Chinese woman spends 11 years knitting clothes from own hair
Beijing: A 60-year-old Chinese woman has spent an incredible 11 years knitting a sweater and a hat using more than 110,000 strands of her own hair. Xiang Renxian, a retired teacher from China’s Chongqing province collected the huge number of hair and counted every single one, weaving them into a coat and cap.
Xiang spent 11 years to spin the hair into workable yarn and complete the ensemble,” reported. The sweater weighs around 382 grammes while the cap that she made for her husband is 119 grammes in weight.
Xiang saved all the hair strands she found in her comb on a daily basis and began using them to knit in 2003.
Each hair she wove into the sweater is around 70 to 80 centimetres long, and around 15 hair strands were used to make one strand of yarn, the report said. “This method is not difficult. The key is to have patience and perseverance,” Xiang said. Xiang said she got the idea when she was 34 years old as a way to preserve the long hair of her youth. (PTI)
Shopkeeper fights off gun-wielding robber by pelting beer cans
London: A shopkeeper in Ramsbottom, Greater Manchester fought with masked gunmen by throwing beer cans at them.
The CCTV footage shows a masked man with his accomplice threatening the shopkeeper of Bargain Booze and demanding cash from the till, while hitting him with a gun on his head, the Daily Star.
The brave shopkeeper pelted the masked thug with cans of beer and other items he could find in the shop, while the accomplice grabbed some money from the till, before leaving quickly from there.
Cops, who are currently investigating the robbery, said that the man with the gun was believed to be in his 20s and around 6ft tall and both of the assailants were wearing white masks from the movie ‘V for Vendetta’. (ANI)
US doctor walks 10 km in snow to perform brain surgery
Houston: Where there is a will, there is a way, an old adage was proved by a US surgeon who walked nearly 10 kilometres through snow to perform a life-saving brain surgery.
Dr Zenko Hrynkiw, the only brain surgeon at Trinity Medical Centre in Birmingham, was at a hospital when he was called at a different hospital for an unexpected, life-saving brain surgery.
According to reports, Hrynkiw tried to make the drive, but a sudden snowstorm unfortunately produced a traffic nightmare.
He was only able to drive for a few blocks before it became clear that he would not be able to make it behind the wheel. So, he walked about 10 kilometres to the hospital and then performed the surgery on a patient suffering from a traumatic brain injury.
According to nurse Steve Davis, Hyrnkiw called up and said: “I’m walking”. On reaching, he spoke to the family of the patient and performed the surgery, Davis said. “Without the surgery, the patient would have most likely died,” hospital sources said. Despite a light dusting of snow in the south on Tuesday, many cities were dealing with bad road conditions and terrible traffic, with some abandoning their cars on the roads and taking refuge in nearby stores. (PTI)
Wheelchair bandit steals car from US dealership
Miami: A wheelchair-bound man with a hankering for a sleeker set of wheels drove a car right out of a Florida dealership, leading police on a chase before being arrested for the theft, authorities said.
Shamal Battice, described as a paraplegic, allegedly stole the vehicle yesterday from an auto dealership in the central Florida city of Ocala under the pretext of planning to buy a car.
Ocala police sergeant Angy Scroble said that Battice pulled up his wheelchair to one particular vehicle he’d had his eye on, a late model white Pontiac. The disabled man asked the salesman for help getting into the vehicle, saying he merely wanted to feel the interior of the car, she said. But once seated behind the wheel, Battice locked the car door, turned the ignition key and hit the gas — using his folding cane to depress the accelerator pedal as he sped away. Police and sheriff’s deputies who gave chase were unable to overtake Battice, who was arrested later while refueling the stolen vehicle at a gas station several miles away. (AFP)
Chinese man uses first-class air ticket to eat free meals
Beijing: In a bizarre case, a Chinese man bought a first-class plane ticket and re-booked it 300 times to have free meals at the VIP lounge of an airport in the country.
The frequent diner purchased the first-class, fully refundable ticket aboard Eastern China Airline and then re-booked his ticket over and over again to have free meals. He used the ticket to gain access to the Xi’an International Airport’s VIP lounge, where high-rolling travellers dine for free, according to a report in the Chinese-language newspaper Kwong Wah Yit Poh in Malaysia.
The man flashed his ticket to lounge staff at the Shaanxi province airport before his trip, ate a meal just like any first class traveller and instead of getting on the flight he would change his flight’s departure to another day.
The next day he would show up with his newly issued ticket for the revised date, eat and then again change his ticket date. He did this over and over again. Eastern China Airlines officials only recently figured out the man’s scheme after noticing his single ticket being re-booked 300 times over one year. Airline officials admitted there was nothing they could do to stop the frequent diner, the New York Daily News reported. A spokeswoman for the carrier called the man’s free-meal scheme a “rare act.” Eastern China Airlines officials confronted him and the human meal ticket was stopped. The freeloader ended up cashing in his fully refundable ticket and getting back all his money. (PTI)
Sole camera from NASA moon missions to be auctioned
Vienna: NASA’s only camera to have made it to the moon and back as part of the Apollo manned missions will be auctioned in Vienna on March 22, organisers said on Friday.
The boxy silver-coloured camera, which could be attached to the front of an astronaut’s suit, is estimated to be worth 150,000-200,000 euros (USD 200,000-270,000), Peter Coeln, owner of the Westlicht gallery holding the auction, told AFP.
In all, the US space agency sent 14 cameras to the moon during its Apollo 11-17 missions in 1969-1972, but only one was brought back to earth, possibly due to problems retrieving the film after the equipment jammed, Coeln said. As a rule, the cameras — which weighed several kilogrammes (pounds) — were abandoned to allow the astronauts to bring back moon rock, weight being a prime concern on the missions.
The Hasselblad camera, which is being sold by an Italian collector, was used by astronaut Jim Irwin to take 299 pictures during the Apollo 15 mission in 1971. A small plate inside with the number 38 — the same number that appears on the NASA snapshots — “is 100-percent proof that this camera is the real thing and really was on the moon,” Coeln said. (AFP)
Nigerian woman throws out pet cat for ‘being gay’
London: A Nigerian woman has reportedly thrown her pet cat outside on the streets for apparently being gay.
The middle-aged woman claimed that her seven-year-old moggy named Bull has engaged in unnatural sexual behaviour and has been making advances to male cats, in presence of female cats, reports said.
She told Nigerian newspaper Leadership that she finds the behaviour disturbing and a contradiction of the laws of nature. (ANI)