Thumbs-Down for Egyptian Hand

The Mummy’s Paw: A mummified hand, billed as a 4,000-year-old relic of an Egyptian princess who was punished for feeding the poor, failed to draw a minimum $500,000 bid at a Florida charity auction.

Mark Smith, director of a charity shelter that was to receive 10% of the sale’s proceeds, said he wasn’t discouraged after the rejection of a $300,000 bid for the hand.

“It takes a special person,” he said.

Wax Clinton Scandal: Organizers of Madame Tussaud’s traveling wax exhibit in Australia have been forced to sew the zipper shut on the trousers of their President Clinton figure because visitors have been undoing the pants--and taking photos while posing next to the wax president on their knees.

Designer Water for Pets: Plain old water just isn’t good enough for show dogs. So says Chuck Christ, who developed Champ-Pagne, a Canadian spring water that is packaged like champagne and lets dogs and cats toast achievements in style.

“When I started this idea, my father-in-law said, ‘Nobody’s going to buy this stuff,’ ” said Christ. But in six weeks of business, Christ says he’s gotten orders for more than 1,600 bottles from upscale grocers, grooming salons and others. It retails at $5.99 to $9.99 a bottle.

Virtual Dressing Room Invented: Computer scientists have devised a sophisticated body scanner that provides shoppers with a “virtual changing room” that measures their every contour with precision.

“It will be the biggest revolution in shopping for a generation,” said Philip Treleaven, project leader at University College, London. “Going to the shops and trying on clothes could become a thing of the past. You could do it all from home, never go into a changing room again if you don’t want to.”

The scanner is shaped like a photo booth. Infrared lights act as an electronic tailor to measure 300,000 points all over the shopper’s body. “I expect within 12 to 18 months we’ll have what the manufacturers want, and our first users will be in place,” Treleaven said.

Terrorism ‘99: The International Assn. for Counter-Terrorism & Security Professionals has unveiled its 1999 Terrorism Anniversaries Calendar.

The calendar commemorates such infamous dates as the October 1983 suicide truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon, and the July 1996 Olympics bombing in Atlanta. It features staged photos of soldiers dodging fiery explosions and blasting away with high-tech automatic rifles. The cover is a gloomy shot of the World Trade Center’s twin towers with a police barricade.

News McNuggets:

* A straw poll of 18- to 30-year-old Britons showed that 24% would choose to kick out their partner if given the choice between their loved one and their TV.

* When Mark Calvert isn’t greeting Seattle shoppers at Liquidation World in his Santa suit, he’s entertaining viewers of “Bong Hit Championship,” a public-access show on which he uses a stopwatch to time how long callers can inhale marijuana from a water pipe.

* Jails in Santa Clara County will eliminate free coffee and sugar next year in an effort to improve the health of inmates.

Wide World of Weird is published on Sundays. Off-Kilter runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.