Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
- A group of octopuses in Jarvis Bay, New South Wales, have been observed shooting debris such as shells and silt at other octopuses several body lengths away using their siphons to propel the objects with a jet of
water. The behaviour was often seen when an octopus was showing signs of anger. ● Kenyan TV reporter Alvin Kaunda was filming a report from a baby elephant orphanage in Nairobi when he was interrupted by one of
the residents coming up behind him and puttings its trunk over his shoulder and face. ● Researchers have detailed how cats were first domesticated in the near-East 10,000 years ago before spreading into Europe
around 3,000 years later, spread further west with the Romans and became fully established in the late medieval period. ● Soon after Laetitia De Amicis and her family moved from Ambly-sur-Meuse in north-east
France to Ginai in Normandy their cat, Cocci, went missing. Thirteen months later she was found in Souilly, 6 miles (9.7km) from her old home, having travelled 280 miles (450km) to get there. She has been reunited with
the family. ● Rosie, a 10-year-old border collie rescue dog from Loughborough, became separated from her owner after being scared by a firework while being taken for a walk on November 3rd. She was then
caught on CCTV walking into a nearby police station and calmly sitting down in the waiting room. Officers gave her water and made a fuss of her before calling the phone number on her collar tag. Steve and Julie Harper
were thrilled to get her back so soon, and amazed at the story. ● Rare healthy elephant twins have been born at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, New York. Less than 1% of elephant births are twins, and they
do not usually survive. ● A dead 18'- (5.5m)-long python's last meal was found to have been a large alligator. ● A one-year-old beagle called Lola who went missing in Stockport was found to have
befriended a fox, which guarded her as she slept. The two were also caught playing together on CCTV. ● An Atlanta naturalist has filmed a cardinal bird perching on a web spun by a jorō spider. The bird
scared the spider away before eating insects trapped in the web. It is the first time a bird has been seen perching on a spider's web to eat; previously they have been filmed hovering beside them or perched on a nearby
branch.
- NASA scientists are studying Australian rocks to learn how ancient microbes shaped them, to give themselves an insight into what to look for on Martian rocks that might indicate the existence of microbes in the past. ●
A team from NASA have released a report on why they think we have not encountered alien life - according to their theory intelligent life has fundamental dysfunctions that lead civilisations to destroy themseves.
The report labels this the Great Filter, and warns that humanity can only avoid it by "identifying [destructive] attributes in ourselves and neutralyzing them in advance". ● Divers searching for wreckage
from World War II aircraft off the coast of Florida earlier this year found debris from the Space Shuttle Challenger which exploded soon after launch on January 28th 1986 and crashed into the sea. Much
of the debris including the remains of the boosters and the crew compartment were recovered in the following weeks, but as the discovery shows, there may be yet more parts to find, which could shed new light on the
disaster. ● The U.S. Space Force [feel free to play the cheesy anthem and stand with hands-on-hips staring resolutely to one side... -Ed] unmanned X-37B spacecraft has landed at the Kennedy Space Centre after
spending a record 908 days in orbit. The purpose of the craft, which resembles the Space Shuttle, is classified, but it is known to have deployed a U.S. Air Force Academy satellite carrying five experiments into orbit.
NASA's massive Space Launch System (SLS) rocket carrying an unmanned Orion spacecraft launched successfully earlier this week after it was found to have suffered only superficial damage from Tropical Storm
Nicole. If all goes to plan the Orion craft will travel around the Moon at an altitude of around 60 miles (97km) then back to Earth before splashing down on December 11th.
- A 600-year-old gold English coin has been found by an amateur historian on the coast of Newfoundland. The coin predates the long-thought earliest European contact with North America since the Vikings by 70 years.
● A gold ring found in 1994 by a metal detectorist in Knaresborough has been valued at up to £30,000 ($35,650) ahead of its auction. The finder had kept it in a cupboard for almost 30 years before deciding to
get it valued. It is thought to date to 100 BCE and to have belonged to a Celtic chieftain. ● The earliest-known evidence of cooking has been found at an archaeological site in Isreal. It suggests that fish were
being cooked at least 780,000 years ago. ● A pair of 1970s "well used" brown suede Birkenstock sandals owned by the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs have been sold at auction for almost $220,000
(pound;185,100).
- Student Patrick Thelwell, arrested for throwing eggs at King Charles last week (he missed) in protest at historic slavery has had his bail terms altered after complaining that being forbidden from carrying eggs in
public meant he could not do his grocery shopping. He must now have a receipt for any eggs on his person. ● A man has been jailed for trying to sell the house he was living in for over £400,000 ($475,400).
