Archive Category: Odd News
World's Largest Bottle of Whiskey
The world’s largest bottle of whiskey was unveiled yesterday in Britain:
Dru McPherson and Mike Drury made the monster malt to put the village of Tomintoul, Banffshire, on the map.
The giant 1½metre bottle holds 105.3 litres of 14-year-old Tomintoul single malt.
A German glassmaker created the 7mm thick pyrex bottle, and a massive cork was specially made to fit.
Image via flickr user Kyle May used under creative commons license. Because of very strict copyright restrictions at The Sun, I can’t show the picture of the bottle itself. But it’s at the link, and it’s huge.
Link via J-Walk Blog
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Nun Pulls Car with Her Hair
(YouTube Link)
Kung Fu artist Zhang Tingting of Kaifeng, China, decided to become a Buddhist nun. This required shaving her head. To mark the end of her secular life, she decided to pull a car with her hair:
The 52-year-old artist has performed across China for decades, after taking up martial arts when she was 17. She began living the life of a nun two years ago.
Before bidding her meter-long braid farewell, she pulled six passenger cars some 50 meters (164 ft) through a Beijing suburb, then repeated the feat with ten cars, for about 30 meters, in her hometown of Kaifeng, Henan Province.
Although Zhang and her plait are now permanently separated, the hair has been preserved. Authorities are considering sending it on a pilgrimage to sacred Buddhist sites in Tibet, or displaying it in a local museum.
Link via The Corner
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A Commute Worse Than Yours
Two feuding French mayors have taken steps to make their constituent’s commute into Paris extra painful. The mayor of Levallois-Perret made D909 into a one way street to help reduce commuter traffic going through his district. However, this created more traffic congestion in neighboring Clichy-la-Garenne.
The mayor of Clichy-la-Garenne responded in the obvious neighborly way of also making his district’s portion of the same street one way also -in the opposite direction!
Thousands of commuters travel through the two suburbs each day into Paris, and municipal and national police were called in to redirect traffic away from the gridlock.
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Why You Should NEVER Piss Off People with Bulldozers
Qu Liming learnd that the hard way. The stubborn man tried to block heavy machineries from digging by parking his car in the way … but this is what he got instead:
"I thought that would slow them down so we could talk, but it just made them mad," said Qu.
"They began to dig out all the earth around my car and my home so now it sits on a mountain all of its own I think as a warning to others," he added.
Now the silver Chrysler sits on top of its own mini-mountain nearly 60ft up in the air amid the 500,000 GBP construction site.
"I tried to climb up and fell all the way down – but the police said it was all my fault for being big-headed," wailed Qu.
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Israel's Richest Woman Can "See The Future"
Businesswoman Shari Arison, who happens to be Israel’s richest citizen worth some $2.7 billion by Forbes’ most recent estimate), has revealed a secret: she can see the future!
This is much bigger than a parlor trick. In her new book published this summer in Israel, the 51-year-old Miami native says she felt the Indonesian tsunami sweeping over the land two months before it happened and sensed Hurricane Katrina pummeling New Orleans. In an interview, Arison says she also "saw the writing on the wall" before the global economic crash. Reading about Arison’s extrasensory perception makes you ache for a heads-up, maybe a blog entry or a tweet or a phone call to Brownie or Greenspan or somebody who might have helped.
Arison explains that she has finally dropped the fear that has held her back from doing more about what she has perceived. Armed with the insight gained through work with Florida-based psychiatrist Brian Weiss, a proponent of regression therapy and the exploration of (take your pick) deep memories or past lives, she says she is ready to go public with her visions and bring together her spiritual and business goals.
Unfortunately, seeing the future isn’t the secret to her wealth. She got rich the old fashioned way … by inheriting her fortunes! Link
(Photo: Andrea Bruce for The Washington Post)
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Flintstones Wedding
Two couples from Norfolk, England got married in a double wedding dressed as characters from the TV show The Flintstones!
Andrea and Simon Bean, aka Fred and Wilma Flinstone, and Richard and Jill Noble, aka Barney and Betty Rubble, celebrated their double wedding at Weston Park Golf Club on Saturday by taking a quick trip to the next door dinosaur park for some spectacular wedding photographs sure to raise eyebrows on any mantelpiece.
