DAVID ADAMS provides a round-up of some stories on the odder side of life…
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Louis appear on the balcony of Buckingham Palace as part of Trooping the Colour parade during the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in London, Britain, on 2nd June. PICTURE: Reuters/Hannah McKay
• There’s an old show-biz adage that talks about the uncertainty of working with children – and Prince Louis, youngest child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, proved the point during the recent Platinum Jubilee celebrations in the UK. Pictures of the prince flashed around the world a couple of times over the four day celebration – firstly, when he was clearly shocked by the sound of a royal flypast while standing alongside his great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on Thursday and, then again when he had a minor tantrum while sitting alongside his mum in a stand watching the Platinum Jubilee Pageant on Sunday. The pictures, as one might expect, quickly went viral around the world and some sections of the media even went to the extent of employing lip readers to find out just what Kate said when she reprimanded her son. The Duke and Duchess later joked on Twitter about their son’s starring role when thanking all those who turned out to wish the Queen well – “We all had an incredible time, especially Louis…”.
• The world’s largest plant has been discovered on an Australian seabed off the western coast. Genetic analysis revealed that underwater fields of waving green seagrass were actually a single organism, the Posidonia australis, which has grown to cover 180 square kilometres by continuously making copies of itself over a period of 4,500 years. “We often get asked how many different plants are growing in a seagrass meadow. Here we used genetic tools to answer it,” Elizabeth Sinclair, a senior research fellow at the School of Biological Sciences and Oceans Institute at The University of Western Australia and the author of a study published last week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, told CNN via email. “The answer definitely surprised us – just ONE! That’s it, just one plant has expanded over 180 kilometres in Shark Bay, making it the largest known plant on Earth.”
PICTURE: Viktor Avdeev/Unsplash
• Uber has published its sixth annual Lost & Found Index in the US detailing the items left behind by passengers and, alongside the expected commonly left items like wallets and phones, the list also reveals some more unusual items. These include “my grandma’s teeth”, a fingernail, a metal leg and a bucket of slime (because who wouldn’t be carrying that when travelling in a Uber vehicle?). Others among the more unusual items said to have been left were a brown tortoise, an antique walking cane that contains a sword and a single strand of blonde hair (it’s loss was obviously keenly felt). Uber also found that Austin, Texas, was the most forgetful city for the second year in a row, that people are most forgetful on the weekends, and that 5pm is the most forgetful time of day.
