DAVID ADAMS writes about the odder side of life..
• An upside down house has opened its doors in Taipei but don’t worry, it’s not a disastrous building error – the property was deliberately created as a tourist attraction. The house, which was built in just two months, is furnished in American Country style with all the furniture and accessories – including everything from a fruit bowl to laptop and rubber ducky in the bathtub – attached to the floor/ceiling. Hundreds have already walked through the door for a peek. Follow this link to take a look inside.
• Weird sounds in space? Amid the various hoaxes about alien contact now playing across the internet is a real space mystery. NASA has just released a recording of a “whistling sound” heard by astronauts Thomas Stafford, John Young and Eugene Cernan on the Apollo 10 mission as they orbited the moon in 1969. A NASA engineer has reportedly said the sounds – which one astronaut described as “outer-spacey” and which lasted almost an hour – were caused by radio interference but alternate theories abound. NASA has released the sounds for a new TV series.
• Police in the UK, responding to a call about an injured otter, were relieved to find the creature was in fact part of a faux fur coat. Police in Newport, Shropshire, tweeted that the injured otter at the roadside turned out to be a coat collar. Dubbed ‘Ollie the Otter’, the would-be otter then went on to make several other appearances on Twitter – in a photos showing him recovering from his ordeal in the police van and tapping away on a laptop. And while it might seem like police were obviously having a quiet day, they did also use the opportunity to remind people to call the RSPCA or a vet if they do find a real injured otter.
• And this week’s odd church – the rocket-ship resembling Church of Hallgrimur in the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik. A Lutheran parish church dedicated to Hallgr√≠mur PÉtursson, the most renowned religious poet of Iceland, it was only consecrated in 1986 after a 40 year long building project and is now one of the country’s key tourist attractions (there is an observation deck in the tower).
