StrangeSights

It’s a New Year and StrangeSights is back to bring you more of the weird and wonderful. Here are some of the stories which have crossed our desk so far in 2010:

• An unusual ceremony in London to see in the New Year earlier this month. A symbolic pile of smart phones were ‘blessed’ in a service at St Lawrence Jewry church in the city’s financial district in what said to be an updated version of the tradition known as Plow Monday, in which villagers would gather to have a symbolic farming implement blessed. Some of the congregation, who included the Lord Mayor of London, held phones up in the air as Rev Canon David Parrott blessed the phones.

• The days when astronauts had to be content to eat out of tubes may be over. Harald Wohlfahrt, a three star Michelin chef, has been appointed to take fine dining into space and the International Space Station has apparently already taken its first delivery. But Mr Wohlfahrt apparently had to be careful not to include sauces which can cause havoc in a weightless environment.

• A Filipino man fishing off the deck of a ship off the coast of Queensland was reportedly stung by a irukandji jellyfish - despite 25 metres above sea level. The tiny jellyfish was apparently contained with sea water when it splashed on his face.