DAVID ADAMS looks at the odder side of life…
• The idea of snakes on a plane has been well-covered by Hollywood but it was a feline that recently caused problems on a flight from Sudan to Qatar. The cat, which is believed to have been a stowaway, wandered into the cockpit about half an hour into the flight and reportedly attacked the pilot. Attempts to restrain the cat were apparently unsuccessful and the plane was forced to make an emergency landing before the cat was offloaded.
The porcelain bowl listed on the Sotherby’s website.
• A small porcelain bowl purchased at a yard sale in the US state of Connecticut for $US35 has turned out to be a rare 15th century Chinese artifact which could be worth as much as $US500,000. An unidentified man bought the bowl in New Haven last year and subsequently contacted Sotherby’s to have it evaluated. They have reportedly dated it to the Ming dynasty of the early 1400’s and estimated its value at between $US300,000 and $US500,000. Only six other similar bowls are known to exist and are mostly held by museums. The bowl is now going to be auctioned in New York this month.
• Utility workers excavating a trench for the relocation of a new pole at a private residence in Wales made a rather unusual find – a previously unknown medieval tunnel. The Western Power Distribution representatives were working at a property in Tintern in the Wye Valley when they stumbled upon what they first thought was a cave. But further investigation revealed it to be a low tunnel. “The tunnel system was tucked away underneath a footpath, running parallel to the Angiddy Brook, and seemed to follow the brook’s route along the valley; it may have been unknowingly walked on for centuries,” said Allyn Gore, a WPD techinician and one of the workers who found the tunnel. The tunnel has been dated to the 1100s.
