UNUSUAL PHENOMENA
#1
FATAL LIGHTNING STRIKE
Photo:Reuters
Fifty-two
cows were killed after lightning hit a wire fence they were grazing next to.
The bizarre event occurred in Valdez Chico, Uruguay.
A spark of lightning can reach over five miles in length, soar to
temperatures of approximately 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and contain 100
million electrical volts.
Weather officials estimate the United States alone receives up to
20 million lightning strikes per year from as many as 100,000 thunderstorms.
Source: The Daily Telegraph (10/24/2008)
#2
BONFIRE APPARITION?
The fire image on the right was taken at a ceremony
in Poland
held to mark the second anniversary of Pope John Paul II's death.
The photographer noticed the resemblance of the leaping flames to the waving
pontiff as he reviewed his photos at home.
Source and Photo: The
Daily Telegraph (10/20/2007)
#3
TEENAGER COUGHS UP BULLET
A teenager from Boise,
Idaho was shot in the mouth
during a house party. The bullet was lodged so close to his spine that
physicians were afraid to remove it and opted instead to let the bullet remain.
Several weeks later the victim felt a sharp pain and
coughed so hard that the bullet flew out.
Source: Fox News (10/12/2007)
#4
MANURE WIPES OUT FAMILY
Six people were killed by manure on a diary farm in Richmond, Virginia
on Monday 7/2/2007. The tragedy began when the farm owner tried to transfer
manure from a small pit to a larger one. When a pipe became clogged he climbed
into the pit to fix the blockage but was overcome by deadly methane gas
emanating from the liquefied manure. A farm worker entered the pit in an
attempt to rescue the farm owner but he too succumbed to the deadly gas.
When the
men did not come out, the farm owner’s wife and daughters apparently made their
way in, all succumbing to the deadly gas.
Source: Associated
Press (7/4/2007)
#5
TAIL BABY HAILED AS HINDU GOD
Crowds were flocking to Indian
temples to see a Muslim baby with a 'tail' who is believed to be the
reincarnation of a Hindu god. The 11-month-old boy has been named Balaji or Bajrangbali,
another name for monkey-faced Lord Hanuman.Iqbal
Qureshi, the child's grandfather, took Balaji from temple to temple where
people offer money to see the boy.
Source and Photo: Ananova (1/13/2002)
#6
THIRSTY MONKEYS ATTACK
VILLAGERS
Reports
from a drought-stricken village in north-eastern Kenya say that 10 people were hurt
when monkeys attacked them for their drinking water.
The
Kenyan newspaper, the Daily Nation, says the
trouble started in Takaba - a trading center in Mandera District - shortly
after villagers began drawing water from three tankers.
A troop
of obviously thirsty monkeys approached the villagers and began biting and
clawing at them and throwing stones.
The
villagers fled, leaving the monkeys free to drink as much water as they wanted.
But the
villagers returned later, armed with axes and knives and drove them back,
killing eight of the monkeys. The incident lasted about two hours.
Source:
BBC News
(3/21/2000)
#7
MONKEYS STONE
MAN TO DEATH
Monkeys are being blamed for the death of a herder in
north-east Kenya
who died from severe head injuries "inflicted by flying missiles".
The unusual attack is reported to have taken place because a group of herders
and their animals were monopolizing a watering hole preventing a troop of
monkeys from getting near enough to have a drink.
The
East African Standard said the
incident occurred on a mountain in northern Wajir District.
Mohammed Abdi Gosho, a nurse at trading center just a half-mile away, told the
newspaper that the man died from "severe head injuries".
Source: BBC News
(2/24/2000)
#8
ORGASM CAUSES STROKE
Sex triggered a life-threatening stroke in a healthy
35-year-old Illinois
woman.
Sex- and orgasm-triggered strokes in relatively young women and men are rare,
but not unheard of. They require a combination of factors and events not
unusual in themselves, but which are highly unlikely to occur simultaneously.
The 35-year-old woman's symptoms were typical of this unusual kind of
"cryptogenic" stroke, said Jose Biller, MD, professor and chair of
the neurology department at Loyola University, Chicago.
After doctors implemented emergency procedures her
condition stabilized and she made a full recovery.
Source: CBS News & WEB
MD (9/16/2008)
#9
‘EXTINCT’ DEER DISCOVERED
Photo: Debbie Martyr FFI – KSNP
This unusual photograph was taken in Sumatra. The animal is a muntjac deer last seen in 1930.
The photographer has been in Sumatra for over two decades, as part of a team working
for Fauna & Flora International and the Kerinci-Seblat National Park Tiger
Protection, which found the muntjac and rescued it from a hunter’s snare on an
anti-poaching patrol.
Source: Cryptomundo
(10/8/2008)
#10
BRUTAL ATTACKS ON SUWANEE RIVER
If you want to stump your friends ask them, what creature
in the Suwanee River has severed fingers, broken a
person’s leg, and inflicted skull fractures.
