Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
- Scientists in China know that the population of Yangtze finless porpoises in the range of the Yangtse River from the Tibetan Plateau to the sea in
eastern China has dramatically decreased over the last couple of decades, but they had no usable data from further back, so turned to poetry. They
searched databases of Chinese poetry going back to the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE) and found 724 poems that mentioned the porpoise, about half also noting
where they had been seen. The data suggests that the general range had decreased by 65% since the Tang dynasty, and hy 91% in the Yangtse's tributaries and
lakes, with the sharpest decline over the last 100 years. ● Between 1990 and 2013 32 greater sage-grouse in Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park were
killed in collisions with aircraft near Jackson Hole Airport. The National Park Service has teamed up with the Teton Raptor Center, artist Lori Solem and
Jackson Hole Middle School art students to create a novel way of trying to reduce the number of fatalities. They have deployed papier-mâché
decoy sage-grouse in a field south of the airport in the hope that they will deter the real birds. ● Two biologists on a trip to observe seabirds while
on holiday in Cape Verde accidentally discovered a live Monte Gordo grasshopper. The last live specimen was collected in 1980, and the species was
declared extinct in 1996. ● Sheriff's officers in Gilmer County, Georgia, were roped in to wrangle a herd of four "friendly" goats that
appeared in a yard, having escaped from their home 14 miles (22.5km) away. ● Plans are being developed to reintroduce elk in Britain 3,000 years after
the native population was hunted to extinction. Provided the idea meets public approval and suitable locations can be found the initial idea would be to
introduce elk into enclosures alongside beavers - a successfully-reintroduced species - before being released into the wild. ● The Zhuyuwan Scenic
Area Zoo in Yangzhou City, China, has asked the public to be on the alert for a capybara, the world's largest rodent, which escaped more than 40 days ago
along with two others, which have been recaptured. They think the fugitive might have swum down the nearby canal. ● Two tourists in America's National
Parks have learned the hard way that official advice to stay at least 25 yards (23m) from bison is no joke. One man, in an unidentifed park was filming
himself approaching a bison behind him for a TikTok video when he realised it had started to charge. He managed to get away. Another man, in Yellowstone,
was not so lucky and became the first person this year to be gored by one of the large animals, requiring emergency medical treatment and 80 stitches. Bison
weigh up to 2,000lbs (907kg) and can run at up to 35mph (56km/h).
- A bright green and orange light seen over Australia, from Perth to the Goldfields, last Sunday was "one hell of a meteor" according to
astronomer Matthew Woods of Perth Observatory. It was likely composed primarily of iron, and searches are underway to see if any of it survived to crash
into the Outback. ● A rare sample of rock and dust from the Moon, collected by the Chinese Chang'e 5 mission and returned to Earth in December 2020
has arrived in the UK to be studied. It is hoped it will shed light on the Moon's origins, especially the theory that the Moon consists of rock ejected
from the early Earth in a massive impact event with a Mars-sized body, named Theia. ● Calculations by three Dutch scientists suggest that the universe
will die much sooner than previously thought. Current estimates are that it will take 101100 years (10 followed by 1,100 '0's) for the last
white dwarf stars to evaporate away and the universe reach a final cold stasis or heat death, but the new research suggests a shorter timescale of a mere
1078 years.
- Archaeologists excavating at the site of planned student accomodation in Leuvan, Belgium, have discovered an extremely rare Roman wooden water
pipe preserved in low-oxygen marshy soil. ● Excavations in Pompeii, Italy, have revealed the remains of four people, including a child,
in a room barricaded with a bed to try to save themselves from the 79 CE eruption of Vesuvius. ● Renovation work in Rome's Piazza San Giovanni has
uncovered the remains of a forgotten palace, likely home to the Popes between the 9th and 13th Centuries, before the establishment of
the Vatican. ● Archaeologists excavating the site of two Roman-era fortresses at Tel Abu Seifi in North Sinai have discovered a third fortress.
