April 2012 – Page 2 – Museum of the Weird

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Guest Blogger

‘LONGEST EVER’ GREAT WHITE SHARK CAUGHT IN MEXICO

Here’s just one more reason for me not to venture out into open water, among the hundreds of other reasons I’ve gathered thus far.

Two men fishing in the Sea of Cortez for small fish caught something a little bigger than a tuna when they hauled up their net. In fact, they may have caught the biggest and longest great white shark on record!

The giant 2000 lbs shark being pulled onto shore.

Grind TV writes:

Two commercial fishermen in Mexico received the surprise of a lifetime Sunday when they hauled up a great white shark measuring nearly 20 feet and weighing about 2,000 pounds, according to local news reports. The rare catch of such a large white shark — at 20 feet it’d be among the longest ever recorded — was made in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez near Guaymas, by fishermen who thought they had merely scored a large haul of much smaller fish as they hoisted up their net.

“We were amazed and immediately realized that we had a huge, dead, great white shark, and then we thought what are we going to do?,” Guadalupe, one of the fishermen, said in an interview with Pisces Sportfishing, which is located in the Baja California resort city of Cabo San Lucas. The other fisherman was named Baltazar.

The shark was dead when it was brought to the surface. The fishermen, whose skiff measures 22 feet and is powered by a 75-horsepower outboard, required an hour to tow the carcass two miles to the coast. About 50 people helped drag the behemoth onto dry sand. Milenio News reported the length of the fish to be six meters, or 19.8 feet.

‘GRASPER’ THE NOT-SO-FRIENDLY GHOST

Queen's Arms Pub frequent guest, Ashley Beland.

Well here’s one ghost, named ‘Grasper’, has been getting a little too friendly for the owners and customers of a bar in Birmingham.

It seems this spirit that lingers around is always in a frisky mood and pinches guests and staffs behinds all the time!

Not a bad way to spend the afterlife, I suppose.

The Sun writes:

Terrified regulars at the Queen’s Arms have been keeping their backs to the wall since they realised the randy ghost was stalking the bar.

And it has become so bothersome that the exasperated owners have had called in a team of ghostbusters to give the saucy spook the bum’s rush.

Staff at the Birmingham city centre boozer have nicknamed the ghost Grasper after they described feeling a “firm pinch” to the buttocks.

Assistant manager Paula Wharton, 41, initially believed the tweaks on her body were muscle spasms.

She said: “One night three of us were talking and I mentioned that I’d felt this pinch on my bum, and everyone else said that it had happened to them too.

IS THERE A WHITE BIGFOOT?

A recently released video has re-sparked some interest in the all mighty cryptid, Bigfoot. Yet, this time instead of being silver or brown, he’s solid white.

Our friends over at Cryptomundo.com have posted an extensive video breakdown of some fantastic footage that has surfaced of a white bigfoot captured on a trail camera the property owner had set up.

Cryptomundo writes:

We’re not sure how recent this alleged Bigfoot footage is that M.K. Davis has in his possession, but it shows an amazing white Bigfoot on all-fours, and then getting up on two legs, sprinting out of view at an incredible rate. According to Davis, this alleged white Bigfoot came from the southern part of the United States. Davis also points out the sheer size of the Sasquatch compared to the cow in front of it.

Accompanying the footage is a “howl” audio lasting about 3 seconds. You can listen to this towards the end of the breakdown.

HOMEOWNERS SUE TO GET OUT OF HAUNTED HOUSE

Michele Callan and Josue Chinchilla's and their haunted house in New Jersey. (image credit abc news)

Now, I’ve heard plenty of ghost stories about homes so spooky and ‘haunted’ that terrified residents flee the house the house in horror, never to return again. Never have I heard of said residents actually taking it a step further like Michele Callan and her fiance, Josue Chinchilla have by suing their landlord for the trouble and stress they’ve had to endure, with their children, since moving into the home in New Jersey and living with the unseen and troublseome housemates.

