Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
- A lobster fisherman on Belfast Loch, Northern Ireland, pulled up a pot recently and found that it contained a blue lobster, a colouring thought by marine biologists to be a 1 in 2 million rarity (We previously
reported on blue lobsters caught off Nova Scotia in 2016 and 2021). Because it was too small to keep legally he photographed it before returning it to the water. ● In 2020 what was hailed as a sensational
fossil discovery was made at a cave site in India. Declared to be a Dickinsonia tenuis, one of the earliest animals, its discovery attracted interest from both scientific and general media as it seemed to
date from the time before Gondwanaland, the giant landmass, split to form India, Australia, South America and Antarctica because a fossil from the same species haad been found in South Australia. A group of
scientists have now visited the cave site and concluded that the 'fossil' was just the imprint of a recently decayed "giant beehive"... ● A homeowner in Sonoma County, California, was puzzled when
mealworms started crawling out of a bedroom wall. When he made a 4"- (10.2cm)-square hole in the wall acorns, some partially-eaten, began spilling out, and kept coming. A pest control officer concluded that the
stash had been made by a pair of acorn woodpeckers which, over the last few years, had dropped acorns through a hole in the chimney before getting into the attic through another hole to eat them; the discarded acorns
had then found their way into the wall cavity. After making three more holes in the wall to get at them, tens of thousands of acorns were eventually removed from the house in eight large bin bags. ● Guinness
World Records has certified a 30-year-old Rafeiro do Alentejo dog called Bobi as the world's oldest living dog and oldest dog ever. Bobi, who lives in Portugal, is more than twice the average oldest age for his breed.
● Punxsutawney Phil, the world's most famous prognosticating groundhog saw his shadow last week and so predicted another six weeks of Winter, according to his handlers. According to the National Oceanic and
Atmosphere Administration "on average [over the last ten years], Phil has gotten it right 40% of the time". Although probably the most famous, Phil is not the only weather forecasting animal. A groundhog called
Chuck at the Staten Island Zoo in New York disagreed, predicting an early Spring, while Scramble the duck in Connecticut agreed with Phil. Bee Cave Bob, an armadillo in Texas, forecast an early Spring as did Snohomish
Slew, a frog in Washington State and Sand Mountain Sam, an opossum in Alabama.
- In 2019 astronomers discovered 20 new unidentified moons around Saturn, taking its total to 82 and making it the planet with the most moons in the Solar System, ahead of Jupiter's 80. Now another 12 moons have
been discovered around Jupiter, retaking the title for the planet, with 92 known moons, although most of the new ones are probably too small to be named. ● Researchers at University College London and the
University of Cambridge have discovered a new form of ice. Shaking ordinary ice with steel balls in a container cooled to -200oC (-328oF) they found that, instead of just breaking the ice into
smaller chunks, it became a fine white powder, which they called medium density amorphous ice (MDA), and which more closely resembled liquid water, with its molecules in an unarranged form rather than the lattice
arrangement of crystal ice. They suspect that amorphous ice might be common in space, where tidal gravity forces and the cold could lead to its formation. They also found that when warmed up and allowed to recrystallise
the MDA released a large amount of heat, which could be what is powering the "ice volcanoes" seen on Jupiter's moon Ganymede.
- Archaeologists at the ancient city of Lagash (now al-Hiba) in Iraq have uncovered the site of a tavern dating back to 2,700 BCE. The site included an open courtyard, a room containing benches, a large oven, a
moisture-wicking "fridge" and the remains of pots, bowls and food, such as fish. ● A team of archaeologists and scientists have spent three years recreating the face of a woman who lived 2,000 years ago.
