StrangeSights

• A German travel agency is reportedly selling tickets for an comet fly-past. Bonn-based Eclipse Travel has joined with charter agency Air Partner and airline Air Berlin to offer 88 people the chance to be among those on a two hour flight aimed at giving them a relatively close-up view of comet Pan-STARRS as it passes within 100 million miles of Earth on 16th March. The plane will zig-zag at a height of 11,000 metres where the atmosphere is clearer and cleaner (and hopefully above the clouds).

• Could your grass do with a coat of paint? Pictures have reportedly emerged from the town of Chengdu in China’s south-west showing local government workers spray-painting some grass green with a chemical solution called the ‘Top Green Turf Greening Agent’. The dye - which is apparently non-toxic - has also been used in a range of other localities including golf courses.

• If you see a Yeti while in the Himalayas, you may capture or film them but do not shoot them (unless you need to in self-defence). Such was the advice issued by the US Embassy in Nepal in 1959. A memo released by the National Archives in the US late last year detailed a series of three regulations for would-be Yeti hunters to abide by. They include the amount needed to be paid to the Government of Nepal for a permit to hunt the Yeti (5000 rupees); that the Yeti should not be shot at; and, that any news and reports which may “throw light” on the existence of the creature should be surrendered to the Nepalese Government.

• It started with planking and then owling but StrangeSights continues to learn about more unusual ways which involve people taking images of themselves in odd poses and then posting them online. Here’s some of the others we’ve come across:
- Batmanning: Hanging upside down supported just by your feet (not advised if you don’t want to thump your head on the ground)!;
- Teapotting: Standing in a teapot-like pose - with one hand on your hip and the other bent up like a spout;
- Horsemanning: Named for the ‘headless horseman’, this involves two people who create a picture showing just the head of one person and the body of another; and,
- Photobombing: This has been around for while and simply involves inserting yourself into someone else’s photo or video, whether accidentally or intentionally.
Any others you’re aware of?

• Robots in movies always seem so…well…polite. But the reality may be very different. Scientists at Cornell University in New York recently conducted an experiment in which two ‘chatbots’ - computer programs designed to simulate human interaction - talked to each other. And the result? Not the erudite conversation you might expect but one which quickly descended into bickering as the pair disagreed with each other about almost everything - including whether one was a Christian. But our favorite quote was where one of the chatbots declared: “I am a unicorn”. Follow this link to see the chat.

• We’ve often written about new words on StrangeSights but what about some of those that are disappearing? Lexicographers from the Collins Dictionary have reportedly recently come up with a list of words that have fallen out of use. They include rather odd words like ‘wittol’, a man who tolerates an unfaithful wife; ’succedaneum’, something which is used as a substitute; and, ‘charabanc’, which refers to a motor coach, as well as the more common aerodrome.

• It’s been an interesting couple of weeks for animal spotting. First there was the pony which reportedly tried to board a train in Wrexham, North Wales, having first accompanied it’s owner as he bought a ticket and then caught an elevator (and having previously visited a hospital accident and emergency). Now comes the cat that likes to ride on its owner’s head. One New Yorker, dubbed the Cat Man of Manhattan, has reportedly been spotted several times walking around the city with his black and white cat sitting on his head (search You Tube to have a look). Not a bad way to travel, for the cat anyway.

• It’s taken three months of work and involved using extremely sophisticated equipment but yes, we now know that the sub-atomic particles known as electrons are not just round but almost perfectly so. In findings published in Nature, scientists in London have reported that electrons are a perfect sphere give or take less than one part in a million billion. So now you know.

• American Don Gorske recently celebrated a big milestone in his life. He ate his 25,000th Big Mac. Mr Gorske, you see, has been eating Big Macs since 1972 and in all that time, there’s only been eight days when he hasn’t partaken of the McDonalds’ burger. That means 400,000 mouthfuls (he estimates each one takes 16 bites). “I really do enjoy every Big Mac,” Mr Gorske reportedly said before chomping into number 25,000 in his home town of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.