Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
- When Craig Baulderstone, 59, from Adeleide, South Australia, went to do some work on a rally car that had been sitting idle for some months he opened the door to discover "at least a hundred" huntsman
spiders hatching from an egg sac near the lock mechanism. He carefully closed the door and got his wife and children to show them then "found another job to do so I could leave them in peace to disperse."
Two days later the spiders had gone. Huntsman spiders typically grow to a leg span up to 5.9" (15cm) and while non-fatal their bite can cause severe pain and injury to humans. ● Wild dolphins have been seen
in New York City's Bronx River for the first time in more than five years; authorities have been working to clean up the river for the last few decades. ● A 12-year-old boy fishing with his mother from a boat
off Florida caught something remarkable - an 11'- (3.4m)-long great white shark. Crew members helped him to reel it in over 45 minutes, after which it was tagged and released. ● A seal pup discovered in
a field in Walton-le-Dale, Lancashire, more than 15 miles (24km) from the sea, has been rescued and returned. A veterinary nurse who had been walking her dog, and the farmer who owned the field coaxed it into a large
dog cage to keep it safe before experts from British Divers Marine Life Rescue could transport it to the coast. It is thought that it had swum up the River Darwen. ● A man in Japan who installed a webcam over
his fish tank and used motion-tracking software to translate the fishes' movements into button inputs to have them play the latest Pokémon game on a livestream had left them unattended when the game crashed. The
software continued to generate button presses from their movements which navigated the Nintendo Switch console to its online store, where they not only caused his credit card details to be displayed to viewers but also
added ¥500 (£3.10; $3.82) to his account, triggered a download and changed the account name. Nintendo granted the man a refund. ● Scientists have discovered a new colony of emperor penguins in Antarctica
by using satellite imaging to detect the patches of brown stains caused by the penguins' faeces on the white snow and rock. ● A wallaby has been photographed hopping across a frozen field near Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
● Rangers clearing a trail in the Conway National Park in North Queensland, Australia, were stunned to come across a giant cane toad which weighed a potentially world record-breaking 6lb (2.7kg). The toad, which
is thought to be female, was dubbed "Toadzilla" and sent to the Queensland Museum for further study. ● SyFy Channel films notwithstanding, the last few years have seen an increase in the number of two-headed
sharks discovered, usually conjoined twins who did not separate properly. They generally die shortly after birth.
- New analysis of seismic waves from near-identical earthquakes which passed along similar paths through the Earth's core in the 1960s has suggested that the spinning solid core, suspended in a liquid metal outer core,
could have slowed down its speed of rotation, or even paused, pending a change in direction. Fans of The Core need not rush out to build an 'Unobtanium' vessel to tunnel into the outer core and explode nuclear
bombs to restart the spin - it is thought that the core's spin has changed direction several times in the past, possibly as recently as the 1970s. ● Astronomers are warning that stars are becoming less visible
as the night sky gets up to 10% brighter every year due to light pollution, according to a new study based on more than 50,000 observations from around the world.
- Archaeologists at Qubbat al-Haw on the West bank of the River Nile in Egypyt have discovered ten mummified crocodiles in an undisturbed tomb. The crocodiles - five near complete and five heads - were analysed with
CT scans so they did not have to be unwrapped and are thought to date from the 5th Century BCE. Hundreds of mummified animals, including crocodiles, have been discovered before, but these are the first to be studied
in depth and shed light on mummification techniques. ● Archaeologists working along the planned route of the HS2 high speed train line have identified about 200 impact marks from pistol shots on the buried
remains of the gatehouse of Coleshill Manor in Warwickshire, and recovered more than 40 musket balls nearby suggesting that it might have been the site of an unrecorded early skirmish in the English Civil War, perhaps
before the nearby 1642 Battle of Curdworth, the first recorded battle of the War. The manor was in Royalist ownership at the time and of strategic importance as it was close to a bridge over the River Cole. ●
Barnsley vintage clothing seller Glass Onion is looking to reunite a 170+-year-old jacket made by indigenous Canadians with the community that made it. The jacket was in a bale of clothing imported from the US. ●
Archaeologists at the Newport Ship conservation project are trying to reassemble the wreck of a C15th ship found in the banks of the River Usk in South Wales after twenty years of preservation work on the
timbers. They have almost 2,500 pieces of the ship, which was 98'- (30m)-long and weighed 25 tonnes. Project curator Toby Jones described the reassembly as being like "a massive, flat-pack ship [with] no
instructions". ● New DNA analysis has suggested that historic plagues like the Black Death were not caused by newly-evolved strains of bacteria, but by ones that had evolved up to centuries before outbreak.
● The discovery of a fossilised dinosaur hatchery of 92 nests and 256 eggs has suggested that dinosaurs - in this case the colossal sauropods titanosaurs - did not incubate their eggs as modern birds, the
living descendants of dinosaurs, do but left them to hatch and the young to fend for themselves.
