Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
- A 300-year-old beech tree known as The Heart of the Dalkowskie Hills in Poland has been named European Tree of the Year for the fourth year running.
Runners-up included a C19th fig tree in Coimbra's Quinta das Lágrimas Gardens, Portugal, grown from seeds exchanged with the Botanical
Garden in Sydney, Australia, the Pino de Juan Molinera, a 400-year-old stone pine in Abengibre, Spain, and Scotland's 400-year-old Skinnish Oak in
the woods near Lochaber, which was recently named the UK's Tree of the Year. ● New Zealand's Mountain to Sea Conservation Trust has awarded their
Fish of the Year title to the blobfish, Psychrolutes microporos. While the gelatinous fish famously resembles an ugly cartoonish face when out of
the water - indeed it won the title of ugliest animal in the world in 2013 and became the subject of an internet meme ("Go home evolution, you're
drunk") - at the pressures of its natural deepwater habitat it looks more like a normal fish.
- NASA's New Horizons probe, having passed and photographed Pluto and Kuiper Belt Object 486958 Arrokoth a few years ago is now nearly 60 AU (astronomical
unit, the average distance from the Sun to the Earth) away, far enough for it to measure the brightness of the far ultraviolet light without interference
from the Sun's light. Taking almost 200 exposures towards the galactic poles New Horizons' spectrometer found that the brightness - mainly from the biggest
stars - was twice as bright as expected, given the sources we know about. The best guess so far to explain the finding is that there could be a massive
unknown cloud of gas emitting far ultraviolet light at the edge of the galaxy. ● A new study looking at 14 lunar rock samples returned by the Apollo
Moon landings has given extra weight to the theory that the Moon was formed by ejecta when a Mars-sized protoplanet, known as Theia, collided with the early
Earth. Both the lunar and terrestrial rocks were found to have comparable levels of oxygen-17, a rare isotope of the gas. The theory is that Theia had lost most
of its outer mantle in earlier collisions and its inner layers and core crashed into the Earth, going on to form part of Earth's core, while the rock thrown
up in the collision eventually coalesced to form the Moon. ● A strange spiral of light seen over parts of England on Monday night has been explained
as being the ejected fuel of a SpaceX Falcon 9 launched from Florida at 13:50 local time (17:50 GMT). When the first stage of the rocket separated any
remaining fuel was ejected and instantly froze at the high altitude, forming the spiral shape as the rocket span.
- Theatre photographer and historian Mike Hume recently discovered a message in a bottle, hidden in plain sight for 119 years in Edinburgh's King's Theatre.
The bottle was inside a plaster crown at the centre of the proscenium arch above the front of the stage. It contained a piece of paper dated October 1906,
listing the names of the managers, directors, architects, draftsmen, plasterers and workers who built the theatre. ● The 6'6"- (2m)-tall Farley Moor
standing stone in Farley Wood near Matlock, Derbyshire, has long been thought to be a single standing stone, but archaeologists have now discovered
evidence that a ceremonial platform stood beside it and five other stones stood nearby, forming a circle. ● The tomb of a previously unknown Pharaoh,
who ruled Egypt during a time of political instability 3,600 years, has been discovered 23' (7m) below ground level at the Mount Anubis necropolis in Abydos.
Two inscriptions were found on walls leading into the tomb, one to the goddess Isis, the other, presumed to the pharaoh's name, was too worn to be read.
● Details of an Iron Age hoard, described as one of the "largest and most important", discovered in 2021 in a field in North Yorkshire by
metal detectorist Peter Heads and excavated the next year by a team from Durham University, have been announced. The hoard comprises more than 800 items
including two cauldrons, horse harnesses and bridle bits, ceremonial spears, coloured glass and fragments of Mediterranean coral, and 28 iron tyres. Early
research suggests that the hoard shows that 2,000 years ago the people living in what is now northern England had four-wheeled carts and two-wheeled
chariots, and trading links with the Roman Empire. ● A prayer book that belonged to Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen has sold for £240 ($311) at auction
in Staffordshire. One of the most infamous early C20th murderers, Crippen was hanged in 1910 for killing his wife and burying her body beneath the
floor of their basement, then fleeing to Brussels with his lover, Ethel Le Neve, where they boarded the SS Montrose bound for Canada, Le Neve
disguised as a boy. Famously the captain of the ship recognised them and telegraphed the British authorities, leading Chief Inspector Walter Dew to take a
faster ship, boarding the Montrose in the St Lawrence River under the pretense of being a pilot, confronting the fugitives and arresting them.
