Interesting News

Strange news.

Deccan Chronicle, 29^th December, 2012

Page 10, first column

Largest, smelliest flower blooms

London: Hundreds of people are visiting a botanical gardens in south eastern Brazil to watch the world’s smelliest and largest tropical flower Titan arum bloom. The flower is also known as the “Corpse flower” as its smell is likened to rotting flesh, the Telegraph reported.

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Deccan Chronicle, 1.2.2013, page 11, 1^st column

London: A British man has offered 43,000 pounds for a rare piece of whale vomit, weighing three kilograms, tat his dog stumbled upon while they were taking a walk on the beach. The substance, found in the digestive system of sperm whales, is valuable and used in perfumes. Ken Wilman said when his dog “started poking at a rather large stone” he realised it was rather unusual. He left the ambergris on the beach, but after doing some research, he went back to get it, BBC news reported. He is now waiting to get the three kg piece tested.

Deccan Chronicle, 13^th June 2013

Front page, bottom

End of Telegram. Stop.

Tiruchirapalli (TN), June 12: It is the end of the ‘taar’ as we know it! BSNL has decided to discontinue the 160-year old telegraph service from July 15.

With smart phones, emails and SMS making the once ubiquitous telegram service passé, the mainstay of quick and urgent communication, the service that delivered news of births, deaths and marriages to people across the country, had become increasingly redundant.

Now, a circular has announced the formal end of the telegraph service.

All telegraph offices under the management of BSNL will have to stop booking telegrams from July 15. Even a desperate upward revision of charges after a gap of 60 years in 2011that hiked inland services to Rs. 27/50 from Rs.3/50, 4/50, proved futile. - PTI

Deccan Chronicle, 24^th June 2013. Page 10, first column, bottom.

4000-Year-old Egyptian Statue Moves on its Own

Curse of the spinning statue! In some eerie news, a 4000-year-old Egyptian statue has puzzled curators at Manchestere Museum after the relic started to mysteriously spin 180 degrees on its own.

The 10-inch tall relic, which dates back to 1800 B.C, was found in a mummy’s tomb and has spent 80 years at the Manchester Museum.

However, in recent weeks, curators were spooked after they kept finding the statue faing the wrong way. Experts decided to monitor the room on time-lapse video and were astonished to see it clearly show the statuette spinning 180 degrees – nobody going near it. The statue of a man named Neb Semu is seen to remain still at night but slowly rotate round during the day. - PTI  

Deccan Chronicle, 17^th Jan, 2014 Page7, 1^st column

Man who hasn’t washed for 60 years

London: Hermit Amou Haji has not washed for in 60 years and smokes a pipe packed with dried animal dung. The 80-year-old man, who has been dubbed the world’s most ineligible bachelor, had moved to the wilderness near the village of Dejgah in the Iranian desert after an unsuccessful attempt at wooing a woman he wanted to marry. According to the Tehran Times, he burns his hair off with a stick from h is fire and uses an old car wing-mirror to groom himself. Haji, who believes that being clean would make him sick, sleeps in a grave-like hole in the ground drinks rainfall from a rusty oil can.

 

10. Deccan Chronicle, March 8^th, page 12, 1st column, bottom

US Man Faces Jail for Laughing Aloud

A laugh riot may land you in jail! A US man is facing 30 days in jail or $500 fine for laughing too loud in his own home. Forty-two-year old Robert Schiavelli of Rockville Centre, New York received the tickets for “disturbing the peace” on consecutive days in February after police responded to a neighbour’s complaints that his laughter could be heard across the street.

Schiavelli who suffers from neurological problems and seizures, was recently slapped two “absurd” summonses after his next door neighbour complained, New York Post reported. “I did not know it was a crime to laugh out a window,” said Schiavelli. Schiavelli was chortling because he says his neighbour often taunts him due to his disability, and his best defence is to laugh him off. - PTI 

11. Deccan Chronicle, March, 16^th, 2013

Page 11, 1^st column, bottom

Woman Who Sees Everything Upside Down!

A woman from Serbia views everything upside down because of a problem in the way her brain processes the images. Bojana Danilovic reads papers from the bottom up, uses an upside down computer screen and needs to work with topsy-turvy forms on her job.

The 28-year-old council worker, who is suffering from the condition since birth, relaxes at home by watching on TV balanced on its top while the rest of the family watch another.

