Tradition where animals predict upcoming season in California
Washington D.C: There is a tradition in California where animals predict the time of the coming season, especially spring.
Locals wait for Punxsutawney Phil, a groundhog, to come out of its hibernation and check for his shadow on February 2, every year. According to a report by Fox News, Phil’s certain actions while seeing his shadow could mean an early spring, according to local custom.
Though people from the neighbourhood have marked the day as Groundhog Day, Phil is not the only one to influence the local people’s customs and beliefs.
There are some other animals about whom international curious souls have come to who can allegedly sense the coming of warmer weather.
One such would be a tortoise named Mojave Maxine.
In California, locals near the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens in Palm Desert wait for a tortoise — the aforementioned Mojave Maxine — to emerge from her brumation, or a hibernation-like slumber, in order to predict an early spring.
However, unlike Groundhog Day, when folks wait to see what Phil will predict, Mohave reportedly waits for the weather to warm up before she emerges, making her less of a predictor of spring and more of a signifier, or indicator.
But here it should be mentioned that Phil’s prediction had only 39 per cent accuracy in 2019. (ANI)
Venice shuts down for WWII-era bomb removal
Rome: A Venice port area was evacuated on Sunday as a World War II-era bomb was defused and later exploded at sea.
The operation in the port of Marghera, a mostly industrial area separated from the tourist city by water, required the evacuation of about 3,500 residents in the early morning. Boat, train and bus traffic was all halted during the operation and planes were prohibited from flying to and from Marco Polo Airport from 8:30am (0730GMT) until 12:30 pm.
The bomb, which weighed about 225 kilos (500 pounds) and contained about 129 kilos of TNT, was discovered during an excavation to fix sewer lines in January. By mid-morning, the first two phases of the operation — the evacuation of residents, and the process of stripping the fuses from the bombs, had been successfully completed, authorities said. Gianluca Dello Monacco, commander of the Army regiment that carried out the work, told Rai24 the precautions were justified.
“It still carried a high risk of explosion,” Dello Monacco said. The city of Venice said later that a controlled explosion had been carried out. “When the bomb reached the open sea, plastic explosive charges were applied to the device, which were detonated underwater by divers…” a statement said. (AFP)