Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
- A rare Goodfellow's tree kangaroo joey, the first to be born at Chester Zoo, last July, has emerged from its mother's pouch. ● Scientists who analysed faeces collected from the slopes of Mount Everest have
confirmed the presence of Pallas' cat at two locations. The wildcat species, the size of a domestic cat, is rare and elusive, and has previously been recorded on Central Asian steppes and grasslands. ● Researchers
at St Andrew's University who asked volunteers to interpret videos of wild chimp and bonobo gestures have concluded that such gestures probably originated in a common ancestor with humans. The study was inspired by the
similarity of gestures made by human infants to those made by the apes. ● Rangers in Colorado who set up motion-triggered cameras to observe animals in the wild were stunned when they discovered that of 580 pictures
snapped by one camera about 400 were of the same inquisitive bear, dubbed "selfie bear" on social media. ● Data analyst Floe Foxon believes he might have solved the mystery of Bigfoot, or Sasquatch,
sightings in the Pacific Northwest of the USA. Postulating that a bear standing on its hind feet could be mistaken for a humanoid, Foxon correlated reports of Bigfoot sightings with black bear populations. He found that
"on average, one 'sighting' is expected for every 900 bears. Based on statistical considerations, it is likely that many Sasquatch are really misidentified known forms." ● Scientists who studied 105 videos
of cats both on YouTube and provided by owners have concluded that domesticated cats have three personalities: 'playful', 'agonistic' or 'intermediate'. [Or perhaps nobody films them unless they are doing something
interesting... -Ed] ● A woman who recently bought a punnet of strawberries from supermarket Lidl discovered a small gecko in it. The Egyptian gecko had travelled almost 3,000 miles (4,830km) and was handed into
the care of the RSPCA.
- In the late 1970s images of a 1.2 mile- (2km)-long mesa in Mars' Cydonia region, taken by the Viking 1 orbiter, gave rise to the "Face on Mars" pareidolia. Now an image of the surface of Mars taken
by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter last December has revealed what looks (albeit vaguely) like the face of a bear. ● Radio astronomers who used an AI system to analyse a previously-studied 150Tb data set gathered
from 480 hours of observation for possible signs of alien technology found that the AI detected eight signals worthy of further investigation that had previously been passed over. They are probably down to interference
but show that AI provides a worthy new means of analysis. ● Footage of a flying 'whirlpool' filmed from the Mauna Kea observatory in Hawaii, which went viral online this week, was probably caused by a SpaceX
rocket launch. ● As this issue is being written green comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is making its closest approach to Earth for 50,000 years and - given clear skies - should be visible with binoculars or a telescope to
the north in the early hours.
- Archaeologists in Japan have discovered an 8'- (2.4m)-long iron sword in a 4th Century burial mound. ● Human bones discovered in a cave in Cumbria have been found to be 11,000 years old, and dubbed
the "oldest northerner" in Britain. ● A gold leaf-covered mummy has been found sealed in a sarcophagus at a burial site at Saqqara, south of Cairo, Egypt. ● Scientists have discovered fossils
of monkey ancestors off the north-west coast of Greenland, suggesting that the squirrel-sized early primates lived in what is now the Arctic 52 million years ago. ● Two bollards that had been dug up to be
reinstalled by London Bridge have revealed that London's bollards were often made of old cannon barrels in centuries past. ● A shipwreck discovered 105' (32m) below sea level off the coast of East Sussex in 2019
has been identified as the Dutch warship Klein Hollandia, built in 1656 and sunk in 1672 during the second Anglo-Dutch war of 1665-1667. ● The owner of a vape shop in Maidstone, Kent, asked to go into
its basement to take a gas meter reading had a look around while he was down there and discovered a vaulted crypt and a network of tunnels possibly dating to the early 1300s when a priory stood on the site.
- A drink-driver who was twice over the blood-alcohol limit suffered a double idignity in Birmingham last October. Not only did he crash his Maserati sports car into railings and a traffic light at a junction, there
was a police car waiting to turn onto the road. This week he was fined almost £2,000 ($2,470) and banned from driving for twelve months. ● A woman returning home in Seattle realised there was an intruder so
she left the building and called the police. When they went in they discovered a fully-clothed man sitting in a bathtub full of water. He was arrested for residential burglary but declined to say why he was taking a
bath in his clothes. ● German police have arrested a woman on suspicion of murdering her doppelgänger, a woman who looked remarkably similar to her, to fake her own death. ● Police in Maryland have
released CCTV footage of a man lifting Murphy, a popular life-sized metal sculpture of a gorilla, kept in an antiques shop, into his pick-up truck in the early hours, and appealed for information leading to Murphy's
return. ● In an effort to curb bad behaviour by its customers in the wake of police and media reporting groups of rampaging youths, a McDonald's in Wrexham, Wales, has replaced its in-house pop music with
classical and switched off public wi-fi at between certain hours. ● New Jersey police have arrested a 29-year-old woman who enrolled at a New Brunswick high school using fake documentation, and attended classes
for four days before being caught. ● A 19-year-old student in Iowa has been arrested for faking cancer to steal thousands of dollars from online well-wishers. Police discovered an IV pole with a feeding pump,
medical supplies in a relative's name, a wig and cash when they raided her home. GoFundMe has promised to repay the $37,000 (£30,000) donated by over 400 individuals, businesses, colleges and cancer foundations.
