Don’t die in London’s Houses of Parliament, or else

The BBC News runs the most wonderful stories. I’d have thought the following to be urban legends, were it not for today’s BBC News story “UK chooses ‘most ludicrous laws’ ” where I learned:

• It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament.
• Only a clerk in a tropical fish store has permission to be topless in public in Liverpool.
• The head of any dead whale found on the British coast automatically becomes the property of the King.

The story also details interesting laws in the U.S., Indonesia, Switzerland, France and elsewhere.

What a world!