Guest Blogger – Page 21 – Museum of the Weird

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Guest Blogger

BIGFOOT PHOTOGRAPHED IN RUSSIA?!

Now this is news! We finally got ourselves a Bigfoot!

…well, on some decent quality film at least!

Here are a number of high-res photos taken in Russia just weeks ago. These are some the newest and best “Bigfoot” photos around. Have a look!

Here is the link to the original story and photos but, it’s in Russian, so use Google Translate if needed to help read it.

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Guest Blogger

TWO-HEADED CAT CELEBRATES 12TH BIRTHDAY

Now, here is an awesomely weird and heart-warming story! We here at the Museum of the Weird love to see these kinds of stories about two-headed animals living a long and healthy life, because as we all know all to well, animals with this and other deformities from birth have very short and unfortunate lives.

The Huffington Post writes:

A two-headed cat in Worcester, Mass., has twice the reasons for celebrating his recent birthday: It got him in the Guinness Book of World Records.

The double-domed feline is named “Frankenlouie,” and according to its owner, who only wants to be known as Marty, he turned 12 on Sept. 8, according to the Worcester Telegram.

In doing so, he earned a place in the record books for being the longest-lived Janus cat (the term for cats with two heads, which comes from the name of a two-faced Roman god).

“He is the most astounding two-headed animal of all,” according to Todd Ray of the Venice Beach Freakshow, who has some by estimates, the largest collection of bizarre animals in the world — including 22 living two-headed animals and a five-legged dog.

Still, he says Frankenlouie is in a class by his two-headed self. “We might never see another one in our lifetime,” Ray told HuffPost Weird News. “I have seen many two-headed animals die within a week. To see one alive for weeks is incredible, but to have one alive for years is truly amazing.”

EXPLODING TOILET SENDS WOMAN TO HOSPITAL!

How very unfortunate for this woman…

But hilarious for us!

WUSA 9 Washington News writes:

WASHINGTON (WUSA) — A woman was sent to the hospital after a toilet exploded at the General Services Administration (GSA) Building in DC, building officials said.

DC Fire Spokesman Pete Piringer confirmed the woman was taken the the hospital with serious, non-life-threatening injuries.

The GSA Regional office building employees were sent a memo, warning them to not use the bathrooms in the building, because the plumbing may be dangerous. The building is on 7th and D SW.

“DO NOT flush toilets or use any domestic water. Due to a mechanical failure, there is high air pressure in the domestic watersystem that resulted in damage to toilets. The engineering staff is working to correct the issue,” the memo said. “There has been damage to flushed toilets that has resulted in injuries. We will announce when the issue is resolved.”

PIRANHA CAUGHT IN TEXAS LAKE!

This scary, sharp-toothed pirahna was caught in a lake near Houston, Texas just 2 hours from here. Coming on the heels of our most recent story of, guess what? A Pirahana attack!

Being in Austin, we have tons of rivers, lakes, streams, ponds and springs to swim and play in, it’s part of makes Austin so amazing. Now that we could possibly have Pirahnas moving in, I’m going to run out of that water as soon as I feel ANYthing resembling a nibble on my toes.

MSNBC writes:

Texas is reminding folks that keeping piranhas as pets is a no-no. The warning this week comes after a 5-year-old girl on her first fishing expedition hooked a red-bellied piranha at a lake near Houston.

This red-bellied piranha was found in a lake near Houston, Texas. Lindsay Schutte used a hot dog to lure her unique prize.

“When I took the hook out of the mouth and saw it had pretty big teeth I was concerned, but I’m in Texas so I don’t know, there could be fish like that,” Christi Schutte, Lindsay’s mom and a recent transplant from California, told NBC affiliate KPRC-TV.

But when the fish bit Lindsay’s brother, the family decided to notify the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, which killed the fish and then froze it for further study.

100 PEOPLE ATTACKED BY PIRANHAS AT BEACH IN BRAZIL!

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…

The Huffington Post writes:

Remember that so-bad-it’s-almost-good movie from last summer where crowds of scantily-clad spring breakers were viciously attacked by a swarm of piranhas at lake Victoria?

Fiction quickly turned to a horrifying reality (though not nearly as horrifying as in Piranha 3-D) for around100 beach goers in Brazil last weekend, Breitbart reported.

The throngs of bathers were treated at a hospital in Jose De Freitas for bites on their heels and toes from piranhas at a local beach.

PLANET HAS DOUBLE SUNSETS LIKE TATOOINE OF “STAR WARS”!

I remember watching Star Wars for the first time and thinking how beautiful it would be to live on a planet just like Luke Skywalker did with his Aunt and Uncle, cruising the dunes and watching both suns set. Now it looks like that will be a possibility for my grandkids’ grandkids!

Discovery News writes:

If you could stand on the surface of Kepler-16b, you’d have two shadows. At sunset, you would see an orange star about the size of the sun and next to it a much fainter red star. As the stars slipped toward the horizon, they would change places in the sky, like partners in a square dance.