He was renting the three-bedroom property in Cambridge. The truth came to light when a prospective buyer talked to neighbours who told him they thought it was being rented. ● Transportation Security
Administration (TSA) officers at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Aiport in Florida recently found a handgun hidden inside a raw chicken in a traveller's luggage. ● A nurse in Wisconsin has been
charged with elder abuse after allegedly amputating the frostbitten foot of a dying nursing home resident without his permission. It is claimed she intended to bronze it and display it in her family's taxidermy shop
under a sign saying "Wear your boots, kids." The victim had entered the care centre after a fall and heating failure at home had left him with frostbite.
- Researchers from Maryland University have found that honey bees' average lifespans are now 17.7 days, roughly half of what they were in the 1970s, and colonies are producing less honey than they did then. ●
the Global Witness campaign group has reported that more than 600 people attending the COP27 climate summit have links to fossil fuel companies. To get to the conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, delegates
used more than 100 private jets in addition to commercial flights.
IN BRIEF: A group of attendees at the National Beard and Moustache Championships in Caspar, Wyoming, last weekend attempted to set a new record for the longest beard chain; by standing side-by-side and clipping
their beards together they made a chain 150' (45.7m) long, more than twice the previous record. ● A girl born in the Philippines this week has been chosen as the symbolic eight-billionth person on Earth by the United
Nations. ● KFC in Germany has had to apologise after sending an app alert to customers saying that "It's memorial day for Kristallnacht! Treat yourself with more tender cheese on your crispy chicken. Now at
KFCheese!" Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) was the start of a two-day wave of destruction of 267 synagogues and thousands of Jewish businesses, and the murder or arrest of Jewish people, in 1938 Nazi Germany
that is considered the beginning of the Holocaust. The company blamed a "semi-automated content creation process linked to calendars that include national observances"... ● A man who thought he was going
deaf in one ear bought a home endoscopy kit and discovered that part of an earplug had been lodged in it for the last five years, ever since he used earplugs to deaden the aircraft noise while flying to Australia. ●
Llandegley International Airport in Wales is no more. Well, it never actually existed but a joke road sign has been in place near the village of Llandegley for almost 20 years. The sign is loved by locals and on social
media, and has drawn no complaints over its time, but at a cost of about £1,500 ($1,780) a year to maintain, creator Nicholas Whitehead, who once wrote with Mony Python's Terry Jones, has decided that it is time
for it to retire, and hopes that Cadw, the Welsh government's heritage body might take it. ● In the U.S. mid-term elections Anthony DeLuca won a landslide victory in Pennsylvania with over 85% of the vote. He
has been a state representative for 39 years, sponsored more than 100 pieces of legislation in the 2021-22 session and, er, died in October, too late for the ballots to be changed... A special election
will be held. ● If you have a spare €260,000 (£227,000; $259,000) and are looking for something a little bigger than a house, the entire Spanish village of Salto de Castro, located near the border with
Portugal, is for sale. The 44 homes, church, school, hotel, swimming pool and barracks were abandoned more than 30 years ago and the current owner has given up on his plans of making it a tourist spot. ● Last
week it was mini-Bounty bars in Celebrations tubs, now Cadbury's has revealed that it is removing mini-Twirl bars from some tubs of its Heroes chocolates, replacing them with two full-sized bars, because of supply
problems. ● As precisely everyone - bar one - could have predicted, Twitter has been thrown into chaos after new owner Elon Musk changed the blue-tick verification to a subscription model (and, apparently, fired
a lot of the workers who were previously involved in verifying applications). The move saw a spate of fake accounts, including one claiming to be a U.S. pharmaceutical company, which cost the real company a noticeable
drop in share price after tweeting that "insulin is now free!" Musk then temporarily closed the subscription option, booted the new parody accounts and introduced a grey tick for certain verified accounts
before withdrawing that and saying that all legacy blue ticks would be removed at a certain date. Big brand advertisers (except for SpaceX which bought a top-level advertising package; SpaceX is owned by Musk) and users
are leaving the site in droves. Musk also posted a technical explanation of what he saw as the problem with Twitter's software only to have one of the company's longest-serving programmers reply that it was utter
nonsense. He got fired within the day. [We'll be there watching the drama until EgoElon tries forcing subscriptions on non-verified accounts... -Ed]
Little Jennifer's mother walked into the kitchen to find Little Jennifer standing on a chair in front of the store cupboard with a jar of peanut butter in her hand and her finger in the
jar. "Little Jennifer! Haven't I told you not to stick your finger in the peanut butter?"
Little Jennifer pulled her finger out of the jar, stuck it in her mouth and licked the peanut butter off, then stuck it back in the jar, smiled as only she could, and said "It's alright,
Mummy, I washed my hand first!"
