News of the Weird - this just in!

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PeteC
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Re: News of the Weird - this just in!

Post by PeteC »

Good lord! Is their beak really that sharp and so strong to be able to do that? :shock:
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Re: News of the Weird - this just in!

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Before you take that story too seriously Pete, you should look at some of the other stories on that site, like:


Ceefax arrives in Norfolk

Local man Bubba Spuckler, who lives in Downham Market with his sister and their eight children, said: “We’ve been gathering around my uncle’s TV and pointing at Ceefax a lot. We have no idea what it means but I am sure there is trickery at work.”
http://www.suffolkgazette.com/news/ceefax/
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Re: News of the Weird - this just in!

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Stolen from Bangkok Post letters to editor:
......................................................................
Fired up over ice cream I bought an ice cream for 25 baht at the airport duty free.
I was asked to present my passport, boarding pass and sign a customs receipt. This country will drown in a sea of waste paper and bureaucracy unless someone seriously looks into triviality.

Bemused Farang, Savanabhumni airport
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Re: News of the Weird - this just in!

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Nereus wrote: Thu Aug 10, 2017 11:05 am Stolen from Bangkok Post letters to editor:
......................................................................
Fired up over ice cream I bought an ice cream for 25 baht at the airport duty free.
I was asked to present my passport, boarding pass and sign a customs receipt. This country will drown in a sea of waste paper and bureaucracy unless someone seriously looks into triviality.

Bemused Farang, Savanabhumni airport
They ask for a boarding pass when you buy anything at shops in UK airports as well, it's so they can claim the tax back from the VAT you pay!
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Re: News of the Weird - this just in!

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106 year old fruitcake found in Antarctica

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-40907084

Ice-covered Antarctica is one of the earth's most hostile natural environments.

But a new find by the Antarctic Heritage Trust suggests it's no match for a 106-year-old British fruitcake.

Conservators found the elderly cake on Cape Adare, and believe it belonged to British explorer Robert Falcon Scott - known as Scott of the Antarctic.

Although the cake's tin was rusted, the team said it was in "excellent condition" and smelled edible.

The New Zealand-based Trust found it in Antarctica's oldest building, a hut built by Norwegian explorer Carsten Borchgrevink's team in 1899, and used by Capt Scott in 1911 during his Terra Nova expedition.

The polar pioneer was said to be fond of this particular cake, made by the British biscuit company Huntley & Palmers.
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Re: News of the Weird - this just in!

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Saw this in a movie once. Ended just as badly as in the movie. Two guys rob a pub without considering who was in the pub. Mug shots shows one of the robbers was more surprised than the other, though I can't tell which was which:

http://www.wbaltv.com/article/armed-sus ... y/12149896
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Re: News of the Weird - this just in!

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Here's what race relations and political correctness have come to in the U.S.

"Banana Peel In A Tree Sparks Racial Hysteria At Ole Miss

Lack of a trash can sparked hysteria at the University of Mississippi, better known as Ole Miss, leading to the cancellation of a Greek life retreat and providing talk show host Rush Limbaugh with an example of the descent of college campuses into politically correct comfort zones.

The university acted last weekend after a black student saw a banana peel in a tree, assumed a nefarious racial motivation and decided the retreat was automatically an unsafe space that must be immediately canceled.

The truth of the matter was later revealed.

A student named Ryan Swanson had finished chomping on the banana to which the offending peel had belonged, and without a trash can in sight, tossed the biodegradable object away to rot and be forgotten.

Oops.

Instead of landing on the grass to dry and crumble, it landed in a tree, thus to play its part in the upcoming tragedy.

The banana peel was not allowed to be forgotten because Makala McNeil, president of the black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, soon passed by the tree and was horrified at what she beheld, according to The Daily Mississippian, the Ole Miss student newspaper.

“That, to me, was a slap in the face to see that banana hanging in a tree after talking about the personal truths of our campus,” McNeil said, noting that race relations on campus had been one subject discussed on the retreat earlier that day.

“The overall tone was heavy. I mean, we were talking about race in Mississippi, at the University of Mississippi and in the Greek community, so there’s a lot involved,” McNeil said.

Alexa Lee Arndt, interim director of Fraternity and Sorority Life, explained the devastation caused by the banana peel.

“To be clear, many members of our community were hurt, frightened, and upset by what occurred … Because of the underlying reality many students of color endure on a daily basis, the conversation manifested into a larger conversation about race relations today at the University of Mississippi,” Arndt said.

Arndt said that the decision to cancel the Greek life event was “imperative to provide space immediately to students affected by this incident.”

