weird news – Page 28 – Museum of the Weird

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Guest Blogger

UFO CAUGHT ON SEVEN DIFFERENT CAMERAS IN CHILE!!

A lightning fast fly-by from a UFO at an airshow in Chile.

It seems an extra fast ufo got a little curious as to what all the ruckus was about over in Chile and decided to have a little look-see.

Little did it know it would be captured on seven different cameras filming the event from seven different angles while it traveled through the air at over 4,000 mph.

Daily Mail writes:

Video from Chile is stirring up the UFO debate after an unusual object took a fly-by during an air-show.

The footage, from 2010, appears to show a ‘spot’ moving quickly from frame to frame, causing the engineer who spotted the aberration enough alarm that he alerted the Chilean Government.

The UFO made an appearance during an acrobatic air-show at the El Bosque Air Force Base in Santiago, and apparently went un-noticed at the time.

Whether this is because this was due to advanced alien cloaking technology, or because the object is just an artifact on the film depends on your viewpoint.

Investigative journalist and UFO author Leslie Kean told MSN’s Cosmic Log: ‘This is a very, very unusual case, and I’m hoping that this case will help move forward the recognition that there really is something here that’s worthy of further study.

‘It has the possibility of being a breakthrough case.’ However ‘debunker’ Robert Sheaffer told the website: “They are “unexplained cases” only if you ignore the explanation. ‘That’s what’s going to happen in this case.’

Kean said that CEFAA, the government agency which investigates strange air phenomena, found the object on seven separate pieces of video tape, which implies the object – whatever it is – is not an abberation on the video tape.

Ricardo Bermudez, CEFAA’s director, told a UFO conference last month that the spots were caused by an object traveling at speeds in excess of 4,000 mph.

Kean picked out a few elements that make this sighting a little special, in particular that the Government investigated the footage so thoroughly, and found examples of the object on seven pieces of film.

MAN HASN’T STOPPED LAUGHING FOR 2 YEARS!

Huug Bosse, the Dutch man who just can't stop laughing.

A Dutch man has been laughing for just about 2 years now, and he doesn’t even seem to mind!

Ever since undergoing hip-surgery and being put under with anesthesia, Huug Bosse just can’t stop laughing, and what’s so funny you ask? He doesn’t know!

Daily Mail writes:

A Dutch man who underwent hip surgery two years ago has appeared in a TV interview claiming he has not been able to stop laughing ever since.

According to Huug Bosse’s wife, her husband now spends his days laughing at everyone and everything and it all started when he had a hip replaced under anaesthesia in 2010.

‘It appears that due to the operation, due to the anaesthesia, he was laughing more,’ Mr Bosse’s wife told the Dutch TV programme Man Bijt Hond as he sat roaring with laughter next to her.

While Mr Bosse did laugh before, his personality had significantly altered since the operation and he now laughed almost all the time, she claimed.

‘Sometimes it starts to get really annoying all that laughing the whole day,’ she said.

MYSTERIOUS EMAILS SENT FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE

When Jack Froese, 32, died of a heart arrhythmia in June 2011, he left behind a number of grieving friends and family members. But the BBC reports that several mysterious posthumous emails from Froese’s account have brought some happiness and closure to those who were closest to him.

Last November, five months after Froese’s death, his childhood best friend Tim Art received an email from Froese’s account.

“One night in November, I was sitting on my couch, going through my emails on my phone and it popped up, ‘sender: Jack Froese.’ I turned ghost white when I read it,” Hart told the BBC. “It was very quick and short but to a point that only Jack and I could relate on.”

The email had the subject heading, “I’m Watching.” While the text of the message itself read, “Did you hear me? I’m at your house. Clean your f***ing attic!!!”

Hart says that shortly before Froese’s death, the two had a private conversation in Hart’s attic, during which Froese teased him over the attic’s messy state. “Just he and I up there. That’s it,” Hart said.

Froese’s cousin Jimmy McGraw also claims to have received a posthumous email from Froese, warning him about an ankle injury that occurred after his cousin’s death.

“I’d like to say Jack sent it, just because I look at it as he’s gone, but he’s still trying to connect with me. Trying to tell me to move along, to feel better,” McGraw said.

For now, the source of the emails remains a mystery. But that’s OK with Hart, who says that even if the emails are coming from a cruel prankster who has hacked Froese’s account, he doesn’t mind. “If somebody’s joking around, I don’t care because I take it whatever way I want,” he said.

What’s interesting and unique about this case is that the emails all had a personal touch. There have been several reported cases of emails sent from a deceased person’s account, but those usually can be easily traced back to spam accounts that have accessed the deceased person’s information.

Posted on March 8, 2012 by Guest Blogger

AUSTIN LOSES AN ICON, LESLIE COCHRAN

Leslie Cochran at Home Slice Pizza, Austin Texas, May 4, 2011 by Steve Hopson

Today is an incredibly sad day for those of us in Austin, Texas and around the world, for we’ve lost an amazingly bright and beautiful spirit that truly embodied the city’s slogan of “Keep Austin Weird”, Leslie Cochran.

Another bright star, deep in the heart of texas, has shined his last warming light upon us and will not soon be forgotten.

