Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
- When 3-year-old Saylor Class told her parents she had heard monsters in her bedroom they dismissed it as overimagination - she had, after all, recently seen the
film Monsters Inc - and gave her a water spray bottle telling her it was monster spray she could use to scare them off. But then her mother saw bees swarming near
the attic and chimney of their Charlotte, North Carolina, home and called in a beekeeper who realised the bees were moving in and out of the attic above Saylor's bedroom.
A thermal camera found that the bees had built a hive inside Saylor's bedroom wall. He removed between 55,000 and 65,000 bees and 100lb (45kg) of honeycomb from the house.
The bees are estimated to have caused more than $20,000 (£16,000) damage. ● A 2-year-old female orca calf that became trapped in a tidal lagoon on Vancouver
Island, Canada, after her mother beached at low tide and died has swum free after more than a month. Ehattesaht First Nation members, fisheries officials and others had
managed to feed her seal meat chunks but efforts to guide her to the narrow entrance to the lagoon using boats failed until at 2:30am on a recent clear and calm night with
a high tide she swam out by herself. It is hoped that she will reunite with her pod. ● A family in Utah whose cat went missing last month were amazed to get a phone
call from a vet in California. Galeana, who, like most cats, loves boxes, had hidden inside an Amazon box that was being packed to return a purchase. Almost a week later
an Amazon worker heard her inside the box - which had a small tear on one edge allowed her to breathe - and took her to a vet who scanned her microchip. Carrie Clark and
her husband flew more than 1,000 miles to California to retrieve her.
- Boeing's Starliner spacecraft is finally ready to make its first manned launch, possibly as soon as next week. The project has suffered years of delays and setbacks
but should eventually join SpaceX's Crew Dragon in flying astronauts to the International Space Station. ● A satellite designed to track down space junk orbiting Earth
has photographed a 3-tonne discarded rocket stage about 36' by 15' (11m by 4m) in size. The satellite is operated by Astroscale, a Japanese company, which aims to
eventually offer to remove space agencies' and other companies' junk from space by using robotic arms to grab it before firing thrusters to slow its speed until it falls out
of orbit. Orbiting junk is a significant problem; there are millions of things ranging in size from flecks of paint to more than 2,000 rocket stages, all of which can damage
satellites and manned craft. Astroscale hopes to begin its service within the next few years. ● NASA's Psyche space probe, heading for a rendez-vous with the asteroid
of the same name, is also carrying a payload to test a laser optical communications system. In early December, with the probe 19 million miles (31m km) from Earth it achieved a
speed of 267 Mbps (for comparison, the computer this is being written on has a non-fibre broadband phone link and is currently working at around 54MBps). As Psyche moves
further away the speed is expected to drop significantly, and from its current location 140m miles (225m km) away NASA were hoping to still achieve 1 Mbps; instead they
received test data at 25 Mbps. One potential downside to transferring data from spacecraft optically is that it is much more dependent on clear weather than radio signals.
