Man Marries 4 Brides at same Ceremony

It is reported that a South African man recently married four women at the same marriage ceremony. Milton Mbhele, the 44-year-old groom, showed up for his wedding in Weenen, near Ladysmith, in a white limousine - with four brides. The brides wore white gowns, and each received rings and a kiss from the groom at a ceremony attended by hundreds of people.

 

Ever heard of something like this? Though it sounds strange, in South Africa polygamous marriages are common among several tribes. In fact, the South African law permits polygamous marriages.

 

Milton Mbhele, who is a municipal manager in Indaka, said the joint celebration saved money by combining the festivities. Interestingly, he has already been married to Thobile Vilakazi for 12 years and has 11 children. Now his wives are planning to live separately and he will visit them in rotation!

 

via Daily Telegraph

World's Largest Paintbrush

Chinese artist He Wenjun recently built a record breaking 12 ft long paintbrush create traditional calligraphy in a special exhibition in Nanchong, southern China. Take a look at the picture.

Wenjun built the massive 115lb paintbrush himself using hair from the tails of 300 horses. It took Wenjun a year to build the record breaking painbrush and nearly another year to learn how to control it. The paintbrush is so massive that it can soak up more than 100lbs of ink.

 

"I am very proud to be the new Guinness record holder," Wenjun said.

 

Wenjun recently showed off his mastery of the giant paintbrush by successfully creating a giant 'dragon' character on a huge sheet of cloth.

Farmer's home-made helicopter

Take a look at the picture. This is a real, hand made helicopter, created by a Chinese farmer out of wood.
Wu Zhongyuan, the 20 years old man, of Luoyang, in central China's Henan province, took nearly three months to complete his home-made aircraft.
He says he used his memories of middle school physics lessons to make the machine which he claims can fly up to a height of 800 metres.
"I didn't have a design," he said. "The only source for me to get relevant knowledge was surfing the internet via my mobile phone."
The blades are made from an elm tree, the engine is from a motorcycle and the frame is reinforced with steel pipes, reports Dahe Daily.
Wu, who lives in a mountain village, said: "I had this dream from childhood of not needing to climb mountains anymore. I wanted to go to school in my own flying machine."
His father, Wu Xizhao, said his son had spent less than £1,000 on developing the helicopter which is due to make its maiden flight later this week.
"He loves machines. At one time or another, he has taken apart and put back together every gadget in the house," he said.

Willow - Dog that can Read!

According to news reports, New York animal trainer Lyssa Rosenberg has taught her terrier 'Willow' to obey simple written commands. How? For example, Willow plays dead when she sees the word 'bang', stretches a paw in the air when she sees 'wave' and gets up on her back feet to beg when she sees the words 'sit up'. So, like humans dogs can also read words?

How it started? Ms Rosenberg has the experience of training dogs to appear in TV adverts and pose on photo shoots. Once, for a bet she told a friend that she would teach Willow to read. The friend challenged the bet and promised a free trip to Mexico if she could do it. So, Ms Rosenberg started to train Willow and within six weeks the terrier was ready with the ability to recognize words and react to written commands. Ms Rosenberg won the bet and Willow went on a trip to Mexico with her!

Willow has her own pet passport and regularly flies transatlantic to visit Ms Rosenberg's husband Gareth Howells, in Guildford, Surrey. She was also the second witness at the couple's wedding at New York City Hall in March - signing the marriage certificate with an inky paw print.

Pet Python Kills Toddler

All pets are friendly and harmless. If you think like this way, think twice after reading this. According to Reuters, a 2-year-old girl in Florida was strangled on Wednesday by a 12-feet-long (3.6-meter) pet python that escaped from a holding tank in the girl's home.

The albino Burmese python was a pet of the boyfriend of the child's mother. The owner stabbed the snake when he found it on the child but she was already dead when emergency crews arrived. The python apparently broke free in the night, entered the girl's bedroom and attacked her.

 

So please, keep these things away from kids.

Boy puts 43 Snails on Face!

