StrangeSights

• The Anglican church of St Hilda’s in Ellerburn, North Yorkshire, has been running Sunday services for more than 1,000 years. Until, that is, the bats drove them…well…batty. An infestation of hundreds of bats has led to the suspension of services for the first time in the church’s history with the unwanted inhabitants reportedly covering the altar with guano, annoying worshippers and filling the church with a disgusting smell. The congregation have spent thousands in creating a new home for the bats in nearby woodland but the protected species just keeps on coming back. They are now seeking permission to have the bats removed for good.

• Over planking already? Now comes the next weird fab from the world of social networking - owling. While planking involves getting a photo of yourself lying horizontal on all manner of objects and in all sort of places, owling takes the same concept but simply replaces the lying down with assuming a crouched position, like an owl on a perch. The mind boggles at what comes next.

• Just how high is Mt Everest? The answer is that no-one knows, not exactly anyway (or rather several groups claim to know but none of their measurements has the acceptance of everyone). In 1856, the mountain was found to be 8,840 metres high. Surveys since have come in with different heights - Indian surveyors put the height at 8848 in 1957 while in 1999 a US expedition found it to be 8,850 metres high with an ice-cap of another metre and in 2005, a survey by China in 2005 put it at 8,844.43 metres tall (plus an extra 3.55 metre high ice-cap). In the hope of settling what is at times a controversial debate, Nepalese authorities have reportedly launched a two year survey to measure the peak and ascertain its height for themselves. We wait to see who’s proved right.