“The otherwise safe space had become a battlefield of emotions,” contributor Ian Miles Cheong wrote on The Daily Caller. The Daily Mississippian said some students broke out in tears over the banana peel, telling organizers they felt unsafe.

Swanson, who began the chain of events, wrote a public apology.

“Although unintentional, there is no excuse for the pain that was caused to members of our community,” he told The Daily Mississippian.

Meanwhile, Limbaugh surveyed the account of the banana peel caper with dismay.

“Well, are they gonna stop serving bananas? Even if they do replenish things lost by ‘humidity.’ But is somebody gonna call the Southern Poverty Law Center and get them involved?” Limbaugh said.

Limbaugh boiled the incident down to its bare essentials.

“There was a student by the name of Ryan Swanson, he was walking through, he was eating a banana. He finished it and he couldn’t find a trash can to throw away the banana peel, so he tossed the banana peel and it ended up there on the trunk of a tree. And then an African-American sorority chieftain came strolling by and saw it and had a panic attack and reported it to the Greek life authorities,” he said.

“They ended the event because the sight of the banana peel in the tree caused such trauma and such discomfort,” he said. “They couldn’t stay there because the sight and trauma of the banana peel was such, so they had to come up with an alternative place for the students to go, ’cause they left the retreat in tears, noting that African-American members of the Greek life retreat didn’t feel welcome nor safe any longer attending the retreat.”

“Unbelievable,” Limbaugh mused. “I was asking Snerdley, ‘What is it about a banana peel anyway? What’s the deal?’ You know what he told me? Know what he told me? He said, ‘Well, it’s because apes, gorillas, monkeys eat bananas.’ I said, ‘So what?’ He said, ‘Well, apparently the black Greek students walking through there got it in their heads that somebody else thought that –’ I said, ‘Are you kidding me? This is the only way this thing could thought to have been racially –’ Assured me it’s the only way.”

Limbaugh said the incident is a symptom of what is wrong with college campuses.

“This is exactly the kind of sensitivity and weirdness and oddity and political correctness that students have been conditioned to expect and be traumatized by. So there you have it,” he said."

https://www.westernjournalism.com/banan ... manualpost

Comment: I thought this had to be fake news as it was on facebook so I searched and no, it really happened! It was reported by many media outlets, even in the UK.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -tree.html
My brain is like an Internet browser; 12 tabs are open and 5 of them are not responding, there's a GIF playing in an endless loop,... and where is that annoying music coming from?
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Re: News of the Weird - this just in!

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Not the welcome home I would want!! :shock:

Russian Couple Find Road Built Through Their Home

"The owners of a house in Russia have returned home from work in a nearby city to find their house partially bulldozed and a new road running through where it had once stood.
Pictures broadcast on REN TV show what's left of the house sitting next to a rain-glistening new highway in the Zavod Voskresensky district. The TV said that the remaining part of the structure is no longer fit for habitation.
The owners, who do not live in the house permanently, had returned from seasonal work in Nizhny Novgorod to find the scene of devastation. They say that they had not been warned of the impending construction work, and had not received a rouble of compensation for their loss, RIA Novosti reports.
Local authorities initially said that "no-one has demolished the house", but soon rowed back on that statement after one the owners, Valeria Udalova, appeared at their offices carrying ownership documents. Now they're saying that there might have been an error on the survey maps prior to work starting on the road.
Demanding 3.6m roubles ($62,000; £48,000) from the local administration in compensation to build a new house, Ms Udalova plans to camp in the middle of the road until the dispute is revolved, the Lenta news site says.
Their claims are being investigated by local officials, who will make a decision within a week."


Taken from: - http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from ... e-41146340

:cheers: :cheers:
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Re: News of the Weird - this just in!

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Japanese firm to offer 'drive-thru' funeral service

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/ ... s/30326668

"A Japanese funeral parlor is set to offer relatives the chance to pay their final respects to deceased loved ones without leaving the comfort of their cars.

The firm claims that the "drive-thru" service is a first in Japan, where a rapidly ageing population means funerals are anything but a dying trade.

Elderly mourners can register their names on a touchscreen tablet device and make a traditional offering of incense just by rolling down a car window - a process relayed to screens inside the venue for the grieving funeral host to watch."....
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Re: News of the Weird - this just in!

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Dover sole 'jumps' down angler's throat in Bournemouth

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-dorset-41598493

An angler had to be resuscitated after accidentally swallowing a fish he had just caught.

The man was kissing the Dover sole in celebration of his catch when the six-inch (14cm) fish wriggled out of his hand and jumped into his mouth, a friend said.

The 28-year-old stopped breathing and suffered a cardiac arrest at the scene on Boscombe Pier, Bournemouth.