- Archaeologists at Ucanal in northern Guatamala have uncovered the burned skeleton and regalia of a Mayan king, suggesting that when the king's reign had ended,
it is thought through violent deposal, the new regime ritually destroyed all the symbols of the previous one to destroy all links to it. ● Scientist Ross Fellowes
is claiming to have solved the mystery of the 'curse of Tutankhamun' which claimed the lives of several people involved in the opening of the Pharaoh's tomb in November
1922. Fellowes claims that toxic levels of radiation from uranium and waste built up in the tomb after it was sealed some time after the pharaoh's death in 1325 BCE. High
radiation levels have been recorded at other Old Kingdom tombs in Giza and at Saqqara. ● Archaeologists diving on the wreck of the Gribshunden, a
15th-century Danish flagship, off the coast of Sweden have made a unique discovery - a chest containing tools for making ammunition, including moulds and lead
plate for manufacturing bullets for early handguns. ● In China the recently-discovered 2,200-year-old tomb thought to belong to an emperor of the Chu state has
yielded more than 1,000 relics including musical instruments, bronze vessels, lacquerware and a coffin bearing more than 1,000 written characters. ● In the early
hours of Thursday 25th April the red sails of the windmill above the Moulin Rouge cabaret in Paris fell off. They had been wrapped in plastic within hours to protect
them while an investigation was launched. Nobody was injured. ● Author Paul Harper is claiming to have identified the location of the burial of the first King of
England, Cerdic, who founded the Kingdom of Wessex. There are few contemporary records regarding Cerdic, but Harper found a reference to 'Ceardices Beorg' ('Cerdic's
Barrow') in a charter drawn up for Edward the Elder, king of the Anglo Saxons in 900 CE. Earlier research by George Grundy and an aerial photograph from the 1970s helped
Harper identify a plowed-down Bronze Age bowl barrow in a Hampshire field close to Roman roads. Bronze Age barrows were frequently reused for later burials. He now hopes
archaeologists will investigate the site. ● The National Library of France has removed four 19th-century books from its collection which may contain
arsenic in their bindings. The books, printed in England, all have emerald green covers, a colour that was commonly achieved through the use of arsenic. While the Library
stressed that the books would only cause minor harm to anyone handling them, the four have been placed in quarantine and will be tested by an independent laboratory. ●
A gold pocket watch, belonging to John Jacob Aster, then the richest man in the world, which was recovered from Astor's body after the Titanic sank and later worn by
his son, has sold at auction for six times its estimate, fetching £900,000 ($1.12m), setting a new record for single items recovered from the incident. A brown leather
violin case that belonged to Wallace Hartley, whose band "played on" as the ship went down, sold in the same auction for £290,000 ($362,200).
- Late last year police in Alaska caught Michael Gale Nash, 49, attempting to rob a First National Bank in Fairbanks. The bank had not yet opened, but Nash passed a note
through the locked doors with his demand for money. Even after staff locked the door with a secondary mechanism and called the police Nash stood his ground outside until
the cops arrived and arrested him. It was not his first incident with the bank. In 2018 he held up the same branch for $400 (£320) but rather than make a speedy
getaway police found him standing outside the building counting the money and arrested him... ● A shoplifter in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was arrested last month after
a chase described as "not a common sight". The man, who had allegedly stolen about $230 (£184) worth of goods from a Walgreens store was caught after what
the Albuquerque Journal reported as a "high-steed chase"; an officer with the local police department's horse patrol unit pursued him and finally managed to
surround and detain him after calling in other mounted officers. Mark Chacon, 30, was charged with shoplifting, resisting, evading or obstructing an officer and possession
of drug paraphernalia. ● Last October police wanting to arrest John Yates on charges of aggravated battery, false imprisonment and tampering, got a tip-off that he
was at his home and went to arrest him, only to find a large hand-written notice on a dry-erase board in front of a window that read "Johnny Yates does NOT
live here!!". They questioned a person leaving the house who confirmed that Yates was inside, so they surrounded the house and called for him to come out. When he did not
they shot smoke canisters into the building and four people walked out, none of whom was Yates. After more smoke was deployed without result officers went in with a
police dog, which found him hiding in a chest of drawers...
- Scientists at the University of California San Diego in La Jolla have developed a "self-digesting plastic" by incorporating spores of plastic-eating bacteria
in polyurethane. The spores remain dormant during the plastic's useful lifetime, but once exposed to nutrients in compost they come to life and digest the plastic. The
bacteria, Bacilus subtilis, is widely used as a food additive and probiotic, and can be genetically modified to withstand the high temperatures needed to make plastic.
While the concept, which could be in use in the real world within a few years, is one approach to the envirnmental problem of plastic, many scientists believe that a
better solution would be to reduce the amount of plastic in use, something that ongoing UN talks for a future legally-binding treaty on plastics are working towards.