Experts from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that the economics graduate is suffering from “spatial orientation phenomenon”, the Daily Express reported.

Danilovic, who works in the Serbian town of Uzice, said that experts say that her eyes see the images the right way up but her brain changes thm. - ANI

13. Deccan Chronicle, March, 23^rd , 2013

Page 10, 1^st column

A Man Who Forgot His Own Wedding!

Beijing:  A Chinese man was so pr-occupied with work that he missed his own wedding, becoming a butt of joke among his netizens across the country. Tang Jinhui when realized his mistake posted an advertisement, asking for {offering ?} apology  from his fiancée. “I, Yang Jinhui carelessly missed the date of registration for my marriage to Miss Zhang on March 13. I deeply apologise for my mistake and for hurting her,” read the advertisement. “I hope Miss Zhang can forgive me and will stay with me in future,” the ad read.  

Deccan Chronicle, 27.9.2013; page 11, 1^st column

3.8-inch dog is world’s smallest

Washington: A pocket-sized 3.8-inch tall Chihuahua, weighing just half a kg, has entered the Guinness World Records as the planet’s smallest dog. The tiny female Chihuahua Miracle Milly, who measures 9.85 cm or 3.8 inches tall, is owned by Vanesa Semier of Dorado, Puerto Rico. Born in December 201 the dog is known for often sticking out her tiny tongue when someone takes her picture, Guinness said. 

Deccan Chronicle, 24-10-2013, page 11, first column, bottom

Sydney: Australian researchers have found minuscule nuggets of gold hidden inside the leaves of eucalyptus trees, in a discovery they say could help prospectors  discover new deposits of the precious metal.

Scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation mad the find in the resource-rich Kalgoordie region of Western Australia, which was the site of a major gold rush in the late 1800s. Geochemist Mel Lintarn said it appeared the trees sucked up the gold particles from 30 metres (100 feet) below the ground through their roots. “The eucalypt acts as hydraulic pump – the roots extend tens of metres into the ground and daw up water containing the gold,” he said. As the gold is likely to be toxic to the plant, it is moved to the leaves and branches, where it can be released or shed to the ground.” The research was published in the journal Nature Communications.    
http://in.screen.yahoo.com/chinas-circular-building-reaches-completion-132752704.html#

Deccan Chronicle, 28.12.13; page10, column 1

Music Makes Hens Lay More Eggs

London: A farmer has found that hens lay more eggs when they listen to opera music. Steve Ladshm played classical tracks and was shocked to find that a group of chickens laid almost twice their usual amount of eggs, the Daily Star reported. Steve, who has worked on the farm for 20 years, said they were building a barn at the time and always had music playing in the background. It was soothing opera and classical music. He said they noticed that the hens were laying more eggs and they put two and two together and realised it was because of the music.   

Deccan Chronicle, Jan, 5^th, 2014, page11,bottom half

‘Reading novels increases brain function for days’

London, Jan 4: Researchers have suggested that reading a novel can trigger actual measureable changes in the brain that could remain for at least five days after reading. Lead author and the director of Emory’s Center for Neuropolicy, Gregory Ben’s study focussed on the lingering neural affects of reading a narrative. -- ANI

Deccan Chronicle/Bengaluru Chronicle,, Jan, 5^th, 2014, page29,bottom half

World wide what?

Magnetic man’s new recoed

A real life magnetic man has set a new world record by having the most spoons attached to his body one at a time. Etibar Eichyev, a 41-year-old former kickboxing coach from Georgia, held 53 spoons on his back and chest, smashing his previous best of 50 and breaking the world record. Becoming the world record holder was his dream, but he still has big plans for the future, which includes moving airplanes and train carriages.

Eichyev claims he can stick the spoons to his body because he has natural magnetic properties.

Deccan Chronicle, 22^nd Jan 2014, page 10, bottom column.

Meet The Teen Who Has Hiccupped For More Than 1MN Times In Past 2 Months

London, Jan 21: Doctors have been left baffled by a teenager who has hiccupped an average of 25 times a minute since November 20.

Chris McKernan, 19, of Tunbridge Wells, Kent, has hiccupped an average of 1500 times an hour – meaning he he’s awake around about 16 hours a day, and hiccupping 24,000times daily, the Mirror reported.

When calculated the figure comes to an astonishing 1.4 million times. Mc Kernan said that he has gotten “sick and tired” of hiccupping and has tried “every trick in the book” from sucking a lemon, standing on head to drinking water upside down.

