Weird News from around the World

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A footwear manufacturer in China has made an electric car out of a giant shoe. It can carry two people up to 250 miles at speeds of up to 20mph on a single charge of the battery underneath the driver’s seat.

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Ziona Chana from Baktawang, Mizoram, India, has 39 wives, 94 children, 14-daughters-in-law and 33 grandchildren. They all live in a 100-room-mansion. His wives take it in turns to share his bed and it takes 30 whole chickens to make a dinner.

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The longest name in the world is: Barnaby Marmaduke Aloysius Benjy Cobweb Dartagnan Egbert Felix Gaspar Humbert Ignatius Jayden Kasper Leroy Maximilian Neddy Obiajulu Pepin Quilliam Rosencrantz Sexton Teddy Upwood Vivatma Wayland Xylon Yardley Zachary Usansky.
This name is composed out of 29 different names and 197 characters (excluding spaces).
Because Usansky was fascinated by words, he changed his name this way.

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Live hairy crabs are displayed in a vending machine at a main subway station in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. The crab dispenser was designed by Shi Tuanjie, Chairman of the Nanjing Shuanghu Crab Industrial Company, who came out with the idea of a crab dispenser 3 years ago. This is the first live crab vending machine in China.

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This miniature creature, from the Brookesia genus, was spotted on an expedition in Amber Mountain Park, Madagascar, by British wildlife photographer Will Burrard-Lucas. Mr Burrard-Lucas and his brother Matt had just settled down for lunch during when their eagle-eyed guide spotted the creature. The delicate-looking creature is one of the world’s smallest chameleons - and can sit on a human thumbnail with room to spare.

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Nearly a mile long and 25 stories high, Freedom will be the world’s largest vessel to ever sail the seven seas. Freedom will be large enough to bring on more than 50,000 residents, 15,000 employees, 20,000 day guests. Its dimensions are so colossal that it will have to be assembled at sea. Once it’s built, Freedom will circle the earth every two years, following the balmy breezes as it approaches the world’s major ports.

[DaveR]

What happens in a Tsunami?

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I guess it will end up as the Worlds biggest surf board  D)

[Yorkie]

I suppose it is someone's dream, but not for me.    At 25 stories high (200') plus the freeboard of probably another 50' she will be quite unstable.  The overturning effect created by wind alone will require so much ballast and such a deep draft that there will not be a port where it would be able to dock.  And probably very little water, except for deep sea, where she will be able to sail.

There has already been construction and reliability issues with Supertankers so how this one will be constructed, and how they will stop it breaking its back is a major exercise for the marine engineers.

By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
 
Monster waves of mysterious origin prowl the oceans, surprising ship captains as they appear on the horizon like great walls before crashing across the bow, or worse.   Windows of luxury liners get broken. Supertankers are disabled and left vulnerable to the whim of the next wave. Many ships disappear.

"Two large ships sink every week on average, but the cause is never studied to the same detail as an air crash," says Wolfgang Rosenthal of the GKSS Forschungszentrum GmbH research center in Germany. "It  simply gets put down to bad weather."

A significant handful of these sunken ships -- about 200 over the past two decades -- are supertankers or large container ships, according to a statement explaining Rosenthal's new research. The cause for most of the mishaps is a mystery, but so-called rogue waves as tall as 10-story buildings are believed to be the major culprit in many cases. Yet until recent years, scientists doubted such strangely huge waves occurred so frequently.

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A waste-to-energy power plant in Denmark that blows smoke rings and has a ski slope
Waste-to-energy power stations are usually ugly eyesores, but a new power plant planned for Copenhagen is different: it is designed to blow smoke rings and double as a ski slope. The facility has been announced as the winner of a competition to design a new waste-to-energy plant for Copenhagen, with expected completion in 2016.
Designed by BIG architects to replace an adjacent 40-year-old plant, the roof of the new construction will feature 1,500 metres of green, blue and black-diamond ski runs
Lifts will run alongside the stack to transport skiers to the top of the building, with the journey up affording passengers a view inside the plant.
Picture: Rendering ©2010 by BIG/Rex Features

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From the weird to the grotesque
Every early spring, a foul odor fills the air of Dongyang, Zhejiang Province. Dongyang people call it the smell of spring. But actually this is the smell of urine! Boy egg vendors go to local elementary schools to collect urine from boys with buckets. The process of boiling eggs in boys’ urine: first, soak eggs in urine and heat them over the stove. After it boils, get all eggs out and crack their shells before putting them back. After a while, pour in new urine. Repeat it and simmer eggs for an entire day.  Local people love the taste of the eggs and eat up to ten of them each day.

