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rob a bank?” The teller asked her supervisor what to do if someone asks how to rob a bank. The supervisor politely asked the man to leave. He did, but the worker who was escorting him out noticed blood running down the man’s thigh. Somehow, he’d stabbed himself with his knife. He was taken to a hospital, treated, and arrested—but for illegal possession of a weapon, not for attempted robbery. (He didn’t actually rob the bank; he only asked how to do it.)
Length of the average professional fireworks show in 1980: 1 hour. Today: 20 minutes.

WHEN WORDS COLLIDE
Wii hate when someone points out that weave used the wrong word to describe something, sew we complied this list of commonly misspelled or misused wurds .
    • A capital is a nation or state’s principal city, which houses the capitol, the building in which lawmakers convene.
    • To flounder is to struggle. But if you do it for long, you may founder, or completely unravel and come apart.
    • A hoard is a large group of objects. A horde is a large group of people.
    • Light can pass through a translucent object and become obscured. If the light goes all the way through, then the surface is transparent .
    • Flotsam is cargo lost at sea, floating on the surface. Jetsam is jettisoned cargo that sinks to the bottom of the sea.
    • To feel hostility toward something is to be adverse . To be completely opposed to it outright is to be averse .
    • Emigrants leave their homeland to reside in another place. Once they’re in the new place, they’re called immigrants .
    •An amiable person is cheerful and good-natured. An amicable person is cooperative.
    • A distinct object is one that is clearly visible; a distinctive one is unique or unusual.
    • A saying by a famous person is a quotation, not a quote. Quote is a verb that means to repeat somebody else’s words.
    • A crevasse is a deep, wide crack. A crevice is a small, narrow crack.
    • Elicit means to draw out something through persuasion, such as secret information. That info might have been a secret because it contained evidence of illegal or illicit activities.
    • An eminent person is someone who is well known and highly regarded. The word imminent describes an event that is about to take place.
    • Your conscience is your moral center, your sense of right vs. wrong. Conscious is an adjective that means to be awake and aware.
The Greatest: Muhammad Ali’s charities have fed 22 million meals to the hungry.

LUCKY FINDS
Ever stumbled across something valuable? It’s an incredible feeling. Here’s the latest installment of a Bathroom Reader favorite .
    L ET ME STAND NEXT TO YOUR FIRE
    The Find: A burned guitar
    Where It Was Found: Under a pile of junk in a garage
    The Story: In 1967, while performing at the Finsbury Astoria, an old theater in North London, Jimi Hendrix doused his Fender Stratocaster with lighter fluid, lit a match, and set the guitar on fire. The roadies rushed in and put the fire out; Hendrix had to be taken to the hospital to be treated for minor burns. That performance was a defining moment in rock history, but the guitar itself was thought to have been lost. It changed several hands several times: Bassist Noel Redding had it at first, but it ended up with Hendrix’s press officer, Tony Garland, who stored it in his parents’ garage in East Sussex…and forgot about it. It remained there, untouched, for nearly 40 years, until Garland’s nephew unearthed it in 2007. The guitar—one of two that Hendrix burned, and the only one that survived—was sold to an American collector for $430,000. He said he was going to put some new strings on it, plug it in, and see if any of that “Hendrix magic” is still there.
    WHAT THE FUGUE?
    The Find: A musical symphony
    Where It Was Found: In a library basement
    The Story: Heather Carbo, a librarian at the Palmer Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, had heard a rumor that a symphony written in Beethoven’s own hand was stored somewhere