The teen said, “Everyone gets annoyed or laughs at me (when I can’t stop hiccupping).”My girlfriend doesn’t seem to mind, but it would be better for everyone if they went.”

The world record for hiccups was set by American Charles Osborne, who had hiccups for an astonishing 68 years. – Agencies     

  

Deccan Chronicle, 13.2.2014, page 10, first column

A chopper you can fly with thoughts

New York: Scientists have developed a mind-controlled system that allows users to fly a model helicopter with just their thoughts. Researchers at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis created a brain-computer interface – a system that allows to communicate directly with an external device – that lets participants control the path of a flying object known as a quadcopter, by thinking about specific movements. The interface requires the users to wear an electro-encephalography (EEG) cap with attached electrodes that pick up signals from the brain, Live Sceience reported.

5.3.2014, Deccan Chronicle, page 7, 1^st column

30,000-year-old giant virus returns

London: A large ancient virus that lied dormant in the Siberian permafrost for at least 30,000 years has sprung back to life after French scientists revived it in the laboratory. The virus, found buried 30m down in the frozen ground poses no danger to humans or animals, but other viruses could be unleashed as the ground becomes exposed, scientists said. “This is the first time we’ve seen a virus that is still infectious after this length of time,” said professor Jean Michel Claveris, from the National Centre of Scientific Research at the University of Aix-Marseille in France.

Comment: That is alright, but why did the virus have to lie? Was it a virus that infects a person to tell lies?! Probably it might have infected the typesetter of the esteemed newspaper. It is an invidious virus, because when struck by it, a person will become a “sanguinary perpetrator of terminological inexactitudes!”  

Deccan Chronicle, 16.4.14, page 10, column 1

Small Colorado town elects dog as mayor

Washington: A bloodhound has been elected as the mayor of a small US town after the dog beat off competition from six other canines, a donkey, a cat and even a hedgehog to win the unofficial title. Pa Kettle, a search and rescue dog picked up 2,387 votes – 55 more than Keynl, a wolf who will be deputy mayor in the town of Divide, Colorado. Buster, the cat, who placed the third with i790 votes, is the viceroy. Divide does not have a human civic leader, so Teller County Regional Animal Shelter holds an unofficial online mayoral race to raise funds. According to ‘The Mirror’, a total of 12,091 votes were cast, with each raising a dollar for the charity.      

Deccan Chronicle, 30.4.14, page 13, 1^st column

New device allows you to swap bodies virtually

London: A group artists based in Barcelona has created an unusual virtual reality device that can allow you to experience what it might be like to step into the skin of another person. The device, called the Machine to be Another lets people experience life in another person’s body. Participants in a body-swapping experiment at the Be Another lab don an Occulus Rift virtual reality head set with a camera rigged to the top of it.

The video from each camera is piped to the other person, so what you see is the exact view of your partner. If she moves her arm, you see it. If you move your arm, she sees it. To get used to seeing another person’s body without having actual control over it, participants start by moving their arms and legs very slowly, so that the other person can follow along. Eventually this kind of slow, synchronised movement becomes comfortable, and participants really start to feel as though they are living in another person’s body, BBC News reported, “The first seconds are just overwhelming,” said Rikke Francis Wahl, one of the female participants, who temporarily became a man. – PTI     

Deccan Chronicle, 20.5.2014 page 13
Now, light can be turned into matter
London: In a breakthrough, scientists have for the first time discovered a revolutionary technique to turn light into matter, a feat thought impossible when the idea was first theorised 80 years ago.
Three physicists at the Imperial College London’s Blackett Physics Laboratory worked out a relatively simple way to physically prove a theory first devised by scientists Breit and Wheeler in 1934.
The new research, published in the journal Nature Photonics, shows for the first time how Breit and Wheeler’s theory could be proven in practise. This ‘photon-photon collider’, which would convert light directly into matter, would be a new type of experiment. This would recreate a process that was important in the first 100 seconds of the universe. 

Deccan Chronicle, 5.6.2014, Page 10,  1^st column

Washington: The world’s oldest pair of pants has been discovered by the German archaeological  team that are 3000 years old on the remains of a man buried in a cemetery in Xinjiang, China. The team created a replica of the trousers and assumes that the pants were not suitable for long distance walking, Mashable reported. Maybe Wagner believes that the pants were meant for horseback riding and they were made of wool and intricately patterned. Wagner said that during normal movements the inner parts of the legs, the crotch and the lower abdomen are not exposed to friction over an extended period of time but that is an issue while riding horses. The pants have straight legs and look similar to those frequently worn by Justin Bieber.    

