More than 1.7 million people visited a canal in Busan, South Korea, to see one shark. Busan has 3.2 million residents. Boats and nets failed to move her. Crews finally herded her out with a floating platform and oars.

In 1922, a man told his neighbor, “I heard something this morning that opened my eyes.”

— from More Toasts, 1922. Got one worse than that? Hit reply.

One pie short, and the evidence is on his nose.

Seen something funnier? Reply with a picture you took — a dog in a hat, a sign gone wrong, whatever made you laugh this week.

On October 29, 1969, a UCLA student named Charley Kline tried to send the word login over ARPANET, the early internet, to a computer at the Stanford Research Institute. The letters L and O went through. Then the Stanford computer crashed. About an hour later, the full word got through.

Also today: in 1964, thieves climbed into the American Museum of Natural History in New York and left with the Star of India, a sapphire the size of a golf ball. The alarm on its case had a dead battery. Police arrested the thieves within two days.

In 1983, the last episode of which TV show drew nearly 106 million viewers?

A) Happy Days
B) The Waltons
C) M*A*S*H
D) Three’s Company

Answer’s at the very bottom. Try it first. 👀

Jerry Tyson started cutting hair in August 1955 and charged 75 cents a cut. He turns 90 on Tuesday, November 3, and still runs a barbershop near the town square in Macomb, Illinois. In 71 years, the price of his haircut rose from 75 cents to $22.

Tyson wrote a letter to the editor joking that he would retire at 90 and give free haircuts. Free haircuts are on. Retirement is off. He told WGEM, a TV station in Quincy, Illinois: “Old barbers keep our word but I’m not going to retire. That’s not even on the table.”

Free haircuts are for long-time customers and neighbors. The shop opens at 9 a.m. Tyson says that if he had his life to live again, he would still be a barber.

Keep smiling,
The Distraction Desk

C — M*A*S*H. The finale ran two and a half hours on February 28, 1983. Nearly 106 million Americans watched, and no scripted episode has drawn more since.

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