During
a two year period officials documented 12 human – sturgeon collisions on the
otherwise placid river. One victim was sitting in a boat when a giant sturgeon
leaped from the water into the boat and smashed her legs. Another was jet
skiing when she collided with a leaping sturgeon. The giant fish are equipped
with sharp armor that readily inflicts deep cuts.
Source
and Photo: The Daily Telegraph (5/07/2008)
#11
WORLD’S LONGEST FINGERNAILS
Lee
Redmond, who has not cut her nails for over twenty years, has grown and
carefully preserved them to reach a total length of 28 ft 4.5 inches when they
were measured on the set of Lo show dei record in Madrid, Spain,
on February 23, 2008.
The
longest nail emanates from the right thumb for a distance of almost 3 feet – 2
feet and 11 inches to be exact.
Source
and Photo: Ananova
#12
Man Pulls Plane With Eyelids
Photo Source: Ananova
#13
HORSE STUCK
IN TREE
A
chainsaw was used to successfully rescue this hopelessly stuck horse in Pullman, W.V.
Source
and Photo: The Telegraph (10/20/2008)
#14
SUSPENDED MOOSE
Photo: City Electric Inc.
This moose apparently got its
antlers tangled in electrical wire before workers several miles down the line
pulled the line tight with a winch. The moose was suspended 50 feet in the air
when workers, recognized something was wrong, backtracked and found it.
The moose was alive when it was
lowered to the ground but was later killed when officials from the Alaska
Department of Fish and Game decided against tranquilizing it to remove the
wires because they were worried the moose, already stressed, would die.
The unusual incident happened
about 80 miles southeast of Fairbanks.
Source: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner (10/17/2004)
#15
PYTHONS FLOURISH IN EVERGLADES
Photo: Getty AFP
The Burmese python, one of the world’s largest snakes, is endemic in parts
of southern Florida
after some were imported as pets and later released into the wild, where they
have bred. Even a small python can produce as many as 80 eggs a year.
There are estimated to be thousands in the Everglades
alone. In America
they have no predators and are flourishing.
Frank Mazzotti, a professor at the University of Florida
who has studied the creatures since 2005, has now warned of “dire consequences”
to local wildlife if they are allowed to proliferate.
He said they are likely to colonize anywhere that alligators live,
including neighboring Georgia
and Louisiana,
and could spread further.
Growing up to 23ft long and weighing 200 pounds, they are proving to be a
menace. Even the Florida
panther may be threatened.
The pythons are also excellent swimmers; they can cover 40 miles in just a
few hours. The US Geological Survey warns that pythons could live in the entire
southern third of the country.
Source: The
Daily Telegraph (5/16/2008)
#16
SCOTCH TAPE EMITS
X-RAYS
Photo: Carlos Camara and Juan Escobar
Through an exotic process called triboluminescence even scotch tape can emit X-rays. Fortunately the
strange effect only happens when the tape is quickly peeled off in a vacuum.
Triboluminescence can occur when solid crystals are scratched or crushed. As
early as 1605 Francis Bacon noticed that scratching a lump of sugar caused it
to give off light.
Some people have observed triboluminescence
in the dark using wintergreen-flavored Lifesavers candy. The idea is to break
the hard, donut-shaped candy in the dark while peering into a mirror. Sometimes
blue sparks are observed.
References
Sticky tape generates X-rays.
Nature 455:1089
(2008)
Excitation of triboluminescence by deformation of single crystal. Physica Status Solidi 1:775 (1970)
#17
GIANT
SPIDER KILLS BIRD
The giant spider is a golden orb.
It is found in Australia
and usually dines on large insects. This unusual photograph was taken in a
backyard near Cairns, Australia.
Source and Photo:
news.com.au (10/24/2008)
#18
EYE INFLATION
A Chinese man blows air from his
eyes to inflate balloon.
Source: Ananova
(11/24/2008)
#19
WHALE EXPLODES
Photo: Taiwan Apple Daily via Reuters
Passers-by and cars were soaked in
blood and entrails in the Taiwanese city of Tainan after a dead sperm whale exploded
while being delivered aboard a trailer truck to a research center for
post-mortem examination.
The whale had died earlier on a
beach and had been collected so its remains could be used for educational
purposes. Because of the whale's size, it took 13 hours, three large lifting
cranes and 50 workers to get the mammal loaded on the trailer truck for its
final journey.
Source: BBC News (1/29/2004)
#20
DEAD SEA
MONSTER?
Photo: AFP
These mysterious remains –
weighing 13 tons – were found on a beach near Puerto Montt in Los Muermos,
Chile in 2003.They were later identified as the remains of a whale.
Source: Beach blob mystery solved at last. New Scientist (6/24/2004)
#21
ALBINO
MOOSE PHOTOGRAPHED IN CANADA
Photo: John H.
coasttocoastam.com
#22
LOCH NESS MONSTER CAPTURED ON SONAR?
