FT267

HELL TO CLOSE
President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan wants to close down “Hell’s Gate”, a gaping crater in the Karakum Desert that has been spewing flames for 40 years. The crater, one of the few tourist attractions of the Central Asian nation, is about 200ft (60m) wide and 65ft (20m) deep. It appeared in 1971 when the ground caved under a drilling rig and exposed a methane-choked cave. Soviet geologists decided to burn off the gas and it has been burning ever since. www.aroundglobe.net, 20 April 2010.

WHAT A BUZZ!
Almost 40 competitors gathered in a field in the city of Tartu, Estonia, for the country’s mosquito-catching contest. They had 10 minutes to catch as many as they could. Competitor Jevgeny Serov explained: “We will warm up so we will start sweating a little; then I will stand with bare hands and feet and my wife and daughter will pick mosquitoes off me.” The first prize, a sailing ship, went to Rauno Luksepp, who caught 38 mosquitoes. Sunday Times, 20 June 2010.

AGE OF REASON
A poll of 1,546 Americans aged 21 to 26, conducted by phone and online by the Pew Research Centre last April, showed that 41 per cent believed Jesus will return by 2050. In another survey of 1,500 Australians, 30 per cent thought dinosaurs and humans co-existed. D.Telegraph, 23 June; ABC News, 30 July 2010.

ILL WIND FOR LUCKY
A dog was sucked into the sky in his kennel by a huge storm in Gesztered, Hungary. Owner Agnes Tamas, 57, said: “It was like something out of The Wizard of Oz”. The dog, now renamed Lucky, was found 20 miles (32km) away after a radio appeal, but there was no sign of the kennel (even though dog and kennel had been chained together). D.Record, Metro, MX News (Brisbane), 22 June 2010.

ELEPHANT-RABBIT
Mohammad Alawna, a 19-year-old rabbit breeder north of Jenin in occupied Palestine, was “shocked and terrified” when his newest animal gave birth to “a black baby elephant” next to nine white baby rabbits on 28 February. The mother bunny was a Dutch breed. The strange offspring died after five hours. www.maannews.net (Israel), 2 Mar 2010.

SCARE RABBIT
A court in Vechta, northern Germany, has thrown out the case of a 60-year-old geo­graphy teacher against Kim Pohl, 14 (or 16), who allegedly tormented her by scrawling pictures of rabbits on the blackboard to aggravate her paralysing fear of rabbits. Two years ago at another school, the teacher successfully sued a pupil for claiming that she “freaked out” when she saw a rabbit or heard the word. [AFP/DDP] 20 July; www.telegraph.co.uk, 21 July 2010.

GAMBLING RISK
The Cape vulture could soon become extinct because South African gamblers believe that smoking its brains gives them supernatural powers to predict match results. This branch of muti magic was highlighted at the time of the World Cup in June. In the worst-case scenario, there could be population collapse within 12 years. [PA] 7 June 2010.

RELIC NEWS
Three X-rays of Marilyn Monroe’s chest and pelvis fetched ,000 (,000) at auction in Las Vegas on 26 June – more than 10 times the estimate. The X-rays came from a visit she made to Hollywood’s Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in 1954. Three days later, a lock of hair cut from Napoleon’s head the day after his death in 1821 fetched £8,800 in New Zealand. And Winston Churchill’s gold-mounted dentures fetched £15,200 in Norfolk on 29 July. Independent, 29 June; [AFP] 1 July; Metro, 30 July 2010.

WET CAT WARNING
When a house in Otago, New Zealand, was endangered by fire on 7 April, Macao the cat woke up his owners, Kate Gatonyi and Bevan Garland, by walking on their faces with paws he had dipped in a lavatory bowl. “He did it about three times,” said Gatonyi. The couple found a blaze 3m (10ft) from their bedroom window – a neighbour’s shed had caught fire and the “raging inferno” was likely to spread to the couple’s garage and gas bottles. Canberra Times, 10 April 2010.

OWL RECOVERY
Emma Stevenson, 11, from Wishaw in Lanarkshire, was reunited with her lost owl after he turned up five miles (8km) away at the house of Sallie Fraser, the head teacher at her Motherwell primary school. Barney the barn owl was missing for a week after flying off while being exercised. Ms Fraser sought the advice of Emma on how to care for an owl that had turned up in her kitchen. She knew Emma helped out at a bird of prey centre, but not that she owned an owl. D.Record, 23 June 2010.

TRAFFIC JAM
A lorry carrying jam got stuck under a bridge and blocked the road for six hours in Worksop, Nottinghamshire. Sun, 16 July 2010.

DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION
A 45-year-old man in a VW Golf rammed at least 17 black cars in an early-morning rampage across London from Wimbledon to Archway on 7 May. Arrested in the Strand as he ploughed into a black cab, he told police he was convinced that black cars were out to kill him. Sun, 8 May 2010.

ANGRY MOB MELTS
A policeman who played ‘ice cream van music’ over a tannoy to calm a gang of unruly youths throwing bottles at his Land Rover acted “inappropriately”, according to his superiors. The incident happened in Twinbrook, west Belfast, Northern Ireland, on 22 May, when 15 teenagers started throwing bottles at the vehicle. But the ploy worked and a spokesman for the independent NI Policing Board said the officer had “showed initiative and should be commended.” BBC News, 27 May; Metro, 28 May 2010.

VINTAGE BUBBLY
The world’s oldest drinkable champagne was discovered in an unidentified shipwreck 180ft (55m) down in the Baltic, near the Åland islands, on 6 July. A local wine expert said the Clicquot champagne from the period 1772–1789 tasted “fabulous” and had lost none of its fizz. It was dark golden and smelled of tobacco, white fruits, oak and mead. There are thought to be at least 30 bottles to recover. They might be from a consignment for the Russian Imperial Court from Louis XVI. Independent, 19 July 2010.

SEX MARKS THE SPOT
Acupuncturist Pham Thi Hong, 54, is credited with helping to free three convicted rapists from prison in Vietnam. She took their cases to President Nguyen Minh Triet, because she believes all three men are virgins. “They all had small red spots on the back of their ears,” she said. “The spots should have disappeared if they had had sex.” The convict­ions were suspended due to flaws in the original evid­ence. MX News (Brisbane), 5 July 2010.

ODD COMPARISON
A vast carpet of microbes covering an area the size of Greece has been discovered on the seabed off the west coast of South America. This “microbial mat” seems to have survived by “eating” hydrogen sulphide and “breathing” nitrates. The total biomass of microbial life in the oceans is thought to weigh about the same as “240 bill­ion African elephants”. Independent, 19 April 2010.

SIMIAN CHATTER
Michael Jackson spent a fort­une trying to make his chimpanzee Bubbles talk. He tried to persuade throat specialists to implant vocal cords in his pet so the pair could sing and chat together. Wacko Jacko’s sister, La Toya, said doctors warned that surgery was too dangerous. Bubbles now lives in a Florida sanctuary. Sun, 12 July 2010.