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A baby dolphin has been rescued in Japan after being dumped in a rice field by a giant tsunami that hit the coast on March 11.
The dolphin was spotted in the flooded field, about 2 km (a mile) from the coast, said Ryo Taira, a pet-shop owner who has been rescuing animals abandoned after the 9.0 magnitude quake and tsunami left 23,000 people dead or missing.
"A man passing by said he had found the dolphin in the rice paddy and that we had to do something to save it," said 32-year-old Taira.
Taira found the dolphin struggling in the shallow seawater on Tuesday and after failing to net it, waded in to the field, which had yet to be sown with rice, to cradle the 1.2-meter (four foot) animal in his arms.
"It was pretty weak by then, which was probably the only reason we could catch it," he said.
Taira and some friends wrapped the dolphin in wet towels and drove it back to the sea, where they set it free. The dolphin appeared to perk up when it was back in the Pacific, he said.
"I don't know if it will live, but it's certainly a lot better than dying in a rice paddy," Taira told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.

[tonyf]

 *&(Referring to the 'big wave' articles; in the RN we called it the 50 year wave. Basically a rogue wave that occurs in rough weather only much bigger. Strange as it may seem but I have experienced one where it came from astern the wrong way whilst the ship was heading into the sea. It wrecked the guard rails around the flight deck, buckled the hangar door and flooded the hangar to a depth of a couple of feet and then just flowed out again as if nothing had happened. The rest of the ship never felt a thing!

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Woman is addicted to eating sofas
Mother-of-five Adele Edwards, from Florida, is addicted to another kind of snack - the suite kind, which most people normally just sit on to eat their dinner.
Ms Edwards apparently loves chomping on household items - such as elastic bands and rubbers.
However, her biggest weakness is snacking on the polyester stuffing in her sofa.
Shockingly, during the course of her lifetime, Ms Edwards believes she has eaten her way through eight settees and five chairs, consuming almost 16 stone of cushion in the process.
Doctors have warned the 30-year-old mum that her addiction could kill her, but she just can't stop herself.
They said Ms Edwards has a disorder called Pica, where sufferers often eat inedible items.
She even had to have emergency treatment recently, so chunks of foam could be taken out of her intestines.
Ms Edwards said: 'I was ten years old when I was first introduced to cushion.
'At first, I thought it was strange but, after sucking it for a while, I came to like the texture.'
The mum said from that point on, she began eating cushions quite regularly and would frequently swallow chunks 'as though it was candy floss'.
'It sounds strange but, to me, foam tasted like sweets.'
While Ms Edwards' craving sounds fairly extreme, the condition could actually affect her in worse ways.
According to the Challenging Behaviour Foundation website, some people with the disorder consume cigarette butts and even faeces.

My Strange Addiction- Couch Cushion Craving

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China's answer to Little And Large
Here's a double act with, ahem, a big difference. Zhang Huan, who is 1m (3ft 3in) and his 2.4m (7ft 9in) partner Xu Guoyuan have formed China’s answer to the Little And Large Show.
‘We live together now, which means we have to have everything at different heights – two toilets, two sinks, two kitchen tops,’ said Mr Xu, 24. ‘Luckily, we save on transport because I can just pop Huan in my pocket.’ The pair, China’s shortest man and Asia’s tallest, were introduced by their showbiz agents.
One fan said: ‘Huan looks like a doll next to his partner. They’re very funny.’  Mr Zhang, 25, and Mr Xu – aka the Heaven And Earth Brothers – have put on a month-long series of shows to help a children’s charity in Chongqing, central China