Animators at the UK studio Aardman used a 3D printer to make 50 different versions of Dot, because she is too small to manipulate or bend like they would other stop-motion animation characters. The figurine’s tiny features stretched the limit of the printer — any smaller and it would be hard to make distinct limbs. Each one was hand-painted by artists looking through a microscope.
The inscription down the side reads: 'Hen Pecked Club's Peace Box No. 6, Patent Cure for a Cross Wife.'
The museum's Dale Keeton said: 'The idea of this Hen Pecked Club was that you made your wife very, very happy - black her shoes, make her porridge, carry her handbag.
'If after all that she still henpecked you, you would get some of your friends round, draw back the lid, put your wife in and rock her gently until she was asleep.
'I think it was just a really good excuse for a load of guys to go to the pub.'
With help from his friend Jake Keen — an expert on ancient metal-making techniques — the author dug up 81kg of ore and smelted it in the grounds of his house, using a makeshift kiln built from clay and hay and fuelled with damp sheep manure.
Pratchett, who has Alzheimer's disease, also said he had thrown in "several pieces of meteorites — thunderbolt iron, you see — highly magical, you’ve got to chuck that stuff in whether you believe in it or not".
After days of hammering the metal into bars, he took it to a blacksmith, whom he helped to shape it into a blade, which was finished with silverwork.
It is so big that it can catch 30 or more prey insects at any one time.
Darwin's bark spider weaves what experts call an orb web, the most familiar spider web design.[...]
"They build their web with the orb suspended directly above a river or the water body of a lake, a habitat that no other spider can use," says Professor Ingi Agnarsson, the director of the Museum of Zoology at the University of Puerto Rico, in San Juan who made the discovery with colleagues.
That allows the spiders to catch insects flying over water, and explains why the web is so long.
To reach from one bank to the other, the spider must weave anchoring lines of up to 25m.
The man, who was wearing a ski mask, appeared to have a pistol in his hand, Graham said.
Graham was armed too, but only with a Dustbuster in one hand and a Swiffer in the other.
"He told me to get down and I grabbed the Swiffer, started jabbing him with it and it broke off, so I still kept on jabbing,” Graham said. "I told him, 'You get out of my house, you sorry son of a bitch, I'll kill you.' I kept jabbing him and he backed out and ran to the back of the house and then across behind the house."
The low wall at street level and the larger circular landscaped perimeter is reminiscent of a bailey, an enclosed courtyard that doubles as a first line of defense. “It’s not necessarily meant to stop the enemy dead,” Rogers says, “but to give you time to react and man the inner defense.” As in the Middle Ages, this wall can be patrolled by guards.
