldson in the southwestern port of Plymouth.

It's a mechanical conspiracy, I tell you. Those darn new-fangled contraptions are going to take over the world!