You are about to become part of history, thanks to me.

That's right. You're about to read what I'm fairly certain is the first ever column to contain both the phrase "getaway donkey" and "Hitler's toilet."

You can now check "read column containing both the phrase ‘getaway donkey' and ‘Hitler's toilet' " off your bucket list.

We'll start with these two news bits:

News Bit No. 1, from United Press International, begins, "Colombian authorities said three men who burgled a convenience store were forced to abandon their loot when the getaway donkey alerted police with his braying."

When I read this, I'm not sure which amazed me more, the fact that these guys tried to use a getaway donkey, or that "burgled" is a word.

Anyway, the story states the men donkeynapped (hey, if UPI can use burgled, I can use donkeynapped) the animal with plans to use it to carry away the loot they stole from the store. But the donkey started yelling, alerting police and forcing the men to flee.

Meanwhile, in Florence, N.J. (Slogan: "The Florence That Doesn't Have To Deal With That Nimrod Columnist"), a man named Greg Kohfeldt said people often stop by his auto shop business to look at his toilet.

The UPI story explains there's a perfectly logical reason: The toilet used to belong to Adolf Hitler. In the 1950s the shop's previous owner installed the toilet, which came from Hitler's yacht.

The yacht was called the Aviso Grille, which, roughly translated, means, "The yacht that no longer has a toilet."

Kohfeldt said the yacht was taken by the British after World War II and stripped for scrap. They looked for a place for the toilet, and naturally, New Jersey came to mind.

KIDDING! I'm kidding, good people of the Garden State.

Kohfeldt said he'd sell the toilet if he received a strong offer. Otherwise, he said, "it'll sit here forever."

So far, nobody has been flushed (hee-hee) with enough excitement to take him up on the deal.

I would imagine the toilet remains well guarded. After all, Kohfeldt wouldn't want it to get burgled or toiletnapped.

I know you're still wondering how I'm going to connect these two stories.

Well, there is an obvious one about Hitler and the donkey having something in common: another word can be used to describe each of them, and it's the same word.

But since this is a family newspaper, I'll leave that behind, rather than getting to the bottom of it.

Bernie Delinski can be reached at 256-740-5739.