ABC News writes:

A New Jersey couple is suing their landlord for a refund after they said paranormal activity caused them to flee their rental home.

Michele Callan and her fiance, Josue Chinchilla, moved into the home in Toms River, N.J., with Callan’s two children on March 1 and were immediately spooked…

At first they chalked it up to the adjustment period of moving into a new home. But things only got spookier, they said. Doors opened and closed. The family even claimed they recorded strange voices whispering, “Let it burn.”

The new tenants said that between the menacing voices, flickering lights and clothes mysteriously flying from their closets, they couldn’t take it anymore. They fled the three-bedroom home and checked into a hotel, where they said they have been living since March 13.

FLYING CAR FROM THE FUTURE IS HERE

The Terrafugia Transition Flying Car converts from street-legal to flight-worthy in minutes.

Now, this may not be the super-futuristic flying car you might have seen in amazing movies like “The Fifth Element”, but sure beats one that doesn’t fly.

Wired Magazine writes:

There’s a flying car coming to the New York International Auto Show this week. The Terrafugia Transition is a two-seat airplane with foldable wings, four wheels and turn signals. Over the past few years the Massachusetts company has called its creation a “roadable aircraft” and lately, a “street legal airplane.” But ahead of the Transition’s first appearance at an auto show, it’s perhaps more appropriate to simply call it what it is: a flying car.

Terrafugia and its Transition have been around for several years, but until now the company has largely stuck to the aviation community. But Terrafugia co-founder and CEO Carl Dietrich says that looking at the people who have placed orders for the $279,000 vehicle, they thought it would be worth looking outside the aviation world.

“We’ve noticed in our order backlog there are actually a fair number of people who are not currently pilots who are putting deposits down to order a Transition.”

So the company is coming to New York to gauge interest in a flying car from the non-pilot sector of the public, hoping the attraction of a flying car can create a few pilots and most importantly, customers.

MYSTERY OBJECT FALLS IN SIBERIA

I’ve always been fascinated by the Tunguska Explosion, and this story brings it to mind. File under latest Russian UFO mystery:

An unidentified glowing object is said to have crashed down from the skies in Russia’s Siberia, causing a powerful explosion. A search for the mysterious item is underway amid speculations of what on Earth it could be.

Witnesses describe seeing a bright glow covering the sky, followed by a shining object falling with a strange clanging sound and disappearing in the distance with a blast.

The unidentified object supposedly fell in the taiga forest of the Irkutsk region, 15 kilometers from the nearest village of Vitim, on Friday night. The head of the regional administration said a group of researchers has been sent to inspect the area and question witnesses.

“We will be able to say what it is, only when we see the thing itself and the place where it fell,” explained head of the region Aleksandr Sergey. “The investigators, together with hunters are going there on snowmobiles”.

Posted on April 15, 2012 by Guest Blogger

ANTI-BEARD GEL INVENTED BY SCIENTISTS

Shaving may soon be a thing of the past!

As a man, I have to put up with a constant battle between mother-nature and the modern business world, shaving my beard.

Well, it seems I may not have to worry about it much longer due to researchers from the University of Pennsylvania coming up with an anti-shaving gel that not only works on men, but women too!

Daily Mail writes:

It’s estimated the average woman spends £12,000 in her lifetime in a bid to get silky smooth skin.

But thanks to a scientific discovery shaving could soon be a thing of the past.

A team from the University of Pennsylvania found that a drug, widely used to treat viral infections of the eye, helped stop the growth of unwanted hair when it was added to a rub-on gel.

A trial involving male participants showed the product kept facial hair at bay for up to six weeks.

It is now hoped that it can be developed into an effective treatment for women.

VIKING ROBOTS FOUND LIFE ON MARS IN 1976, SCIENTISTS SAY

New analysis of 36-year-old data, resuscitated from printouts, shows that NASA found life on Mars, an international team of mathematicians and scientists conclude in a paper published this week.

