‘A Kenyan man bit a python that wrapped him in its coils and hauled him up a tree in a struggle that lasted hours.
Farm manager Ben Nyaumbe was working in Kenya’s Malindi area at the weekend when the snake struck, apparently hunting for livestock.
“I stepped on a spongy thing on the ground and suddenly my leg was entangled with the body of a huge python,” he told the Daily Nation newspaper.
When the snake coiled itself round his upper body, he resorted to desperate measures.
“I had to bite it,” he said.’
‘Scientists have identified the single chance encounter about 1.9 billion years ago to which almost all life on Earth owes its existence.
It saw an amoeba-like organism engulf a bacterium that had developed the power to use sunlight to break down water and liberate oxygen.
The bacterium was probably intended as prey but instead it became incorporated into its attacker’s body – turning it into the ancestor of every tree, flowering plant and seaweed on Earth. The encounter meant life on the planet could evolve from bacterial slime into the more complex forms we see today. “That single event transformed the evolution of life on Earth,” said Paul Falkowski, professor of biogeochemistry and bio-physics at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “The descendants of that tiny organism transformed our atmosphere, filling it with the oxygen needed for animals and, eventually, humans to evolve.”’
‘A cat taking a nap on the roof of an ambulance woke to find itself going along on an emergency callout at speeds of up to 100km/h.
Chloe’s snooze ended in a hair-raising 13km trip from Port Douglas to Oak Beach in north Queensland with lights flashing and siren blaring all the way, The Cairns Post reported today.
Chloe’s owner and paramedic Myles White got a huge shock when an extremely distressed meow alerted him to a “goggle-eyed” cat sitting on the roof. [..]
“When I took her down, she was all fluffed up and her eyes were a bit blown out and she did a big ‘Help, get me off’ meow.”‘
Not particularly clever, really. Lucky tho. 🙂
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‘An American hiker stranded in the Bavarian Alps for nearly three days was rescued after using her sports bra as a signal, police in southern Germany said Monday.
Berchtesgaden police officer Lorenz Rasp said that he helped lift 24-year-old Jessica Bruinsma of Colorado state to safety by helicopter on Thursday after she attracted the attention of lumberjacks by attaching her sports bra to a cable used to move timber down the mountain.
“She’s a very smart girl, and she acted very resourcefully,” said Rasp. “She kept her shirt and jacket for warmth, but thought the sports bra could work as a signal.”‘
‘A man bitten on the penis by a deadly snake has told how he used a cold rum can to soothe the pain while he rang his mother to say a final goodbye.
“I thought I was gone,” Daryl Zutt said of his now notorious encounter with a brown snake during a roadside toilet stop in remote far north Queensland, The Cairns Post reported.
“I thought, ‘Maybe, this is it. Maybe, I’m gonna cark it’.”
The Cairns Post revealed details of the bizarre encounter two weeks ago but the identity of the victim remained unknown until Mr Zutt came forward to tell how the brown snake took a near-fatal swipe as he relieved himself.
“I squatted down … I reckon I must’ve nearly sat on his head,” he said.
“As soon as I felt it, I yelled.
“It really hurt. [..]’
Followup to Deadly snake bites man’s penis.
‘A dying man who literally gambled on his own life plans to spend his bookie’s winnings on booze, fags and death-defying theme park rides!
“Well, why not?” said pragmatic Jon Matthews who has been living on borrowed time ever since he was diagnosed with an untreatable asbestos-linked cancer more than two years ago. [..]
He walked into Fenny Stratford’s William Hill Bookmakers last September and told surprised staff he wanted to take out a £100 bet against the doctors’ prediction that he’d dead by Christmas.
“I thought it would be a bit of fun and I thought it would give me an incentive to battle this horrible illness and survive a bit longer. The people at William Hill checked all the facts and gave me odds of 50-1.”‘
‘Doctors in Japan who carried out surgery on a man to remove a tumour had good news and bad news for him.
The good news was he did not have cancer.
The bad news: The growth that had been causing him pain was in fact a 25-year-old surgical towel.
The patient had been carrying the cloth since 1983, when surgeons left it in him after a minor operation to treat an ulcer, a spokesman for the hospital said.
The man, now 49, went in to another hospital in late May after suffering abdominal pain. [..]
“The towel was greenish blue although we are not sure about its original colour,” the Asahi General Hospital spokesman said, adding it had been crumpled to the size of a softball.’
‘A roadside toilet stop ended in pain, embarrassment and almost death for a tourist when a highly venomous snake bit the end of his penis.
The deadly brown snake slithered between his legs and lunged at his manhood as he crouched on a roadside near Laura, 300km northwest of Cairns, about a month ago.
Details of the incident only came to light yesterday after they were confirmed by a paramedic.
“It certainly had a swipe at him,” an ambulance spokesman said yesterday.
“But it didn’t envenomate him.
“As it came through it must have got a bit of a shock.”‘
Australia should make this into an advertising slogan to attract tourists. ‘Come to Australia. Our wildlife will bite you on the cock.’ Can’t fail. 🙂
‘An Omaha man saved a life, his own life by getting the courage to turn a knife on himself and perform a tracheotomy.
