StrangeSights

• As pranks go, it was pretty elaborate. Staff at Legoland California reportedly decided to prank their boss by swapping his real-life Volvo SUV - parked in the company car park - for a lifesize replica made completely out of Lego. The model was made from more than 201,000 Lego bricks.

• A US man has come up with a way of both spending time with his baby and getting some exercise. Joshua Levitt was reportedly lifting his baby (now an eight-year-old) up and down in an attempt to soothe her when he realised, in his words, he was “multi-tasking” by getting some exercise at the same time. He’s now developed an entire exercise routine - described in his book Baby Barbells - which includes a ‘baby bench press’ and ‘lullaby lunges’.

• Ah, the years slip by so fast. Yes, it was time for the annual Wife-Carrying World Championships in Finland last week and once again, Finns Kristiina Haapanen and Taisto Miettinen reportedly took the prize, defeating 46 other couples to win their third successive championship. The event, which takes place over a 253.5 metre course featuring two dry and one water obstacle, traces its roots back to 19th century bandit who stole food and girls from villages.

• Fans of Japanese girl band AKB 48 got a shock this week when they were informed that the band’s newest member, 16-year-old Aimi Eguchi, wasn’t in fact a person at all. Turns out Aimi is a virtual creation, her features a composite of the other band members, manufactured as part of a marketing campaign the band is undertaking with sweet company Glico.

• As far as wrong turns go, it was a big one. An Emperor Penguin was found on Peka Peka Beach on New Zealand’s North Island last week, apparently having made a wrong turn when swimming in Antarctica. The bird, which was eating sand in the mistaken belief it was snow, was taken to Wellington Zoo where it is undergoing treatment before its future is decided. And it’s name? Yep, Happy Feet.

• We all know (or should) that it can be unwise to advertise the fact you’re on a holiday miles from home on a social networking site like Facebook. Ah, hello, burglars. Now a London-based security company, Precreate Solutions, has gone a step further - they’re reportedly offering to update your Facebook or Twitter page while you’re away with comments that make it look as if you’re still, in fact, at home. Don’t they have internet all around the world now?

• Still in the UK, and parents at a Plymouth school have reportedly criticised a proposal to put up child-shaped bollards outside the school as a traffic calming measure, saying the bollards were “too scary” and looked like something out of Dr Who. Surely a Dalek would be just as effective?

• There was no trouble finding Wally in Dublin, Ireland, this week. More than 3,500 people (3,657 to be exact) reportedly turned out in Merrion Square on Saturday dressed up in the stripey shirt and hat typically worn by Wally, the key character from the Where’s Wally? books. The event was aimed at setting a new Guinness World Record for having the most Where’s Wally’s in the one place. Known as Waldo in the US, the character was created by British illustrator Martin Handford and the first book was published in 1987.

• The world’s largest sculpted human form is being created in the north of England. Artist Charles Jencks has designed the figure, named Northumberlandia, which will be 400 metres long and up to 34 metres high and use 1.5 million tonnes of soil and clay taken from a nearby mine. He has been commissioned by the mine operators and the landowners to create the landform which will sit within a 14.5 hectare public park near the town of Cramlington in south-east Northumberland.

• It’s certainly irritating when you order takeaway only to find that when your orders arrives it’s wrong. But calling the police is probably going a step too far. That’s what reportedly happened in the US city of Savannah, Georgia, when an apparently irate woman dialed 911 after a Chinese restaurant mucked her order up and requested police force the business owners to give her a refund. Police were, understandly, not amused.

• A Spanish village has been painted blue for the premiere of the new Smurfs movie. Homes, shops and even a church have reportedly been daubed in the color in the village of Juzcar in southern Spain - selected by Sony as the site for the film’s world premiere. Locals are hoping for a tourist boom but how long the color remains on the buildings at this stage is unknown.

• Cicada icecream is now off the menu. A shop in Missouri in the US starting selling icecream containing cicadas recently (they were dewinged and boiled before being coated in brown sugar and chocolate) but has reportedly now decided to pull them off the menu after concerns were raised about their inclusion by health authorities. No apparent concerns among consumers, however - the first vats of the icecream had apparently sold out in just a few hours.

• Conspiracy or simple mistake? The Australian Department of Defence have reportedly admitted that its files on UFO sightings - dubbed the X-Files, after the TV series - have been largely lost or destroyed. The admission came after the Sydney Morning Herald lodged an freedom of information request with the department. The defence force no longer takes reports of UFOs. Conspiracy theorists enjoy!

• 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.

• The South Pacific island nation of Samoa is reportedly jumping ahead a day in a bid to facilitate better business with neighbours Australia and New Zealand. The country intends jumping the International Date Line, from the east side, where it currently lies, to the west side on 29th December. This will see the country go from being 21 hours behind Sydney to three hours ahead. The move isn’t unprecedented - in 1892 Samoa jumped the dateline to the eastern side in an effort to help business links with the US and Europe.