- A man sitting in the front passenger seat of a pickup truck on a road 45 miles (72km) south of Wichita, Kansas, was fatally shot after a dog jumped into the back of the truck and stood on the trigger of a still-loaded hunting
rifle that had been laid there, causing it to fire. ● A car thief in Cheshire was caught thanks to the recent cold weather. The man had abandoned the car when he realised that officers were following him and ran
off, successfully evading them, but they noticed distinctive footprints in the snow, starting at the car, and tracked them to a nearby house where they arrested him after matching his shoes to the prints. The man was recalled to
prison for a previous conviction, given a two month sentence and ordered to pay a surcharge. ● Serial killer and suspected cannibal Robert Maudsley has set a new world record for spending more time in solitary
confinement than any other prisoner in history after attacks on other prisoners and staff since his incarceration in 1974 have led him to be kept in isolation for more than 16,200 days - almost 45 years. He now occupies a
thick glass-walled cell-within-a-cell familiar to anyone who has seen The Silence of the Lambs and is only allowed outside for an hour a day accompanied by six guards. ● The Apple Watch crash alert warning
has struck again, with ambulances and fiteen police officers sent to a suspected shooting at a gym in Sydney, Australia. The watch was being worn by Jamie Alleyne, who was running a boxing class. A client punching pads
on Alleyne's hands as he gave commands like "1-1-2" to indicate which hand to hit led to the watch's accelerator registering impacts and the Siri voice assistant interpreting the commands as emergency phone
numbers - 112 can be used from mobile phones in Australia. Alleyne has since disabled Siri... ● Officers of Thailand's Narcotics Control Board have seized 1.1 tonnes of crystal methamphetamine hidden inside
tea and coffee packages due to be sent to various countries. Ten people were arrested.
- An iceberg almost 600 square miles (1,554km2) in size - roughly the size of Greater London - has calved from the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica, the second significant calving from the shelf in two years.
● Engineers at the University of New South Wales are working to adapt diesel engines to run on a mix of hydrogen with a small amount of diesel. They claim that the engines emit less than 15% of the emissions of
regular diesel engines. ● Normally in Britain Scotland is colder and the southeast (including London) is hotter. As this issue is being written the situation is reversed with below-freezing temperatures in
Oxforshire and mild weather in the Highlands. In the last few weeks Scotland has seen freezing weather, with a rare ice disk forming at the foot of a small waterfall on a mountain at the head of Loch Fyne in Argyll,
and - unlike certain ski resports in Europe reported on in an earlier issue, where snowfall is so low snow machines have been called into use - there was so much snowfall in the Highlands that the Lecht Ski Centre in
the Cairngorms had to close because 6' (1.8m) drifts were blocking roads leading to it.
- The police department in Cumberland, Rhode Island, received an unusual request after Christmas. A young girl wrote to them saying that "I took a sample of a cookie and carrots that I left for Santa
and the reindeer on Christmas Eve and I was wondering if you could take a sample of DNA and see if Santa is real?" She enclosed the evidence. The Rhode Island Department of Health-Forensic Sciences unit recently
responded saying that while it was not able "to definitively confirm or refute the presence of Santa" there was a partial match "to a 1947 case centred around 34th Street in New York City"
[referencing the 1947 Christmas film Miracle on 34th Street] adding that they did find the presence of DNA closely matching Rangifer tarandus [reindeer] on the carrot sample. Tweeting about the
request they said that "we can all agree that something magical may be at play."
IN BRIEF: A woman in Barranquilla, Colombia, is celebrating after winning 1,488,882,590 pesos (£268,000; $330,210) from two lottery tickets on the anniversary of her husband leaving her for her best
friend. ● Calderdale Council in West Yorkshire are being mocked for having an 8' (2.5m) diameter semi-circular bicycle lane painted beside the main road in Halifax. ● A letter posted in Bridgwater, Somerset,
in 1995 - 28 years ago - has finally been delivered to an address in Wylam, Northumberland. Franking stamps suggested it had been lying around in a Northumberland sorting office. It was addressed to a former occupant
of the house. ● A new study has suggested that people who suffer from sleep disorders like insomnia or sleep paralysis may be more likely to report seeing ghosts or aliens. ● This issue is being written on
Burns Night, celebrated in Scotland and by Scottish communities around the world. Around 140 people, including 50 Scots, at the British Antarctic Survey's Rothera Station in Antarctica celebrated an early Burns Night
last weekend, thanks to the RRS Sir David Attenborough, which delivered frozen haggis on its last visit. ● Four-year-old Teddy from Portishead in Somerset has become the youngest member of Mensa, the
organisation for people in the 98th percentile or higher on a standard IQ test. According to his mother, Teddy, who can count to 100 in six languages, taught himself to read at 26 months "by watching
children's television and copying the sounds of letters". ● British Army officer Preet Chandi has set a new record for the longest solo, unsupported and unassisted polar expedition, trekking over 868 miles
(1,397km) across Antarctica. ● Scientists at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have created an artificial skin that is more sensitive than human skin. They hope it could be used in prostheses, robots
and human-machine interfaces. ● Researchers at the University of Seville and the University of Bristol have solved a mystery that intrigued Leonardo da Vinci more than 500 years ago - why some bubbles in liquid
rise in a spiral. Using computer modelling they found that once a bubble reaches a certain size water pressure causes it to deform, causing the zigzag motion.
Little Jennifer's father was reading her school report. "Maths: 14th, English: 8th, Geography: 12th, Writing: 6th... Isn't there anything
you're first in, Little Jennifer?"
Little Jennifer thought for a moment, then smiled as only she could. "Oh, yes, Daddy. When the bell goes at the end of school I'm always first out of the door!"
