Themes Off; Error in IE 5.5

Has anyone experienced the following error?

I have themes completely turned off and just have the loop called into action within several HTML documents, as I am using wordpress as the DB program for a “press release” page of a site I built. The coding works perfectly in IE6, Safari and Firefox.

However, I have had reports from my computer-inept clients (through one of my associates who actually SAW the problem and couldn’t figure it out) that when they tried to view the page on Windows 98 on Internet Explorer 5.5 (and, god help us, AOL’s browser), it apparently:
a) did not load the proper stylesheet (linked in my hard-coded php doc)
b) displayed a wordpress logo
c) completely destroyed the entire layout

This said I couldn’t get much more detail from them and I have no way to replicate the problem as I don’t have a box that old.

The site is here.

My only theory right now is that it’s somehow related to the archane system they’re running on. But since it’s all coming from coding on the back end, and displays just fine when it’s output to all web browsers I’ve tested, I totally can’t fathom how any browser of any sort could be dropping in images I haven’t even called.

Here’s the wordpress code from the front page:

<?php require(‘./wp-blog-header.php’); ?>
<?php define(‘WP_USE_THEMES’, false); ?>

<ul class="news">
<?php
$posts = get_posts(‘numberposts=3’);
foreach ($posts as $post) : start_wp(); ?>

<li>
<?php the_date(‘Y.m.d’); ?>
<font color="000000">&raquo;</font> <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark">
<?php the_title(); ?>
</a></li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>