DAVID ADAMS looks at the odder side of life…
Part of the tin can Christmas tree as seen on a Guinness World Records video. PICTURE: Screenshot.
• Looking for a different sort of Christmas tree this year? How about one made of sardine cans? Philippines-based food brand, Mega Sardines, stacked more than 70,000 of their cans in the shape of a Christmas tree – and snared a Guinness World Record for the world’s tallest tin can structure when they did so. The 5.906 metre tall tree, which is now on show at the SM Megamall Building in Manila, was made of 70,638 cans and weighs some 14,000 kilograms. It’s on display until the end of the month after which the cans will reportedly be donated to food-related charities.
• Much ado in the UK this week as the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is rolled out with a 90-year-old grandmother named Margaret Keenan the first to receive it. But the second person to receive the vaccine has a rather more famous name – William Shakespeare. This Shakespeare, an 81-year-old who, like his namesake, hails from Warwickshire, was given the injection in Coventry, just a short drive from the Bard’s birthplace at Stratford-Upon-Avon. Understandably, there’s been plenty of puns doing the rounds on social media as a result including ‘The Taming of the Flu’ and the ‘Two Gentlemen of Corona’.
• More on the mysterious monoliths appearing around the world with a third spotted in California and a fourth in Texas. Following the discovery – and then removal – of monoliths, firstly in a desert in the US state of Utah and then on a hill in the Eastern European nation of Romania, another silver coloured pillar was found at the top of Pine Mountain in Atascadero before it too was removed by unknown people (and replaced with a wooden cross). Then this week comes news one was spotted beside outside a pizza shop in El Paso, Texas. No doubt there’s more to come.