• The Home Alone house has reportedly gone on the market in the US with an asking price of $US2.4 million. The red brick house in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka was seen in both the 1990 film and its sequel, Home Alone 2. The couple who are selling the house bought it just 18 months before it was spotted by the film’s director John Hughes.

• It took seven years to build and reportedly cost $4.8 million. The world’s largest model airport recently went on display in Germany. The model, based on Hamburg Airport, includes moving vehicles and plans that fly with the use of wires along with 15,000 figurines, 10,000 trees and 500 cars.

• The heart symbol (meaning to love) has entered the Oxford English Dictionary as one of more than 45,000 new words and meanings added to the latest version of what is considered by many to be the most authoritative English language dictionary in the world. Among the other new entries are “Tinfoil hat” (used with allusion to the belief that such a hat will protect the wearer from mind control or surveillance); the 10 or five or one “second rule” (allowing for the eating of a delicious morsel that has fallen to the floor, provided that it is retrieved within the specified period of time), and “IMHO” (in my humble opinion) as well as Australianisms “flat white” (a style of espresso drink with finely textured foamed milk) and “tragic” (a ‘boring or socially inept person, especially one with an obsessive interest or hobby).

• Finding the walk between golf holes a bit hard lately? Forget the buggy, a course in Germany has introduced a 150 metre travelator to take golfers up an admittedly rather steep hill from the first green to the second tee. Known as the “magic carpet”, the travelator at the course in Schloss Auel Golf Club near Cologne reportedly works in all weather and starts automatically when a player - and buggy - hop on board. The introduction of the travelator has apparently met with the approval of the (one imagines, rather tired) club’s members.

• It’s a busy life being a member of the police SWAT team in Beijing so there’s little time to find that someone special. To give officers a helping hand, police chiefs reportedly launched a match-making service at an annual Police Open Day recently, posting pictures of 54 unmarried recruits on large boards in a police station in the hope of catching the eye of some of the visitors. Such was the interest, police have already vowed to repeat the service in the future.

• Mr Burns attracted the ire of Springfield’s citizens when he blocked out the sun in The Simpsons. But now come reports of a plan to use artificially created “clouds” to do the same in Qatar, not to extort its citizens for money as was the case with Mr Burns, but to try and keep the ground temperature down during the World Cup in 2022. The mechanical clouds would hover above the stadium in an attempt to deflect some of the sun’s strength during games.

• He’s a real-life transformer. Californian Drew Beaumier - apparently an ardent fan of Transformers when a child - has created a costume, using parts of a children’s toy, that enables him to ‘transform’ into an car. He’s now reportedly hoping to develop the costume to make it available for purchase by mail order.

• As audiences go, it was probably one of the more passive ones. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra played to an auditorium filled with potted plants in London this week in an experiment commissioned by TV shopping channel QVC to test the theory that plants grow better when played classical music. The three hour concert apparently included Mozart’s Symphony Number 40.

• Excitement is growing ahead of Britain’s upcoming Royal Wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton and the range of souvenirs continues to grow - everything from commemorative plates, tea towels, coins and replica rings to name but a few. One commemorative mug produced by a firm in China, however, has been manufactured with what appears to be a slight flaw - it bears a portrait of the wrong prince. Next to a portrait of Kate Middleton is that of Prince Harry, her future brother-in-law, instead of that of her future husband Prince William.

• For the fashionista who likes to stand out from the crowd, look no further than these distinctive boots, designed to resemble a pair of horse’s hooves. The limited edition boots were released by UK betting company Betfair at the Cheltenham Festival to commemorate the horse-racing meet’s centenary. Reportedly priced at £1,300 a pair, they come in either ankle or knee length.

• Forget about calling yourself rich if you’ve only got a million dollars. A survey by US financial firm Fidelity Investments has found that 42 per cent of US millionaires said they did not feel wealthy (compared with 46 per cent in 2009), adding that they didn’t think they would do so unless they had at least $US7.5 million. Tough for some.

• In a case of life imitating art (or a cartoon, in this case), a team of scientists in the US have replicated the scene in the movie Up in which grumpy old man Carl Fredricksen’s attaches hundreds of helium balloons to his house to lift it into the air. The house reportedly didn’t get blown to South America like Carl’s, it did reach as high as 10,000 feet and set a new record for the largest cluster balloon flight ever attempted while doing so. The experiment was conducted by National Geographic as part of a TV series.

• When you get lemons, make lemonade. That’s what one Christchurch resident has done after a 30 tonne boulder crashed into his house during the earthquake which shook the city last month. Phil Johnson decided to raise some money for the the victims of the earthquake and auctioned off Rocky - for such was the boulder named - online. The sale reportedly raised more than $NZ60,000.

• Ever wondered what it would be like to drive a giant shoe? Your chance may yet come - a footwear maker in China has created an electric car which resembles a giant shoe. The shoe company is planning to make 40 more of the oversize clogs and use them as promotional tools. It’s not the first time we’ve seen a shoe car - a high heeled shoe car made headlines which it appeared in Washington DC back in 2007.