IN BRIEF: With shades of the Y2K problem with computers worldwide in build-up to the year 2000, where computers which were programmed to store the year as just two
digits had to be reprogrammed to stop them recognising '2000' as '00', American Airlines's booking system has been having problems with a 101-year-old passenger, identified
just as Patricia. Because their systems do not recognise her birth year of 1922 as a year they keep booking her in as born in 2022, even when flying with her daughter. Staff have
always been helpful in light of the problem, but as a frequent flyer she just wishes someone would fix the booking computers. ● Liutauras Cemolonskas, 13, who regularly
searches the beach at Marazion in Cornwall for washed-up Lego pieces has found a rare Lego octopus. Thousands of Lego pieces were lost from the Tokio Express in 1997 when
a freak wave washed 62 cargo containers into the sea off Land's End, and pieces have occasionally been washing ashore on Cornish beaches ever since. Liutaurus is now on the
lookout for an equally rare Lego dragon. ● Kemptown Bookshop in Brighton is to open at 5am on the first Wednesday of every month, but not to sell books. They are
inviting writers to join silent writing sessions for up to four hours before the shop opens to the general public. With an on-site cafe there is a ready supply of tea or
coffee, and a local bakery delivers pastries at 7am. "Where better to write than a bookshop with a cafe, and when better than at 5am?" owner Cathy Hayward told
reporters. ● The National Library of France has removed four 19th-century books which may contain arsenic in their bindings from its public collection. The books,
printed in England, all have emerald green covers, a colour that was commonly achieved through the use of arsenic. While the Library stressed that the books would only cause
minor harm to anyone handling them, the four have been placed in quarantine and will be tested by an independent laboratory. ● A team of scientists are trying
to make white bread as healthy as wholemeal while retaining its texture and taste, by adding small amounts of peas, beans and cereals including bran as well as wheat germ, which
is usually removed in milling white flour. ● A fan of the role-playing computer game Skyrim has developed a virtual reality setup based on an HTC Vive headset,
and three Vive trackers to follow her movements, small fans to reflect in-game location temperature, a haptic vest which vibrates when her character is struck in combat and
a second haptic vest which generates a small electric shock when her character takes damage. The whole rig cost over $15,000 (£12,000). ● An emergency exit
slide which fell off a Delta Air Lines Boeing 767 soon after it left John F Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in New York washed up on a beach at Belle Harbor, Queens,
right outside the home of lawyer Jake Bissell-Linsk, whose firm filed an ongoing lawsuit against Boeing over the recent door plug blowout on an Alaska Airlines aircraft.
The flight from JFK to Los Angeles turned around after losing the slide and landed safely back at JFK. ● In 1977 The Beatles achieved their 12th #1
album in the UK music charts in a record [sic. - sorry...] 14 years, an achievement that lasted for 47 years but has now been broken by Taylor Swift, whose The
Tortured Poets Department has become her 12th #1 album in the UK in just 11 years and six months. ● Glasgow Clyde College are offering a one-day course
in Taylor Swift for people who are unfamiliar with her and her songs but are intending to go with friends or take their children to one of her upcoming three nights at Edinburgh's
Murrayfield Stadium as part of the Eras tour. The one-day course, on May 7th, will cover her songs, fashion and hairstyles, and crowd chants as well as notable
moments to look out for in her gigs.
UPDATES: Two people, Daniel Graham, 38, and Adam Carruthers, 31, from Cumbria have been charged with causing criminal damage to the Sycamore Gap tree and causing
criminal damage to Hadrian's Wall. The iconic tree, situated in a gap in the Wall, was felled overnight last September.
Little Jennifer was watching a television programme about World War II with her parents. She turned to her father and asked "Daddy, what
did you do during World War II?"
Her father laughed. "Oh, Little Jennifer, I wasn't even born then!"
Little Jennifer looked thoughtful, then turned to her mother and smiled as only she could. "Mummy, what did *you* do during World War II?"
