This is my favorite news day. The oddities, the fun stuff, the unexpected. Let’s begin with Austria today…
Europe
Austria
In Graz, a group of about 30 people has discovered that an underground parking garage makes a surprisingly good substitute for the Alps. The long concrete corridors create the echoes yodelers want, so instructor Anna Maria Gutschi takes her students deeper underground until they find the best acoustics.
Germany
Amateur archaeologist Oliver Riedl was metal-detecting near Wesseling when his detector wouldn’t stop signalling. 934 Roman silver denarii, Germany’s largest known hoard from the period of Emperor Hadrian.
Sweden
Another silver hoard has just emerged on Gotland: 45 Roman denarii and a gold ring. But two of the Roman coins aren’t Roman at all. They are ancient counterfeits, possibly made in what is now Ukraine. Stranger still, the newest coins were already more than 250 years old by the time somebody buried them around AD 450.
Italy
At the Etruscan city of Vulci, north of Rome, archaeologists opened a monumental 2,700-year-old tomb that had been targeted repeatedly by looters. The thieves nevertheless left quite a collection behind: weapons, gold and bronze objects, chariot equipment, an entire banquet set — and an unusually rare pair of women’s shoes.
Britain
Conservationists at Chester Zoo found a female wasp spider in Cheshire — the first recorded there. She’s been named Wendy. The striking yellow-and-black species makes huge webs containing a mysterious zigzag pattern whose exact purpose remains uncertain.
Asia
Singapore
Long-tailed macaques along Old Upper Thomson Road have discovered that streetlights can be dismantled. Witnesses watched them twist fittings loose from several lampposts; one macaque was photographed sitting beside the road inspecting the inside of a component it had opened. Remarkably, the lights apparently kept working.
Japan
Residents of Moriyama City began calling police Wednesday morning because a roughly two-metre-tall “ostrich” was running around their neighborhood. Police pursued the bird for about two hours before cornering it at an apartment complex. Only afterward was the fugitive properly identified: an emu, less than a year old, that had escaped from a mobile zoo through a door that happened to have been left open.
China
Chinese consumers, particularly younger ones, have developed an appetite for products intentionally designed to look peculiar, awkward, or “ugly-cute.” The trend has become strong enough that unconventional appearance is being marketed as an advantage rather than a design failure
Vietnam
Former Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman sat down at a piano this week before one of his more unusual audiences: approximately 150 rescued moon bears. The concert took place at a Vietnamese sanctuary caring for bears rescued largely from the bile-farming industry.
Australia & Oceania
Australia
Indigenous rangers in Western Australia’s Great Sandy Desert discovered a young night parrot tucked inside a spinifex tunnel — during daylight. Night parrots are so elusive that even people working in known night-parrot territory rarely see one.
Betty Gregory had moved into aged care only weeks before her 95th birthday in Queensland. Apparently that wasn’t going to interfere with the birthday plans. She celebrated turning 95 by going skydiving.
A white humpback spotted off Noosa on September 20 immediately raised hopes that Migaloo, Australia’s famous white humpback, had finally returned after disappearing from confirmed sightings in 2020. Scientists aren’t convinced. Wildlife scientist Vanessa Pirotta says the animal photographed appears darker than Migaloo and proper identification would require better evidence, particularly photographs of its tail.
New Zealand
A woman walking her dog on a beach near St Andrews, south of Timaru, noticed some unusual bones. She contacted South Canterbury Museum. They were moa bones. Museum staff subsequently found that the beach appears to expose a much larger area of ancient forest floor, possibly dating from the last interglacial period.
New Zealand’s Department of Conservation recently released some of the more unusual calls its staff has received. Among the problems citizens apparently thought conservation officers should solve: a black cat sitting on someone’s doorstep, possum poop — and a UFO falling from the sky.
Africa
Morocco
Researchers have reconstructed a face from the famous Jebel Irhoud remains in Morocco, which date to approximately 315,000 years ago and represent some of the oldest known Homo sapiens remains.
Archaeologists excavating an ancient Egyptian fortress in the western Nile Delta found the carefully buried skeleton of a young male horse. The animal may have pulled a chariot or served another military role. Rather than simply disposing of it when it died, someone apparently gave the horse a deliberate ceremonial burial inside the fortress.
Middle East
Turkey
Göbeklitepe has produced hundreds of scattered human bones over decades of excavation, but archaeologists had never identified an actual burial there. Now researchers report finding the site’s first two burials, approximately 10,000 years old. That could help explain one of the stranger mysteries surrounding a place already famous for monumental structures built by people living before agriculture had fully transformed human society.
North America
Canada
A moose somehow ended up trapped inside the Merrickville Locks on Ontario’s Rideau River. Getting it out required police, Parks Canada, firefighters, bylaw officers, and natural-resources staff. Instead of attempting to haul the animal out, they essentially operated the lock for their unusual passenger: the water was gradually lowered one stage at a time until the moose could be guided back to land.
Drivers on a busy Ontario highway ramp began calling police after spotting a raccoon stranded in a live traffic lane. Police blocked traffic, gave the animal room, and eventually herded it into nearby brush. The officers called him Rocky.
South America
Chile
At ancient Lake Tagua Tagua in central Chile, archaeologists have uncovered a concentration of bones belonging to gomphotheres, extinct relatives of elephants.
Several bones have stone-tool cut marks, and tools and flakes were found nearby. The site dates to roughly 13,000–12,000 years ago, providing unusually clear evidence of early South Americans processing these enormous animals.
Here is the missing section—and there were indeed several good American oddities this week.
United States
Montana
A mountain goat wandered into Bozeman Wednesday morning and made its way to a church on South 19th Avenue. Montana wildlife officials immobilized the unexpected visitor, put it in a trailer and returned it to the Gallatin Range.
Florida
Scientists at a NOAA Fisheries laboratory in Panama City heard tapping at their back door. Standing outside was an injured brown pelican pecking on the glass. Fishing line and a treble hook were tangled around one wing, and cactus spines were embedded in its foot. The researchers treated the bird—but nobody can explain precisely why an injured pelican appeared at the door of a marine-science laboratory.
California
Fishermen on the Sacramento River encountered something considerably larger than the usual catch: a humpback whale. The animal traveled roughly 60 miles inland from the Pacific. Researchers identified it from photographs and discovered that scientists have records of this particular whale stretching back 24 years. Nobody knows why it decided to take a river trip.
Florida
Japan wasn’t alone in this week’s escaped-emu department. Florida Highway Patrol officers encountered a white emu wandering through traffic on the Polk Parkway. Officers managed to corral it into the back of a Road Ranger vehicle until its owners arrived.
Hawaii
Workers at Honolulu Harbor spotted a live opossum at a freight facility. That is a problem because opossums aren’t native to Hawaii and are prohibited there. Agriculture officials baited traps with cat food and apples and caught the stowaway the following day. Officials then searched the area for additional opossums but found none.
Ohio
Someone drove to Cleveland Fire Station 42 with a rather unusual passenger problem. Their 50-pound Australian Kelpie, appropriately named Moose, had gone after a doggie bag containing restaurant leftovers and somehow wedged himself underneath the front seat of the car. Two firefighters had to extract him. Moose was unharmed.
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