‘A rare textile made from the silk of more than a million wild spiders goes on display today at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
To produce this unique golden cloth, 70 people spent four years collecting golden orb spiders from telephone poles in Madagascar, while another dozen workers carefully extracted about 80 feet of silk filament from each of the arachnids. The resulting 11-foot by 4-foot textile is the only large piece of cloth made from natural spider silk existing in the world today. [..]
Peers came up with the idea of weaving spider silk after learning about the French missionary Jacob Paul Camboué, who worked with spiders in Madagascar during the 1880s and 1890s. Camboué built a small, hand-driven machine to extract silk from up to 24 spiders at once, without harming them. [..]
But to make a textile of any significant size, the silk experts had to drastically scale up their project. “Fourteen thousand spiders yields about an ounce of silk,” Godley said, “and the textile weighs about 2.6 pounds. The numbers are crazy.”’
‘A death row inmate in Texas tore out his eyeball with his fingers and ate it, leaving him blind after he gouged out his other eye several years ago, the state’s department of criminal justice said on Friday.
“We don’t know how it happened,” said Jason Clark, a spokesman for the department. “There are no indications that he used anything other than his hands.”
Andre Thomas, 25, was now in a secure psychiatric facility after he pulled out his left eye last month at the death row unit in Livingston in eastern Texas, Clark said.
Thomas was condemned for killing his wife, son and infant stepdaughter in 2004, according to the department’s brief account of the case. Local media reports said he had ripped out the hearts of his victims.’
‘Michigan police say a 35-year-old mother used the Internet to track down the son she gave up for adoption a decade ago, seducing and raping the teenage boy when she found him after an online search.
Aimee Louise Sword of Waterford Township, near Detroit, was arraigned this week on three charges of criminal sexual conduct for the alleged rape of her biological son, whom she put up for adoption more than 10 years ago, MyFOXDetroit reported.
Prosecutors say the boy is still a minor, but won’t disclose whether he knew the woman was his mother — a situation that has horrified mental health experts who are calling the case “an abomination.” [..]
Sword’s attorney Kenneth Burch told the Press that his client “maintains her presumption of innocence” and said the accusations of incest have been very difficult for her.’
‘A Coatesville mother made her 6-year-old daughter drive a car because “[mom] was sleepy” after smoking “that stinky stuff,” according to police. [..]
Officer Robert Keetch said he had to do a double take after seeing the little girl driving. “There were two white knuckles and a little head popping over the stearing wheel,” he said.
The woman, Lakisha Hogue, was sitting in the passenger seat, laughing, when a patrol officer pulled her over, said police. Hogue told the Officer Keetch that she was teaching her daughter how to drive.
“Mom made me drive because she was sleepy,” the girl told police.
Then police say the aunt asked her niece, “Was your mom smoking that stinky stuff again?” The girl replied “yes,” say police.’
