DAVID ADAMS writes about the odder side of life…
• You will, of course, remember hearing about the tragic sinking of a New York City ferry, with all 400 passengers on board, at the hands of a giant octopus 53 years ago – an incident memorialised in a monument in Battery Park on the southern tip of Manhattan Island. Sound fishy? You’d be right to question it. The bronze monument to the incident is the work of artist Joseph Reginella, part of an elaborate hoax he put together over six months which also reportedly includes a website (a screenshot from which is pictured), fabricated newspaper clippings, and fliers directing people to a (not real) museum across the harbour on Staten Island. Reginella, who confesses to eavesdropping on the conversations of those who arrive at the memorial, reportedly says it’s all part of “a multimedia art project and social experience” looking at how gullible people are. Now you know!
• We love a good contest on StrangeSights so we were only too pleased to hear that 87-year-old Bob Moore, of the US city of Portland, Oregon, has won the ‘Golden Spurtle” at the World Porridge Making Championships in Scotland. The title is awarded to the contestant who makes the best traditional porridge using just three ingredients – oatmeal, salt and water. A spurtle, by the way, is a Scottish kitchen tool used to stir dishes like porridge.
• It’s a café with a difference. The Toppels Roadside Café, which opened in Wertheim near Frankfurt earlier this year, is located inside what appears to be an ordinary family home – except that everything inside is upside down. Visitors can partake of a fresh brew as they look up to see furnishings that might grace a typical family property stuck on the ceiling (or is that the floor)?
• We’re taking a break from our recent series on odd churches.
