DAVID ADAMS writes about the odder side of life…
{bigger}A train in Vienna. PICTURE: Samuel-Elias/Unsplash{/bigger}
• Viennese commuters have turned up their noses after a month-long trial of different scents on the Austrian city’s subway. The trial of four different aromas – reportedly containing hints of grapefruit, green tea, melon and sandalwood – were tested in carriages on two lines during July. But public transport operator Wiener Linien says its dropped the idea after the results of a survey showed 57 per cent of people weren’t in favour.
• The gravestone of the ‘real’ Snow White has gone on show at a museum in Germany. The grave marker of Maria Sophia von Erthal – thought to be the inspiration for the character in the tale the Grimm Brothers’ first published in 1812 – had been missing since 1804 after the church she was buried in was demolished. But it was found at house in Bamberg in Bavaria and since donated to the The Diocesan Museum in Bamberg. A baroness, Von Erthal was born into a wealthy family in Lohr am Main and, following the death of her mother while she was still young, her father, a nobleman who apparently owned a mirror factory (think magic mirrors and glass coffins), remarried a women who tried to exclude her in favour of her own children (think wicked stepmother). Von Erthal died in the 1790s.
• A lesson about where you store your life’s savings – make sure it’s in something you don’t throw it out. A man from the US state of Oregon reportedly learned that the hard way recently when he tossed a shoebox into a recycling bin outside his home, only to realise later it contained $US23,000 of his hard-earned money. Thankfully, when he contacted the recycling service, an eagle-eyed employee spotted it on the sorting line where it had toppled over. Only $US320 was found to be lost prompting joy all around. But perhaps a bank might be safer. Just saying.
