Etc...

And step on it. I'm in a hurry

From the town of Aigle, in the French-speaking sector of Switzerland, comes word that a woman hailed a taxi one day last week and paid a fare of $29.15 so she could catch up to a train that had pulled out of the station before she was able to board it. (Swiss trains are famous for their punctuality.) Happily, the driver got her to Bex, about six miles down the line, in time. Now, normally, this wouldn't qualify as unusual, but in this case it does. You see, the woman in question was the conductor, and in her absence the train had made the trip with its doors open. No word on whether she still had a job after the incident was reported to her superiors.

It may come as a surprise that a four-hour drama about the American Civil War is the all-time favorite movie among British cinema goers. Yes, they love the tale of Scarlet O'Hara and Rhett Butler as told in "Gone With the Wind." That's the conclusion, not of a vote, but of a study of visits to theaters undertaken by the British Film Institute for the government-owned Channel 4 TV. Box office figures aren't available for older movies, so the data for anything released prior to 1970 were pieced together using trade magazine statistics and anedotal evidence, according to the BBC News. The two most popular movies with British audiences are "Gone With the Wind," with more than 35 million viewers, and "The Sound of Music," with an estimated 30 million. The most popular films with British moviegoers and the year of release for each:

1. "Gone With the Wind" (1939)
2. "The Sound of Music" (1965)
3. "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937)
4. "Star Wars" (1977)
5. "Spring in Park Lane" (1948)
6. "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946)
7. "The Jungle Book" (1967)
8. "Titanic" (1997)
9. "The Wicked Lady" (1945)
10. "The Seventh Veil" (1946)