Take a look at snail covered face in the picture. This is Fin Keheler, a eleven-year-old boy from Sandy, Utah, who allowed 43 of the slimy mollusks to crawl on his face last Saturday. Why? Because Fin wanted to break the World Record for maximum number of snails placed on the face for 10 seconds.

The Guinness World Records website says the present record was set in 2007 for snails on the face for 10 seconds is eight. The boy says he has since learned the record was 36. On Saturday, Fin made three attempts. Sitting back in a reclining chair, snails gathered from neighbors' gardens were carefully placed on his face. Those that remained for at least 10 seconds were counted.

 

Now, Fin wants the Guinness World Records to verify his effort. His family is sending witness statements, video and media coverage to Guinness this week. Anyway this attempt proves that there are some people who can do anything and everything for name and fame. What you say?

Baby on 3000 Calories a Day Diet

How much calories a baby should intake per day? Around 1000 calories? But it is reported that a 16-months-old toddler in Britain who was born three months early is being fed 3,000 calories a day! Why? Because the baby is still 6lb under weight and she need to those extra calories to grow.

 

Baby Agatha Holloway was born via Caesarean section on new year’s eve 2007. But as she was born three months early, Agatha had some severe complications and almost died. The medical team at St George’s Hospital, south London, had managed to resuscitate her and put her on to a life support machine after birth.

 

Now Agatha's diet includes high-calorie prescription milk, clotted cream, full fat butter, high fat roasted meats and chocolates. Note that the 3000 calories per day mark is 500 calories more than the recommended daily intake for an adult person!

World's First Transgenic Dog Glows!

A group of scientists in South Korea have created the world's first transgenic dog. Take a look at the picture. This cloned beagle named Ruppy is the world's first transgenic dog. She was engineered to glow red under ultraviolet light.

At first glance, this sweet beagle puppy looks like just another cute puppy. But when she is lit with an ultraviolet light, the odd dog glows deep red in the dark.

Ruppy (short for Ruby Puppy) was one of five cloned puppies genetically engineered to produce a fluorescent protein by scientists. They were created by a team led by Byeong-Chun Lee of Seoul National University in South Korea, who created the first cloned dog Snuppy in 2005.

Spaghetti Junction Birmingham from Space!

Soon astronauts in space will be able to view Birmingham's Spaghetti Junction glowing at night. Birmingham City Council is planning to illuminate the giant interchange that links the M6, Aston Expressway, A38 and A5127 above two railway lines, three canals and two rivers.

Birmingham City Council officials want to illuminate the flyover network to turn it into a landmark as part of a £6 billion makeover project of the city. Clive Dutton, director of planning at Birmingham City Council, said: "It is an extraordinary structure, one that is known around the country, but we feel as though it can have a massive impact around the world."

 

Well, the ambitious plan is currently at the drawing board stage, and officials are still unsure how many lights would be required and the Highways Agency would have to be consulted. On the other hand, the council has already applied for lottery funding for the project and hopes that the lights will be switched on as early as next year.

Chocolate-powered Formula 3 Racing Car

A new environmentally-friendly racing car, made of vegetables and powered by chocolate, will be launched next month. The car, named ecoF3, has a steering wheel made of carrots, a body made of potatoes and a seat made of soybeans. And the cool thing is that it will be able to travel at 145 miles per hour speed. Can you believe this?

 

Developed at the University of Warwick's Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre, the WorldFirst vehicle is the first Formula 3 racing car designed and made from sustainable and renewable materials. It uses plant-oil based lubricants and a biodiesel engine capable of running on chocolate and vegetable oil.

Due to use of the unusual fuel, the car engine failed to meet the current regulations for racing cars. But the designers of the car hope that the technology used in their environmentally-friendly racing car will be adopted by Formula 1 teams such as McLaren and Ferrari. With it's launch next month, this odd racing car will prove that environmentally friendly car is not necessarily a slow car.

Bra Underwire stops Bullet and saves Woman

Bra can save you from a bullet! Though it sounds strange and impossible, it actually happened with a 57-year-old Detroit woman, who avoided serious injury when her bra stopped a bullet shot at her from next door.