With 165 guests dressed as cavemen and women, two best men dressed as dinosaurs, and a spectacular tiered wedding rock cake, both Wilma and Betty entered the ceremony to the traditional organ sound of Wagner’s Bridal March.
However, this was quickly replaced by an organ version of The Flintstones theme tune.
All of the participants had been married before and felt no need for a tradition wedding. In lieu of gifts, the couples received donations for the Children’s Liver Disease Foundation. Link -via Arbroath
(image credit: James Bass)
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Cockney ATM
Photo: Times of London
Bank Machine, an ATM operator in Britain, now has five cash machines in London that offer users the opportunity to conduct their business in the cockney dialect. It’s a promotional gimmick designed to amuse customers:
“Readin’ your bladder of lard”, read the message on the screen. It asked for his “Huckleberry Finn”. Then more bewildering questions: did he wanted to see his balance on the Charlie Sheen? Did he wish to change his Huckleberry Finn or did he simply require sausage and mash, with or without a receipt?
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Punctuation Hero or Vandalizing Grammar Nazi?
Stefan Gatward has been wrestling with inner turmoil ever since the Birmingham city council began removing the apostrophes from the city’s signs this January.
Finally, his frustration was too much to bear, and Stefan took it upon himself to fix the signs. But he didn’t stop there …
He will not join the ‘five items or less’ queue at the supermarket, in protest that the sign should read ‘five items or fewer’.
He also gets annoyed when people-neglect the ‘Royal’ in ‘Royal Tunbridge Wells’, and was vexed when he saw a major chain store advertising sales with signs saying ‘until stocks last’ rather than ‘while stocks last’.
‘I fought for the preservation of our heritage and our language but some people seem happy to let that go. I’m not,’ he said.
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Cucumber Thief Stumps Authorities
Someone in Australia has robbed over $10,000 worth of cucumbers in eleven separate robberies over the last three months.The latest robbery of 50 bags of pickles is the largest of the heists so far.
“The issue with the cucumber is how do you and I tell who owns a different cucumber?,” SA Police Chief Inspector Kym Zander told ABC Radio on Wednesday.
“We’re having difficulty establishing where they (the cucumbers) are going.”
What do you think? How can they track down the cucumber thief?
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3,000-year-old Butter Found
An oak barrel of butter has been found in a bog near Gilltown, Ireland. Two workers, John Fitzharris and Martin Lane, noticed a white streak in the peat and uncovered the barrel, estimated to be 3,000 years old. Pádraig Clancy and Carol Smith of the National Museum of Ireland took charge of the barrel.
“It’s rare to find a barrel as intact as that,” Mr. Clancy explained, “especially with the lid intact, and attached. It’s a really fine example.”
He estimates that the barrel is approximately 3,000 years old, from the Iron Age.
At the moment it is being dried out by staff at the Conservation Department. Once dry it will be soaked in a wax-like solution which preserves it.
“At 35ks, it’s a pretty big one,” Ms. Smith explained. Other examples of bog butter they showed tended to be less intact and much smaller.
Link -via Unique Daily
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Watch Returned 128 Years Later
In 2000, Rich Hughes was diving near a shipwreck off the coast of Pembrokeshire, Wales when he spotted a shiny object under the sea. He retrieved a pocket watch with “Richard Prichard 1866 Abersoch North Wales” engraved on the casing. After nearly ten years of detective work, Hughes reconstructed the story of the pocket watch and its owner. Ship captain Richard Prichard died during a voyage of the Barbara and was buried at sea. A man named Jones took over both the ship and the captain’s effects, but did not have the necessary navigational skills. The ship sailed into the wrong channel and sank during a storm in 1881. The crewmen were rescued, but captain Jones went down with the ship, and presumably had the watch on his person. Hughes enlisted the help of an amateur historian to track down Prichard’s family.
The watch, which was seized up and will never work again, will be handed to Mr Cowell later this month.
His grandmother was Captain Prichard’s cousin, making him the closest surviving family member.
He said: “I am delighted the watch has come home after all these years.
“It has come as a complete surprise to me that my ancestors had such a colourful, seafaring past.”
