A golfer sparked a wildfire which destroyed 12 acres of dense woodland at Shady Canyon golf course in Irvine, California, after he struck his club against a rock while trying to hit his ball out of the rough. Around 150 firefighters responded to the blaze. The golfer is apparently not going to be charged in connection with the incident.
Ferrari recall
After a number of Ferrari 458 Italias have burst into flames, the Italian manufacturer has decided to recall 1,248 of the cars including 50 in Britain. Incidents have been reported in California, Paris, China and Switzerland, the cars suddenly bursting into flames or crashing and prompting speculation that the car is jinxed. However, the problem appears to be with the …
Bend it like Roberto
Remember Brazil’s Roberto Carlos taking a free kick from 115ft against France in 1997 which was seemingly heading for the corner flag but then curved like a banana to land in the net? No. Never mind, there is a video you can watch. The stunning free kick was dismissed as a fluke but now, a research team has applied the …
Pi in the sky
Shigeru Kondo, a 55 year old Japanese systems engineer, has set a new world record by doing what most of us would never even consider worth even dreaming about doing. He has calculated Pi (ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter) to 5 trillion digits. Pi, as we all know, is usually abbreviated to 3.14. The previous …
The Last of the Summer Wine
The final curtain has fallen on the world’s longest running sitcom The Last of the Summer Wine after 37 years, 31 series and 295 episodes. Peter Sallis, who was in the very first episode, was also in the last, his character Norman Clegg delivering the final line of the show, which was, ‘Did I lock the door?’. In its heyday, …
Deadly mushrooms
An early and abundant mushroom harvest in the Alpine valleys of northern Italy has to more people than usual scouring the woods and forests in search of succulent fungi. However, many have also been ill-prepared and in ten days, eighteen people have so far lost their lives. Not through eating non-mushrooms or poisonous varieties, though, but as a result of …
Laurie loads of dough
British actor Hugh Laurie has become the highest paid actor in US television drama, earning around €400,000 per episode as the grumpy but brilliant doctor in the series House. Laurie is followed by Christopher Meloni and Mariska Hargitay from Law & Order who are paid $395,000 and David Caruso, whose role on CSI Miami earns him $375,000 an episode. Still …
Talk about speculative
Was this an Ice Age highway? Workers digging up A-road find axe abandoned 13,000 years ago The axe is actually a postage stamp sized piece of a Neolithic axe made from greenstone. What next? Was Birmingham the Ice Age seaside resort? Grain of sand found under local tip
Joy in Chile, but a long haul ahead
Emotional scenes in Chile as 33 miners trapped 2,300 feet below ground for 18 days have been found alive and apparently in good spirits, despite their confinement. However, it could be Christmas before the miners, trapped after a rockfall, can be rescued, as it will take 120 days to drill a rescue shaft of sufficient width to haul the men …