Deccan  Chronicle, 26.6.2014, front page, 1^st column, bottom

Diamond the size of the earth!

Washington: Astronomers have discovered an Earth-sized ‘diamond’ about 500 light years away in space, which is possibly the coldest, faintest white dwarf star ever detected. This ancient stellar remnant is so cool that its carbon has crystallised, forming – in effect – an Earth-size diamond in space. The object is likely the same age as the Milky Way, approximately 11 billion years old.       

Deccan Chronicle, 23.7.2014, Page 6,  page bottom

Mumbai: In a rare case that has surprised even the medical fraternity, more than 232 teeth were extracted from the mouth of a 17-year-old Buldhana boy in a seven-hour-long operation on Monday in JJ Hospital’s dental department.

The boy, Ashik Gavai, who studies in Class 10, hails from a lower middle class family. Dr Vandana Thoravade, ENT. surgeon, JJ Hospital, said, “Two hundred and thirty two was the number of teeth we could count. There were many more. The total number of teeth must be more than 350.”

“The boy had been suffering for the past one-and-a-half years and the fact that he had lived with it for such a long time was shocking. The highest number of teeth extracted by doctors has been 25 or 32. This is the first time we have extracted so many teeth from the mouth of a patient. We will be publishing papers on it. This is a world record,” added Dr Thoravade.

 Dr Reshma Hanwate. The doctors were shocked to find tooth after tooth hidden in the form of a crown.

Dr Thoravade said, “Wisdom teeth usually erupt between 17 and 25 years of age. For some people, they erupt normally while for others, they may be impacted by the fact that we have a smaller jawline. In the boy’s case, the wisdom teeth were completely buried in the jawbone giving rise to multiple roots and hence, multiple teeth.”

........
Describing the case as a development anomaly and one of the rarest in the history of medical science, Dr Thoravade said, “The highest number of teeth extracted by doctors has been 25 or 32. This is the first time we have extracted so many teeth from the mouth of a patient. The study will be taken up for further research and we will be publishing papers on it. This is a world record.”

 The boy’s state has been confirmed as normal by doctors and his teeth growth has been controlled. “He also has a new face now. He looks absolutely different so much so that even his mother was not able to recognise him,” said Dr Thoravade.

Deccan Chronicle, 30.7.14, page 7, 1^st column, (other stories)

Furniture that feels like flesh!

London: A British designer has created a new type of furniture which feels like real human flesh. Gigi Barker has created the skin chair and skin stool set from a pheromone-impregnated silicone base that helped her with the creation of human skin replica, Metro.co.uk reported. In this project called A Body of Skin, Barker had to study about the structure of skin surfaces and volume of flesh. Barker believes that a bond gets formed when a customer’s skin comes into contact with the chair that replicates the exact human touch. 

Deccan Chronicle, 3.9.14, page 10, left column

We have mites living on face!

Washington: Scientists have for the first time found that mites crawl along everyone’s face, and no amount of scrubbing is going to get them off. Researchers have known for more than a century about the Dermodex mites on human skin. The creatures have also been investigated as a potential cause of the skin disorder, rosacea. However, it was that just a small minority of people played host to the translucent critters. Megan Thoemmes,a graduate student at North Carolina State University, scraped the sides of people’s noses at the citizen science events, in Raleigh, North Carolina. Thoemmes and colleagues tested hundreds of people and found mites 14 per cent of the time, NPR reported.

Deccan Chronicle, 3.10.2014; page 12, 1^st column, down 

Low ability to smell can predict death

Washington: The inability to identify scents is a strong predictor of death within 5 years in older adults, a new study led by an Indian-origin researcher has found. Thirty-nine percent of study subjects who failed a simple smelling test died during that period, compared to 19 percent of those with moderate smell loss and just 10 percent of those with a healthy sense of smell, researchers said. Olfactory dysfunction was better at predicting mortality than a diagnosis of heart failure, cancer, or lung diseases. Only severe liver damage was a more powerful predictor of death. For those already at high risk, lacking a sense of smell more than doubled the possibility of death. “We think loss of sense of the smell is like the canary in the coal mine,” said the study’s lead author Jayant M. Pinto, an associate professor of surgery at the University of Chicago. 

