Shark teeth in the desert? That’s perhaps the most puzzling one, or is it the robots protesting AI? “No whales here…move on.”
Africa
Kenya
Thousands of people travelled to Getare in Kisii County after a woman said a soot pattern on her kitchen wall resembled the Virgin Mary. Her husband demolished the kitchen to stop the crowds, but visitors continued arriving.
Africa
The UN General Assembly voted 164–1, with six abstentions, to promote the Equal Earth map and phase out the Mercator projection. Mercator depicts Africa and Greenland as similarly sized, although Africa is approximately 14 times larger; the resolution is nonbinding.
Asia
India
Forest officers found five baby orangutans in Odisha’s Balasore district on September 8. Orangutans are native only to Borneo and Sumatra; the animals are in quarantine while investigators examine suspected international trafficking.
India
Doctors examining a 26-year-old man in Delhi found a uterus, fallopian-tube-like structures and undescended testes inside his abdomen. The congenital condition had remained undetected until the infertility investigation.
China
Researchers filmed an armoured sea robin walking backward and sideways on the South China Sea floor. The fish uses modified pectoral fins as legs and a sensory, rake-like head structure to locate buried prey.
Japan
Japan supported the UN resolution promoting the Equal Earth map projection, then objected after four Russian-controlled islands claimed by Japan were colored the same as Russia. Tokyo has asked the map’s operator to change the depiction.
Australia & Pacific
Australia
Southern Cryonics operates the Southern Hemisphere’s only cryonics facility from an industrial shed in Holbrook, New South Wales. Seven deceased clients are stored head-down in liquid nitrogen at minus 196°C; preservation and storage cost more than A$200,000, and current science cannot revive them.
Researchers examined 2,400 reports of native animals occupying Australian buildings. Cases included seven sugar gliders under a kitchen sink, an echidna removing pantry items and a koala sitting on a bed.
An asteroid entered the atmosphere and crashed into the Indian Ocean almost 800 kilometres off Western Australia, between Broome and Bali. It was only the 13th asteroid detected by scientists before impact, and photographers at Gantheaume Point captured its descent.
Bones from Juukan Gorge show that Tasmanian devils lived in Western Australia’s Pilbara thousands of years ago. Researchers found bones bearing evidence of devil chewing and digestion alongside human artifacts, indicating that the animals scavenged scraps from human camps.
New Zealand — Please don’t tell everyone where the whales are
A southern right whale and her calf spent several days close to New Zealand’s Northland coast before moving south toward Auckland. The Department of Conservation asked people not to post the whales’ current location, because real-time sightings can attract boats and jet skis.
Middle East
Egypt
A Cairo University-led team found fossilized teeth from seven shark species on the Abu-Tartur plateau in Egypt’s Western Desert. The area was a tropical sea during the Cretaceous period, between 66 million and 145 million years ago.
Egypt
Archaeologists uncovered the approximately 4,350-year-old tomb of Sekhentio-Ptah, an official whose titles included “keeper of secrets of royal decrees.” The burial contained more than 100 shabti figures and a wooden falcon.
Europe
Poland
Approximately 30 humanoid and quadruped robots marched outside Poland’s Digital Affairs Ministry in Warsaw. The September 7 demonstration called for stronger AI oversight and employment protections.
Bulgaria
Archaeologists excavating the Roman colony of Deultum found the remains of a man inside an enormous ceramic storage vessel in a fortress tower. He apparently climbed into the jar during an attack in the fourth or fifth century AD; two iron knives were found with him, including one still at his belt.
Germany
A nearly 90-year-old painting generated an online time-travel theory because an Indigenous man depicted in it appears to be staring at an object resembling a modern smartphone. Historians identified the supposed phone as an ordinary object appropriate to the period.
A 62-year-old passerby reported seeing a crocodile in the water between Altenburg’s Großer and Kleiner Teich ponds. Police and firefighters deployed specialist equipment and recovered a lifelike stuffed crocodile.
Great Britain
Matthew Bishop began documenting motorway services at age 14 and completed visits to all 97 British motorway service stations in 2019. He now drives approximately 25,000 miles annually and revisits about five stations a day, four days a week.
France and Great Britain
The nearly 70-metre Bayeux Tapestry is being displayed in Britain for the first time, at the British Museum. The initial allocation of 100,000 tickets sold out before the exhibition opened.
South America
Chile
The Atacama Desert is heading for one of its most abundant blooms in 30 years after unusually heavy winter rainfall.
Peru
People aboard a boat near Pucusana, south of Lima, were surprised by a group of orcas swimming alongside them. The September 6 sighting was described as unusual for the area, and video of the encounter quickly passed 200,000 views.
Uruguay
Argentine football commentator Sebastián “Pollo” Vignolo told an influencer that he had always dreamed of playing first-team football. Uruguay’s fourth-division Real Montevideo has now offered to make it happen: Vignolo says he will train for the appearance, and the club has publicly referred to him as its “star signing.”
Peru
Aymara communities are reviving waru waru, an ancient system in which raised agricultural beds are surrounded by water channels. The visually striking patchwork helps protect crops from temperature extremes and is being used again to grow native potato varieties under changing climatic conditions.
Canada
British Columbia
A new Kitten College campus has opened in Langley for people learning to care for kittens. The program trains volunteers and foster carers in specialized kitten care.
Police in West Kelowna, British Columbia, are investigating after a person wearing a Cat in the Hat costume chased a teenage girl. Police say the incident appears connected to an online trend that turns the children’s-book character into a sinister figure.
British Columbia
A floating mass approximately 150 metres long and carrying nearly 100 trees appeared on Williston Lake, vanished, and reappeared almost 20 miles away. BC Hydro believes vegetation growing on accumulated woody debris was lifted by high reservoir levels.
United States
Police in Damariscotta, Maine, received numerous calls about a Bigfoot-like creature wandering around town. An officer eventually found the creature sitting on Main Street and established that it was a man wearing a costume.
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