According to police sources, the woman, who lives on Huntington Street near Outer Drive on the West side of Detroit, was shot at by a male teenager when she spotted a group of male teenagers breaking into a neighbor's house on Tuesday morning.

Luckily the underwire of the bra deflected the bullet and saved the woman from serious injures or death. She sustained injuries due to the hit, but they're not life threatening. She was taken to a hospital and released by the afternoon. The suspects, all African-American teenagers, drove away after the shooting.

So, is it not amazing? An ordinary bra saved the woman. The underwire bra was definitely made from strong material and now police want some bullet-proof vests made from that wire!

Mount Everest Cricket

Named after the first two Everest heroes, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherp, two cricket teams on Tuesday have successfully played the world's highest match on the side of Mount Everest.

The Nokia Maps Everest Test was the brain child of Briton Richard Kirtley, who visited Gorakh Shep, a plateau 5,165m above sea level, some years ago. The 50 odd players, aged between 22 and 36, spent a gruelling nine days trekking to the site of the Twenty20 match at the Gorak Shep plateau. English skipper Andrew Strauss was the honorary captain of Team Tenzing and vice captain Alastair Cook led the Team Hillary. Team Hillary beat team Tenzing by 36 runs with six balls remaining.

The match was intended to raise $365,000 for two charities: the Himalayan Trust set up by Sir Edmund Hillary to support the Sherpas and a U.K. charity.

The location of the wicket was at more than twice the altitude at which professional footballers are allowed to play. At that height the body absorbs only two-thirds of the oxygen it does at sea level, meaning the resting heartbeat is about a third faster. So, definitely it was not a easy match for the players, which included bankers, lawyers and former cops.

Milky Way Tastes like Raspberries!

Can anybody ever think about the taste of a giant dust cloud at the heart of the Milky Way? Yes, probably no one but Astronomers did. Astronomers testing a giant dust cloud at the heart of the Milky Way have found that it might taste of raspberries, according to reports.

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, were searching space for evidence of amino acids: the basic chemicals from which life is created. Scientists failed to locate any such aminos but did find ethyl formate - the chemical responsible for the flavour of raspberries.

The astronomers used the IRAM telescope in Spain to analyze electromagnetic radiation emitted by a hot and dense region of Sagittarius B2 that surrounds a newborn star, the paper reported.
Radiation from the star is absorbed by molecules floating around in the gas cloud, which is then re-emitted at different energies depending on the type of molecule. Ethyl formate and propyl cyanide are two molecules are the largest yet discovered in deep space.

Astronomer Arnaud Belloche said that It was happen to give raspberries their flavor, but there were many other molecules that were needed to make space raspberries. The results are being presented today at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science at the University of Hertfordshire.

Great Wall of China is much longer than we thought

One of the seven wonders of the world is the Great Wall of China. According to a new study, this ancient structure is 180 miles longer than it's previously thought length. The extra miles of the ancient Chinese monument were uncovered after a two-year government mapping study, reports Sky News.

The study used mapping technologies such as infrared range finders and GPS devices to show extra portions of the wall - hidden by hills, trenches and rivers. The study found that the wall spans 8,850km (5,500 miles) and the newly-mapped parts of the wall were built from Hu Mountain in northern Liaoning province to Jiayu Pass in western Gansu province during the Ming Dynasty. They were covered over time by sandstorms that moved across the arid region.

The study was carried out by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping. It will continue for another 18 months in order to map sections of the wall built during the Qin (221-206BC) and Han (206BC-9AD) Dynasties.

On the other hand, present Great Wall of China is in danger! Recent studies by Chinese archaeologists show that sections of the wall in Gansu are being reduced to "mounds of dirt" by sandstorms and may disappear entirely in 20 years. They blame destructive farming methods in the 1950s that "desertified"large areas of northern China.

NY woman planning to have dead lover's child

A New York judge has given a woman permission to harvest her dead lover's sperm so she can still have his baby. Can you believe this? Yes, the woman wants a child from a dead man's sperm.

Johnny Quintana was only 31 when he died Thursday of an apparent heart attack and had wanted to have a second child with his fiancee, Gisela Marrero. So, the woman wanted to keep his sperm. But, the only way to make it happen was to quickly collect his sperm, which stays fresh for only 36 hours after death.

