Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
- A baby alligator that was stolen from the Animal World & Snake Farm Zoo in New Braunsfels, Texas, 20 years ago has been returned after the now-8'- (2.5m)-long reptile was found in a backyard about 50 miles (80km)
away. It had been kept as a pet, probably by the suspected volunteer who stole it. They did not have the required permits to keep an alligator so wildlife workers confiscated it and handed it to the zoo who concluded it
was their missing 'gator. ● A British birdwatcher on holiday in Papua New Guinea has discovered living specimens of three bird species long thought exinct. ● In Madagascar a dusky tetraka bird, not seen for
more than 24 years, has been photographed. ● In Oldham, England, a kitten that had climbed 60' (18.2m) up into a tree on only her fifth day of being allowed outside, then evaded all attempts to tempt her back
down for three days was eventually rescued by a tree surgeon using a net. ● A women's softball game at the University of Central Florida was interrupted by two parrots flying around the field. One of them even
decided to perch on home plate umpire Chad Steers' shoulder, hopping across to his other shoulder when he tried to pet it. The parrots belonged to a woman living near the stadium, and had been allowed to fly free. 'Tiki',
the one on Steers' shoulder, was eventually persuaded to move onto a groundskeeper's hand and returned to his owner, along with his friend. Steers' colleagues later left a soft toy parrot on his desk... ● A Royal
Carribean cruise ship sailing from Florida had an unusual stowaway recently - a 9"- (22.9cm) burrowing owl which flew onto the Symphony of the Seas shortly before she sailed. Because burrowing owls are a protected
species in Florida and a cruise ship was not the ideal place to find the owl's normal diet of insects and small animals a biologist from the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission was sent out and, with the
help of crewmembers, managed to capture the owl.
- NASA's DART mission to crash a spacecraft into a small asteroid to test the feasibility of the technique for deflecting potentially Earth-threatening asteroids has been found to have been more effective than
previously thought. Calculations before the impact suggested that the asteroid's orbit around its partner should have been shortened by seven minutes but the effect was greater. A further study showed that this was due
to the recoil and matter thrown off the asteroid by the impact.
- Archaeologists digging near the Hathor Temple in Qena Province, 280 miles (450km) south of Cairo, Egypt, have unearthed a small and well-preserved sphinx statue with a face resembling existing statues of the Roman
Emperor Claudius, who extended the empire's reach into North Africa during his reign between 41 and 54 CE. ● Also in Egypt officials have confirmed the discovery of a hidden corridor above the main entrance to
the Great Pyramid at Giza. The 30'- (9m)-long, 7' (2.1m)-wide passage with a chevron-vaulted ceiling was first detected in 2016 using muography, a non-invasive technique which maps the penetration of muons, a by-product
of cosmic rays, which are only partially absorbed passing through stone. Radar and ultrasound were used to map the space before a 0.24" (6mm) endoscope was inserted through a joint between stones above the entrance to
photograph the corridor. It is not known if its purpose was simply load-bearing or if it leads to something else. ● Analysis of Old Norse manuscripts by researchers from several universities has suggested that
descriptions of sea monsters called 'hafgufa' could have been based on observations of a rarely-seen feeding behavious of whales, lying at the surface of the water with their jaws open and waiting for shoals of fish
to swim into them, thinking that they have found shelter from predators. ● Archaeologists excavating the site of a former song school near Leicester Cathedral have unearthed a Roman shrine including a 1,800-year-old
altar stone and the remains of a cellar with what was once a concrete floor and stone walls that were painted. The dig also turned up Roman pottery and coins.
- A New Jersey man who visited a car dealership and took a new pickup truck for a test drive was arrested at a casino in Atlantic City almost 40 miles (64km) after the dealer notified the police that he had not
returned the truck over nine hours later; the vehicle which was found in the casino's car park. ● Last week the New York Police Department released CCTV of a man wearing a brown hat, colourful jacket and
black trousers slashing the tyres of seven police cars outside a stationhouse in Queens, and appealed for help identifying him. They did not have to wait too long, as three days later a man walked into the station to
report that his car had been stolen. He was wearing the same colourful jacket, brown hat and black trousers... ● Vera Liddell, a former employee of a Chicago area school district, has been charged with theft after
ordering 11,000 cases of chicken wings during the pandemic, when schools were closed but meals were provided to students for collection. The district was billed for the wings and paid $1.5m (£1.27m), but there
are no records of where they went although there is CCTV footage of Liddell collecting a shipment in a district vehicle. Chicken wings are not served to schoolchildren in the area because of the risks of small bones.
- In 1987 Japan's Coast Guard issued a report concluding that the country was made up of 6,852 islands. Recent digital mapping by the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI) has increased that number - by 7,273.
The GSI stressed that the increase to 14,125 islands does not represent any additional land area, but reflected advances in surveying technology and mapping resolution. ● Mapping was also an issue on Twitter this
week after Michelle Bayly weighed in on the debate of where the British North/South divides are by posting a map of England and Wales showing where she considered the North, Midlands and South boundaries to be.
