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CHICAGO — Two sisters from Virginia sold their Illinois-shaped corn flake on eBay Friday night for $1,350.

"We were biting our nails all the way up to the finish, seeing what would happen," said Melissa McIntire, 23. "There's a lot of relief involved."

The winner of the auction, which lasted more than a week, is the owner of a trivia Web site who wants to add the corn flake to a traveling museum.

"We're starting a collection of pop culture and Americana items," said Monty Kerr of Austin, Texas. "We thought this was a fantastic one."

Kerr owns TriviaMania.com and said he will likely send someone to Virginia to pick up the flake by hand, so it won't be damaged. This isn't the first corn flake that Kerr has tried to buy. He said he purchased a flake billed as the world's largest, but that by the time it was delivered it had crumbled into three pieces.

McIntire and her sister Emily, 15, listed the corn flake on eBay last week, but eBay canceled the auction saying it violated the Web site's food policy.

The sisters restarted their Ebay auction, advertising a coupon redeemable for their corn flake, instead of the cereal itself.

The McIntires said they'll likely use the money for a family vacation.

Copycat items have popped up on eBay, including corn flakes shaped like Hawaii and Virginia. There's also been a potato chip shaped like Florida, and Illinois corn flake paraphernalia, including T-shirts and buttons.

ROCKFORD, Ill. — The heart transplant that saved Brian Troy was made possible by a fellow Marine.

Troy, 43, of Rockford, served as a Marine in the 1980s. He was dying of an inherited heart condition in 2006 when he received a new heart in a transplant. The donor was 23. Troy didn't know much more than that.

Then Troy saw headlines about the murder of a 23-year-old Marine. He read about how Ricky Martinez survived two tours in Iraq, but he was shot to death in Chicago in a case of mistaken identity. The gunman thought a passenger in Martinez' car was a rival gang member, prosecutors said.

That was enough for Troy to guess his donor's identity. He then sent a thank-you letter to the family through an organ donor network. The first letter went unanswered, but a second, sent more than a year later, received a reply.

And just last month, Martinez' family and Troy met. His mother, Adalilia Cruz, placed her hand on Troy's chest to feel the heart beating.

"It shows you what kind of a person my son was," she said. "Even after his life was gone, he kept helping."

Troy agrees.

"Not only did I get a heart, but I got a very honorable heart," he said.

Nearly 98,000 people are waiting for transplant of a vital organ, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. Troy works to encourage organ donation, organizing events and passing out fliers.

Illinois residents can register as organ donors at www.lifegoeson.com or by visiting any Secretary of State facility.

A woman’s trip to the Magic Kingdom was hardly a walk in the park after she says she was beaten up by a woman in a ‘line rage’ incident.

Aimee Krause says Victoria Walker accused her of cutting into the line at the Mad Tea Cup ride last year at Disney World, MyFOXOrlando reports.

Walker, an Alabama native, could face 15 years behind bars if convicted of battery with a deadly weapon.

Krause has now filed additional charges claiming her children were also attacked.

“She came from behind just screaming,” Krause told MyFOXOrlando. “Next thing I knew she kicked me in my left leg, threw me to the ground and at that point I was pinned between the teacup and the saucer and she continued to beat up on my body.”

In the incident report, Krause claimed Walker tried to choke her with a lanyard she wore to hold water bottles around her neck, MyFOXOrlando reports.

During a deposition Monday, Walker declined to accept a plea deal that would have given her a one-year jail sentence.

Jury selection for the ‘Tea Cup Madness’ trial will begin in April.

When a highway bridge spanning the Mississippi River collapsed last August in Minneapolis, killing 13 people, calls for action came from the highest levels. President Bush visited the scene of the disaster and assured the nation, “We in the federal government will respond,” and Congress allocated nearly $200 million for repairs.

But since then, very little has changed in how the country ensures bridges are safe. Throughout the U.S., bridges continue to be inspected only every two years, just as they were before the tragedy in Minnesota.

And although a disaster may have been averted on a Philadelphia bridge this week, it was only thanks to the careful watch of a single engineer.

Peter Kim wasn’t scheduled to inspect a certain overpass outside Philadelphia until next year, but the alert contractor, passing through the area on his way from lunch, spotted a 6-foot crack in a 40-year-old column on Interstate 95, the main highway corridor from New England to southern Florida.

“I passed by this column and saw that it had deteriorated to a point that needed immediate attention,” Kim said. A decision to close a stretch of the bridge and a portion of I-95 was made within minutes.

Around the country, 74,000 bridges are classified as structurally deficient. Just this week in Minnesota, another bridge was closed to traffic — its condition so poor that it may be beyond repair. Experts believe another collapse is all but inevitable.

“I would say that chances are we will have something occur in the future, [in] the next year or two, that will probably take lives again,” said Professor Kevin Womack, professor of civil engineering at Utah State University.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, reacting to the crack in Philadelphia, warned that Congress is siphoning money away from inspections, funneling it into pet projects.

“Those who say we need a more focused federal program, I agree: We should focus on national priorities, not on lighthouses [and] museums,” Secretary Peters said.

These troubled bridges are a problem with no easy solution: Engineering estimates say it will take $1.6 trillion to repair and replace them.

A German woman was not able to blow out her candles and make a wish, but her birthday cake served as an even better present — it saved her life.

The 26-year-old driver skidded on a snowy road and hit a tree near Freudenstadt, but walked away uninjured after landing on her homemade birthday cake, Germany’s The Local reports.

The car was completely wrecked, The Local reports, but the woman was fine after being caught by her airbag and the cake, police said.

WILMER, Texas — A registered sex offender is running for mayor of a Dallas-area town.

James Brian Sliter wants to be mayor of Wilmer. The election is May 10.

Records show that Sliter was arrested four years ago for arranging sex with someone he thought was a 15-year-old girl on the Internet. When Sliter got to the meeting place, he was greeted by police instead of a teenager.

Sliter, who is now 42, said he needs to prove that he can be an asset to his community. He says that he's truly sorry and hopes voters realize that people make mistakes.

Sliter was charged with attempting to sexually assault a child and placed on 10 years probation, according to state records. He's eligible to run because he received deferred adjudication and not a conviction.

"People need to realize that people make mistakes, and they need to look past those mistakes and forgive and move on," Sliter told Dallas TV news station KTVT. "I'm not asking anybody to condone what I did."

The town's current mayor, Don Hudson, said the campaign won't cast a good light on Wilmer.

"Will a sex offender serving as mayor put a stigma on this city? You bet it will," Hudson told KTVT.