Archive for November, 2007

Three-legged duck Born in China

November 30th, 2007 by admin | Comments Off | Filed in animal, odd

This one is not an ugly duckling but a three-legged duck which was born in China.

The young duck is being raised by its owner in Yancheng in the Northeastern province of Jiansu after being born on September 4.

Although it is reportedly eating well and quacking all day long, a rare mutation has left the male duckling with an extra leg dragging behind him.

Its owners say removing the surplus leg is not an option and experts are now determining whether the duck will produce three-legged offspring if it breeds.

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Two-headed Turtle Found in Philadelphia

November 30th, 2007 by admin | Comments Off | Filed in animal

A rare two-headed turtle captured by a turtle collector was bought by a pet store and is now on display. This two-headed turtle is a rare example of a conjoined-twin birth, its owner said.

The 2-month-old turtle, known as a red-eared slider, fits on a silver dollar. It has two heads sticking out from opposite ends of its shell, along with a pair of front feet on each side. But there is just one set of back feet and one tail.

The turtle is seemingly healthy, and the species can live 15 to 20 years, Jacoby said. The turtle has not yet been named.

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Extraordinary Boy Befriends a 4.8-metre-long Python

November 30th, 2007 by admin | Comments Off | Filed in animal, xo feat

This one’s really an extraordinary boy. Instead of playing with peers, he for a 4.8-metre-long python as a playmate.

In the village of Sit Tbow, 50 kilometres east of Phnom Penh, Sambath Uon, seven, reportedly refuses to go to sleep without the company of his pet, Chamreun, or Lucky, in Khmer.

The snake slithered into town in 2000, when Sambath was just a few months old.

While the boy’s father tried to return the snake to the forest three times, the Burmese python loyally returned to her young master and has earned the acceptance of villagers, who think she brings good fortune.

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Bracelet Found in Chicken After 25 years

November 30th, 2007 by admin | 1 Comment | Filed in animal, offbeat news

This chicken must be good at keeping things. A bracelet own by Aaron Giles which was lost more than two decades was found on it’s gizzard after a butcher cut it. Wanna know how the butcher know who’s the owner of the bracelet? Aaron’s name, address and phone number was engraved on it. Pretty amazing huh.

Bracelet Found in Chicken After 25 years“I’ve heard of livestock swallowing unusual objects, but this situation stands out,” Mark Olson, who owns the meat locker, told the Sentinel of Fairmont.

Giles had lived in Fairmont as a child and played hide-and-seek and other games with his brothers in their grandfather’s barn near Sherburn.

“I would spend most of my time out at his farm, and that’s the only place I can think of that I would have lost it,” Giles said about his bracelet on Thursday. The 31-year-old said he thinks the bracelet was lost when he was 4 or 5.

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World’s Most Expensive Faberge’s Egg at $18.5 Million

November 28th, 2007 by admin | 1 Comment | Filed in world record

This egg is not your typical breakfast favorite as it is the world’s most expensive Faberge egg. It fetched a whopping $18.5 Million in an auction at Christie’s.

Worlds Most Expensive Faberges Egg at $18.5 MillionThe translucent pink egg contains a clock and animated cockerel and had never been seen in public before the sale was announced.

A spokesman for Christie’s said a tense auction room burst into applause when the hammer went down. The piece, not publicly documented when it was made in 1902 for the Rothschild family, went to an unidentified private Russian buyer, he added.

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The Extraordinary Great Swallower

November 28th, 2007 by admin | Comments Off | Filed in animal, offbeat news

Not because this fish is called the Great Swallower it can eat something a lot bigger than itself. Well, it did and resulted to it’s death. The Great Swallower is 7.5 inches in length and snake mackerel on it’s belly is 34 inches – really a mouthful.

Great SwallowerWhile fishing in about 1,400 feet of water off the South Coast of Grand Cayman, Mr. Wright’s attention was drawn to an object that was floating on the surface nearby. He motored over to investigate and picked up a dead fish that simply amazed him. It is now also astonishing scientists both here and in the United States.

In the belly of the fish was another fish, and this one was clearly much, much bigger. In fact when it was measured it was determined that the fish he picked up had eaten a ‘snake mackerel’ that was more than four times its own length.

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Jerry Mika, Honest Man Returns Mistaken $2M Check

November 28th, 2007 by admin | Comments Off | Filed in offbeat news, people

Jerry Mika must be overwhelmed by the amount of money in his hand – a 2 million dollar check. This “honest man” returns the mistaken check because he figured he couldn’t cash it.

Expecting a $15 refund from the Utah Department of Commerce, the Draper man opened his mail recently to find a $2,245,342 check.

“I kept trying to find a way to make it legitimate so I could cash it,” he said. “I did think about all the things I could do with the money … who wouldn’t?”

Mika returned the check — a mistake that occurred when an employee entered a serial number, not an amount — to state finance offices Wednesday.

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Nano Toilet, The Most Bizarre Nano Image Ever Made

November 28th, 2007 by admin | Comments Off | Filed in odd

This ‘nano toilet’ won the Most Bizarre prize at The 49th International Conference on Electron, Ion and Photon Beam Technology and Nanofabrication Bizarre/Beautiful Micrograph Contest. This contest already took place in 2005, but this image is making the rounds again; maybe you haven’t seen it yet, Nanowerk LLC reports.

Here are the price winners for the 2004 and 2007 contests’ Most Bizzare category (the category wasn’t available in 2006 but was brought back by popular demand in 2007).

2007 winner: Nanojogger sprints along 200nm pitch gratings after a contaminated high temperature anneal. Submitted by: Keith Morton, NSL, Princeton University.

2004 winner. Fishing with Nanotubes – These micro fish appear hooked on nanotubes with a catalyst bait. Submitted by: David Tanenbaum and Markus Brink (Pomona College). Source

Alexis Lemaire, World’s Fastest Human Calculator

November 27th, 2007 by admin | 1 Comment | Filed in world record, xo feat

A 27-year-old named Alexis Lemaire, a doctoral student in artificial intelligence from Reims, made a world record calculating the 13th root of a random 200-digit number in just 72.4 seconds using only his brain.

French “mathlete” Alexis Lemaire showed off his rare mental agility Thursday, claiming a new world record after working out in his head the 13th root of a random 200-digit number in just 72.4 seconds.

Lemaire, a 27-year-old doctoral student in artificial intelligence from Reims, near Paris, sat at a laptop computer that randomly selected the figure and displayed it on the screen. The number was so long it ran over 17 lines.

Lemaire, who says he doesn’t consider himself a nerd or a geek, then took just over a minute to identify two quadrillion, 397 trillion, 207 billion, 667 million, 966 thousand, 701 as the 13th root. In other words, the number multiplied by itself 13 times produces the 200 digit number originally generated by the computer.

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The World’s Largest Chair

November 27th, 2007 by admin | Comments Off | Filed in world record

This 33-foot chair in Anniston, Alabama is the world’s largest. It promotes the Miller’s Office Furniture and was built in the 1980s. Link