Deccan Chronicle, 6.10.14, front page, bottom

Bliss? Woman marries self in UK!

London, Oct, 5: A woman in the UK who was fed up of being single got married to herself in a full wedding ceremony attended by 50 guet.

Grace Gelder, a photographer said that after being single for six years she had built up a brilliant relationship with herself – and creating that bond with someone else seemed like too much hard work.

Gelder even “proposed” to herself on a park bench in Parliament Hill, London, last November and walked solo down the hall in mid-March this year, ‘mirror.co.uk’ reported. Gelder bought a dress, a ring, rehearsed vows, and eventually wed in a farmhouse in rural Devon watched by her sister and friends – sealing the deal by planting a kiss on a mirror.

“A few did comment, in a light-hearted way that it was a bit narcissistic,” Gelder said. “Obviously if you have just announced you’ve married yourself, it is plainly a statement of self-love, and I was under no illusion how self-indulgent that might appear. But I was completely comfortable with my motivations. I had been on a journey of personal development using meditation, dance and performance to increase my self-awareness,” Gelder said.

Though he wedding holds no legal ground, Gelder is glad she is no longer a ‘single’ lady.  - PTI

Nick Wallenda , unbelievable feat in Chicago

Please visit BBC news at

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29875647

Deccan Chronicle,22-12-14, page 10, left col, bottom,

A strange chunk of rock with "unusual Christmas colouring" which is stuffed with 30,000 tiny diamonds has been found in a mine in Russia.

The ornament-sized red and green rock was pulled from Russia's huge Udachnaya diamond mine.

"The exciting thing for me is there are 30,000 itty-bitty, perfect octahedrons, and not one big diamond. It's like they formed instantaneously," said Larry Taylor, a geologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

The concentration of diamonds in the rock is millions of times greater than that in typical diamond ore, which averages 1 to 6 carats per tonne, Taylor said.

The thousands of diamonds in the rock cluster together in a tight band, Live Science reported.

The clear crystals are just 0.04 inches tall and are octahedral, meaning they are shaped like two pyramids that are glued together at the base.

The rock has been donated to science as the diamonds' tiny size means they are worthless as gems.

Taylor said the astonishing amount of diamonds, and the rock's unusual Christmas colouring, will provide important clues to Earth's geologic history as well as the origin of these prized gemstones.

"The associations of minerals will tell us something about the genesis of this rock, which is a strange one indeed," he said.

Deccan Chronicle, 23-12-13, page 6, top

Mysuru: It is one of those freak surprises thrown by nature. A goat at the Solapur hamlet in H.D. Kote taluk in Karnataka has given birth to two stillborn kids   on Monday with a striking resemblance to a human face.

The goat gave birth to first human-like still-born kid at around 6.30 am. Five hours later it delivered another kid, this time a female with human features.

The incident became talk of the town instantly.

Nearly 70 per cent of the features are human-like. The eyes, nose and mouth resemble a human baby. Even the limbs are like that of a human. Only ears and foot were those of a goat.

The owner of the goat, Bhaskar said he has been rearing the goat for four years and she has delivered around 10 babies till now, all of them normal.

His house is drawing crowds by the hundreds. Some felt it is an isolated case, while some others feared that the birth of such goats would bring a bad omen, and asked Bhaskar to dispose off the still-borns.

Deputy director of animal husbandry Dr Devadas said, “In medical terms, the condition in is called fetal anasarta, means the baby body filled with excessive fluids. This happens due to a genetic disorder or infection.” The two still-born baby goats will be preserved and exhibited at the Mysore Dasara Exhibition, he added.

Deccan Chronicle, 2, March, 2015
London: The world's first full-body transplant, in which someone's head would be sewn onto a donor body, will be possible within two years. Controversial surgeon Sergio Canavero of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group in Italy believes that this technique can save the lives of people riddled with cancer or whose nerves and muscles have wasted away, the Independent reported.

Canavero said that he thinks people are now at a point when the technical aspects are all feasible. If society doesn't want it, he won't do it, but if people don't want it in the US or Europe, that doesn't mean it won't be done somewhere else.

Harry Goldsmith of the University of California, Davis, said that this is such an overwhelming project, the possibility of it happening is very unlikely, and adding he doesn't believe it will ever work, as there are too many problems with the procedure.

