A Race to the Top
The 2016 world champion of sport climbing took on an unexpected challenger earlier this month: an elevator. The 26-year-old Polish man, Marcin Dzienski, raced a neon-lit elevator on the side of a Warsaw hotel and reached the top of a 75-foot plexiglass wall in 12.12 seconds, just barely beating the machine. Dzienski scales the face of the wall with incredible speed, pulling himself up small holds as the elevator rises beside him. With sport climbing scheduled to make its Olympic debut as an event at the 2020 summer games in Japan next year, Dzienski participated in the event to promote the sport.
A lot to swallow
A woman from California had a dream that she swallowed her engagement ring. When she woke up, she couldn’t find her ring and discovered that she hadn’t dreamt about swallowing her ring after all. The San Diego woman was recently sleepwalking, during which she swallowed her 2.4-carat diamond ring while dreaming that she was on a high-speed train. In the dream, a group of villains were attempting to steal her ring, so she swallowed it as a means of protecting the ring. In the waking world, she swallowed the ring with a glass of water and went back to sleep. When the couple realized that she might have swallowed the ring, they went to an urgent care clinic for an X-ray of her stomach and discovered the ring inside. She then had an emergency upper endoscopy performed to retrieve the engagement ring.
A support clown
A man in New Zealand expected to be fired in a meeting and was told he could bring someone to support him. He hired a professional clown, Joe the Clown, for $200 New Zealand (about $127 in U.S. dollars). The man received an email from his bosses at the ad agency where he worked telling him that the meeting was to discuss his future at the company. Sensing peril, he reached out to a clown, who arrived in full make-up and made balloon animals while his bosses told him he was being let go. But his bosses did see the humor in the situation despite the awkward layoff. The good news is that the man now has a new job with a competing ad agency.
A cheesy gimmick
A new restaurant in London, England, has the cheesiest gimmick — it’s the world’s first conveyer belt cheese restaurant. The Pick & Cheese restaurant in Seven Dials Market in Covent Garden has 25 varieties of cheese from across Great Britain on a 130-foot conveyor belt that’s in continuous motion. Cheese plates are color-coded by price, but there’s also options to purchase cheese flights as well. The restaurant also offers grilled cheese sandwiches and pan-fried angloumi — a brie-like cheese from from sheep and goat milk.
Birds-eye view
A Chicago Transit Authority stop is so fouled with pigeon waste and feathers that it’s known as “pigeon poop station,” which has prompted area politicians and city officials to try and find some way to fix the problem. But the gray, cooing birds aren’t giving up their right to do their business where and when they feel like it. According to WBBM-TV in Chicago, Democratic state Rep. Jaime Andrade came to the Irving Park Blue Line station recently to do a live interview about the problems of pigeon mess, including his proposal to have transportation officials install a hose line for power washing when they construct new escalators at the stop. As Andrade talked to the reporter, he suddenly stopped, rubbed his head and said “I think they just got me.” They did, in fact, do just that.
‘Rude’ British license plates
In a country known for its proper etiquette and genteel manners, a class of license plate numbers was recently approved by the British Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) some are considering quite “rude.” The beginning four letter-number combo in question is “BJ69,” which follows a complex code requiring the use of 69 for all license plates issued over the coming six months. Executives at the van rental company Vanarama informed the DVLA that BJ69 is a sex position in which two people are giving each other oral sex, and that this was “a bit much” for some customers. The government agency has not decided to ban the configuration, even though over the past six months, where the required number was “19,” included such banned plate numbers as: “B19 NOB,” “P19 FKR,” and “B19 DCK.”
The sky is NOT falling
A giant fireball streaks across the sky and suddenly a boulder appears on a road in Chesterfield County, Virginia. Coincidence? Definitely yes. But that didn’t stop people from speculating about the boulder’s mysterious origins and sudden appearance. Witnesses said the meteor appeared around 8 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 12, and around the same time a boulder the size of a picnic table mysteriously showed up on a highway near to Richmond, throwing a passing car onto its roof. Twitter users speculated that it could be “a part of the Moon” or “the biggest meteorite I’ve ever seen.” Though not everyone was caught up in meteor madness. Others commented that there was no large crater — “Did it have a parachute? Come on people” — and then of course, the obvious: “If it were a meteorite we would all be dead.”
Boat car
An elderly Pensacola, Florida, couple spent the summer riding in style in a hybrid vehicle they call the “Boat Car” — which is exactly what it sounds like. The man built the boat car in just three days, combining the family boat with the bottom part of a Ford Expedition. “Took him three days. Three days, he drove it out of our yard,” the man’s wife told news outlets. The boat car is street legal, with functioning headlights, tail lights, turn signals, and horns. In case it rains, the man keeps a scuba mask and snorkel on deck.