Steve Wilder has faith in God and after a near death experience last week he has a lot of faith in himself. “I was scared to death. I was thinking about dying.”
Just after midnight, Wilder found himself in a dead sleep. Dead because he woke up and couldn’t breathe, his air passage swollen shut
“It just blocked all the way and I just got up and I panicked!” The 55-year-old Wilder, who didn’t think he had time to call and wait for help, faced an unimaginable choice. Either lie there and suffocate to death or take matters into his own hands with a steak knife. [..]’
‘A German man survived a 25ft plunge down a lift shaft when he landed on a woman who had fallen down it a day before.
Jens Wilhelms, 27, was unhurt after landing on the 57-year-old woman and managed to free himself from the shaft at the apartment block in Frankfurt am Main where he lived.
He called out rescue services who took the woman to hospital. Doctors said she is in a critical condition after sustaining injuries in her original fall – and then again when Wilhelms landed on her.
Police spokesman Manfred Vonhausen said: “The woman had been lying unconscious in the shaft for some time already.’
‘Former The A-Team star Mr. T once stunned a sick child’s family by bringing him out of a coma – after doctors begged the actor for help.
The poorly kid fell unconscious in Detroit, Michigan in the mid-1980s – and the only physical movement he made was in response to hearing Mr. T’s name.
And when the mohawked star was in town, he stopped by the hospital to visit the ill boy – with miraculous results.’
How many years in a decade? 🙂
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‘A playful New Zealand dolphin used to swimming with humans has amazed conservationists by guiding two distressed whales back to sea.
The dolphin led the two pygmy sperm whales 200 metres along the beach and through a channel to the open sea, Department of Conservation worker Malcolm Smith said today.
The two whales, a mother and her young calf, were found stranded on Mahia Beach, on North Island’s east coast on Monday morning, Smith said. [..]
“They obviously couldn’t find their way back past it to the sea,” Smith said.
Four attempts by volunteers to refloat the pair failed and it was becoming highly likely they would have to be euthanised, he said.
Then the dolphin, named Moko by local residents, swam up.’
‘A Japanese pin-up model says that her big breasts have not only boosted her career — they also helped her overturn a court verdict.
The bikini model, who goes by her professional name Serena Kozakura, was cleared after a court decided she was too well-endowed to squeeze into a room through a hole, as she had been found guilty of earlier.
“I used to hate my body so much,” Kozakura, who has appeared in product commercials on television, told the private Asahi network in an interview aired Tuesday.
“But it was my breasts” that won in court, she said.’
A truck is on a trailer, being towed down the highway. Apparently such things wobble like maniacs if you change lanes too quickly.
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‘A monster crocodile came within a metre of making a meal of a fisherman on a Northern Territory river.
The saltie came alongside the small boat – probably looking for a free feed of fish – and suddenly exploded out of the water.
It almost got its jaws around 27-year-old Israeli tourist Novon Mashiah, who was leaning over the back of a dinghy posing for a photo. [..]
“I was shocked – the animal clearly wanted to kill me,” Mr Mashiah told the Northern Territory News.
“One minute I was leaning over the boat teasing it for a picture. The next minute it burst out of the water with incredible speed … its jaws fully open. [..]
“I was pointing at it when it suddenly jumped up at me – I didn’t realise that crocs were so aggressive.”’
‘Has the Amber Room, the 18th-century chamber decoration the Nazis stole from the Soviet Union in World War II, finally been found? German treasure hunters say they may have solved the decades-old mystery.
Treasure hunters in Germany claim they have found hidden gold in an underground cavern that they are almost certain contains the Amber Room treasure, believed by some to have been stashed away by the Nazis in a secret mission in the dying days of World War II.
The discovery of an estimated two tonnes of gold was made at the weekend when electromagnetic pulse measurements located the man-made cavern 20 meters underground near the village of Deutschneudorf on Germany’s border with the Czech Republic.’
‘The Queensland government says there is no reason to change the law after a court found a teacher could legally slap a student in the face.
An assault charge against a Gold Coast high school teacher who admitted slapping a year eight student in class was thrown out yesterday.
The magistrate accepted the teacher was practising “domestic discipline” – a law that allows a teacher to use reasonable force “by way of correction, discipline, management or control”.
Southport Magistrates Court was told Upper Coomera State College teacher Justin Ransfield, 37, slapped Aidan Pascoe, 14, in the classroom in December 2006.
The court heard Ransfield and the student clashed physically after the boy disobeyed a direction to start work.’
‘A Canadian man survived 96 hours pinned under his all-terrain vehicle in the Rocky Mountains by eating rotting animal carcasses, drinking melted snow and thinking of his grandchildren, he said on Monday.
Ken Hildebrand was trapped face down for four days and three nights in the Crowsnest Pass area of southwestern Alberta, where he tried numerous ways to free himself in below-freezing temperatures.