Believed to have been a prominent figure in the Arab Nabataean civilisation her body lay in a tomb at the Hegra arcahaeological site in Saudi Arabia. Bone fragments from her skull were assembled and a 3D printer used
to reconstruct her face based on forensic analysis. ● The discovery of the skeletal remains of about 70 massive elephants dating to the Pleistocene and up to three times bigger than today's Asian elephants, in a pit
near Halle, Germany, has suggested that Neanderthals lived in settled social groups larger than previously thought, collaborating on hunting, butchering and cooking their food. ● New analysis of a 319-million-year-old
fossilised fish, dug up in a coal mine in Lancashire, England, over 100 years ago and first scientifically described in 1925, has revealed the oldest example of a well-preserved vertebrate brain structure; as the fish
fossilised its brain was replaced by a dense mineral that preserved its structure. Because it is the only known specimen of its species non-destructive scanning methods were used to analyse the fossil's interior. ●
It has long been thought that when the Vikings came to Britain in the ninth century CE they took horses and dogs from the Anglo-Saxons settlements they plundered, but new evidence from a Viking cremation cemetary in
Derbyshire suggests that they brought the animals with them. The remains at the site include bone fragments; femur and skull bones were traced to two adults, a juvenile, a horse, a dog and possibly a pig, and tests for
strontium, which makes its way into bones and teeth from eaten plants, suggested that one adult and the animals originated from Scandinavia rather than Britain. ● A handwritten sheet of lyrics for David Bowie's
"The Jean Genie" has sold at auction for £57,000 ($68,850). Bowie had given it to the founder of his fan club in the 1970s. ● One of the three surviving blaster gun props used by Harrison Ford
while playing Han Solo in 1977's Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope has sold at auction for $1,057,500 (£875,500). It is not known if it was the one used in the Cantina scene where Solo might - or might not -
have shot first to kill bounty hunter Greedo. ● A 1799 marriage certificate signed (as witnesses) by Lord Horatio Nelson and Emma Hamilton is to be auctioned in Scotland. It has an estimated value of £10,000-£15,000
($12,000-$18,000). The certificate was for the marriage of William Compton and Anne Bottalin, who were wed aboard HMS Foudroyant when it was anchored in the Bay of Naples. ● A number of items believed to
have been gifts to late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher have been auctioned, having been rescued from a rubbish tip. They include an unsigned oil painting portrait of Thatcher which sold for £1,100
($1,330), photographs of her posing with soldiers and a bronze bust of former US President Ronald Reagan, which sold for £11,700 ($14,130). It is not known how they came to be thrown out. ● A refuse worker
at the Five Lanes Recycling Centre in Monmouthshire spotted a number of old books that had been thrown out and realised that they were worth saving. The books, written by P.G. Wodehouse include Jeeves and Wooster stories
as well as Leave It To Psmith and other titles. The Jeeves and Wooster alone, dating to the 1930s is valued at £200 ($242). Monmouthshire council intends to use the money raised from their sale for tree
planting.
- Jaswant Singh Chail, who was caught in the grounds of Windsor Castle with a crossbow on Christmas Day 2021, while the Queen was in residence, has become the first person since 1981 to be convicted of treason. He
pleaded guilty to the three charges brought against him (possessing a loaded weapon in the castle grounds, making threats to kill, and treason) and had told royal protection officers he intended to assassinate the
Queen as "revenge for those who have died in the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh Massacre", when British troops opened fire on thousands of Indian civilians in Amritsar. ● Police in Massachusetts are searching
for the person - or more likely persons - who stole a 200lb (91kg) cement sculpture of green film ogre Shrek. Appealing for information on social media they added that the "dragon sculpture he lives with is
frustrated and lonely."
- The production of concrete generates about three times more carbon dioxide (CO2) than the aviation industry but a trio of Californian companies have demonstrated using concrete to store CO2 for,
potentially, thousands of years, either by using calcium oxide from limestone to capture it from the atmosphere before using the limestone in concrete or taking CO2 generated as a side product from other
industries and injecting it into the wastewater from cement (the main component of concrete) manufacturing, which makes the water less reactive and more reusable to make more cement instead of just being thrown out, cutting
both pollution and CO2 emissions. ● Last weekend the coldest temperature ever recorded in the continental United States was hit as it fell to -43oC (-46oF)
with a wind chill of -77oC (-108oF) at the summit of Mount Washington in New Hampshire. ● The Rideau Canal in Ottawa, Canada, usually becomes the world's longest skating rink, at 4.8 miles
(7.8km) when it freezes over in the winter, but this year a milder winter will result in the rink having its latest start in over 50 years. It needs 10-14 days of temperatures between -10oC (-14oF)
and -20oC (-4oF) for a 1' (30cm) thickness of ice to form, but temperatures in December hovered around -2oC (28oF) and around -5oC (23oF) in January.
