StrangeSights

• The UN headquarters in New York has seen some powerful and distinguished figures pass through its doors over the years and the elderly southern American gentleman dressed in the white suit at first glance seemed to be one of them. But after officials took a second look they soon realised that the man in question was actually Colonel Harland Sanders, of KFC fame (or, more accurately, a Colonel Sanders impersonator, for the real Colonel Sanders died in 1980). The impersonator reportedly even managed to pose in a picture with Libyan Ali Treki, the new president of the UN General Assembly, before he was tossed out. It was all apparently part of a new promotional campaign by KFC which has also included the company asking for an official seat at the UN. UN officials were not amused.

• Wallace and Gromit would think it was a cracking invention! A team of designers have come up with an automatic breakfast machine which can do everything from preparing an omelette to spreading butter and jam on toast and grinding coffee beans before making a fresh brew. The machine has reportedly been built in Amsterdam.

• Ever wanted to direct and star in your own version of Star Wars? A website - Star Wars Uncut - offers the chance to do just that - it’s split the entire movie into 15 second clips and is calling on people to film their own version to fill one of the 472 gaps. The film will then be spliced together to create a single homage to George Lucas’ original creation. Better be quick, may of the scenes are already done.

And just before we go,

• Looking for something to buy for the person who’s got everything? Harrods in London have announced they will now be selling bars of gold bullion to customers.

• Who could have predicted that a pitch-black art installation at the Tate Modern in London would lead to someone walking into a wall? Anyway, that’s what reportedly happened at an exhibition earlier this month. The injured man apparently just walked away with some blood on his nose.

• A hundred-and-sixty years after his death, a funeral service was held for author Edgar Allan Poe last weekend. The writer died some four days after being found wandering the streets of Baltimore and was buried following a funeral in which fewer than 10 people turned up thanks to a lack of publicity. Fans in the US - celebrating 200 years since his birth this year - decided to rectify that by staging a second funeral, complete with a fake body, which attracted more than 700 people (a big jump on the original seven who turned up)!

• ‘Whatever’ has been voted the most annoying conversational word or phrase in the English language in a US survey. A poll by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion found that almost half of the more than 900 people who took part in the survey voted it the worst followed by ‘you know’ (25 per cent), ‘it is what it is’ (11 per cent), and ‘anyway’ (seven per cent). Like, whatever…

• Looking to get married but can’t find a best man? Why not hire one? A recent article in The Guardian newspaper highlights the growing trend for people in Japan to hire “stand-ins”, whether they’re playing the part of your spouse or significant other, a boss or colleague, or even relatives such as a nephew or niece. The number of agencies providing such services has reportedly doubled in the past 10 years.

• Can it have come round so fast already? The annual Ig Nobel Prizes were officially announced last week. The 10 winners including Elena Bodnar, who took out the Public Health Prize for her invention of a bra that doubles as a pair of face masks; a team from the University of Bern in Switzerland who won the Peace Prize for determining whether it’s better to be smashed over the head with a full or empty bottle of beer; and, Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University in the UK who won the Veterinary Medicine Prize for showing that cows with names give more milk than cows without.

• 2012 marks a century since the sinking of the Titanic and to mark the occasion, a British company is reportedly planning a cruise that will travel the same route and arrive at the site of the sinking in the North Atlantic to hold a memorial service exactly 100 years to the day since the ship succumbed to the sea. More than 1,500 of the 2,223 passengers and crew aboard the ship died when it sank after striking an iceberg on sometime between the night of April 14 and early morning of April 15, 1912. The ship, which had sailed from Southampton in the UK, was headed for New York.

• So, the vote is in and Kraft’s iSnack 2.0 - a blend of Vegemite and cheese - has been replaced by…(drum roll, please)…’Vegemite Cheesybite’. Hmmm. Kraft said the name had attracted some 36 per cent of votes in a poll involving 36,000 Australians and New Zealanders, beating other contenders including ‘Vegemate’, ‘Creamymate’ and ‘Vegemite Smooth’. While ‘Chessymite’ was ruled out (the name has already been trademarked by another company), there are suggestions that use of the Cheesybite name might also come under challenge - this time by Pizza Hut which sells a ‘Cheesy Bites Pizza’. Meanwhile, the debate rages over whether the iSnack naming snafu was simply a clever marketing ploy.