Paramedics managed to remove the fish with forceps in an ambulance.

Ambulance worker Matt Harrison said: "It was clear that we needed to get the fish out or this patient was not going to survive the short journey to Royal Bournemouth Hospital.

"I was acutely aware that I only had one attempt at getting this right as if I lost grip or a piece broke off and it slid further out of sight then there was nothing more that we could have done to retrieve the obstruction."

Mr Harrison said the fish's barbs and gills became stuck but he eventually succeeded in extracting it in one piece.

He said it was the "most bizarre" call-out he had ever attended.

Members of Boscombe Pier Sea Anglers performed CPR on their friend and before the arrival of emergency crews at about 23:00 BST on 5 October.

Ian Cowie from the group said: "He was kissing the fish when it jumped down his throat. It's a tradition to kiss your first catch."

Paramedics managed to restart the unnamed man's heart at the pier after working on him for three minutes.

Mr Harrison said: "We're all so glad the patient has no lasting effects from his cardiac arrest, which could so easily have had such a tragic and devastating outcome."
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Re: News of the Weird - this just in!

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This may be the only country in the world that hypes up fog as a tourist attraction, and gives it a fancy name. :shock: :banghead:

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/ ... s/30329365
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Re: News of the Weird - this just in!

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PeteC wrote: Mon Oct 16, 2017 2:59 pm This may be the only country in the world that hypes up fog as a tourist attraction, and gives it a fancy name. :shock: :banghead:

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/ ... s/30329365
Something similar in Oman, it's called The Khareef :wink:

https://www.thenational.ae/lifestyle/tr ... f-1.530638
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Re: News of the Weird - this just in!

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aragon wrote: Mon Oct 16, 2017 3:11 pm
PeteC wrote: Mon Oct 16, 2017 2:59 pm This may be the only country in the world that hypes up fog as a tourist attraction, and gives it a fancy name. :shock: :banghead:

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/ ... s/30329365
Something similar in Oman, it's called The Khareef :wink:

https://www.thenational.ae/lifestyle/tr ... f-1.530638
For a couple of seconds I thought you were talking about the 'queef', but I don't think that should be foggy.
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Re: News of the Weird - this just in!

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Two Pommie Sheilas: Swearing Aussies make Poms look angelic

https://thewest.com.au/entertainment/tw ... b88631411z

Flatpack furniture: the ultimate test of any relationship. And your swearing threshold.

With three months to go before the birth of our first child, my husband has been putting together more flatpack than any human should have to in a lifetime.

Normally that job falls to me — I can’t be trusted with the washing machine, that’s his bag — but as I currently can’t bend over to retrieve the little wooden pins from the dog’s mouth when he takes them hostage, it’s now in the “you knocked me up, now knock this up” section of my poor husband’s to-do list.

And in a case of extremely bad timing, in an effort to clean up our act before little ears can hear us (and God forbid, they become his or her first words) we’ve also been trying to ban swearing in our house.

It’s for this reason our evenings at home have been punctuated by loud calls of “fudge”, “frick” and “potatoes” (don’t ask, I haven’t) as the other half does battle with the hell that is Allen-key assembly while struggling to keep his language G-rated.

Sadly, neither of us has managed to keep it entirely clean, especially when it comes to putting those final nails into the back of various bookcases and chests of drawers. Fudge really doesn’t cut it when you hit your thumb with a hammer.

But it wasn’t until a friend pointed out that Ofcom, the British regulator for communications, had put out a guide to swearing and ranked various dodgy words that I realised I swear far more than I thought, according to their ratings anyway. Everything from “bloody”, to “old bag” is on the list, albeit rated as not too offensive, along with a lot of “sexual” references that I definitely don’t use.

But what shocked me most about the list was how different the Australian and British sensibilities seem to be. The Aussies really do seem to swear much more than the Poms.

Take the “c” word for example, which is rated one of the most offensive words in the guide. It’s such a taboo one for me I have used it just three times in my life and under extreme provocation. Once to describe someone who tried to kill me and hundreds of others (it’s a long story) and twice to describe two burglars who ransacked our home and that of a family member.

But it’s a word I regularly hear on Aussie building sites, or thrown about liberally by teens in our local park.

So, while my British accent might make the words sound dirtier, somehow I comfort myself with the fact that even by prudish British standards, I’m not doing so badly when it comes to cutting down those profanities. And as a new Aussie, I’m practically Mary Poppins in comparison.
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Re: News of the Weird - this just in!

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If you were the cockpit crew on the last ever Air Berlin flight how would you mark the occasion? Well, you could buzz the tower...

Here is how it's done in the movies:


And for reals. Ground view:


Tower view:
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