DAVID ADAMS looks at the odder side of life…
• A giant whale tail has saved a subway train which jumped the railway tracks in The Netherlands this week from disaster. The subway train broke through a barrier at De Akkers in the city of Rotterdam with the front carriage coming to rest on the top of a giant sculpture of a whale’s tail. The tail sculpture – which depicts two whale tails emerging from water and is named, rather appropriately in this case, ‘Saved by the Whale’s Tail’ – stopped the train from crashing 10 metres to the ground. The driver was the only person aboard the train and was not injured. While officials are planning to remove the train, there are now calls to leave it in-situ atop the almost 20-year-old plastic artwork (which also was not damaged in the incident).
• A flying car took to the air in Slovakia recently in a test-flight. The AirCar, the work of Slovakian company KleinVision, takes about three minutes to convert from a car to an aircraft and features retractable wings and a parachute system. It was tested at an airport in Slovakia but footage of the flight and flew as high as 500 metres. The company says AirCar reaches speeds of up to 200 kph during takeoff and has a range of 1,000 kilometres.
• Paying coconuts for your college education? It may be literally so on the Indonesian island of Bali where a hospitality college is offering students whose finances have been hit by the coronavirus pandemic the option of paying tuition fees in coconuts and other natural materials. The Venus One Tourism Academy reportedly said the coconuts will be used for producing coconut oil while moringa and gotu kola leaves will be used to make products like herbal soap, all of which are sold on campus in a fund-raising effort.
