On the night of November 25th, 2000 in St. Johns, New Brunswick, the Coast Guard found a fleshy object floating in the harbour.
The police were called and the the mysterious object was picked up, and taken to a hospital for identification. It seemed to have been in the salt water for some time, and it was misshapen and rancid. The doctor dumped the flesh out of the large plastic bag and into a sink and began some preliminary visual investigation. The police were concerned that it may have been part of a human body.
After taking into account the size of the object (36 inches long, almost as wide and about 8 inches thick) and the structure of the muscle tissue, the doctor ended the suspense by revealing that this was in fact a side of beef...
...as the doctor so elequently put it, "...corned, obviously".
based on a radio interview aired Nov. 29th, 2000 on the CBC.