LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON, CULT FIGURE According to a recent Associated Press story, residents of the primitive South Pacific island of Tanna each day raise the U.S. flag and formally pray that Americans will return to the island to bring the cargo they brought when they used the island as a staging area during World War II and the Vietnam War. Islanders built an airstrip with a bamboo "control tower," hoping to attract U.S. planes; they built bamboo "refrigerators," opening them each day to see if their prayers had brought the cargo they remember were in U.S. refrigerators; and one cult worships Lyndon Johnson, praying to Johnson outboard motors that were part of the U.S. cargo. DIRTY WORK "He's quite a guy" is how a Provo, Utah, water department worker described fellow employee Jerry Miller, who volunteered in December to lower himself into nine feet of raw sewage that was blocking the pipes in a residential neighborhood. As of November, at least 72 commercial airline passengers had been arrested at New York's Kennedy airport when X-rays showed heroin, wrapped in condoms or balloons, in their intestinal tracts. Sylvia Matos left New York City without a trace shortly before officials cracked down on her for 2,800 unpaid parking tickets (over a 38-month period, an average of 2.5 per day), totaling $171,000 in fines. She had registered her car at 19 addresses with 36 different license plates. A government survey revealed 62 percent of the residents of Cairo feel they need sleeping pills at night because of noise. Horns are more important to motorists than traffic lights, and mosques play loud calls to prayer several times a day. At one city square, the noise is 10 times greater than international recommended levels. According to a Vatican policy statement, Eastern meditation practices such as Zen and yoga can debase Christian prayer by encouraging a "cult of the body." Members of the Corsican National Liberation Front claimed credit in January for blowing up about 60 cabins at a holiday complex near Bastia, which caters mostly to nudists. A 45-year-old man walked into WTVJ-TV in Miami in April and told a receptionist he had a bomb, causing employees to flee. However, the man revealed to one employee who stayed behind that the bomb was in his head, having been surgically implanted by the CIA in 1965 (though he later admitted that the bomb seemed to have moved to his rectum). The station went on automatic programming for a few minutes, showing mostly commercials, until the man was apprehended. SIGNS OF THE CRIMES Two days after Kevin Callahan, 32, reportedly stabbed his wife in the throat in St. Petersburg, Fla., and fled, he was found unconscious on a bridge, having been struck by lightning. Off-duty Minneapolis police officer Craig Stoddart, 35, was arrested in October after he was discovered nude, asleep and snoring in a child's bedroom in nearby Moose Lake. Stoddard, apparently intoxicated, had been involved in a traffic accident in front of the home, and while the inhabitants went outside to watch the tow trucks, Stoddard wandered around back and into the house, where he crawled into an upstairs bedroom and slept for three hours before being discovered. Two 15-year-old boys from Kansas City, Mo., were arrested in Prairie Village, Kan., in December for auto theft and leading police on a chase. Police were tipped off when the boys stopped at a police station to make a phone call, believing it was a convenience store. Their getaway took place at a speed of under 10 mph because of icy streets. YOU STOLE THE WORDS OUT OF MY MOUTH Nelson Echazabal, 25, and Claude Cherubin, 22, were arrested in Miami for burglary in April. They had met two days before and formed a partnership after Cherubin broke into Echazabal's home to burglarize it and the two struck up a conversation. THE EXPERTS SPEAK A correction in the "Ask Beth" advice column in the April 13 Boston Globe told readers to disregard her statement the day before that women are "least likely" to get pregnant halfway between the beginnings of successive periods. It's "most likely." Atlanta Braves pitcher John Smoltz gave himself five-inch-long welts in March when he tried to iron his polo shirt while wearing it. "I've ironed that way five or six times," he said,"and never had that happen." Dave Ten Eyck of Anniston, Ala., was injured recently after he attempted to replace a tubelike fuse in his Chevy pickup with a .22-caliber rifle bullet (used because it was a perfect fit). However, when electricity heated the bullet, it went off and shot Ten Eyck in the knee. Astrophysicist John Middleditch told a February American Association for the Advancement of Science audience that a signal thought a year ago to be the fastest-spinning object in the universe (and thus the subject of many theories and papers) was just reception from a TV monitor in the Chilean observatory where the "spinning object" had been discovered. Someone had forgotten to turn it off. THE STING Nairobi police arrested a Greek nun ("Sister Irene") in January and charged her with smuggling 6000 bees into Kenya under her habit. She told the Kenya Times that she wanted to use the bees' wax to make candles. The Jan. 8 crime column in the Wisconsin State Journal reports that Madison police were called to an apartment