The watch will go on display at the Porthmadog village hall. Link -via Arbroath
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$1 Million for Proof of Mermaids
The Israeli town of Kirvat Yam is offering a hefty sum to anyone who can provide proof of the existence of the mer-people (meeple?).
“Many people are telling us they are sure they’ve seen a mermaid and they are all independent of each other,” Kirvat Yam town council spokesman Natti Zilberman told Sky News.
“I was with friends when suddenly we saw a woman laying on the sand in a weird way,” he said. “At first I thought she was just another sunbather, but when we approached she jumped into the water and disappeared. We were all in shock because we saw she had a tail. At least five of us saw it and we all couldn’t believe it.”
The town council, which is offering the reward, insists that the mermaid mania is not just a marketing ploy to attract tourists, though it does hope tourists will come out to try their luck at the $1 million prize.
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7 Giant Versions of Everyday Critters
Ever wish that itsy bitsy crab you had for dinner were bigger, so that you could eat more of one instead of ordering another dish? Why not order a coconut crab, a Tasmanian giant crab or a Japanese spider crab? Who knows, with 13 ft of crab to deal with, you might not even be able to finish it all!
(Also available: escargot So big, you can’t even wrap your hands around it.)
This article over at Cracked also features jellyfish, spiders, worms and other creepy crawlies you would love to see magnified.
Puppies, kittens, infants: All adorable. And do you know why? Because they’re tiny. If you start to magnify these things, then you wind up with the substantially less cute wolves, jaguars and teenagers.
Yes, if there’s one thing nature teaches us, it’s that what may start out as an adorable little animal friend can quickly turn into a Lovecraftian horror when its itty-bitty wittle mouth gets big enough to start eating your face. And when the little versions are already a little bit creepy, the big versions are the stuff nightmares are made of.
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Bob Dylan Picked Up by Police
Legendary musician Bob Dylan had a brush with the police last month in New Jersey. Long Branch police officer Kristie Buble responded to a call about an “eccentric-looking old man” in a residential neighborhood. Buble approached the man and questioned him. He had no ID, and said he was Bob Dylan and was checking out a house that had a “for sale” sign. Buble later said,
“Now, I’ve seen pictures of Bob Dylan from a long time ago and he didn’t look like Bob Dylan to me at all. He was wearing black sweatpants tucked into black rain boots, and two raincoats with the hood pulled down over his head.
Buble decided to humor the old man who didn’t know the address of where he was staying, and gave him a ride to the hotel he described. There were tour buses parked there, and entourage members vouched for Dylan’s identity. They went so far as to produce his passport for the officer.
A police department source said Buble had taken her share of good-natured ribbing from some of the older officers.
“To really appreciate the story from our end, you have to see Kristie,” one cop said. “She looks like a 16-year-old kid, next to this living legend. It was unbelievable.”
Link -via Boing Boing
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Kid Finds Rubber Duck Shaped Potato
Four-year old Zachary Clouter dug up quite an unusual potato in his parents’ garden: a spud shaped exactly like a rubber duckie!
When four-year-old Zachary Clouter was asked to help out on his parents allotment, he didn’t expect to find a spectacular spud.
The thrilled youngster dug up a potato the same size and shape as the rubber ducks which normally play in his bath.
Zachary is so pleased with his discovery that he has banned his family from eating the potato duck.
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Cat Saves Man from Burning Home
With most “pet saves family from fire” stories, it’s easy to assume that the pet woke someone up because it wanted OUT of the house. In this case, the cat came in from outside, and it didn’t even live there!
Engineer Andrew Williams was asleep when the fire broke out at his bungalow in Bracknell in Berkshire.
As black smoke filled the property, his neighbour’s cat Hugo came through a cat-flap and raised the alarm by clawing at the father-of-two’s face.
Rescuers said that the fire could have killed Mr Williams if he had not been awoken by Hugo. A smoke detector had been moved during work on the bungalow.
Hugo had been in the house before, and was in fact a regular visitor. He was not in the habit of clawing Mr. Williams’ face. Link -via Arbroath
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Dwarf Mini Pony
This pony is an American miniature horse born with a dwarfism gene. For reference, there’s another picture of little Koda compared to a normal horse on the website. He goes to about the knees of the stallion. I couldn’t resist posing this image with the huge eyes though.
