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In 1989, a Union Bridge, Md., high school permitted a female student, Tawana Hammond, 17, to try out for its football team under the pressure of a federal statute that bars school discrimination on the basis of gender.

On her first scrimmage, Tawana, a running back, was tackled and suffered massive internal injuries.

In October 1992, she filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against the county board of education for its alleged failure to tell her how dangerous football is.

Escondido attorney Ben Echeverria filed a $2 million lawsuit in August against Texaco Inc. and a local gas station manager because station attendants were pumping gas for women at self-service prices, but not for men.

The station almost immediately stopped its practice and forced women to start pumping for themselves.

A survey of home burglars' work preferences published in Whittle Communications' Special Report magazine revealed that 32 percent like to browse through family photographs while on the job, 27 percent like to raid the refrigerator, and 7 percent watch TV.

Seventy percent of the 191 imprisoned burglars reported they like to limit their jobs to a 20-minute maximum, 17 percent wondered what their victims were like, and 59 percent said a dog in the home was the most effective burglary deterrent.

The Associated Press reported that the village of Sodom, Conn., disappeared, like its biblical namesake.

Though it appears on maps, the AP writer interviewed residents of Sodom Road and the Sodom Corner intersection, both hallmarks of the village of Sodom, and discovered that everyone claims now to live in North Canaan.

Raleigh, N.C., police charged Vernon Edsel Brooks, 34, with robbing a Radio Shack in July, despite his foresight in disabling a video surveillance camera by taking the camera with him as he fled.

Because he forgot to take the recorder to which the camera was connected, police found a tape containing a full facial shot of Brooks reaching for the camera.

James Macdonals and William Shoesmith, both 26, were sentenced to five years in prison for bank robbery. According to his lawyer, Macdonald hated his robbery work and had to drink before each job. For what was to be the pair's last job, he got fall-down drunk and had to be carried by Shoesmith into the bank to pull off the heist. The two were soon captured.