You would not need to be Luke Skywalker visiting his home planet of Tatooine in the movie “Star Wars” to watch the twin sunset. The only science fiction in this story is how to make the 200 light-year journey to Kepler-16, a binary star system jointly sharing the Saturn-sized planet, Kepler-16b.

WIDE ANGLE: Age of the Exoplanet

The finding, reported by scientists on NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting space telescope team, adds a new page into Mother Nature’s recipe book for extrasolar planets.

“It’s the first one that circles two stars, so it’s a fundamentally different kind of planet,” lead researcher Laurance Doyle, with the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., told Discovery News.

BOY LIVING IN THE WILD APPEARS OUT OF NOWHERE!

What a crazy story this kid has! Living in the wild with his father for 5 years, only to have to bury him after an injury killed him while still in the woods. With his father gone he followed the emergency instructions given to him by his father to head to the German capital of Berlin for help.

The Gaurdian writes:

He walked out of a German forest, speaking English and knowing only his first name. Police in Berlin are trying to unravel the mystery of a teenager who says he has no idea who he is or where he comes from.

The boy presented himself to the Berlin authorities last week saying all he knew was that his first name was Ray, he was probably 17 years old and he and his father had roamed through the woods for about five years.

“He speaks fluent English and very broken German,” the Berlin police spokesman Michael Maaß told the Guardian. The police have not yet determined if his accent is American, British or that of some other English-speaking nationality.

He told youth workers that his father, whom he called Ryan, had died two weeks ago and he had buried him in a shallow grave covered with stones. The boy then walked north, following instructions his father had given him should anything happen to him.

The pair’s odyssey started after his mother, who he said was named Doreen, died. He says that he and his father never set up home but kept moving, staying in tents and huts in the woods.

It is not clear what they ate or how they survived the often harsh German winters. “He doesn’t show any signs of abuse and he is in good shape physically and psychologically,” Maaß said.

The boy says he cannot remember anything about where he lived before the five-year journey began. “We have nothing more to go on than what he told us. We don’t have any other clues as to his identity,” Maaß said.

WORLD’S SCARIEST INSECT GETS AN UPGRADE!

I was already terrified of these things, then they go and grow HUGE jaws/fangs out of nowhere? NOT fair.

Live Science writes:

A giant male wasp with jaws that, when open, are longer than its front legs was discovered on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, researchers announced last week.

Researchers called the shiny black wasp, which is about 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) long, the “Komodo dragon” of the wasp family.

“Its jaws are so large that they wrap up either side of the head when closed. When the jaws are open they are actually longer than the male’s front legs,” said Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohard Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis. “I don’t know how it can walk.”

BIG TOE FOR A THUMB? WHY NOT?

Incredibly awesome surgery skills going to work here! This man lost his thumb and was able to have doctors use his big toe replace it. I mean, they do look a lot alike to begin with so that’s a plus. I wish this man good luck and a speedy recovery!

BBC News writes:

James Byrne, 29, from Fishponds severed the thumb on his left hand last December while sawing through wood. After an attempt to re-attach his damaged thumb failed, plastic surgeons at Frenchay Hospital transplanted his left big toe to his hand.

Surgeon Umraz Khan said: “The loss of the toe is not as disabling as losing a thumb, so the loss outweighs the gain.”

Mr Byrne said: “Mr Khan re-attached my thumb but it had been badly damaged and although we tried everything, including leeches, to get the blood flowing again it didn’t take.

“Mr Khan said to me ‘You will have a thumb even if I have to take your toe’. I thought he was joking, but he was serious and nine months later here it is. The aesthetics of it don’t bother me, “I am just happy that it works, my work as a paver would have been destroyed without the use of my hand because I couldn’t pick up a brick without a thumb but now I hope I can be back at work in a few months.”

BILLBOARD USES LIVE BACTERIA TO PROMOTE MOVIE!

This was a pretty genius idea, using live bacteria and mold to slowly form the name of the movie, execution is fantastic as well!

The Montreal Gazette writes:

Two billboards made from live bacteria mounted in an abandoned storefront window in downtown Toronto are giving a whole new meaning to the term “viral marketing.”

A team of scientists created the one-of-a-kind advertisements to promote director Steven Soderbergh’s film Contagion, in theatres Sept. 9, starring Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow.

The living billboards, sure to leave germaphobes itching for hand sanitizer, were the brainchild of Mark Biernacki and Steph Mackie, the creative director duo of Lowe Roche advertising agency in Toronto.

“We wanted something that would have visual impact,” explained Mackie.

Building on the film’s plot, which follows the spread of a fast-moving and lethal airborne virus that kills within mere days, Biernacki and Mackie teamed up with U.K.-based CURB Media to transform their idea into a microbe-infused reality.