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StrangeSights: Paper plane champs; ending burrito messes; and UFOs at US Congress…

Paper plane championships

DAVID ADAMS provides a round-up of some stories on the odder side of life… 

Paper plane championships

Seunghoon Lee of South Korea performs in ‘Aerobatics Discipline’ during the Red Bull Paper Wings World Finals 2022 in Salzburg, Austria, on 14th May. PICTURE: Joerg Mitter/Red Bull Content Pool

A group of hopeful pilots, the winners from a pool of more than 61,000 hopefuls from more than 60 countries, gathered in a hangar in the Austrian city of Salzburg last weekend to compete in the official paper plane world championship. All competitors in the distance and airtime categories in the competition – known as Red Bull Paper Wings – were required to make their plane from identical materials consisting of a single, standardised sheet of A4 paper and had to create their planes by folding only – no cutting, tearing, gluing, stapling or other such modifications were allowed. Lazar Krstić, of Serbia, won the distance category with a flight of 61.11 metres, Rana Muhammad Usman Saeed, of Pakistan, won the airtime category with a flight lasting 14.86 seconds, and Seunghoon Lee, of South Korea, wearing a black tuxedo, won the aerobatics category, launching planes that twirled, boomeranged and flapped their wings. But he then upstaged himself by proposing to his girlfriend on stage – offering her a paper plane, which she tearily accepted. 

We’ve all been there. Having your burrito or taco fall open as you go to eat it can be rather annoying, not to mention messy, but a team of students at Johns Hopkins University have reportedly come up with a solution – edible tape. The Whiting School of Engineering students unveiled their “Tastee Tape” project recently as part of the school’s Engineering Design Day early this month. They said they were inspired by their own experiences with “messy lunches” to create the tape which features a “food-grade fibrous scaffold and an organic adhesive”. “What I can say is that all its ingredients are safe to consume, are food grade, and are common food and dietary additives,” engineering student Tyler Guarino was quoted as saying in a news release. He added: “Tastee Tape allows you to put full faith in your tortilla, and enjoy your meal, mess-free.” Looking forward to it.

US Congress held its first hearing into UFOs (or unidentified aerial phenomenon – UAPs – as they are now known) in more than 50 years this week, releasing a previously classified video of an unidentified aerial phenomenon which showed a fleeting image of a reflective spherical object speeding past a military fighter jet. The split-second image, which was taken last year through the window of an FA-18 jet, remains unexplained. But that’s not the case of a second video, shot through night vision lenses on the US west coast in 2019, which showed glowing green triangles moving through the air. While this at first puzzled officials, a second video shot this year on the country’s east coast apparently cleared it up after it was concluded that it showed a series of drones. Pentagon officials also reportedly testified under oath at the 90 minute House of Representatives subcommittee hearing that the government had not collected materials from any alien landing on Earth. The last hearing on UFOs was in 1966.

 

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