Koda is so small that he is often mistaken for a battery-operated soft toy.
Standing at 59cm tall, if Koda the horse wants an equal he has to turn to the vetinary cat for company.
Link Via Cute Overload
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Chinese Farmer Builds Homemade Helicopter
He made it out of wood and a motorcycle engine:
20 year old Chinese farmer Wu Zhongyuan built himself a helicopter using only — according to the man — what he remembers of middle school physics lessons and “relevant knowledge [found while] surfing the Internet via my mobile phone.”
Well, sure looks like things worked out. His single-seater conveyance has blades made from the wood of an Elm tree, a frame reinforced with steel pipes and uses an engine from a motorcycle — all for around $1,600. Wu claims the ‘copter can get him as high as 2,600 feet, though it seems he’s grounded for the time being as the Chinese government has forbid him to fly because of safety reasons.
Link via Geekologie
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Hackers Hacked by Fake ATM
At the recent DefCon hackers’ convention in Las Vegas, a fake ATM deceived many hackers in attendance:
An organizer for the conference said security authorities seized the device. It’s not known how long the ATM was in the hotel or whether it was placed there by a DefCon attendee to catch his fellow hackers or simply by an outside criminal group trying to target conference attendees.
Witnesses say the kiosk was well-placed to avoid surveillance cameras….
Markus said it was clear to him the ATM was fake when he looked at the smoked glass on the front of the machine and noticed something funny about it. When he beamed a flashlight through the glass, instead of seeing a camera behind it, he saw the PC that was set up to siphon card data.
The ATM had been placed right outside the hotel’s security office.
Link via Crunch Gear
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Miss Landmine Pageant Banned in Cambodia
Morten Traavik, the artist who founded the Miss Landmine pageant in Angola (featured previously at Neatorama) also organized a similar beauty pageant in Cambodia. After expressing support for the contest, the Cambodian government has withdrawn permission.
An exhibition of photographs of the contests was due to open on Friday, with the top prize of an artificial leg for the winner of an internet vote. But over the weekend the government ordered the organisers “to stop activity immediately in order to keep the honour and dignity of handicapped Cambodians, especially women”.
Traavik has requested a meeting with authorities over the issue. Link -via Arbroath
(image credit: Flickr user *christopher*)
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Gnome Rescue
An elderly resident of Cootamundra, New South Wales, Australia died and left behind around 1500 cement garden gnomes. Not knowing what to do with them, the executor of the will contacted the Australian Gnome Convention for advice on disposing of them.
Convention organiser and “Gnome Master” David Cook said he did not hesitate in organising the rescue party when contacted about the homeless little folk.
“We didn’t want to see them put in a skip and taken to the tip and all smashed up,” Mr Cook said.
I believe that means they didn’t want to see the gnomes thrown away. A four-member team traveled 800 kilometers to pack up the gnomes of all sizes.They will be painted and refurbished, and will appear at the 2010 Australian Gnome Convention on January 26th. Link -via Arbroath
(image credit: Australian Gnome Convention)
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World's Oldest Potted Plant
It took three months of planning, a crane, and nine gardeners to transfer a palm tree called a cycad to a new pot. The operation at Kew Gardens in London was difficult and delicate because the tree is considered to be the oldest potted plant in the world.
The ancient cycad was collected in the early 1770s from the Eastern Cape in South Africa by Kew’s first plant hunter, Frances Masson.
It was one of 500 species gathered for the botanical gardens during Captain Cook’s second voyage around the globe.
For the last 160 years, the tree has been housed in Kew’s Palm House, where its nobbly trunk has grown outwards and upwards at an inch a year.
It now stretches to 14ft 5 inches and because it is growing at an angle, is propped up by stilts.
The repotting procedure was successful. Link -via Unique Daily
(imafe credit: Jenny Goodall)
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Misspelled Highway Sign
A sign on Highway 51 in Wisconsin points to exit 185. There are four words on the sign, and three are misspelled. “Exit” was correctly spelled.
David Vieth, director of the bureau of highway operations for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, said the mistake was made by Decker Supply Company of Madison, which printed the sign.
The sign for exit 185 on southbound Highway 51 reads “Buisness 51 Rothschield Schofeild.”