The scam came to light when doctors noticed "life-threatening irregularities" in the way the medical equipment was being used in her videos and photographs, and police could find no nearby hospitals that had
treated her.
- A rare Nacreous, or 'mother-of-pearl' cloud has been seen over Scotland. The clouds, in which sunlight reflects off ice crystals to give them their unique colouration, normally form high in the atmosphere in
-80oC (-112oF) air over polar regions, but a weakening of the polar vortex winds that circle the Arctic and lock in the cold polar air allowed it to slip south. ● Electric cars are often
said to be more environmentally friendly because of their lack of emissions, despite requiring precious metals and copious energy to manufacture. Another problem was highlighted in Sacramento this week after a Tesla
Model S caught fire. Because of the intensity of the fire firefighters needed almost 6,000 gallons of water - in a state still under drought conditions - to extinguish it, and had to jack up one side of the burning
car to spray the lithium-ion battery pack.
IN BRIEF: The Associated Press was mocked this week for issuing a new style guidebook that ruled using the the word 'the' followed by a label such as in "the poor, the mentally ill, the French, the
disabled [..]" could be dehumanising. The French Embassy in Washington, D.C., tweeted that it would now have to refer to itself as the "Embassy of Frenchness in the U.S." ● Passengers on a flight
from Dubai to Auckland, New Zealand, flew for 13 hours then found themselves back in Dubai after flooding forced the closure of Auckland Airport when the flight was halfway there. ● The British Trust for
Ornithology found itself locked out of its Twitter account recently. Attempts to contact Twitter - where most support staff were fired by Elon Musk after his takeover - for an explanation failed to get a response but
a spokesman for the charity speculated that it was because they had been tweeting about sightings of woodcocks. [Good thing they were not in Scunthorpe as well... -Ed] ● A life insurance firm that used a photograph
of serial killer doctor Harold Shipman, believed to have murdered up to 250 patients, alongside the strapline "Because you never know who your doctor might be" in an advert has been ordered to submit future
adverts to review by a risk carrier. ● Rick Astley is suing the rapper Yung Gravy for allegedly using someone to impersonate his voice on a recent song that used the underlying composition of Astley's "Never Gonna Give
You Up", but not his voice, under license. ● Drivers on the A7 in Marbella, Spain, had a payday earlier this week after a car crash caused a bag of €20,000 (£17,740; $21,900) in €50 notes to fly out of one of
the cars' windows and burst, sending notes flying across the road. Drivers and even passengers on a bus that had had to stop grabbed as much as they could. ● When the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the San Francisco
49ers to win the NFC American football title last weekend the Empire State Building in New York City was lit up in the Eagles' green and white, something that attracted the anger of many New Yorkers, whose city has two
American football teams and who view the Eagles as an arch-enemy. As one resident tweeted, "King Kong should have destroyed you". ● Copies of the first two Harry Potter books, signed for a school librarian
when author J.K. Rowling visited to give a talk in 1999, are to be auctioned after being kept on a shelf for 23 years. They are expected to fetch between £l1,500 and £2,000 ($1,850-2,470). ● Researchers
have created a tiny robot out of gallium infused with magnetic particles that can shape-shift to melt its way past bars before reforming. [At just 3mm (0.1") wide it is not a threat to any visiting T-800s... yet. -Ed]
● An original, if damaged, costume of much-unbeloved 1990s British TV character Mr Blobby that was put up for auction on eBay recently sold for £62,000 ($76,500) after it went viral on social media, although
the buyer then backed out and the seller decided to hang on to it. ● A pea-sized capsule containing highly-radioactive Caesium-137, which came loose and fell off a Rio Tinto subcontractor's lorry somewhere along
the 870 mile- (1,400km)-long road between the Gudai-Darri mine in Kimberley and Perth, Australia, has been located. The capsule, part of a density gauge, would have exposed anyone handling it to the equivalent radiation
they would receive by walking around outdoors in a year, per hour, and could cause skin damage, burns and radiation sickness.
UPDATES: NASA's Perseverence Mars rover has deposited its tenth and final rock sample tube at a site known as Three Forks. If a later mission to Mars is unable to retrieve the samples retained in the
rover for return to Earth the tubes provide an alternative cache that can be collected. ● Dharmesh A. Patel, who was driving his family in their Tesla when it went off a cliff and fell 250' (76m) has been held
on suspicion of attempted murder and child abuse. The incident was initially hailed as 'a miracle' because nobody was killed but investigators are now studying the car wreckage to try to rule out mechanical failure.
