Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
- One of the enduring mysteries about the dinosaurs has been whether they were cold- or warm-blooded. Recent analysis of growth rings and isotope signals in bones suggested that dinosaurs were warm-blooded, but
the results were inconclusive because the fossilation process changes the chemicals analysed and the analysis required the destruction of samples, leading to a restricted data set. Now a team led by Jasmina Wiemann
at CalTech have used a different, non-destructive technique. They looked at the waste products from inhaled oxygen reacting with proteins, lipids and sugars, which show up as dark patches in fossils, measurable with
infrared spectroscopy, and show the amount of oxygen taken in, hence whether the dinosaur was warm- or cold-blooded. The molecules studied are not water-soluble so extremely stable over time. The results were
compared with modern animals and suggest that dinosaurs, like their modern-day bird descendents, were warm-blooded. ● Researchers studying the signature whistles of dolphins, used to identify each other, have
found that they vary depending on where the dolphin lives implying that they have regional accents. ● A three-year study of bonefish off the Florida coast has shown that they contain significant levels of
pharmaceuticals including blood pressure medicines and anti-depressants. ● A chihuahua called Timon and a pig called Pumbaa, taken in by an Arizona animal shelter after their owner was arrested (for non-animal-related
crimes), have proven to be such inseparable friends that the shelter sought out a home where they could be together. Better Piggies Rescue in New River, Arizona, proved to be the place, and have announced that
the naturally friendly Pumbaa will be greeting visitors when public tours resume in September, no doubt with Timon close at trotter. ● A man who noticed that his nine-month-old kitten had started acting oddly,
including scratching the front door, peeing around the house, including on his bed, and meowing loudly paid £50 ($63) for an emergency vet's appointment only to be told that she was just sick of him working from
home and wanted some space... ● Scientists at the University of Western Australia have identified an underwater seagrass meadow as being a single plant. The seagrass covers about 77 square miles (200km2)
and is thought to have spread from a single seed over 4,500 years and is now the world's largest plant.
- Earlier this year scientists reported identifying the first examples of the mineral davemaoite at the Earth's surface. The mineral exists between 410 miles (660km) and 560 miles (900km) down in the lower mantle and
would naturally break apart as it moved towards the surface and pressure around it dropped, but the specimens identified were encased in a diamond, providing the pressure to keep them intact. Davemaoite was named after
geophysicist Ho-kwang "Dave" Mao, who developed many of the techniques used to study and classify it. ● A new method of transferring quantum data without loss should enable collaborating optical
telescopes over wide areas to improve imaging resolution by 3-5 orders of magnitude, enabling them to image nearby small extra-Solar planets, surface details of stars and accretion disks around black holes.
- Researchers have extracted and sequenced almost complete genomes from two Pompeii victims of the 72CE eruption of Vesuvius thanks to their bodies having been encased in hardened ash. The findings suggest that one of
the people probably had tuberculosis. ● Archaeologists flying over the South West Amazon rainforest with foliage-penetrating lidar scanners have found a network of lost cities described as "unprecendented".
● Earlier this week a boy on a County Down beach found what appeared to be a grenade. It was reported to police and destroyed in a controlled explosion in a nearby park. An army bomb squad officer confirmed that
it was a World War I "Mills Bomb", the first hand grenade to be widely deployed across the British army. The police later thanked the boy for alerting the authorities after finding it. ● A fossil of
a previously-unknown massive pterosaur, dubbed a flying "dragon of death" with a wingspan of 29'6" (9m) has been found in Argentina. ● The preserved footprints of an adult and child walking together
21,000-23,000 years ago beside what was a lake at White Sands in New Mexico have been discovered. It is thought they are of a mother and child. ● The remains of a lost 3,400-year-old palace city have been
revealed in Iraq after months of extreme drought caused more water than usual to be pulled from a Mosul reservoir for irrigation. Archaeologists are racing to excavate the site before water levels rise again. ●
To mark this week's 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation - she is already the longest-reigning monarch in British history - knitters in several towns have been creating royal-themed toppers for
letterboxes, but a knitting group in Holmes Chapel, Cheshire, have gone further, creating a life-sized knitted statue (the knitting is fitted around a cage over a donated shop mannequin) of the Queen, complete with
crown, handbag and a pet corgi. The group of about 40 knitters have been working on the statue since July last year. ● A collection of Beatles memorabilia from before they became famous has sold at auction for
£11,360 ($14,290). ● Construction of an industrial park near Merida, Mexico, has unearthed the ruins of an ancient Mayan city in which more than 4,000 people are thought to have lived between 600-900CE. ●
Massachusetts lawmakers have issued a formal pardon for Elizabeth Johnson, Jr, 329 years after she was sentenced to death during the Salem Witch Trials. She was never executed, but for some reason she was overlooked when
other victims of the miscarriage of justice were posthumously pardoned. Her case had been taken up by a group of schoolchildren last year. ● A 1964 Aston Martin DB5 owned by the late Sir Sean Connery - though not one
driven in Bond films, because the extra gadgets made that too heavy to drive normally - is being auctioned by his family to raise money for a philanthropy fund set up in his name. It is expected to sell for at least
£1,400,000 ($1,761,000).
