My father was a reporter in Cuba many years ago and heard of a rather tragic event. The father of a Cuban family had bought lottery tickets. Desperate to feed his family, he had traded the tickets to a grocery store owner for a few pounds of beans. When the lottery was announced, it turned out that his tickets would have won him about fifty thousand dollars. The irony of this was too much for the poor man's sense of humor, and he hanged himself from a poinciana tree.

Dad, as a reporter, wrote up the story and sent it off on the wire of the Associated Press. It was picked up all over the world, and republished.

As my father came downstairs from his office in the Havana Post, after sending the story, he began to visualize the story in his mind, and recognized that he had written that the poor man had hanged himself from a poinsettia, not a poinciana. He considered going back to kill the story, since a poinsettia would obviously not be big or strong enough for a hanging.

He let the story go. It was reprinted everywhere with no correction. And no one ever questioned Dad on the strange mistake.