Again there was a problem. A court order was needed because Quintana and Marrero were not yet married. So, the woman appealed before the court. The Bronx judge agreed on Friday with only four hours left until the deadline to collect the spermn. Marrero already has a 2-year-old son with Quintana.

Auction of Japanese School

It is reported that a small town in Japan is planning to auction off four primary schools on the Internet. Why? Because there is scarcity of student due to falling birthrate.

Niikappu, a farming and fishing town of 11,000 people on the northern island of Hokkaido, plans to start the auction next month on the Yahoo! Japan online auction site, said Hidenori Tsutsumi, who is in charge of the auction.

Last year, the small town closed seven of its nine schools. Thanks to falling birthrate! Three of those closed schools were turned into a corporate office, a nursing home and a horse-racing centre but the town was unable to find buyers for the others. With no immediate buyers for the other four, the town said it "decided to list the schools on Japan's largest auction site".

In rual areas of Japan, falling birthrate is a serious problem. In those areas older population has been left to till the lands while the younger population has moved to the cities.

Three of the four schools up for sale boast spacious teachers' residences and swimming pools. The asking prices range from 21.8 million to 67.4 million yen (220,500 to 682,000 dollars), the town said.

Plane lands on School Playground

During an emergency situation aircraft pilots looks for open areas to land the plane. That's why on Wednesday, the pilot of a small plane made an emergency landing on a North Phoenix school playground. Miraculously the pilot walked away without hurting anyone.

Television images show that the plane ended up with its nose stuck into the grass at Villa de Paz Elementary School. The odd landing site was just feet from a jungle gym and nearby classrooms. The pilot had apparently been doing practice landings at a nearby airport when an unknown problem developed on the single-engine plane. After landing, the pilot walked away and no one on the ground was injured.

Englishwoman fined for noisy Sex!

A 47-year-old Englishwoman has been convicted of flouting a city order to keep her love-making sessions quiet, officials said.

Caroline Cartwright, was found guilty of breaching a noise abatement notice served on her after police received 25 complaints about her loud sessions with husband Steve. The Sun reported that she was fined more than $760.

"I am not making the noise on purpose," she told magistrates in Sunderland. "I have no desire to hurt anybody or damage any property."

One neighbor reportedly said she had not gotten a decent night's sleep for two years because of the Cartwrights. Another neighbor said she was forced to move out because of the noise. "I heard sounds of a sexual nature, they were really loud, and there was a lot of moaning and groaning and screaming as if in pain," said neighbor Rachel O'Connor, who recorded the couple for authorities. "It wasn't just the woman, it came from both parties."

A 13-year-old boy robs Bank!

Believe it or not, a 13-year-old boy was caught red-handed while robbing a bank in Peoria. Yes, this is possible. Because, today's kids are very clever and they can do many things like the adults do! Thanks to televisions and Internet.

The robbery happened on Monday. According to police sources, the boy threatened a teller with a gun and demanded cash. Police found the kid hiding in a nearby garage about 30 minutes after the robbery. He got caught due to a dye pack that had been placed in the bag of money.

On Tuesday the unidentified boy was charged with felony armed robbery in juvenile court. Prosecutors were also considering whether to seek to have him tried as an adult and face up to 30 years in prison.

This was the first of it's kind case that Sheriff Michael McCoy came across in his career as a Sheriss. "It's the youngest person I can remember," McCoy said.

Ohio teacher took students to strip club

A school spokesman said a southwest Ohio teacher has resigned after acknowledging she accompanied four female students to a male strip club.

Bill Solazzo,Butler Tech school district spokesman said 47-year-old Lori Epperson resigned Thursday. He said the teacher told Edgewood High School administrators that the students, all cheerleaders, asked her to take them to the bar in February.

Epperson told school officials in an e-mail that she got permission from the parents of the 17- and 18-year-olds to bring them to Club Masque in Dayton. Epperson taught marketing at the school and previously served as a coach for the district’s eighth-grade cheerleaders.