Le Neve was charged with being an accessory after the fact and acquitted; she moved the the US then Canada before returning to Britain. Crippen was convicted
of murder. The prayer book is thought to be one that Crippen had with him in his cell as he awaited execution. ● A letter written on Titanic-headed
paper, sent by 16-year-old Thomas Cupper Mudd to his mother from Queenstown, Ireland, the ship's final port of call before heading across the
Atlantic, is to be sold at auction. In the letter Thomas, who was travelling second-class and would be one of the youngest to die in the sinking of the ship,
wrote that the ship was "like a magnificent palace" but described "very rough weather". He was sailing to America to join two of his
siblings and work as a bookkeeper. ● Staff at an Oxfam charity shop in Chelmsford have been left stunned after a donated Chinese language Bible sold
at auction for more than £56,000 ($72,500), seventy times its estimated value. The 1815 book proved to be a copy of the first Bible published in
Chinese. ● The public release of 80,000 pages of US government documents relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was greeted
enthusiastically by conspiracy theorists but revealed little of interest and certainly no smoking guns. What they did reveal were the unredacted Social
Security numbers of hundreds of still-living congressional staffers and others including a former assistant secretary of state, a former US ambassador and
Joseph diGenova, Donald Trump's former campaign lawyer, who described the failure to redact the data as "absolutely outrageous... sloppy. [..] It not
only means identity theft, but I've had threats against me ... there are dangerous nuts out there."
- Four men have been jailed for between 4 and 6 years for attempting to smuggle cannabis resin worth £1m ($1.3m) into the UK in 2023. Around 400lb
(182kg) of resin, disguised as Citronella candles, imported from Malaga, Spain, was seized at Tilbury Docks in Essex, destined for Liverpool. ● In 1951
an original oil sketch of Wolfgang Wilhem of Pfalz-Neuberg by Anthony van Dyck was stolen from Boughton House, the home of the Duke of Buccleuch and
Queensbury, where it had been housed for safekeeping during World War II. Its disappearance only became public in 1957 when the Duchess of Buccleuch and
Queensbury visited one of Harvard University's art galleries and saw it on display. How it came to be in America has long been a mystery but Dr Meredith Hale
of the University of Exeter has searched through archives in the UK, US and Canada to "reconstruct the painting's movements over three generations".
The thief, according to Dr Hale, was Leonard Gerald Gwynne Ramsey, editor of The Connoisseur and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. He had
visited Boughton to gather material for the magazine's yearbook. Letters between Ramsay and art historian Ludwig Goldscheider show that Ramsey wanted to sell
two paintings to raise money "to buy new curtains", and Goldscheider supplied a certificate of authentication. The painting was sold anonymously at Christie's
auction house in April 1954. Less than a year later it was sold to an art dealer in New York City, then to another dealer, who sold it to Dr Lilian Malcove,
who ultimately donated it to Harvard's Fogg Art Museum. Correspondence shows that Ramsey had claimed to have bought the paining at a market in Hemel
Hempstead, London, and claimed to doubt its authenticity. After the Duchess had visited the gallery the painting was returned to Dr Malcove, and donated to
the Art Museum of the University of Toronto after her death in 1981. The university's executive committee recently voted to return it to the present Duke.
● A Staffordshire woman has been jailed and given a restraining order after creating a fake life and twice pretending to be pregnant with twins to fool a
man she had met online. She had claimed to be a partner in a nursery business who owned her own home but had been in a relationship with an abusive partner
whose twins she was carrying. While "pregnant" she told the man that she had a rare condition in which she had two uteruses and had lost one of
the twins, even providing a fake NHS-headed letter confirming the miscarriage. She also created a fake Facebook profile for her alleged ex, and used it to
send threats and warnings about herself to her online boyfriend. She then claimed that she had given birth to the surviving baby and sent him faked
photographs, before claiming that 'Athena' had died of sudden infant death syndrome, sending him a fake death certificate. After they met and their
relationship became serious she claimed to be pregnant with twins again, and staged a gender-reveal party for his family. Later, concerned at the lack of
heartbeats, he persuaded maternity staff to perform a scan, which revealed that she was wearing a fake baby bump. Libby Vernon, 23, pleaded guilty to
ten charges including four counts of sending texts and a photograph conveying false information, four counts of sending false communications with intent to cause
harm and one count of sending a false death certificate.
- A crack stretching for a couple of metres (6'6") has opened up at the top of a section of cliffs near the Belle Tout lighthouse at Beachy Head near
Eastbourne, leading to warnings from the Coastguard for people to stay away from the cliff edges and base. There have been several cliff falls nearby in
recent years. The decommissioned lighthouse, now used as as holiday let, has already been moved back once due to coastal erosion.
