StrangeSights

• OK, so we’ve had boats made out of bottles, ‘aquacars’ and even an ‘aquabus’. Now a trio of Londoners have used a bouncy castle to paddle their way across Lake Garda in Italy. “Great Britain has such a great tradition as a seafaring nation and we really feel we have played no role at all in adding to this” admitted one of the would-be sailors. The trip was apparently part of Honda’s Live Every Litre project.

• Finishing a 5,000 piece jigsaw is a big moment for anyone - even more so if it’s been an effort that’s taken seven-and-a-half years. Just imagine the disappointment of Jack Harris, then, when he reportedly discovered that a piece was missing! The family of the retiree believe it may have been eaten by one of his daughter-in-laws dogs.

• A Japanese couple are believed to have become the first people to be married by a robot. The Tokyo ceremony - between Satoko Inoue, an employee at Kokoro, the company which made the robot, and her husband Tomohiro Shibata, a professor of robotics - was led by I-Fairy, a seated robot with plastic pigtails. Said the bride: “This was a lot of fun. I think that Japanese have a strong sense that robots are our friends”.

• We already have internet churches and online confessionals, now comes the idea of the virtual pilgrimage. A new service allows would-be pilgrims to the Shrine of St James in the Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela to pay for a ‘digital candle’ to be lit for them without ever leaving the comfort of their home. The operators of the scheme have permission to set up the the electronic candles at the site - a move which could have the added benefit of helping to reduce the risk of fire in the cathedral.

• In an ironic twist, a tiny sliver of the famous apple tree Sir Isaac Newton observed an apple falling from (and so ‘discovered’ the law of gravity) is heading for the weightless environment of outer space. British-born astronaut Piers Sellers is taking the piece of wood aboard the space shuttle Atlantis next week on behalf of the Royal Society of London.

• It’s a fair knock by any standard. Teenage English cricketer Oliver Hardaker celebrated a world record-breaking batting streak earlier this month when he smashed 329 runs, not out, in a single day’s cricket. The tally, which was arrived at during a game in the Yorkshire Dales, included 27 sixes and 28 fours off 144 balls.