New Zealanders Drilling for Whiskey in Antarctica
A group of explorers from New Zealand are traveling to a campsite of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 1909 Antarctic expedition in the hopes of finding whiskey left behind beneath the floorboards of a shelter:
Among the supplies British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton abandoned on his unsuccessful 1909 expedition to the pole were two crates of the now extinct rare old brand of McKinlay and Co whisky.
Now Whyte & Mackay, the drinks giant that owns McKinlay and Co, has asked for a sample of the drink for a series of experiments, the Telegraph newspaper reported in London.
The New Zealanders will use special drills to free the trapped crates and rescue a bottle from the crates, discarded near the Cape Royds hut used by the Nimrod expedition, or at least draw off a sample using a syringe.
The crates were discovered in January 2006, but the bottle couldn’t be removed as they were too deeply embedded.
Link via Discover | Image: NASA
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Man Uses Crane and Lawn Mower to Trim His Hedges
Well, if he didn’t have hedge clippers, then he had no alternative. Two men (who prefer that their names be kept confidential) in Cambridge, New Zealand hauled a lawnmower into the sky with a crane in order to trim a hedge:
The man had expected a real hedge trimmer to turn up on Sunday to mow the hedge, but when he didn’t his mate arrived with his crane and a ride-on mower.
The next thing he knew he was being hoisted up on top of the two-metre high hedge.
“We were supposed to get all dressed up in our Mooloo gear and show people that this is how the Waikato boys mow their hedges.”
The unusual sight bemused passing motorists. One passer-by, Bart Dinger, said it was a classic case of Kiwi ingenuity.
“A kiwi classic – jandals and all,” he said.
One of the pair is being treated for a broken hand that resulted from the stunt.
Link via Geekologie | Image: Bart Dinger
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Shark Caesarean Section
The New Zealand Herald is reporting on a strange occurence at Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World. Eloise Gibson writes that a shark was bit open at the stomach by another shark, which freed her young that were due to be born that night. Since the staff was unaware of the pregnancy, they were shocked and speculated that the sharks feared predator attacks if she birthed during the night; the likes of stingrays could be lethal.
The young sharks have been taken to a “nursery” tank with some baby eagle rays, where visitors can see them before they are released into the wild.
Link (Photo: Richard Robinson)
Update (11/11/2009): The mother and her eight babies are all doing fine. Link to Daily Mail story with video.
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Cat in a Freezer for 19 Hours
A cat named Krillen survived 19 hours in a freezer in Te Kuiti, New Zealand. Sarah Crombie heard a faint meow when she approached the freezer, which hadn’t been used since her partner Sid Sisson shut it the night before. He didn’t realize that Krillem had jumped inside. The freezer was set to -18C, the coldest possible setting. She opened the lid and saw him on a bag of dog food.
“I raced inside to get Sid and as I came out, Krillen rolled off the bag in an attempt to get out, but he was that frozen he just rolled to the bottom of the freezer on his back,” she said.
“At first we thought his eyeballs were frozen. I’ve never seen a cat with such big eyes.”
Fortunately, Sid, 28, knew it was essential to raise the body temperature of hypothermia sufferers slowly. So he put the cat under his shirt and got into bed with him.
It took three hours under the covers for the cat to stop shaking. Krillen appears to have recovered without frostbite. Link -via Arbroath
(image credit: Bruce Mercer)
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Legendary Man-eating Bird
The native Maori of New Zealand tell of a giant man-eating bird called Te Hokioi. Now scientists have identified a real bird that fits the description. Haast’s Eagle has been extinct for only 500 years, and may be the source of the Maori tales. The bird with up to a four meter wingspan was first discovered in 1870, but until recently was thought to be a scavenger. Recent scans show the bird to be strong enough to kill prey much larger than itself.
“It was certainly capable of swooping down and taking a child,” said Paul Scofield, the curator of vertebrate zoology at the Canterbury Museum.
“They had the ability to not only strike with their talons but to close the talons and put them through quite solid objects such as a pelvis. It was designed as a killing machine.”
Its main prey would have been moa, flightless birds which grew to as much as 250kg and 2.5 metres tall.
“In some fossil sites, moa bones have been found with signs of eagle predation,” Dr Scofield said.
Link -via the Presurfer
(image credit: John Megahan/PLoS Biology)
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The Shweeb -- A Human-Powered Monorail
(YouTube Link)
The Schweeb is an experimental transit system in New Zealand that combines the bicycle and a monorail track. Users lie down individual pods and work the pedals to move forward:
Our proposal to get you safely and quickly from one point in the city to another would be to elevate you onto a network of interconnected monorails where you never have to stop at traffic lights. The ideal vehicle for such a system already exists. Fully faired recumbent cycles, because of their low aerodynamic resistance, are breaking all bicycle speed records and currently reaching speeds of 90 kph (56 mph) in sprints. Suspending these comfortable and highly efficient machines from monorail tracks has the added advantage of taking away the rolling resistance of pneumatic tyres. Trains of Shweebs can further reduce the aero drag – ten people travelling at 40 kph will each have a lot less work to do than a single rider at the same speed. A single rider requires only a fraction of the energy to achieve the same speed as a normal cyclist – thanks to the significant reductions in both aero drag and tire friction. The vehicle is completely weatherproof, you can’t derail or fall out while on the cellphone or blackberry!