Patricia Scripko of the Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System in California, also doubted the operation would be possible, but said if a head transplant were ever to take place, it would be very rare and it's not going to happen because someone says "I'm getting older, I'm arthritic, maybe I should get a body that works better and looks better."

In an operation, which was carried out on a monkey with a limited degree of success in 1970, the surgeons did not join the spinal cord so the animal could not move and it lived only nine days until the head was rejected by the body's immune system.

Deccan Chronicle, 25th March, 2015, page 11, bottom

WASHINGTON, March 24 — Human faeces contains gold and other precious metals that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, experts say.

Now the trick is how to retrieve them — a potential windfall that could also help save the planet. 

“The gold we found was at the level of a minimal mineral deposit,” said Kathleen Smith, of the US Geological Survey, after her team discovered metals such as platinum, silver and gold in treated waste.

A recent study by another group of experts in the field found that waste from one million Americans could contain as much as US$13 million (RM47.64m) worth of metals. 

Finding a way to extract the metals could help the environment by cutting down on the need for mining and reducing unwanted release of metals into the environment.

“If you can get rid of some of the nuisance metals that currently limit how much of these biosolids we can use on fields and forests, and at the same time recover valuable metals and other elements, that's a win-win,” said Smith.

“There are metals everywhere — in your hair care products, detergents, even nanoparticles that are put in socks to prevent bad odors.” 

More than seven million tons of biosolids come out of US wastewater facilities each year: About half is used as fertiliser on fields and in forests and the other half is incinerated or sent to landfills.

Smith and her team are on a mission to find out exactly what is in our waste. 

“We have a two-pronged approach,” said Smith. “In one part of the study, we are looking at removing some regulated metals from the biosolids that limit their use for land application.

“In the other part of the project, we're interested in collecting valuable metals that could be sold, including some of the more technologically important metals, such as vanadium and copper that are in cell phones, computers and alloys.”

The findings were presented at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society, taking place in Denver through Thursday. — AFP
- See more at: http://www.themalaymailonline.com/features/article/gold-in-human-faeces-worth-millions-says-us-study#sthash.SLVuuGbK.dpuf
 

Deccan Chronicle, 11.4.2015, page 11, 1st columnMan runs around world in 621 days

London: A man from England has become the fastest man to run around the world, covering 16,300 miles in 621 days. Kavin Carr finished the epic challenge when he made it back to his starting point on Dartmoor
in Devon, The Mirror reported. The 34-year-old said that it was hard but he made it and so he had no words to explain his feelings. Carr wore down 16 pairs of trainers on his journey which took him eastwards in and out of 26 countries as he crossed continents from coast to coast.

Deccan Chronicle, 17th April, 2015; page 11

New Mexico: A four-year-old goat in the US dubbed 'Vincent van Goat' has learned how to paint, and the animal's colourful artwork is selling for as much as USD 40 each.

Bodie, who lives at the Albuquerque Botanic Garden, New Mexico, has spent the last few months being taught how to paint by staff member Kristin Wright.

Bodie's paintings are up for sale at the New Mexico BioPark Society. They sell for about USD 40 each.

 "To see a goat actually hold a paint brush in his mouth and paint and he has some accuracy with it and some talent yeah that's unique," said Albuquerque Zoo Manager Lynn Tupa. Bodie, with a paint brush in its mouth, showed off its artistic skills at the Rio Grande Heritage Farm over the weekend, 'KRQE News 13' reported. Lynda Shey, who was among the crowd that watched the goat paint, said that she was ready to shell out maybe "a couple thousand" if Bodie painted a sheep.

Deccan Chronicle, 20^th May 2015, page 11, 1st col

London: An image claimed to be the only contemporary portrait of William Shakespeare has been discovered in a 16^th century book about plants. In what has been hailed as the literary discovery of the century, the drawing was identified by UK botanist and historian Mark Griffiths and revealed in Country Life magazine. Griffiths cracked an “ingenious cipher” to identify the Bard in an engraving in in the 16^th century work. “This is what Shakespeare looked like, drawn from life and in the prime of life,” he said. The discovery depicts Shakespeare, aged 33, while all other well-known images we have of Shakespeare were produced after his death.
20.8.15
Here is an interesting news piece about a novel way of cleaning water.
Please follow the link.
Drinkable Book!