It must be true…

An amateur rocket scientist with ambitions of traveling into space to prove that the Earth is flat survived a successful test flight in a steam-powered craft he built in his own garage. “Mad” Mike Hughes, a 61-year-old limousine driver, launched himself almost 2,000 feet above the Mojave Desert in California. After a hard landing aided by two parachutes, he complained of a backache and some cuts. “I’ll feel it in the morning,” Hughes said. “Am I glad I did it? Yeah. I guess. I manned up and did it.”

Visitors at the Royal Gorge Dinosaur Experience in central Colorado were treated to a brief but spectacular pyrotechnics show when the theme park’s life-size animatronic Tyrannosaurus rex burst into flames. At one point, the 24-foot-tall dinosaur appeared to be breathing fire as onlookers recorded the inferno for social media. The blaze—caused by an electrical problem—ultimately left nothing behind but a charred metal skeleton. “We knew he had a temper, but today he blew his top,” said Zach Reynolds, the park’s owner. “Our mighty T. rex is no longer. You might even say…extinct.”

A French waiter says that a restaurant in Vancouver violated his rights by firing him for rude and aggressive behavior, because that’s just how French people act. Guillaume Rey filed a complaint with British Columbia’s Human Rights Tribunal, claiming discrimination against his French culture, which“tends to be more direct and expressive.” The tribunal will hear the case, with a judge saying, “Mr. Rey will have to explain what it is about his French heritage that would result in behavior that people misinterpret as a violation of workplace standards.” ■