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Bleeding Billboard
To remind drivers to drive carefully during the rain in Papakura, New Zealand, the local government put out a rather disturbing billboard that bleeds when it rains. The billboard may be terrifying, but apparently it’s effective: there hasn’t been a fatality since.
BuzzFeed has the video clip: Link [embedded YouTube]
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Naked Rugby Match Interrupted by Dressed Streaker
Rugby players aren’t afraid of anything, including playing naked! A match in the nude over the weekend in Dunedin, New Zealand went off without a hitch, except for chilly weather and a streaker!
The nude rugby international, which started as a celebration of New Zealand’s national nude day, was held yesterday as a warm-up – although temperatures were reportedly cold enough to prove embarrassing – to the forthcoming match between the All Blacks and France.
Needless to say, there were plenty of tackles flying about with only one interruption … when a fully-clothed streaker ran on to the pitch.
(image credit: Stephen Jaquiery/Otago Images/Otago Daily Times)
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Twitter Treasure Hunt
Anthony Gardiner of Wellington, New Zealand bought an engagement ring for his girlfriend, but she turned him down. He can’t return the ring and doesn’t want to keep it as he considers it bad luck, so he’s staging a treasure hunt!
Anyone keen to pick up the ring, valued at NZ$5,000 ($3,268), will need to be in New Zealand’s capital city, Wellington, on Saturday to join the hunt, the Dominion Post newspaper reported.
Clues to the ring’s whereabouts will start being posted on social networking site Twitter (http:/twitter.com/donoogle_com) at 8 a.m. local time on Saturday (2000 GMT on Friday).
Link to story. Link to Twitter feed.
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Penguin Sports
The Penguathlon is a sporting event for penguins at the Kelly Tarlton Arctic Encounter in Orakei, New Zealand. Penguins compete in five events: football, Frisbee, surfing, swing ball, and waddle races. This is no joke! New Zealand is home to nine of the 16 penguin species, and the colony at the Arctic Encounter has 80 King and Gentoo penguins in its colony. The sports are showcased as an enrichment exercise for the birds.
“New Zealand has the greatest diversity of penguin species and is arguably the best place in the world to see them. As well as being great fun, the Penguathlon gives people a fantastic chance to get up close with them as well as gaining a better understanding about their welfare”, said Gregg Anderson, Tourism New Zealand’s Regional Manager for UK and Europe.
The Penguathlon, which will run the rest of this month, may become an annual event. Link (with video) -via Arbroath
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True Blood "Emergency Vampire" Posters
I spotted these in Auckland, New Zealand (where the show True Blood is only just starting on TV). They’re made of wood, and the stakes are designed to snap off in case a vampire attacks.
They’re screwed down though, which makes them safer but rather counterproductive.
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111-Year-Old Tuatara Becomes a New Dad
Henry and Mildred were seen mating last March, and Mildred laid some eggs. After an incubation of 223 days, 11 baby tuataras hatched (see video here).
"We basically wrote him off for the past 10 or 15 years, thinking he was going to be absolutely useless," the Southland tuatara curator Lindsay Hazley remarked rather tactlessly.
Tuataras are rare, and most live in predator-free sanctuaries, and are descended from a line of reptiles that hung out with dinosaurs 225 million years ago.
Photo by Lindsay Hazley/Southland Museum and Art Gallery
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The Fiordland National Park in New Zealand
Photo: James Frankham / NY Times
I’ve always wanted to visit New Zealand ever since I saw The Lord of the Rings movies, and this feature at the New York Times by Robert D. Hershey Jr. just added a lot of fuel to my wanderlust fire:
IN 1908, The Spectator magazine called the 33.5-mile Milford Track through Fiordland National Park in New Zealand “the finest walk in the world,” an honorific still credible to knowledgeable hikers — one fan was Sir Edmund Hillary — a full century later.
The park, part of the Te Wahipounamu Unesco World Heritage Site, is of jaw-dropping beauty, a rare combination of rain forest, rushing rivers and glacially carved alpine heights that yields vistas that make you think you’ve stepped into a picture postcard. What’s more, novices as well as hardened trekkers can fully enjoy the delights of the Milford, which offers as much solitude as you could want and ambient water so pure you’re actually encouraged to drink whatever you can reach.
Wow. Just Wow. Has anyone ever been there? What’s your experience? Link
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Whipper
(YouTube link)
Whipper is a parakeet in New Zealand. A fluffy mutant parakeet who was abandoned by his mother because of his bizarre looks. No doubt he’ll be quite popular with people! -via Unique Daily
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