- North Wales police who pulled over a car on the A55 found that the it did not have a valid MOT test result, while the driver was disqualified, uninsured, tested positive for cannabis and was wearing nothing but a coat... She
told them she was on her way to give her boyfriend a "special surprise". ● A man in court in Blackburn who admitted shoplifting shampoo worth £50 ($63) from a Boots shop in Darwen refused to
remove his hood in the dock, claiming that his hair was a mess. One of the chairs of the bench quipped "I'm not sure why your hair is a mess, it should be lovely with all that John Frieda." ● Police in
Birmingham are searching for the driver of a £500,000 ($629,000) Ferrari SF90 who abandoned it after crashing head-on into parked cars, wrecking the front of the Ferrari. ● A father in Hong Kong has been
billed for HK$33,290 (£3,400; $4,280) after his young son smashed a 6' (1.8m) statue of Laa-Laa, the yellow Telletubby, in a shop because he found it "scary". ● Oregon writer Nancy Crampton
Brophy, who wrote a 2011 blog post titled "How to Murder Your Husband" has been convicted of fatally shooting her husband in June 2018. ● A man who entered an Arlington, Texas, elementary school
campus last Thursday with a loaded gun in his waistband adjusted his trousers as he approached the school's front office and accidentally shot himself in the leg. Police said that they did not suspect him of any malicious intent
as he was there to collect his child, but arrested him anyway after he was discharged from hospital as it was against the law to take a gun onto school property. ● Chicago police are looking for a man who stood
behind a live news location report on the city's gun violence and appeared to wave a handgun at the reporter. ● Paris gendarmes arrested a man who disguised himself as an old woman in a wheelchair to approach
the Mona Lisa in the Louvre and - having failed to break its bulletproof protective glass - threw a gateau at it, leaving cream smeared across the glass. ● So far this year more school students have been killed
in shootings in America than police officers shot dead in the line of duty, according to several reports.
- Marvin Rees, Mayor of Bristol, took a nine-hour flight to Vancouver, Canada (a 4,600 mile (7,400km) journey generating 4,445lb (2,016kg) of CO2 per passenger, according to the Flight Free UK site), to give a talk to a TED
conference on how city mayors could influence carbon policy. Earlier this year Bristolians voted to abolish the post of directly-elected mayor after Rees' term ends in 2024. ● Modelling by the Alfred Wegener
Institute suggests that unless global warming is significantly reduced some 70% of the Siberian tundra could be lost by 2050. ● Earlier this week a 3.8 magnitude earthquake occurred about 5 miles (8km) under the
ground near between Stanton upon Hine Heath, Weston-under Redcastle and Hodnet in Shropshire. Locals described buildings shaking but there were no reports of serious injury.
- As part of a year-long celebration to mark the 125th anniversary of the publication of Bram Stoker's Dracula 1,369 people dressed as vampires gathered at Whitby Abbey in North Yorkshire last
week to set a new world record. They needed to all be wearing classic vampire costumes (cloak and fangs, basically) and stand together in one place for five minutes. Guinness World Records later confirmed that they had,
indeed, broken the previous record of 1,039 vampires set at Doswell, Virginia, in 2011. As well as all the men, women and children, there were several cloak-wearing dogs who, we presume, supplied their own fangs...
Whitby is closely associated with Dracula - the house where Stoker stayed while researching the book still stands, and Dracula arrives in Britain at Whitby to set up
homecoffin in the ruined Abbey.
IN BRIEF: Travel agency Ancient Mystery Cuise is offering travellers a cruise through the Bermuda Triangle, with a promised full refund if the ship disappears... [Who would they refund if the paying passengers
disappear with the ship? -Ed] ● The Boomtown Rats are changing their name to the Boomtown Longtails for one night to play a gig on the Isle of Man during the TT Festival, to honour centuries-old Manx folklore that
saying the name of the rodent species is bad luck. ● Language officials in France have created new French terms to replace English gaming language, including "rétrojeu" (retro gaming),
"contenu téléchargeable additionel" (additional downloadable content) and "joueur/joueuse professionel/professionelle" (E-sports professional gamers). ● A Reddit user
has amused the Internet after posting a picture of a Del Taco fast food chain voucher his cousin was given in a branch a few years ago. The voucher is for a free medium drink with the purchase of any epic burrito,
subject to the usual T&Cs, but what drew interest was its expiry date. It "Expires 1/6/2106". ● A man whose hands became permanently clenched as a result of the autoimmune disease scleroderma
has successfully had a double hand transplant. While not the first person to undergo the procedure his is thought to be the first in the world to have it because of scleroderma. ● The Rhode Island farmhouse
that was the inspiration for the 2013 horror film The Conjuring has been sold at auction for $1.525m (£1.21m); the new owners plan to host paranormal events and tours. ● Engineers at Northwestern
University in Illinois have created the world's smallest remote-controlled walking robots, each about 0.5mm (1/50") wide.
CORONAVIRUS ROUND-UP: Lockdown measures led to many education classes and exams moving online, but Shanghai University is being widely mocked for responding to the current city lockdown by declaring that
students who have yet to complete their mandatory 50m (164') swimming test before graduating can do it online. Students asked if they could do it in their baths, and one posted a video of himself in trunks and goggles
diving onto his bed and pretending to swim. The university is actually requiring them to complete a "Basic Theory of Swimming" test form, but quite how that can be anything like an actual lap in a pool
remains to be seen.
UKRAINE: A shop in Kyiv is selling stress toys designed to look like Vladimir Putin. Each mini-Putin comes with a coffin, a noose and Ukraine-flag-bearing pins to stick in it. ● Kalush Orchestra,
Ukrainian winners of this year's Eurovision Song Contest, have auctioned their trophy for €838,000 (£712,000; $900,000) for medical supplies and the purchase of three Ukrainian-made PD-2 drones for
the country's military.
Little Jennifer's parents had taken her to a family gathering. Her mother's aunt, who had never taken to Little Jennifer's father came up to them and asked her niece if her husband still
treated her with respect. Little Jennifer looked up at the severe face and declared "Daddy always treats Mummy like a queen!"
Bursting with pride and wanting to show how clever his daughter was, Little Jennifer's father asked her, "And if I treat Mummy like a queen, what does that make me, Little Jennifer?"
Without hesitating Little Jennifer smiled as only she could. "A servant!"
