A Real Psychic Detective

Peter Hurkos, a dutchman, was a world famous psychic and was able to help police solved crimes on more than one occasion.

On one occasion, an arsonist was terrorizing Nijmegen, Holland and the police, skeptical at first, asked Hurkos to help. He toured the scenes of several of the fires, finally finding a charred screwdriver handle. He paused and said, "We must look for a boy - a boy in his teens." Still doubtful, the police supplied him with school yearbook pictures of every boy in the city. Finally, Hurkos picked out one boy in a group shot. He was the son of a very prominent and wealthy man, and the police did not want to act. Hurkos insisted, telling them that they would find a box of matches and a bottle of lighter fluid in the boy's pockets, even though he did not smoke. When the boy was brought in, he denied everything until Hurkos said, "Pull up the left leg of your overalls and show the police the scratches you got from the barbed-wire fence as you ran from the fire." The scratches were indeed on his leg, and the boy broke down and confessed.

On another occasion, Dutch police took him to a house where a man had been shot on his own doorstep. Hurkos touched the victim's coat for a few moments and then told police that the killer was an older man, wore spectacles, had a mustache and a wooden leg, and had thrown the gun used for murder on the roof of the house. Police searched the roof and found the gun. They also found fingerprints on the gun that convicted the dead man's father-in-law - an older mad who had a mustache, wore spectacles and had a wooden leg.

When the famed Stone of Scone was stolen from Westminster Abbey in 1950, Scotland Yard got nowhere until it invited the young but already famous Peter Hurkos to come to London. At the abbey, Hurkos touched a tool left by the thieves and after several hours he said he could "see" the escape route the thieves took and drew a detailed map - even though he had never been in London before. He said the culprits were three men and a woman, and gave detailed descriptions of them too. When all were arrested some months later, all four were found to match Hurkos' descriptions.

Random Odds & Ends

• Carrots were originally purple. The Dutch bred orange carrots in the 17th century which proved more popular.
• Tarantulas do not leave any tracks on the sand.
• Dolphins can talk ten times faster and at a ten times higher pitch than humans.
• An ostrich egg is big enough to make an omelet for 12 men. It can weigh up to four pounds and requires 40 minutes to boil.
• Fingernails grow about four times faster than toenails.
• Wearing black for mourning started in the 15th century. Anne of Britanny, widow of France's King Charles VIII, donned black when she went into mourning. Before that, Europeans wore white to symbolize hope or renewal.
• The Eiffel Tower weighs in at 10,100 tonnes.