Baby boom at US hospital with 16 pregnant nurses
A baby boom is brewing at a suburban Arizona hospital where 16 intensive care nurses recently discovered they are all pregnant. The nurses at Banner Desert Medical Center in Mesa outside Phoenix joked Friday they thought there was something in the water when it became clear they were all expecting babies between October and January. Nurse Rochelle Sherman, nearly eight months along, said: “I don’t think we realised just how many of us were pregnant until we started a Facebook group.” Nurse Jolene Garrow joked, “We all formulated this plan to have the holidays off!”
(AP)
Boy solves six Rubik’s cubes under water in one breath
An 18-year-old student from Georgia solved six Rubik’s Cubes under water in one breath on Friday, in a bid to set a new Guinness World Record. Vako Marchelashvili was submerged in a glass tank for just over one minute and 44 seconds as he flipped, turned and solved the cubes in front of a crowd at the Gino Paradise aqua park Tbilisi. He said he had been preparing for the underwater challenge for six months, training several hours a day.
“I trained a lot planning to break a record — and to ensure my safety, because even a small mistake could be dangerous and life-altering,” Marchelashvili said afterwards. “I think my result will stay as a record for a long time. I hope to break many other records.” After observing Marchelashvili’s attempt, the Georgian Records Federation issued a diploma confirming his result. They will send their evidence to the Guinness World Records headquarters for verification.
(Reuters)
In UK, Scorching weather helps uncover archeological sites
Britain’s hottest summer in decades has revealed cropmarks across the country showing the sites of Iron Age settlements, Roman farms and even Neolithic monuments dating back thousands of years, archaeologists said on Wednesday. Cropmarks — patterns of shading in crops and grass seen most clearly from the air — form faster in hot weather as the fields dry out, making this summer’s heatwave ideal for discovering such sites.
Archaeologists at the public body Historic England have been making the most of the hot weather to look for patterns revealing the ancient sites buried below, from Yorkshire in the north down to Cornwall in the southwest. “We’ve discovered hundreds of new sites this year spanning about 6,000 years of England’s history,” said Damian Grady, aerial reconnaissance manager at Historic England.
“Each new site is interesting in itself, but the fact we’re finding so many sites over such a large area is filling in a lot of gaps in knowledge about how people lived and farmed and managed the landscape in the past,” he said. The archaeologists are mapping the sites to determine the significance of the remains beneath and how best to protect them. While some may be significant enough to merit national protection from development, local authorities or farmers may be left to decide what to do at other sites.“We’ll hopefully get the help of farmers to help protect some of these undesignated sites,” Grady said.
(Reuters)
Deputies rescue women stranded on unicorn raft
It was not a fairy tale, but a rescue on a Minnesota lake did involve a rainbow unicorn. A sheriff’s deputy and a reserve deputy from the Chisago County Sheriff’s Office spotted a group of five women on a large, inflatable rainbow unicorn floating on Fish lake on Saturday. KMSP-TV reports the deputies pulled their squad car over and asked the women for a photo, but noticed the raft was stuck in weeds. One deputy threw a rope to the women while the other recorded a video. The sheriff’s office tweeted: “With a handful of laughs and some mad rescue roping skills, they were pulled back to the dock!” Deputy Scotty Finnegan threw the rope. He says the women would have had trouble getting out of the mucky lake unassisted.
(AP)
It’s Trump vs Merkel at Madame Tussauds
Madame Tussauds in Berlin unveiled its latest attraction on Tuesday — a posturing Donald Trump figure striking a picture of German Chancellor Angela Merkel on a punchball. Unlike the usual wax figures, the new moving “Trump” in the Berlin museum is an actor wearing a silicone mask modeled on the billionaire US President, dancing to the Abba hit ‘Money, Money, Money’.
Relations between the two leaders got off to a frosty start, although Trump said they had had a “great meeting” on the sidelines of a NATO summit last month. Trump was measured in 1997 for New York’s Madame Tussauds when he was real estate developer.
The Berlin museum’s spokeswoman Nina Zerbe said it took nine people and more than two months to make the silicon mask, which has real hair. “Ultimately, people find him funny and want to take pictures with him. They don’t feel repelled,” she said. “We noticed a year ago when we put up the wax figure that he is not someone who is perceived as negative or whom visitors want to harm.”
(Reuters)