According to her the North of England begins at Leeds, putting cities including Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Hull - considered to be powerhouses of the North, firmly in the Midlands. Needless to say she was
widely mocked. [For the sake of transparency we should say that TFIr is based near Liverpool. In the North. -Ed] ● Environmentalists and naturalists are hailing a landmark agreement to protect the oceans,
reached after ten years of negotiations, and the first international agreement on protecting the seas in forty years. The High Seas Treaty, reached at the weekend after 38 hours of negotiations, establishes 30% of
international waters as protected areas where shipping, fishing and mining will be limited. It still needs formal ratification and oversight bodies will need to be set up. ● Several California mountain towns
and communities were completely cut off for over a week by the recent snowfall with residents of Crestline in the San Bernardino mountains carving "HELP US!!" in the snow in the hope of attracting the
attention of passing aircraft after the roof of its only grocery store collapsed under the weight of snow, other commercial buildings collapsed and the town's cafe had to be evacuated because of a suspected gas leak.
IN BRIEF: More than 1,000 schoolchildren, mostly girls, across Iran have fallen ill over the last three months because of alleged poisonings, possibly with toxic gas. While the pattern suggests mass hysteria,
as has happened in other countries, many in Iran believe that the government is targetting them in order to force the schools to close because they have been centres of the anti-government protests that have swept
the country since September. ● Canadian twins Adiah and Adrial Nadarajah have been certified by Guinness World Records as the world's most premature surviving twins. They were born at 22 weeks, 126 days early,
beating the previous record holders by one day. ● The red and yellow globe hot air balloon used in BBC TV ident videos between 1998 and 2002 is to be flown again for the first time since being mothballed in 2002.
If it proves to be still flightworthy it will be flown, tethered, at the Midlands Air Festival in June. ● A businessman who makes £200,000 ($236,500) a year was greeted with no sympathy whatsoever when
he whined online about the cost of taking Übers and hiring chauffers after being banned from driving for a year because he crashed his Ferrari, causing damage to five other cars, and fled the scene. ●
Retail store Marks & Spencer have apologised after displaying daffodils next to spring onions in the "seasonal favourites" section of their produce section. Daffodil bulbs can be poisonous. ●
School dinner lady Brenda Rotherham, 81, has retired after working at the same school, St George's Catholic Primary School in Maghull, Merseyside, for fity years. ● A Spanish court has ruled that a man must
pay his ex-wife €204,643 (£182,000; $215,250) for 25 years of unpaid domestic labour while she was married to him, because he had wanted her to stay at home except for a small amount of public relations work
in gyms he owned. ● A campaign to save a Birkenhead, Merseyside, flat that had been transformed with artworks, including a sculpted minotaur head and a lion, by its amateur artist resident over 33 years, but was at
risk after the building's owner put the entire house up for sale, has been saved after an anonymous donor stepped in at the last minute. The flat, known as "Ron's Place" will become the centre of a charity to
promote art and mental health awareness. ● Two RAF Typhoon jets scrambled from RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire to intercept a civilian plane that had ceased contact with ground control while flying from Iceland to
Kenya caused a sonic boom that was head in Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire. The plane was diverted to Stansted Airport in Essex where police found that the loss of contact was due to "equipment
malfunction and nothing of concern". ● While being interviewed on the GB News TV channel lawyer Jonathan Coad exploded when asked about representing former Health Secretary Matt Hancock, ranting
that "I made it absolutely clear to your programme, I asked them not to disclose that." It later emerged that in his email to the production team specifying his terms for appearing, he had accidentally omitted the
word 'not', implying that he did want to be asked about it... [It is easy to do - while proofreading this issue I found a missing 'not' further up... -Ed] ● Patricia Kemp, known as an "eccentric" street
preacher, was last seen in Philadelphia in 1992 and declared dead 25 years ago. She has now been found alive in a nursing home in Puerto Rico. ● A new ruling in Switzerland that milk-based products cannot use
national symbols on their packaging unless they are exclusively made in the country means that American food conglomerate Mondelez will have to redesign the packaging of Toblerone bars to remove the iconic image of the
Matterhorn mountain, replacing it with a generic summit. Whether or not it will still include a bear (the regional symbol of the Bernese Oberland in the current design) remains to be seen. Mondelez received criticism in
2016 for introducing more space between the triangular 'peaks' in the bars to reduce costs; the change was reversed two years later.
UPDATES: The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence has issued a report concluding that "Havana syndrome", the unexplained illness reported in American embassies around the globe,
starting in Cuba in 2016, while "genuine and compelling", is "very unlikely" to be caused by a hostile foreign government. More than 1,500 "anomalous health incidents" across more than
90 countries, affecting staffers, military officers and aides, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris, were analysed.
"LITTLE JENNIFER!" the teacher said, in the middle of a lesson, "I would appreciate it if you did not fall asleep in class!"
Little Jennifer slowly opened her eyes and looked around at her friend's bemused faces, then smiled as only she could. "But, Miss, I wasn't asleep, I was studying what you
wrote on the board so hard that my eyes got tired and I had to rest them!"