Leslie Cochran taking a quick nap during a previous SXSW in front of our very own Museum Of The Weird!

KXAN writes:

Albert Leslie Cochran, the thong-wearing street person who became the living embodiment of the city’s “Keep Austin Weird” slogan, died Thursday morning after more than two years of declining health.

He was 60.

Cochran had been hospitalized since Feb. 16 and inhospice care for the past week. Friends said he had never fully recovered from a head injury from the fall he suffered in October 2009.

“Leslie lived outside the box,” said friend Christine Ann, a South Austin merchant. “He exemplified that, but also spoke … passionately that we not take ourselves too seriously. And Leslie, of course, never did.”

SET PHASERS TO “SHUT UP”, SPEECH-JAMMING GUN CREATED!

A new 'gun' has been invented that stops your conversation cold. Photo courtesy Kazutaka Kurihara

Ever been at the office, library or park enjoying the peace and quiet when, all of a sudden, an incredibly rude person decides to shatter the silence and start talking on their phone annoyingly or, continues to attempt conversation with others over and over again besides being told to ‘shh’ or ‘please, be quiet’ a thousand times?!

Do you want to shut their mouth without ever touching them or getting into an argument? Of course you do!

Well have no fear, for the Japanese Speech-Jamming gun is here!

Wired writes:

What inspired Japanese researchers Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada to create a prototype for a speech-jamming gun? J.G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick novels? Dystopian art-house cinema? The Muzak Corporation? German avant-garde electronic experiments? The LRAD sound cannon? The answer, it turns out, was the friendly local science museum.

Kurihara, a research scientist at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, broke it down in an e-mail exchange with Wired. “One day I just came by a science museum and enjoyed a demonstration about Delayed Auditory Feedback (DAF) at [the] cognitive science corner,” says Kurihara. “When I spoke to a microphone, my voice came back to me after a few hundred millisecond delay. Then, I could not continue to speak any more. That’s fun!”

Kurihara soon realized his adventures in the science museum could be applicable to other fields. He was already interested in developing a system that “controls appropriate turn-taking at discussions.” The science museum visit was his “a-ha!” moment. “Then I came up with the gun-type SpeechJammer idea utilizing DAF,” says Kurihara. “That’s the destiny.”

VIOLIN STRINGS MADE OF SPIDER SILK!

Dr Osaki with his one of kind, spider-silk strung violin.

More cool news coming from the spider-science world!

Adding to the list of incredible and awesome uses for spider-silk, a scientist of Japan’s Nara Medical University, Shigeyoshi Osaki, has developed a set of violin strings woven from the ‘dragline’ silk spiders use to hang themselves from.

It’s apparently stronger and resonates brighter than the usual, aluminum coated, string traditionally used on violins and other stringed instruments! Researchers have been studying the pros and cons of using spider-silk for quite some time now and have been making breakthrough after breakthrough. Hopefully we’ll see some more incredible stuff very soon!

BBC News writes:

A Japanese researcher has used thousands of strands of spider silk to spin a set of violin strings.

The strings are said to have a “soft and profound timbre” relative to traditional gut or steel strings.

That may arise from the way the strings are twisted, resulting in a “packing structure” that leaves practically no space between any of the strands.

The strings will be described in a forthcoming edition of the journal Physical Review Letters.

95 YEAR OLD WOMAN CLIMBS OUT OF COFFIN…FOR BREAKFAST!

This is why you should, at the very least, double-check to see if the person you just laid to rest in a coffin, is actually dead.

95 year old, Li Xiufeng, was presumed dead by neighbors when she was found lifeless and non-responsive in her home. They laid Li in a coffin for a few days while they made funeral preparations, and so friends and relatives could come visit and pay respects.

The day before the funeral was set to happen, Mr. Qingwang, the man making the plans, came to check and prepare the coffin, only to find it empty!

Apparently, being dead for a few days works up quite the appetite, because they found Li Xiufeng doing just fine in her kitchen and making herself some breakfast. She’s quoted as saying “I slept for a long time. After waking up, I felt so hungry, and wanted to cook something to eat.”

Again, just double-check.

Daily Mail writes:

A 95-year-old Chinese woman thought to have passed away stunned her neighbours – after waking up six days after she had been placed in a coffin. Li Xiufeng was found motionless and not breathing in bed by a neighbour two weeks after tripping and suffering a head injury at her home in Beiliu, Guangxi Province.

When the neighbor who found her could not wake the pensioner up, they feared the worst and thought the elderly woman had passed away. She was placed in a coffin which was kept in her house unsealed under Chinese tradition for friends and relatives to pay respects.

But the day before the funeral, neighbours found an empty coffin, and later discovered the 95-year-old, who had since woken up, in her kitchen cooking. Neighbor Chen Qingwang, 60, who originally found Mrs Xiufeng, said: ‘She didn’t get up, so I came up to wake her up.

‘No matter how hard I pushed her and called her name, she had no reactions. ‘I felt something was wrong, so I tried her breath, and she has gone, but her body is still not cold.’

