DAVID ADAMS writes about the odder side of life…
• Think your baby has what it takes? Twenty-five babies in Lithuania recently put their skills to the test in a race to see who could crawl the fastest. The annual event in the nation’s capital of Vilnius is held on 1st June to mark International Children’s Day. Teams waved toys and banged baby food cans to encourage the participants, all aged between seven months and one-year-old. In the end it was 11-month-old boy Ignas Dovydaitis who took the honours, making it first down the five metre long course.
• It had sat unopened in the Vermilion Heritage Museum in Alberta in Canada for decades. Until, that is, Stephen Mills and his family paid a visit. A safe that had been locked for 40 years – once kept inside a hotel which closed in the 1970s and subsequently brought to the museum in 1992 – had previously defied all efforts to open it – including by blacksmiths. But it was opened by Mills on his initial attempt when he dialled up the first combination of numbers – 20-40-60 – that popped into his head. “It was a 100 per cent guess,” he told CNN. Sadly, the contents – some papers, old cheques, a waitresses notepad and a receipt, while of historic interest didn’t prove to be a treasure trove.
• A company in the US state of Utah is offering $US1,000 to a person who discards their smartphone in favour of a flip-phone for a week. FrontierBundles.com says they’re running the experiment to “see what happens”: “How did you sleep? Were you more or less productive? How long did things take? Did it feel like you went back in time?” They’re looking for “smartphone addicts, social media experts, and tech geeks” to apply, noting that the more the applicants use a wi-fi-enabled smartphone in their daily life, the better. The winner, who also receives a “Boredom Buster Swag Bag” containing a map, notebook, phonebook and CDs, will have to keep a log of their experience. US citizens only and entrants must be 18 or over. Applications close on 1st July.
