Alert Clerk Isn’t Sold Until King Plays His Face Card

You can’t be too careful these days. Just because a guy hands you an American Express card that says he’s the King of Sweden doesn’t mean you don’t ask him to prove it. King Carl XVI Gustaf was Christmas shopping in Stockholm and wanted to use his American Express card in a toy store to pay for a computer for his 9-year-old son. The skeptical clerk ran the king’s card to make sure it wasn’t stolen and then demanded another form of identification--even though King Carl’s face and name appear on Sweden’s one-krona coins and he has ruled since 1973. The clerk finally approved the purchase but still demanded the king’s address (Royal Castle, Stockholm). And it didn’t end there. As the king was leaving the store, the magnetic shoplifting alarm in the package sounded.

--The owner of an 89-foot yacht custom-built 50 years ago for Adolf Hitler has proposed a fitting end for the Third Reich relic: He wants to sink it off the coast of Miami Beach for an offshore habitat for fish. J.J. Nelson, owner of A-1 Marine and Commercial Wrecking of Jacksonville, Fla., said the Ostwind has been “nothing but a pain” since it was abandoned on his property about seven years ago. “Some people put swastikas on it, some people tear it apart for souvenirs and other people set it on fire,” he said of the teakwood vessel. Nelson said Miami Beach Vice Mayor Abe Resnick, a concentration camp survivor, would like to send a second boat filled with Nobel Prize winners, Cuban refugees, survivors of the Holocaust and the ship St. Louis to witness the Ostwind’s destruction. The ceremony next spring would coincide with the 50th anniversary of the “Voyage of the Damned,” the 1939 odyssey of the St. Louis, which left Hamburg, Germany, with 900 Jews aboard at the beginning of World War II. The United States and Cuba refused the passengers entry and the boat eventually returned to Europe, where authorities believe that up to 700 were killed by the Nazis.

--In a fitting tribute to the inventor of the earmuff, about 15 people plunged into bone-chilling 34-degree Clearwater Lake in Farmington, Me., to celebrate Chester Greenwood Day. Although his birthday is Dec. 4, 1858, the annual celebration was timed to coincide with the first day of winter. Donning a pair of earmuffs, Gov. John R. McKernan Jr. led a parade in honor of the Farmington native, who came up with the idea as a 15-year-old after chilling his ears while ice skating in 1873.