Further, NASA doesn’t need a human expedition to Mars to nail down the claim, neuropharmacologist and biologist Joseph Miller, with the University of Southern California’sKeck School of Medicine, told Discovery News.

“The ultimate proof is to take a video of a Martian bacteria. They should send a microscope — watch the bacteria move,” Miller said.

“On the basis of what we’ve done so far, I’d say I’m 99 percent sure there’s life there,” he added.

Miller’s confidence stems in part from a new study that reanalyzed results from a life-detection experiment conducted by NASA’s Viking Mars robots in 1976.

Researchers crunched raw data collected during runs of the Labeled Release experiment, which looked for signs of microbial metabolism in soil samples scooped up and processed by the two Viking landers. General consensus of scientists has been that the experiment found geological, not biological, activity.

The new study took a different approach. Researchers distilled the Viking Labeled Release data, provided as hard copies by the original researchers, into sets of numbers and analyzed the results for complexity. Since living systems are more complicated than non-biological processes, the idea was to look at the experiment results from a purely numerical perspective.

They found close correlations between the Viking experiment results’ complexity and those of terrestrial biological data sets. They say the high degree of order is more characteristic of biological, rather than purely physical, processes.

Critics counter that the method has not yet been proven effective for differentiating between biological and non-biological processes on Earth, so it’s premature to draw any conclusions.

The research is published online in the International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences.

Posted on April 14, 2012 by Guest Blogger

MAN SHOOTS 4-INCH NAIL INTO HEART

Pictured above is Dennis Hennis, with a 4-inch nail in his chest.

A New Jersey man has managed to shoot himself in the chest and puncture his heart with a 4-inch long nail while doing some construction work on a neighbor’s roof.

BBC News writes:

A New Jersey man is making a quick recovery after accidentally shooting a 4-inch (10cm) nail into his heart. Dennis Hennis, a 52-year-old self-employed builder, was working on his neighbour’s roof when his nail gun jammed and he tried to clear it.

The nail pierced the right side of his heart and he went into cardiac arrest. His surgeon credited Mr Hennis’ recovery to prompt medical attention and knowing that he should not remove the nail himself.

Mr Hennis told Dr Michael Rosenbloom that it felt like he had won the lottery. “I got a new grandson on my birthday on March 23 and a week later I’m almost dead,” Mr Hennis said. “Now we can celebrate birthdays together.”

He was airlifted to trauma centre an hour away in Camden, New Jersey, and went under immediate surgery. “Imagine there is a nail in the heart and they have to do CPR [cardio-pulmonary resuscitation],” Dr Rosenbloom said. “It turns a little puncture wound into a laceration.”

Mr Hennis expects to be discharged in time to celebrate Easter with his family.

GIANT WHALE-EATING WHALE FOUND WITH TEETH OVER A FOOT LONG

A depiction of a prehistoric whale-eating whale.

This is just one of the many reasons I will not go into any amount of water I can’t see the bottom of.

A giant prehistoric whale that was capable of eating other whales has been discovered by Paleontologists in Peru, with teeth that are over a foot long used to eat whales the size of some of the biggest ones alive today!

Discovery News writes:

The massive skull and jaw of a 13-million-year-old sperm whale has been discovered eroding from the windblown sands of a coastal desert of Peru.

The extinct cousin of the modern sperm whale is the first fossil to rival modern sperm whales in size — although this is a very different beast, say whale evolution experts.

“We could see it from very far,” said paleontologist Olivier Lambert of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, France, who led the team which found the fossil.

The giant 3-meter (10-foot) skull of what’s been dubbed Leviathan melvillei (in honor of the author of “Moby Dick”) was found with teeth in its top and bottom jaws up to 36 centimeters (14 inches) long. The discovery is reported in the July 1 issue of the journal Nature.