● Archaeologists in Cyprus have rediscovered an ancient statue sanctuary containing over 100 statue bases, the size of which suggests that some of
the statues would have been huge. The site was discovered in 1885 but later became covered over by sand and forgotten about. ● A group of British
archaeologists studying the leap forward into using bronze for weapons, jewellery and tools in the eastern Mediterrean around 1,300 BCE are claiming to
have made a surprising discovery about the materials used. Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, copper being widely available in the area, but there is
no significant regional source of tin. The group performed lead and tin isotope analysis of tin ingots recovered from bronze age shipwrecks off Israel and found that
much of the tin was mined in England, specifically Devon and Cornwall, where tin continued to be mined until the late C19th. ● Archaeologists
at the Saqqara site in Egypt have discovered an unknown pharaoh's tomb concealed behind a "massive" pink granite false door in another tomb. ●
Metal detectorists in southwest Wiltshire have found a rare Anglo-Saxon gold and garnet raven head and a gold band, dating to around the 7th
Century. ● The discovery of stone tools and circular structures on the Isle of Skye in Scotland's Inner Hebrides has been hailed as "hugely
significant", pushing back the earliest-known occupation of the area.
- Three Chinese men have been arrested on the Japanese island of Amami after hotel staff alerted police to their luggage, which was making "rustling"
noises. The suitcases contained "thousands" of hermit crabs, weighing a total of 353lbs (160kg). The crabs are a protected species on the island,
and the men were charged with attempting to smuggle them out. ● US Border Patrol agents in Mission, Texas, have arrested two men after an inspection
of their car revealed an spider monkey zipped inside a pink bag. The species is endangered. ● Four men have been convicted in Odisha, India, of
attempting to smuggle over 400 rare turtles, worth about ₹1,000 (£9; $12) each. ● Gordon Pierce, described by police as a "low-level
drug dealer" and addict, was arrested in Kansas last Thursday and charged with stealing a 1794 bronze cannon from its podium in a Wichita park. It is
alleged that he owed his meth dealer $20,000 (£15,130) and had been threatened with himself and his family being shot if he did not repay the debt,
which he planned to do by selling the metal from the cannon and stolen statues. Pierce had bribed a homeless man with drugs to help him hoist the cannon
onto the back of his pickup only for it to fall off while being driven. He then fixed a chain to it and dragged it home using the truck. ● A slow-speed
car chase by California Highway Patrol officers in Oakland and Berkeley turned serious after the suspect threw a bag at them out of his window. Another
officer discovered that it contained a hand grenade with its pin partially removed. The suspect eventually abandoned his vehicle, was apprehended on foot
and faces charges of possession of a stolen vehicle, fleeing police, resisting arrest and possession and transportation of a destructive device. ●
Akron resident Victoria Vidal was arrested on Monday after police stopped her car and found her pet raccoon sitting on the passenger seat holding an empty
meth pipe in its mouth. She was charged with possession of drugs, three counts of possession of drug paraphernalia and additionally cited for driving under
suspension. The Springfield Township Police Department later issued a statement that "No raccoons were hurt or injured in this incident."
- Scientists at the Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in the Netherlands studying caddisfly larvae cases preserved since the 1970s have found 571 cases dating
as far back as 1971 which contain microplastics, lead, titanium and zinc, showing that plastic pollution has been an issue for over 50 years. ●
Radiation levels in much of the Zone of Obligatory Resettlement around the former Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine, site of the 1986 disaster, have fallen
below Ukraine's national safety threshold, suggesting that crops could be grown again in fields there, with proper monitoring and adherence to food safety
regulations. ● Seismologists studying the Uturuncu volcano in Bolivia, which last erupted 250,000 years ago, after frequent earthquakes hit the area,
the land around it deformed and the cone began ejecting plumes of gas have concluded that it is not likely to erupt. They imaged the magma and gas moving
around beneath the volcano - it sits on the largest-known magma body in the Earth's crust - and concluded that the movement is not upwards. ● The
supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming has long been considered a potential threat, last erupting more than 70,000 years ago, but new analysis
has revealed the presence of a "sharp reflective cap" of magma 2.4 miles (3.8km) below the surface, which acts like a lid trapping pressure and
heat below it. The volcano is venting gas through the park's many hydrothermal springs and geysers, so it is, in effect, breathing peacefully. ● Renewable
energy sources provided a record 32% of global energy last year, even as electricity demand grew by 4%, according to a report by the Ember think tank. ●
Researchers in China have developed a low-cost and energy-efficient way to extract uranium from sea water; it is thought that around 4.5bn tonnes of uranium
is in the oceans, more than 1,000 times the amount that is available for mining from the ground. ● Researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory,
the University of Texas at Austin and Type One Energy may have solved a 70-year-old problem with nuclear fusion, long seen as the future of nuclear power.