because of a dispute between two women over ownership of three pairs of underpants that were neither woman's size. The smaller woman said she bought the larger size because she expects to get pregnant; the larger woman said she normally wears a larger size but would put these on for the officer to show that she could fit into them. The officer confiscated the underpants. The victim of an at-home robbery in Dallas in February told police that the man took $8 from the victim's pants and wallet and started for the door but then turned and threw the money on the floor, declaring, "This house is not worth robbing." Vallejo police arrested Jeffrey L. Flournoy, 27, for bank robbery in March after a teller gave him $105 cash based on Flournoy's note that he had a bomb. The teller later said that, at first, Flournoy's cane and dark glasses looked like a disguise, but when Flournoy asked for directions to the front door, the teller realized he was blind and apprehended him. Flournoy said he was primarily trying to publicize the plight of the disabled. YES, IN FACT, WE DO Singer Johnny Paycheck asked the Ohio Supreme Court in December to reduce his nine-year sentence received for a 1985 shooting. Paycheck was convicted of shooting a man in the head for asking Paycheck if he wanted to eat deer meat and turtle soup (to which Paycheck objected, yelling, "What do you think I am, a country hick?"). A jury in Gwinnett County, Ga., near Atlanta, found Herbert Freels, 24, guilty of rape in November, despite his having produced a note signed by the victim, stating, "I was not raped. I did it under my own free will." Freels was distraught after the verdict, saying that he "always" has his sexual partners write such notes. Charles Erickson, 65, won $95,000 in a La Crosse, Wis., trial in March because a 6-inch clamp was left inside his body after a lung operation. Erickson said he had not planned to sue, but then Lutheran Hospital sent him a bill for the subsequent operation, which was solely to remove the clamp. Tara Georgianna Gephart Judkins, 37, was accused in February of performing oral sex on a Viacom Cablevision employee in Nashville in exchange for a cable TV hookup. A Nashville Banner reporter failed to ascertain whether she received premium channels or just basic cable. Australian lesbian Lisa Ptaschinski, 25, was convicted in February of assisting her lover, Tracy Wigginton, in the murder of Edward Baldock. Wigginton preferred blood to solid food and occasionally seduced Ptaschinski to cut her wrists in the name of love. (Ptaschinski said, "If you are going out with someone, you do whatever you can to please them.") Wigginton was said to have gone into a "feeding frenzy" after the murder of Baldock, looking afterward as though she had eaten a huge meal, according to Ptaschinski. In Connecticut's second such incident in a year, Gary A. Ecsedy turned himself in to park rangers in Hamden, confessing he had crawled under an outhouse in a state park in January to peer up at women using the toilet. A Borsad, India, judge granted a divorce to a woman in October because her husband wanted to marry another woman, but with the provision that before the final decree, the man would have to submit to a public beating by the wife. As part of the coordinated global efforts for the third annual World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, sponsors in Amsterdam featured a man dressed as a giant penis riding in a limousine and accosted by a group of nurses, who unrolled a giant condom onto him. As part of last fall's primary campaign for state legislature in Muskogee County, Okla., incumbent Jeff Potts charged dirty tricks against John Monks. Potts made a citizen's arrest of two women carrying "Vote for Jeff Potts" signs but wearing skimpy clothing and occasionally baring their breasts to passersby on a busy street. Employees of the Merita Bread Co. in Greensboro, N.C., noticed last year that their company coffee machine produced a foul-tasting brew, and they tried various remedies to improve the taste. Some employees then remembered a heated dispute they had with a delivery man, who had access to the plant in evening hours, and thus organized a stakeout. Subsequently, Dale David Tinstman, 46, was arrested for having urinated into the coffee machine daily for several months. In Hull, England, Judge Arthur Myerson was in trouble with protesters after rejecting a life sentence for rapist Brian David Huntley in March and giving him three years instead. Myerson said the lesser sentence was because Huntley "showed concern and consideration by wearing a contraceptive." In March, police in New York City charged salesman Joel Levy, 32, with assault. According to police, Levy's live-in girlfriend arrived home unexpectedly after Levy had just put in an order for a call girl to come over. Levy improvised a plan to intercept "Brandy" in his building's lobby, have a liaison, and then to dash back upstairs before his girlfriend got suspicious. When he saw a good-looking woman in the lobby, Levy assumed it was Brandy, nudged her into an elevator, and, according to police, pawed and fondled her while waving a $50 bill, saying, "You know you want it. You know you'll do anything for it." The woman was not Brandy but rather an assistant district attorney from Brooklyn. [N. Y. Post, 3-10-95]