As Mrs Xiufeng lived alone, Mr Qingwang and his son made preparations for her funeral, and the ‘dead’ woman was left in her coffin two days after she was discovered. The day before she was due to be permanently laid to rest, however, Mr Qingwang arrived at his neighbour’s property and found her ‘corpse’ had disappeared.

GIANT ‘TREE LOBSTER’ ONCE THOUGHT EXTINCT, FOUND ALIVE!

Nick Carlile, seen here with the Lord Howe Island stick insect, discovered the thought-to-be extinct phasmid in 2001 on Ball's Pyramid. -Daily Mail

Here’s a cool little story about a not-so-little bug that was once widely accepted as extinct, only to be discovered 80 years later, hidden from the world on a huge, lonely rock out in the middle of the ocean.

The giant stick bug or ‘tree lobster’ that was once found on Lord Howe Island near Australia, was believed to have gone extinct over 80 years ago when a grounded ship allowed black rats to escape from it’s cargo and subsequently find their new favorite meal, huge phasmid insects called, easily enough, stick bugs. Just a few years later, the bugs were nowhere to be found… and the rats had gotten fat.

A couple of researchers thought they may have some luck finding these guys still alive after some info came down the pipe-line about a possible sighting on another island just a few miles away called Ball’s Pyramid.

Ball's Pyramid, the giant rock jutting out of the ocean all by itself, where the giant stick-bug was found.

Sure enough, they were there, clinging to the one plant that survived on the lifeless island. The researchers quickly made a plea to the Australian government to take some specimens and attempt to build a population large enough to re-introduce back to the island it once inhabited, after the black rats are taken care of, of course.

The Daily Mail writes:

A narrow and forbidding rock that stands higher than the Empire State Building, it does not look like the most welcoming place to set up home.

But that did not stop an insect which was thought to be extinct for 80 years from building its last known colony on the 1,844ft high Ball’s Pyramid.

Scientists have discovered 24 of the creatures living 500ft above the South Pacific Ocean around the single plant that had survived on the rock.

The ‘tree lobster’ insect, which is as large as a human hand, had somehow made its camp despite the lack of food and the harsh conditions.

Nobody could say how they got there in the first place – but four have now been taken off and have bred thousands more to ensure their species survives.

DOG-HEADED PIG MONSTER ATTACKS!

A dog-headed pig monster has began to terrorize villagers in northern Namibia, which is on the southwest coast of Africa, and seems to have caused quite a bit of trouble by attacking dogs, goats and anything else that gets in its way.

People of the region just beyond the Kalahari desert have never seen anything like this creature before and say it must be the work of aliens or ‘black magic’.

Although there are no photos of said monster, it has worked it’s way into the headlines of major news outlets around the world.

Yahoo News writes:

Residents in northern Namibia, on the southwest coast of Africa, have reported being terrorized by a bizarre dog-pig hybrid creature.

The animal is said to be mostly white and unlike anything the villagers have ever seen, with a doglike head and the broad, round, nearly hairless back and shoulders of a giant pig. The beast was spotted chasing and attacking dogs, goats and other domestic animals in this arid region not far from the Kalahari desert.

As often happens when rumors of monsters spread in rural areas around the world, some locals have taken extra safety precautions, such as traveling in groups and arming themselves with weapons.

In 1995 and 1996, some Puerto Ricans armed themselves against the vampire beast el chupacabra; last year, Malaysian residents patrolled the streets searching for the mysterious orang minyak, or “oily man” creature that had recently terrorized them.

WORLDS FIRST MAN THAT LIVES WITH NO HEART

X-ray showing dual turbine-like blood pumps that have a 'continuous flow'.

Doctor’s here in Texas have a made a huge break-through in medical science and surgery. They have successfully replaced a heart with a dual turbine-like blood pump that has a ‘continuous flow’ to it, so it hums like a hard-drive instead of having the traditional “pum-pump” you’re used to hearing.

Thousands of people around the world already have something similar to this installed in their bodies, the difference in this case being that most of them have a device that helps an already beating heart, this one just replaces it all-together.

There has even been a documentary made about the incredible process the 2 doctors and patient went through called “Heart Stop Beating”.

Heart Stop Beating | Jeremiah Zagar from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.

Heart Stop Beating is the story of Billy Cohn & Bud Frazier, two visionary doctors from the Texas Heart Institute, who in March of 2011 successfully replaced a dying man’s heart with a ‘continuous flow’ device they developed, proving that life was possible without a pulse or a heart beat.

The Daily Mail writes:

In March of last year, Craig Lewis, 55, was dying from a heart condition that caused build-ups of abnormal proteins, and not even a pacemaker could help save his life.

But two doctors from the Texas Heart Institute proposed a revolutionary new solution – install a ‘continuous flow’ device that would allow blood to circulate his body without a pulse.

Dr Billy Cohn and Dr Bud Frazier installed the device after removing Mr Lewis’ heart. Within a day, the patient was up and speaking with physicians.

The two doctors had developed the device some time before and had tested it on nearly 50 calves.

They removed the animals’ hearts, and by the next day, the calves were doing everything they were the day before – eating, sleeping, and moving – but this time, without a heart pumping blood through their bodies.