For fusion reactors to work plasma, superheated electrically-charged gas, has to be contained using magnetic fields, but the fields have tiny
"holes" which allow particles to escape, causing the reaction to fail. To find and eliminate the "holes" scientists have used
perturbation theory, which is fast but critically flawed. The team has instead applied symmetry theory, which requires less computing power, is faster and
more accurate. ● The effects of hurricanes in the atmosphere and at the surface of Earth are well-known, but new research has thrown light on their
effect under the sea. They have been found to trigger underwater waves which move sediment and organic matter from the litoral zones at coasts to the ocean
depths; Hurricane Florian, in 2003, for example, is estimated to have moved an entire year's worth of sediment in two weeks, according to the Oceanix Flux
Program, which deployed sediment traps at various depths. As well as having a key role in suppporting marine life sediment movement also plays a significant
part in carbon cycling.
IN BRIEF: A record 51,725 playing cards have been toppled like dominoes to set a new world record. The cards were bent slightly to stand on their
sides, and put up by a team of domino toppling experts in a special facility designed by Foshan Sunhohi Smart Home Technology Company to prevent even the
slightest breeze affecting them. ● A 47-year-old American tourist who climbed onto railings at the Colloseum in Rome to take a photograph slipped and
fell, impaling himself for 20 minutes before paramedics and rescuers could reach him. ● A woman in Kentucky was shocked to discover 22 boxes containing
70,000 Dum-Dum lollipops on her doorstep. Her 8-year-old son had ordered them on Amazon while playing with her phone... After the story broke on local news
stations she was able to return them and get a refund of the $4,000 (£3,000) cost. ● An NHS blood donation worker has been given a payout of
almost £29,000 ($38,300) payout after a Myers-Briggs psychology quiz taken during a team-building exercise compared her to Darth Vader, leading her to
resign a month later. ● A Vanderbilt student who fell ill during an overnight research trip in the Blue Springs Cave, Tennessee, had to be rescued
from three miles into the cave system. ● When Jack McGowan married his wife Kathryn last week there was a debate about how many bridesmaids she would
have, which might have got a little bit out of control. Brides in the UK usually have 3-5 bridesmaids. Kathryn had 95, making up 38% of the guest list...
Jack had a mere 8 groomsmen. ● Common sense dictates that an egg dropped on its end is more likely to crack than one dropped on its side, but research
by MIT associate professor Tal Cohen, who dropped 180 eggs from three different heights either horizontally- or vertically-orientated, found the reverse is
true.
UPDATES: A second F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet, worth around $67m (£50.7m) has been lost by the USS Harry S. Truman, this time
due to a failure to slow the landing aircraft with arrestor wires. Both pilots ejected and were recovered safely by helicopter. It is the third fighter lost
in the Red Sea since December, when the USS Gettysburg accidentally shot one down in a friendly fire incident. ● Researchers into the origins
of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which caused the COVID pandemic, have found evidence that an ancestor of the virus originated in Western China or Northern Laos
and left there several years before it appeared in humans in Wuhan, Central China, suggesting that it travelled up to 1,678 miles (2,700km) in too short a
time for natural dispersal by its primary hosts, horseshoe bats, but was spread by the wildlife trade, probably in palm civets or raccoon dogs, not
manufactured in a lab and accidentally released as some conspiracy theories supposed. ● The Russian Kosmos 482 Venus probe reentered the atmosphere
at 06:24 GMT on Monday over the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta, Indonesia, and is assumed to have fallen into the water. ● Daniel Graham and Adam
Carruthers have been convicted of two counts of criminal damage, one by cutting down the iconic Sycamore Gap tree and the other for causing damage to
Hadrian's Wall after the tree fell on it. They will be sentenced in July.
Little Jennifer's somewhat haughty grandmother was staying with her family. One morning Little Jennifer came down to breakfast and
her grandmother looked down her nose at her. "Little Jennifer," she said, "I hope you've made your bed."
Little Jennifer looked at her and smiled as only she could. "Oh, no, Granny, I think it was already made when Mummy and Daddy bought it!"
^ ...end of line