- A suspected Chinese spy balloon was much in the news this week after it flew across Alaska and western Canada before re-entering US airspace over Montana and heading eastwards. Republicans, especially the Twice-Indicted
Former Guy (TIFG) demanded that President Biden order it shot down, which he did once it had cleared the eastern seaboard and would not risk falling on buildings or people. The TIFG also insisted that such an incident
would never have happened when he was in office because he had such a great relationship with China... The US Department of Defence then released data showing that at least three such incidents had happened during that
time. TIFG's oldest son, the not-at-all-egotistically named Donald, Jr, called for his patriotic followers to shoot the thing down themselves, despite them (presumably) being armed with at best high-powered automatic
guns and the balloon flying at an altitude between 80,000' (24km) and 120,000' (37km), higher than commercial airlines, meaning that they would be shooting into the air and the bullets coming down elsewhere, potentially
causing injury, as has been seen in a number of countries where guns are fired into the air in celebration after weddings and other events. A second balloon was sighted over South America.
IN BRIEF: They are not the two things you would usually associate with each other but later this year the Birmingham Royal Ballet will debut Black Sabbath - The Ballet, based around eight tracks by
the Birmingham heavy metal rock band and music inspired by them. ● The final Boeing 747 to roll off the production line flew a special flight path in the shape of a crowned '747' to be delivered to cargo airline
Atlas Air. ● Juliette Lamour, an 18-year-old Canadian university student, bought her first ever lottery ticket, for the Gold Ball draw last month, and won the C$48m (£29.7m; $35.8m) jackpot. ● Stoke on
Trent council has apologised after workers demolished and removed a statue of pottery founder Josiah Wedgwood made out of red bricks during road widening work. ● A Long Island, New York, nursing home is being
investigated after a woman who was pronounced dead and put in a body bag last week was found to still be alive three hours later in a funeral home. A care home in Iowa had been fined over a similar incident three days
earlier. ● Lawyers for Middle Earth Enterprises, which controls the Lord of the Rings franchise has sent a cease and desist demand to a Brighton waste collection company called Lord of the Bins, who
advertise with the slogan "One Ring to Remove It All". ● New Yorker Kingsley Burnett thought he was setting up his dream holiday to Australia but accidentally booked a ticket to 'SDY' airport -
Sydney-Richland Municipal Airport in Montana - instead of 'SYD' - Sydney, Australia. According to a hotel manager in Sydney, Montana, he was not the first... ● A Porsche dealership in Yinchuan, China, accidentally
listed a brand new Panamera sports car online for 124,000 yuan (£18,300; $15,000), just over a tenth of its actual price. ● Mason Stonehouse, aged 6, from Michigan, used his father's phone to order almost
$1,000 (£817) of takeaway food. The first clue his father had was the line of delivery vehicles outside the house... ● At the end of January Sally Orange, a British Army veteran from Wiltshire, who had done
eight Ironman triathlons and run seventy marathons, started the World Marathon Challenge, running seven marathons in seven days on seven continents - flying to Antarctica, Cape Town, Perth (Australia), Dubai, Madrid and
Miami. Earlier this week she finished the seventh and became the first female veteran and fifth British woman to complete the Challenge.
UPDATES: The shipwreck unearthed by the tides shifting sand on a beach on Nantucket, off Cape Cod, has been provisionally identified as a schooner called the Warren Sawyer that was wrecked on December
22nd, 1884, although there are a few inconsistencies which would need to be ironed out before a definitive identity can be confirmed. ● The Tesla roadster launched into space five years ago on a SpaceX
rocket as a dummy test payload has now settled into an orbit between those of Earth and Mars. According to NASA it will make a second close approach to Mars before coming within 2 million miles of Earth in 2047 and 2050.
Little Jennifer's mother walked into the kitchen to find her daughter sitting at the table writing on a piece of paper. "Are you writing that thank you letter to Granny,"
she asked.
"Yes, Mummy. Would you like to see it?"
Her mother picked up the letter and read it. "That's very nice, Little Jennifer, but why are you writing it with such big letters?"
Little Jennifer smiled as only she could. "Daddy said that Granny is going deaf so I'm writing very loudly!"
