Wanna Bet?
Every, single year for the past 40 years, a giant straw yuletide ram figure in the town of Gavle, Sweden has been set afire by vandals. Every year the town tries to tighten security. But even with watchmen and cameras, last year two men, one in a Santa suit and the other disguised as a gingerbread man, used flaming arrows and managed to set the structure ablaze. This year the town decided to really get serious: They doused the giant straw ram with fire retardant.
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – A town in Sweden this Christmas hopes to win its battle with vandals who almost every year for the past four decades have foiled security measures to burn down the town's giant Yuletide straw ram.
By dousing the 13-metre (43-feet) version of the traditional Swedish Yule ram with flame retardant, officials in Gavle aim to thwart arsonists who target the straw structure, a smaller version of which most Swedes have in their homes at Christmas.
"Not even napalm will get the ram to burn now," tabloid daily Aftonbladet quoted Freddy Klassmo, an official with the company who provided the flame retardant chemicals, as saying.
Now, I don't know about Sweden, but here in America that statement about napalm would be viewed as a challenge by a number of people. But here's a listing of the Akzo Nobel flame retardants. I wonder if there are any environmental issues with these?
World news | Gaius December 1, 2006
By steveH, December 1, 2006 @ 6:23 pm
Forty continuous years of the same thing? That sounds like a time-honored tradition to me. Those Scandinavians shouldn’t be so rigid in their beliefs. ;>