DAVID ADAMS provides a round-up of some stories on the odder side of life…
GRAPHIC: articular/iStockphoto.
• An unusual date popped up this week when the calendar ticked over on Tuesday to 22.2.22 (or US format 2.22.22). Dubbed ‘Twosday’, the date is formally known as a palindrome, something that is the same whether read backwards or forwards. It’s not as unusual as it may seem – The Guardian reports that in UK date-writing format – 22.02.2022 – there’s already been seven such dates this century alone, starting with 10.02.2001 and with the next to appear on 03.02.2030 (the next ‘Threesday’, meanwhile, will be just 11 years away on 3.3.33). Interestingly, in the UK format, the date also an ambigram, a word to describe something which appears the same whether read right side up or upside down (try it out on a calculator).
• Israeli farmer Chahi Ariel has grown the world’s heaviest strawberry, according to Guinness World Records. At 289 grams, the strawberry was about five times the average weight of a regular berry of the local Ilan variety, said Nir Dai, a researcher at Israel’s Volcani Institute where the strain was developed. The strawberry was 18 centimetres long and 34 centimetres in circumference, the online Guinness entry said. Ariel had been hoping he was onto a winner when they saw how big the fruit were growing on his family farm last year. He has been waiting for confirmation it was a record while keeping the giant strawberry in the freezer as proof. “When we heard, it was an amazing feeling. I jumped in the car, laughed and sang,” said Ariel, proudly displaying his certificate on a laptop. “We’ve been waiting for this for a long time.” Unusually cold weather in early 2021 slowed the strawberry’s ripening process, allowing it to continue gaining weight, according to the record book’s website. The previous record was held by a Japanese farmer who discovered a 250-gram strawberry in his harvest in 2015.
• Speaking of unusual records, a city in the US state of Oregon is hoping to be recognised for its installation of an 11-metre tall fork outside a soon-to-be opened food outlet. The city of Fairview believes the stainless steel fork is the world’s tallest but are awaiting official recognition. Mayor Brian Cooper told KATU-TV that the fork came about “because we wanted something on the corner, whether it was a water tower or a windmill or some sort of piece that’s going to be on the corner”. One of the design team suggested putting a fork in it and coming back to it but Cooper says that “over the course of a couple months, it just kind of stuck in the brain. He added that, being a fork, it could easily become part of marketing campaigns like ‘Take a left at the fork,’ ‘The Fork in Fairview’.
– With RAMY AMICHAY, Reuters.
