DAVID ADAMS looks at the odder side of life…
• Frustrated by COVID lockdowns? Then let it all out by screaming to your heart’s content – in Iceland. The country’s tourist board has launched a new campaign, ‘Let it out!’, to promote the island nation by inviting people to take part in some “scream therapy”. People are invited to head to a special website and record a scream which will then be “released” via seven speakers placed at picturesque locations around the country including Festarfjall in Reykjanes Peninsula and Skogafoss waterfall. “You’ve been through a lot this year and it looks like you need the perfect place to let your frustrations out,” says a statement on the website. “Somewhere big, vast and untouched. It looks like you need Iceland.” There’s even some tips on how to scream and past examples of screams. Time to go vent.
• Two volumes from a 16th century copy of a 15th century Chinese encyclopaedia sold for hundreds of times their estimated price at an auction in Paris recently. Auction house Beaussant Lefevre had expected the volumes from the Yongle Dadian – first commissioned by Yongle Emperor, the third ruler of the Ming Dynasty, and complied between 1404 and 1408 – to sell for up to €8,000. But in a stunning result, the auction of the two volumes earlier this month resulted in a price of €6,400,000. The copies were commissioned by the Jiajing Emperor in 1562.
• A Greek student who was stuck in Scotland after flights were repeatedly cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic has taken matters into his own hands – and ridden a bike home instead. Kleon Papadimitriou, 20, who is a student at the University of Aberdeen, took 48 days to cycle the 3,500 kilometres to his home in Athens riding on his newly purchased bike. People were able to watch his progress – which saw him travel through the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Italy – via a special app and his Instagram account. Papadimitriou told CNN after completing the journey that it was only just starting to dawn on him “how big of an achievement this was”.
