Brothers re-gift same hard candy for decades
MANCHESTER, Dec 27: Two New Hampshire brothers have gotten their holiday regifting skills down to an art — they’ve been passing the same hard candy back and forth for over 30 years.
It started in 1987, when Ryan Wasson gave a 10-roll Frankford “Santa’s Candy Book” with assorted fruit flavors to his brother, Eric Wasson, as a joke for Christmas, knowing that Eric wouldn’t like it.
“I didn’t eat them,” Eric Wasson told WMUR-TV. “And so the next year I thought, ‘Hey, I think I’m going to give it back to him. He’ll never remember.’”
But Ryan immediately recognized it. They’ve been taking turns ever since, keeping a log of their exchanges. They’ve gotten creative about it.
Ryan Wasson told the station the candy has been frozen in a block of ice and put in Jell-O, adding, “He one time sewed it into a teddy bear.”
The tradition has also involved family members, co-workers and even a sheriff’s department. Last year, it was presented to Ryan Wasson on a silver platter at a restaurant.
This year, Ryan Wasson turned to a group on social media for ideas. Suggestions included having it arrive via a pizza delivery or Christmas carolers, hiding it in a book or cake, or holding a scavenger hunt with clues. (AP)
Extinct shark named after museum official as she retires
BATON ROUGE, Dec 27: A Louisiana State University museum official has received a unique retirement gift — researchers in Alabama and South Carolina named a prehistoric shark species after her.
Suyin Ting has been collections manager for vertebrate paleontology at the LSU Museum of Natural Science for 26 years.
Her new namesake is Carcharhinus tingae, which lived 40 million years ago and was identified from fossilized teeth in the museum’s collection.
“I am very honored to be recognized by my peers for my work,” Ting, who studied mammal paleontology, said in a news release Thursday, the day she retired.
But, she added, the fact that David Cicimurri of the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia, and Jun Ebersole of the McWane Science Center in Birmingham, Alabama, also identified many other specimens for the museum is much more important.
Their contribution to the vertebrate paleontology collection is huge, she said.
According to the researchers, Carcharhinus tingae teeth have not yet been found anywhere but Louisiana, where they are relatively common — evidence that these sharks lived in an ancient ocean that covered what is now Louisiana.(AP)