Pickled corpse tumbles out of rum barrel

[Troll]

Pickled corpse tumbles out of rum barrel
Thirsty Hungarians find surprising cause for drink’s ‘special taste’

BUDAPEST, Hungary - Hungarian builders who drank their way to the bottom of a huge barrel of rum while renovating a house got a nasty surprise when a pickled corpse tumbled out of the empty barrel, a police magazine Web site reported.

According to online magazine www.zsaru.hu, workers in Szeged in the south of Hungary tried to move the barrel after they had drained it, only to find it was surprisingly heavy and were shocked when the body of a naked man fell out.

The Web site said that the body of the man had been shipped back from Jamaica 20 years ago by his wife in the barrel of rum in order to avoid the cost and paperwork of an official return.

According to the Web site, workers said the rum in the 300-liter barrel had a “special taste” so they even decanted a few bottles of the liquor to take home.

The wife has since died and the man was buried in a proper grave.

Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12631404/

[Troll]

Body-in-the-rum story had us over a barrel
Reuters withdraws tale of Hungarian workers’ finding body in rum cask

OK, maybe we should have known it was too good to be true. But we couldn't resist the story, offered by Reuters as legitimate, of workers in Budapest who drank a barrel of rum with a special flavor and then were mortified to find a pickled corpse at the bottom of the barrel. So we published it Thursday.

Readers soon began questioning the veracity of the tale and pointing out references to similar stories on urban legends sites. On Friday, MSNBC.com contacted a Reuters senior editor, who said our call was not the first and promised to try to get to the bottom of the matter. We altered our version of the story to reflect Reuters' efforts and inject a hint of skepticism.

On Tuesday, Reuters issued the following advisory: “The Budapest story headlined "Hungary workers get shock at bottom of rum barrel" issued on May 4 is withdrawn. Police said the incident, reported on a police magazine Web site, happened 10 years ago. Reuters has been unable to make any further checks to substantiate the story. There will be no substitute story.”

© 2006 MSNBC Interactive

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12705304/from/RS.1/