By Sunday morning, the sign had been replaced. Link
(image credit: Corey Schjoth/Wausau Daily Herald)
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Five Legged Dog Saved From Freak Show
A woman in North Carolina woman recently paid $4000 to save a five legged dog from becoming a freak show attraction. The owner was offered $3000 from a freak show operator in Coney island, when Allyson Siegel offered to up the price in order to help keep the dog from being little more than a spectacle.
Although the fifth leg didn’t seem to bother the pup, Siegel intended to have it removed, but was shocked to learn it would cost another $2000 to do so. Fortunately, a Manhattan vet was so touched by Siegel’s actions that he offered to remove the leg free of charge.
“She is beautiful, she’s not a freak, she’s a normal little puppy dog and she should be just like all the others,” Siegel said.
Precious was born with a fifth leg protruding from her stomach, between her hind legs. The extra leg has six toes.
Link Via Dogster Dog Blog
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Lightning Bolt Interrupts Sex
It’s an old trope in comedy that someone commits a sin and God gets their attention with a bolt of lightning. The real life version played out in the woods near Wert, Germany. Jens Gottlieb and his girlfriend Lisa Gruhn were feeling frisky, pulled off the highway, headed into the forest, and stripped naked. A bolt of lightning struck the ground near them! They started running as a torrential downpour began.
They lost their way and were spotted blundering around in the dark by another motorist in a parking space who called police.
Officers who arrived a short while later managed to find the naked and shivering pair and help them into dry clothes and took them home.
Bet they won’t do that again. Link -via Buzzfeed
(image credit: Flickr user kainet)
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Burglars Should Avoid Distinctive Facial Tattoos
This is why I will never get a tattoo:
TAMPA – It wasn’t particularly hard for the victims of a Riverview home invasion to identify the burglar. He was the only one with an outline of the state of Florida tattooed on his face, authorities say.
In addition to the Florida tattoo, Sean Roberts also has the words “Crazy Cracker” written or tattooed on his head, Hillsborough County sheriff’s spokesman J.D. Callaway said.
And to think that if he had chosen a rectangular state like Wyoming or Colorado, he could have escaped.
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Skating Down a Roller Coaster
German daredevil Dirk Auer established a new world record when he raced down a 860-meter wood roller coaster track in under a minute. He maintained an average speed of 56 mph on custom skates that he built himself:
‘After this some of the sides were so high that at times I was at 90 degrees and so it was very important to have as much traction as possible. Luckily everything went according to plan – it was a lot of fun.’
Mr Auer, from Gross-Gerau near Frankfurt, is considered to be the most extreme in-line skater in the world.
He already holds the world record for reaching speeds of 190mph as he was dragged along behind a Porsche GT2.
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Dog Nurses Tiger Cubs
If you were impressed with the dog who wet nursed the red panda cubs, just wait till you read about the dog who adopted these tiger cubs. The page also has photos of a dog in the same area that adopted two lion cubs.
What I want to know is why are all these wild animal mothers being so negligent to their young in the first place. Thank goodness for these good natured dogs or these cubs would be in big trouble.
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Baffling Toilet Signs
New signs for a public loo in Winchcombe, England have people scratching their heads. The infographic resembles a skier with poles, or a man on an escalator. The words “ambulant urinal” convey the idea of a urinal that walks.
Barbara Heard, from Gretton Road, Winchcombe, said she failed to understand how the signs could have been sanctioned by Tewkesbury Borough Council.
She said: “Does anyone have any idea what these signs mean?
“My husband and I regard ourselves as fairly intelligent but we have no idea.
“What will our overseas visitors will make of these signs?
Chris Pike of the Tewkesbury Borough Council says “ambulant” restrooms are larger than standard, and are “intended for people who may be partially disabled but cannot access the full disabled unit.” Link -via Arbroath
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Thief Compliments Victim in Hand-Written Note
Matt Neary of Fargo, North Dakota found that a thief had stolen CDs and his wallet out of his truck — but he did leave a pleasant note complimenting Neary’s taste in music:
You have amazing taste in music.
Don’t worry about your credit cards and diver’s license — I know I can’t use them…after tonight, at least.Seriously though
Lock your car in the future
Link (local news video) via Nothing To Do With Arbroath
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