• The voice of former German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck has been heard for the first time in 100 years in a series of remarkable recordings digitally restored by the Thomas Edison National Park museum in the US. The recordings, in which Bismarck can be heard reciting parts of songs and poetry in English, Latin, French, and German - including France’s national anthem, La Marseillaise - and advising his son Herbert to “live life in moderation”, was made in 1889 using a wax cylinder phonograph. Discovered in 1957, research on the recordings did not reportedly start until 2005.

• Being able to say words backwards is quite a remarkable feat yet Alyssa, a girl from Oklahoma in the US seems to be able to do so with little effort. In a video clip posted on YouTube which has, yes, gone viral around the globe, Alyssa is seen repeating backwards any word that’s thrown at her. You can see the video here.

• He’s been everywhere, man. Lego Tourist is, you guessed it, a Lego man but what sets him apart from his millions of fellow minifigures is that he’s travelled thousands of kilometres around the world. Purchased by English woman Leanne Buchan last year before she took him to Australia, she now posts him to Lego enthusiasts around the world so they can photograph him in front of international landmarks and then mail him back. He’s already reportedly been snapped in front of so far are Tower Bridge in London, the Sydney Opera House and even in Norway where he attended the World Beard and Moustache Championships. Lego Tourist even has his own Facebook page where you can follow his wanderings.

• But back to animals and Pockets Warhol, a Capuchin monkey who lives at a primate sanctuary in Canada, must be toasting his success after reportedly selling his artworks for prices ranging into the hundreds of dollars. Buyers from as far afield as Europe have been buying the works which he started creating after being given the non-toxic paints to play with. The money raised will help fund a new barn for the sanctuary.

• The world’s tallest Lego Christmas tree was unveiled in London last month. Standing 12.2 metres high, the tree at St Pancras Station in the city’s north features 600,000 bricks and took two months to build. It’s 172 branches are decorated with 1,000 baubles which are also made of Lego.

• Eighty chefs in Shanghai have created the world’s longest yule log - and it measures more than a kilometre. The 1,068 metre long cake was more than five times longer than the previous record-holder and reportedly contained more than 1,000 kilograms of flour, 904 eggs, 209 kilograms of sugar, 401 kilograms of chocolate and 34 kilograms of vanilla. It was unveiled at the city’s Pudong Shangri-La Hotel.

• The “world scariest bridge” has reportedly opened on the top of Tianmen Mountain in China. The bridge, a narrow, 200 foot long glass-bottomed walkway, is suspended from the side of a cliff 1,220 metres above sea level. Opened last month, it’s creation comes in the wake of a similar glass-bottomed walkway known as the Skywalk, which projects over the Grand Canyon (and the Eureka Skydeck, of course!).

• It’s an unusual crime prevention measure. A priest in Lodz, Poland, has been blessing manhole covers after town authorities asked him to do so to stop them being stolen by scrap metal thieves. All 4,000 of the town’s manhole covers were blessed at a church service.

• It’s an amateur snapper’s dream. An American company has produced a camera that takes images which, if unfocused at the time, can be focused later on. The pocket-sized Lytro uses “light field” technology to capture complete light field data and thus enable photographers to “shoot now and focus later”. The camera starts at $US399 for an eight gigabyte version.

• A mysterious Lego man has washed up on a US beach. The eight foot tall fibreglass Lego man reportedly washed shore last week on a Florida beach but is now being held in police custody until an owner comes forward. Named ‘Ego Leonard’, the figure bears the slogan ‘No real than you are’ on its top. It has been suggested that the man is the work of Dutch “guerilla artist” Leon Keer. A similar figure appeared on a Netherlands beach in 2007.

• Don’t worry about trying to get the ball back. News has swept around the world of a golf course in Brisbane which has a rather unusual hazard - half a dozen bull sharks in the course’s 21 hectare lake. The shark’s, then juveniles, reportedly moved into the lake at the Carbrook Golf Course when the nearby Logan River flooded in the 1990s. The golfers are apparently unfazed - the club now hosts a monthly competition called the Shark Lake Challenge.

• Getting the silent treatment for your local traffic director? It could be because, like in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, they’ve reportedly employed 120 professional mimes to take on the job. Wearing clown outfits, the mimes were charged with reprimanding bad drivers in a bid to encourage politeness on the road. And they’re apparently not alone with mimes being put to good use in controlling traffic and pedestrians in Brazil and Colombia.

• Seems like Star Wars wasn’t all wrong after all. Scientists say they’ve spotted a planet which, like that of Tatooine in Star Wars, has two suns and so, two sunsets. The planet, known as Kepler-16b, lies about 200 light years from earth. The scientists say the fact the suns are quite close together means the planet, a gas giant where temperatures range from a frigid -70 to 100 degrees Celsius (not exactly balmy!), would never have continuous daylight.

• A mannequin is reportedly running for mayor in a suburb of the US city of Cincinnati. The life-sized shop dummy, known as BarBe Q, is apparently running on a platform of fighting for small shop owners as they take on fast food chains. Restauranteur Kenny Tessel, who ensured the manniquin’s fame a couple of years ago when he successfully fought a battle against authorities over whether he could display the bikini-clad model outside his restaurant, insists the move is not a stunt.

• 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.

• 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.

• It’s a chance to own some movie memorabilia with a difference. A US company has built a replica of Carl Fredrickson’s house from the animated Pixar movie Up and it’s now reportedly on the market for around $US400,000. The four bedroom property, which is located in Utah, was built by Bangerter Homes and fitted out to reflect the 1950s - the era in which the movie property was built. It is painted in the same colors as that featured in the film and even features the same picture of Paradise Falls over the fireplace. While Mr Fredrickson flew his house to South America, this house doesn’t come fitted with balloons.

• Flying cars might seem a long way off but the concept took a great step forward this month when US authorities approved a two seater model that reportedly takes just 20 hours to learn how to fly. Or is that drive? The Terrafugia Transition features wings that fold up automatically after landing and is powered by high octane unleaded petrol.