Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
- Researchers looking for the wreck of the USS Johnston, which sank during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944, have discovered the deepest-recorded squid, a bigfin squid, 20,380' (6,212m) below sea level in
the Philippine Sea. ● A cat which had been missing for eight months was reunited with its owner after she called her vet to discuss her other cat and heard the missing cat's distinctive meow in the background.
Told that it was a stray that had been brought in, she initially dismissed it as a coincidence but called back later to ask if the cat matched her missing one - black with a white patch on one paw - and then took
photographs in to the surgery where they were reunited. ● In December Jessica and Nikki Gerson-Neeves took delivery of a Vitamix high-end food blender. They have not been able to use it though - or even unpack
it - as their three cats are working shifts to sit on the box so it always has at least one of them on it 24/7, and "the cats rule the house". Vitamix even sent three empty boxes to decoy the cats, but the
cats preferred the original as it was sturdier with the blender inside. ● The Loch Ness Monster, possibly the most famous cryptid in the world, is usually depicted - and reported - as being like a prehistoric
plesiosaur with a horizontal head atop a long neck, but analysis of elasmosaur - a type of plesiosaur - fossils' inner ear bones suggests that the creatures did not raise their heads in that manner, but kept their
necks and heads horizontal or just below horizontal for their ears to function. ● A New Zealand man who had a blocked ear thought it was water from a swim, but could still feel it 'moving' while he was sitting
still so he went to a doctor who prescribed antibiotics and advised him to use a hairdryer to dry out his ear. Two days later, with no change to his ear he went to a specialist who discovered that he had an insect in
his ear canal, and pulled out a cockroach - or rather half of the cockroach, the other half had to be extracted with a suction machine. ● People travelling on a train at London Bridge station last week noticed a
plastic box that had been left in the carriage. It contained a 1.4" (3.5cm) pink-toed tarantula. It was handed to station staff who passed it on to the RSPCA. ● A study recently published in Biological
Reviews has confirmed that the Earth is undergoing its sixth mass extinction. While the previous five had natural causes blame for the current event, which is estimated to have seen between 7.5% and 13% of species
die off since 1500, is placed firmly on mankind.
- A 555.55-carat black diamond which is thought to have crashed to Earth in a meteorite or an asteroid impact is to be auctioned by Sotheby's Dubai next month with an estimated value of up to £5m ($6.8m).
Black diamonds are thought to have originated 2.6 to 3.8 billion years ago. ● In 1996 a NASA-led team announced that a 4 billion-year-old meteorite that originated on Mars and was found in Antarctica in 1984
appeared to contain organic compounds that were left by living creatures. Now another team, led by Andrew Steele of the Carnegie Institution for Science, has found that the compounds were more probably deposited
by water flowing across the rock over a long time period.
- New research by a team including an ex-FBI agent has suggested the identity of the person who betrayed teenage diarist Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis in World War II. Amsterdam's Jewish Council had been forced
to implement Nazi policy in Jewish areas of the city, but was disbanded in 1943 and its members sent to concentration camps except for Arnold van den Bergh, who was instead left to live as normal. It has long been
suspected that a member of the Council had been feeding information to the Nazis and the team claim that van den Bergh must have told them something important to retain his freedom. An anonymous note found in the
files of a previous researcher also suggests that Otto Frank was told of van den Bergh's betrayal. Van den Bergh died in 1950. ● New analysis of the location of the oldest-known fossils identified as Homo
sapiens, or humans, has found them to be older than previously thought. It had been thought that they were less than 200,000 years old, but paleontologists have identified a layer above them that was deposited by a
volcanic eruption 230,000 years ago. ● Archaeologists excavating a waterlogged ditch in Twyford, Buckinghamshire, ahead of work on the HS2 rail line have found an "extremely rare" Roman carved wooden
figurine. The figure is 26" (67cm) by 7" (18cm) and still has recognisable hair markings and carvings of a knee-level tunic. It is thought that the lack of oxygen in the ditch helped to preserve it.
- A family had a narrow escape in Ashford, Kent, when a drunk driver missed them, crashing instead into a traffic island. When a witness tried calling the police the man attempted to grab the phone, claiming that he
was a policeman. When asked for his ID he reached into his car and pulled out a pair of handcuffs and a "medium-sized" kitchen knife which he waved around as witnesses fled the scene. The man fled, himself,
when the real police turned up, throwing his knife into a bush, and was eventually cornered in a car park where he stripped off all his clothes. Officers had to pepper-spray him to arrest him due to his aggressive
behaviour. David Saunders, 37, was jailed for 18 months by a Canterbury crown court for dangerous driving, threatening another person with a blade, impersonating a police officer and failing to give a specimen. He
told the court the handcuffs were for making prank TikTok videos. ● Two men have been jailed by Snaresbrook Crown Court, London, for attempting to smuggle cocaine worth £250,000 ($341,875) in condensed
milk and baked bean tins. They used a machine can sealer and blank tin lids to reseal the cans in St Lucia before mailing them as "tinned goods" to London. ● Russian police have arrested a man who
built a fake border and control posts 15 miles inside the Russian border with Finland, and charged four South Asian migrants more than €10,000 (£8,320; $11,300) to cross.
