DAVID ADAMS provides a round-up of some stories on the odder side of life…
• A Catholic prayer book which measures just five millimetres across sold for almost $US5,000 in Brussels this week. The leather-bound book, which contains The Lord’s Prayer printed in Dutch, English, American English, French, German, Spanish and Swedish, was one of a few hundred published by the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany, in 1952 as a fundraising project to pay for post-war reconstruction efforts. Arenberg Auctions said the book, which had been expected to sell for up to $US1,700, sold for $4,739.11. “The printed text is so minuscule that you cannot read it with the naked eye but need a strong magnifying glass,” auctioneer Henri Godts told The Guardian. The book came with the metal plates which were used to print it.
• Dozens of Santa Clauses swapped sleighs for gondolas as they rowed along Venice’s canals on Sunday. The cold weather kept away many residents and tourists but this did not stop the Santas taking part in the colourful Christmas regatta. Earlier this month, Venice unveiled a rather unusual Christmas decoration – a floating Nativity scene. With baby Jesus emerging from the waters, surrounded by a floating Joseph and Mary under the sunset near the island of Burano, the floating nativity scene was created by Francesco Orazio, a greengrocer with an artistic bent. The painted plywood nativity figures were fixed by wooden stakes and then anchored on the bottom of the lagoon. And, for a couple of hours a day, the feet of the statues are exactly level with the water.
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• A Canadian beach where a barge has been stranded since mid-November after crashing into a seawall during a storm has been renamed ‘Barge Chilling Beach’. Vancouver Park Board installed the sign at Sunset Beach as a “holiday gift” to the city, saying in a tweet that “No matter what storms life may send our way, we’ll always be here for you”. “We’ve been seeing people kind of having fun, taking pictures, all the messaging out there and we thought let’s add to the fun and let’s bring a little more joy to the season, if you will,” Donnie Rosa, general manager of the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation, told CBC News. The name ‘Barge Chilling Beach’ is a reference to ‘Dude Chilling Park’ which was a joke sign installed at Guelph Park in 2014 after members of the public noticed a sculpture at the park called Reclining Figure resembled a lounging man. That joke sign was later stolen, but replaced by the park authorities with an official one.