Sonar pictures
taken on a Scottish celebrity-bound voyage on the famous loch revealed five
unexplained images. According to Captain John Askew, it was the first
time in his 15 years working on the loch that he successfully picked up images
of this kind. A sonar expert who has spent years studying the world famous loch
said: "This has got me puzzled and has every
appearance of a genuine sonar contact. A single object often appears
again, as an echo.”
Photo and Source: Nessie caught
on sonar? Highland News (5/28/2009)
In 2003 a team of scientists - who
collectively publish their work on the PBS Nature series, National Geographic,
the Discovery Channel and numerous scientific journals - arrived at Lake Champlain to passively determine, i.e. without using
sonar, whether echolocation can be detected within the lake.
The impetus for their study was a
plethora of reliable eyewitness reports describing a large creature swimming in
the lake. They reasoned that if a large creature lived within the confines of
the lake and was hunting for prey within the murky waters, that it may rely on
echolocation to detect the prey.
One of the lead scientists (Dr.
Joseph Gregory, now deceased) was professor of sound and engineering at North Carolina University stated:
I feel that the effort was a
technical success as we were able to conduct far reaching, low-noise sound
measurements and, indeed, were able to detect signals the nature of which
suggests the presence of some interesting, unexpected phenomena.
The scientists claimed to have
detected the presence of echolocation signals underneath the surface of Lake Champlain at four different locations. Dolphins and
whales are the only mammals known to actively use echolocation. They presented
a summary of their findings at a 2003 meeting of the American Acoustical
Society but they have yet to publish their results in a peer-reviewed
scientific journal.
Source: www.animalvoice.com
This photo was taken by Sandra
Mansi on Lake Champlain in 1977. It was
published in Time
and various other magazines.
An interesting video shot with a
cell phone on Lake Champlain. (5/31/2009)
#23
BURNING HOUSE STRUCK BY TORNADO
Photo:
www.SignalTheororist.com
(4/24/2009)
#24
YOUTH
STRUCK BY METEORITE
Photo: SkyNews
Gerrit Blank was on his way to
school when he saw a ball of light" heading straight towards him from the
sky. The “ball of light” was a red hot, pea-sized piece of rock that struck the
lad in his hand inflicting a three inch scar, bounced off and struck the ground
creating a foot wide crater.
Gerrit explains:
At first I just saw a large ball of light and then I
suddenly felt a pain in my hand. Then, a split second after that, there was an
enormous bang like a crash of thunder.
The noise that came after the flash of light was so loud
that my ears were ringing for hours afterwards.
When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going
fast enough to bury itself in the road.
The only other known example of a
human being surviving a meteor strike happened in Alabama, in 1954 when a grapefruit-sized
fragment crashed through the roof of a house, bounced off furniture and landed
on a sleeping woman.
Reference
14-year-old hit by 30,000 mph space meteorite. The Daily Telegraph (6/12/2009)
#25
UNIDENTIFIED
CLOUDS
Photo: Ken Prior
These sinister cloud formations
are so novel that meteorologists have no name or classification for them. They
have been observed in England,
Scotland and New Zealand.
Although they look ominous, they usually break apart without producing a storm.
According to The Daily Mail:
Officials
will apply to the UN's World Meteorological Organization in Geneva to have the new cloud type considered
for addition into the International Cloud Atlas, the system used by
meteorologists across the globe.
Reference & Photo
The cloud with no name: Meteorologists campaign to classify unique
'Asperatus' clouds seen across the world.
The Daily Mail (6/2/2009)
#26
THE MAN
WHO BITES THROUGH STEEL
Xiong of Nanjimen region, Chongqing, bites through
steel bars to gain entry and burglarize peoples’ homes. He told police that he
grew up in a mountain village where walnuts are abundant and that he grew
strong sharp teeth by cracking them open.
Unable to find a job he started
breaking into peoples’ houses by biting through steel bars that were used to
reinforce windows. He had found that he could chew open steel bars by prying
open welding spots with his teeth.
Source and Photo: Ananova (6/13/2009)
#27
WHALE
COLLIDES WITH SHIP
Photo: Flip
Nicklin
The body of the giant blue whale
was found by researchers from Oregon State University
in the Santa Barbara Channel off the coast of California.
They came across the carcass
while out in their small research vessel, the Pacific Storm, operated by the
university's Marine Mammal Institute.
Reference
Giant blue whale floats belly-up after being killed in a tragic
collision with a ship. The Daily Mail (6/12/2009)
#28
VOLCANO
VIEWED FROM SPACE
Photo:
NASA
#29
ALBINO
WHALE SPOTTED
Photo: Sydney Morning Herald
#30
BEE WEDDING
This couple decided to get married while
cloaked in honey bees.
The excited bride claimed, "It was an amazing feeling to have
a carpet of living bees moving over my body."
Source and Photo: Ananova