- A 100-yard- (91m)-wide ice disk has reappeared in the Presumpscot River in Westbrook, Maine. The disk first appeared in 2019, then partially formed again in 2020. Officials are encouraging people to photograph
it but warning them not to try to walk on it. The disk forms because the river's current creates a vortex which causes ice to spin. In 2019 the disc span in the middle of the river but this year it has drifted to a
bank and become lodged. ● Snow has blanketed the Sahara Desert near Ain Sefra in northwest Algeria. Despite the area being 3,300' (1,000m) above sea level and surrounded by the Atlas Mountains, snowfall is rare,
with just five occurrences in the last 24 years, three of which have been in the last seven.
- If you have been using social media in the last few months you cannot fail to have seen mention of Wordle, the guess-the-word game (Put simply, you get six attempts to guess a five-letter word; after each attempt
you are told which letters are right and in the right place, which are right but in the wrong place and which are not in the word. A new word is set daily. It resembles the old Mastermind board game of the 1970s,
itself based on an earlier game called Bulls and Cows). So popular is Wordle that Apple have removed several advertising-funded clones from their app store; the creator of Wordle has announced that his game is - and
will remain - free of ads. Another game called Wordle, with no similarities, has been on Apple's app store for several years and saw a resurgence of interest after the new Wordle took off. By agreement with Josh
Wardle, creator of the new game, Steve Cravotta, the first Wordle's author is donating his payments from it to an education charity. ● Wordle has not been without controversy. A recent game left UK English
speakers flummoxed after the set word was 'FAVOR', a American English spelling. Some players took to social media to warn (humorously, we hope) of an impending transatlantic diplomatic crisis, especially as the
game is hosted on a .co.uk domain. Josh Wardle is Welsh but lives in New York City. The daily word is picked at random from a (demonstrably) American list so he can still play.
IN BRIEF: Baby Shark Dance [YouTube; it is an earworm - don't say we didn't warn you...] is now officially the most-viewed video on
YouTube, and the first to surpass 10 billion views. ● A group of cryptocurrency investors who paid £2.2m ($3m), a hundred times the estimate, for a rare illustrated screenplay of an unproduced 1974 14-hour
adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune by Alejandro Jodorowsky, with illustrations by Jean 'Moebius' Giraud, announced plans to make it public and develop "an original animated limited series" before
social media users pointed out that what the group had bought was just a book, not the rights... ● Police alerted to a dead body being transported wrapped in a carpet in a car on the M11 motorway discovered that
it was a Prince Charming mannequin being taken to a themed birthday party. ● Emma Timmis has successfully run the length of New Zealand [we presume with a ship or plane involved somewhere... -Ed]. She is waiting
for her time, just under 21 days, to be verified as a world record. ● A hotel in Edinburgh had to be evacuated last Saturday after a 'mysterious' smell was detected. Scottish Gas Networks ruled out a gas leak
and the smell was later reported as drifting towards the city centre. ● The Indonesian government has approved a bill to relocate the capital from Jakarta on Java to a yet-to-be-built city on Borneo to ease
the chronic congestion and environmental problems faced by Jakarta. ● Marks & Spencer have renamed Midget Gem sweets as Mini Gems after a campaign by a Liverpool Hope University disability studies lecturer.
Other supermarkets are reported as reviewing the name of their products. ● App monitoring firm App Annie has reported that across ten markets including India, the US, Turkey, Mexico, Japan, Singapore and Canada
people are spending an average of 4.8 hours on their mobile phones, with users in Brazil, Indonesia and South Korea spending more than 5 hours. ● The Villa Aurora in Rome was put up for auction this week. Filled
with artworks including statuary by Michelangelo and the only surviving mural painted by Caravaggio the six-story house had a starting price of €471m (£394m; $537m). There were no bids. It is expected that
another attempt to sell it will be made in April with a reduced price. ● The world's largest offshore wind farm is to be built about 43 miles (70km) off the English and Welsh coasts in the Celtic Sea.
CORONAVIRUS ROUND-UP: China is blaming a case of the Omicron variant detected in Beijing on a letter sent from Canada. With the city in near-lockdown no tickets will be sold for the Winter Olympics due to
open on February 4th and the Games will operate in a closed 'bubble' only accessible to participants, officials and invited guests. ● The Washington County Detention Centre in Arkansas is being sued
by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of inmates who claim they were given the horse anti-parasitic drug Ivermectin to counter COVID-19 without their consent. There is no scientific evidence that Ivermectin
is effective against anything but parasites in equines.
UPDATES: New cases of "Havana syndrome" have been reported in Geneva and Paris, with four US diplomats falling ill to the unidentified neurological condition speculated as having been caused by
targeted microwave energy. ● Spencer Elden, whose lawsuit against Nirvana over the use of a photograph of him as a naked swimming baby on the cover of Nevermind, has filed an amended suit after the
original was thrown out following his failure to respond to a motion to dismiss it.
Little Jennifer came home from a playdate with some of her classmates. "Did you have fun?" her mother asked.
"Well, Mummy," Little Jennifer replied, smiling, "Little Simon asked me to play doctor and patient with him."
Somewhat concerned, her mother asked her what happened. Little Jennifer looked up at her and smiled as only she could. "He made me wait for half an hour, glanced at me, scrawled
something I couldn't read on a bit of paper and told me to take it to the pharmacy!"