IN BRIEF: DNA testing company 23andMe, facing a £4.59m ($5.95m) fine from the UK's Information Commissioner's Office regarding a 2023 data
breach, has filed for bankruptcy protection and plans to sell itself, meaning that all of its clients' genetic information is now up for sale... ●
The BBC has been hit by a wave of criticism after announcing that its flagship children's programme Blue Peter will no longer be shown live
as a result of changing viewing habits. The programme, the longest-running children's show in the world, has been broadcast live for 66 years. ●
Illustrator Julien Berjeaut has criticised the French government after it cancelled an order for 800,000 copies of his new illustrated book version of
Beauty and the Beast; Education Minister Élizabeth Borne said the new version was judged to be too grown-up for the 10-11-year olds to whom
it was due to be given, but Berjaut claims it was because he portrayed the characters as darker-skinned than previous versions. ● Brits on TikTok, with the
apparent collusion of the government, the Royal Palaces and several high street chains, have been pranking Americans into believing that a siren is
sounded nationally at 3pm to signal the start of tea time, and anybody found not drinking a cup of tea without good reason could face fines of up to
£80 ($104). [Earl Grey, hot, please... -Ed] ● A copy of Margaret Atwood's Good Bones has been returned to Bexhill Library in East
Sussex almost 28 years after it was borrowed. The library currently has an amnesty for overdue returns... ● Etsenumhe Ahmed, 18, from Nigeria, has
built himself a replica Lamborghini Egoista out of cardboard. It is powered by a small motorcycle engine and can reach a top speed of 24mph (40km/h). The
real Egoista sold to a private collector in 2013 for $117m (£90m). ● In 2009 Eileen De Bont changed her name by deed poll to Pudsey Bear, raising
£4,000 ($5,200) for the Children in Need charity. Her council tax statements and tax forms are in the name of Mrs Pudsey Bear, as is her driving
license, her bank account is in the name of Mrs P Bear, and Companies House has registered her tarot-reading business as being owned and run by Mrs Pudsey Bear but the
Home Office has continually refused to issue her a passport, calling the name change "too frivolous" and possibly in breach of copyright law,
something the UK Deed Poll Service says is irrelevent as a passport is not 'trading'. ● Finland has been named the happiest country for the eighth
year running in the UN-sponsored World Happiness Report, thanks to its access to nature and strong welfare system. Both the UK and US slipped down the
rankings, to 23rd and 24th respectively with Costa Rica and Mexico entering the top ten for the first time. The report is based on
surveys of people evaluating their lifestyles.
(DON'T) MESSAGE ME!: Somebody unauthorised accidentally sent a message to NASA's entire Materials and Processes Technical Information System
(MAPTIS) email list, set up to discuss planned payloads on space missions, with members at space agencies around the world, who were not at all happy
about it. Speculation among members and people who heard about the incident was that somebody at Elon Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency"
(DOGE) - which is neither an official government department nor efficient itself, having allegedly cost the US $0.5 trillion to save a few billion
dollars - had messed around with the list settings. ● More seriously it has come to light that senior officials in the White House, including
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and
Vice-President J.D. Vance were using the private Signal messaging platform to discuss attacking the Iran-backed Houthi group in Yemen. Such discussions are
legally required to be archived, but by its nature Signal communications cannot be kept unless screencapped. How the incident came to light only made it
worse - somebody, possibly Waltz, had added Jeffrey Goldberg, a journalist at the Atlantic magazine into the discussion, which also contained
criticism of former President Biden and of "free-loading" Europe. The initial defence offered by Hegseth &al. was that no actual
details of the attack were discussed; the next day Goldberg released screencaps showing a precise timeline for the (by then already carried out) attacks was
indeed given by Hegseth... The officials were almost certainly in breach of the US Espionage Act, but given the corrupt state of the government under Trump
they likely will not even be fired.
UPDATES: Five men have been convicted of the theft of a functional £4.8m ($6.2m) gold toilet, part of an art installation at Blenheim
Palace in September 2019. ● Two RAF engineers, Daniel Heath and William Lawrence, both 22, have been sentenced to carry out unpaid work and each
pay £2,725 ($3,530) towards the repair costs of the statue of Paddington Bear broken off from a bench in Newbury, Berkshire, in March. District judge
Sam Goozee told the men, who admitted taking the statue while on a drunken night out, that "On the night of the 2nd of March 2025, your actions
were the antithesis of everything Paddington stands for. Your actions lacked respect and integrity, two values you should uphold as members of the armed
forces."