Throughout the ordeal, he kept wolves and coyotes away by blowing on an emergency whistle.
“I thought of my family and God and that was it,” Hildebrand, a paramedic, told Reuters from his hospital bed in Lethbridge, Alberta.’
‘An 81-year old man in the small Chilean village of Angol shocked his grieving relatives by waking up in his coffin at his own wake, local media said on Sunday.
When Feliberto Carrasco’s family members discovered his body limp and cold, they were convinced that the octogenarian’s hour had come, so they immediately called a funeral home, not a doctor.
Carrasco was dressed in his finest suit for the wake, and his relatives gathered to bid him a final farewell. [..]
The man who “rose from the dead” said he was not in any pain, and only asked for a glass of water.’
‘After a long, dry decade, La Nina has arrived at last, bringing drenching rains across most of Queensland and stretching into NSW and Victoria.
Cattle farmer Fred Ahern and his family were airlifted from their Murweh Station property on the banks of the Warrego River, south of Charleville, yesterday. They were forced out by rising floodwaters that have reduced their homestead to an island invaded by snakes. But Ahern couldn’t be happier. The rain means he’ll be able to return to his normal stocking level of 1200 breeders after reducing the herd to 700 because of drought.
“Am I happy? Am I ever,” Ahern says. ‘
‘A man being held in a Dutch police cell on suspicion of growing cannabis got an unintended treat in his lunch — a piece of hashish-laced cake, a spokesman said Thursday.
“It was an accident,” said Alwin Don, police spokesman in the southern province of Zeeland.
The hash cake had earlier been seized by police in an unrelated investigation and stored in a refrigerator — close to lunch packets served to suspects being held in cells at the police station in Goes, 110 miles south of Amsterdam.
“Clearly it looked a lot like the other lunch packets,” Don said of the hash cake, which was served with a cup of coffee on Sunday.
“Officers returned to the cell a half hour later and the suspect told them: ‘I think you’ve given me something you weren’t supposed to,'” Don said.’
‘After playing World of Warcraft, the 12 year old boy knew how to cope when he was attacked by a moose in the forest.
In the article he describes how he first yelled at the moose, distracting it so his sister got away, then when he got attacked and the animal stood over him he feigned death. “Just like you learn at level 30 in World of Warcraft.”‘
‘”Holy shit.”
Inside the cockpit of the cruising airliner, Captain Bob Pearson was understandably alarmed at the out-of-the-ordinary beeps that were chiming from his flight computer. On the control panel, an amber low fuel pressure warning lamp lit up to punctuate the audio alarm.
First Officer Maurice Quintal, copilot of Air Canada Flight 143, checked the indicator light to determine the cause of the computer’s complaints. “Something’s wrong with the fuel pump,” he reported.
The mustachioed Captain Pearson pulled out the trusty Boeing handbook, his fingers dashing through the pages to find the specifics of the warning. To his relief, the troubleshooting chart indicated that the situation was not as perilous as it might seem: the fuel pump in the left wing tank was signaling a problem, a minor issue considering that gravity would continue to feed the engines even if the pump failed. [..]’
‘British supermarkets are selling beer at prices cheaper than water and soft drinks, with cans sold for as little as 50 cents.
Supermarkets were stocking shelves with beer priced so low they were actually losing money, the Mail on Sunday reported.
Experts estimated that the supermarkets were losing up to 18c per can through excise and production costs, the newspaper said.
Many of the major supermarkets were now selling beer for just 50 pence ($1.15) a litre. The same supermarkets sell mineral water for 56p-92p a litre.
Own-brand cola sells for 56p-65p.
The British health department has commissioned an independent review of alcohol pricing and promotion and has not ruled out changing regulations.’
‘The Brazilian government says huge new oil reserves discovered off its coast could turn the country into one of the biggest oil producers in the world.
Petrobras, Brazil’s national oil company, says it believes the offshore Tupi field has between 5bn and 8bn barrels of recoverable light oil. [..]
A senior minister said Brazilian oil production had the potential to match that of Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. [..]
The state-controlled company says the results show high productivity for gas and light oil – the best quality oil – which is more valuable and cheaper to refine.’
‘Most parents like to pull out all the stops to make a child’s 16th birthday as memorable as possible.
But having a female stripper surprise your son in front of his teacher in class would not feature on many wish-lists.
Yet that’s what happened when one woman booked a special performer for her son’s big day.
She stipulated that the surprise take place in drama class – and even asked the teacher to film it so the family could see the boy’s reaction.
But – thanks to what has been put down as a booking error – a female stripper turned up in place of the gorilla-suited man the unnamed mother had apparently asked for.
The stripper, who arrived on cue halfway through the lesson, first walked the birthday boy around the classroom on all fours.
Then, gyrating to the sounds of Britney Spears, she spanked him before stripping down to her bra and knickers and insisting the “naughty” schoolboy rub cream all over her body. [..]
“To be fair to the teacher, you could tell she was just stunned – and when the cream came out she told the stripper: ‘That’s it. That’s enough’.”‘
