DAVID ADAMS looks at the odder side of life…
• A longstanding air leak in the International Space Station was finally plugged recently – with the aid of a tea bag. Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, reportedly said while what was a minor leak had started back in September, 2019, the rate at which air was escaping suddenly increased in August this year. This prompted a search for its location which was found after cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin ripped open a tea bag and allowed the leaves to float free in the Zvezda Service Module. The leaves floated towards a scratch on the wall which was found to the source of the leak. It was subsequently patched using tape.
The bacon mask as it appears on the Hormel website.
• Like the smell of bacon? A US company is offering people the chance to win a mask impregnated with the smell of the popular breakfast food. Hormel said the Black Label Breathable Bacon two-ply mask, which is decorated with pictures of bacon, uses the “the latest in bacon-smell technology” and allows the wearer to take “bacony-bliss” where-ever they go (but they do warn against eating it). The contest, which runs until next month, is only open to US residents. For details, head to https://breathablebacon.com.
• The world’s largest Zuger Kirschtorte cake – weighing a massive 241 kilograms – was recently baked in the Swiss town of Zug. The Swiss cherry cake, which has been validated as the world’s biggest by Guinness World Records, was reportedly made by a team of 10 bakers at the Confiserie Speck bakery over some 55 hours. It measured some four metres in diameter and the ingredients included some 900 eggs, 18 kilograms of butter and 23 kilograms of flour. Pity the poor person who had to cut the cake into 3,000 pieces which were then handed out to passersby.
