DAVID ADAMS writes about the odder side of life…
• A headstone bearing the words ‘You will always be remembered, never forgotten’ was among items left behind by passengers at Dublin Airport, according to a list released by the airport authority. Other items left behind reportedly included a toilet seat and cistern, a life-sized mannequin, human ashes, and a glass eye. The list also includes confiscated items such as a 15 kilogram beach boulder and an anchor chain. One passenger apparently even tried to board a plane with a live turtle in their pocket but had to hand it over to a relative instead.
• The solar eclipse this week made headlines all over the world (as did US President Donald Trump’s decision to look at it with his unprotected eyes, prompting calls of ‘Don’t look’). But in South Carolina, officials at the state’s Emergency Management Division obviously decided to have a bit of fun earlier this month, tweeting a message in which they told residents to watch out for Lizardmen, citing the possibility of increased paranormal activity around the unusual celestial activity. They weren’t the only ones to take the mickey – Joshua Stevens, a data visualisation and cartography expert at NASA’s Earth Observator, apparently amused by the increasingly complicated maps being released to show the best places to watch the eclipse on the continental US, released his own map showing the best place to see the eclipse and Bigfoot at the same time. ‘Sunsquatch’ spawned a host of imitators including one showing the best places to see a UFO and the eclipse and the best places to watch from a cemetery.
• Forgot to give Shakespeare his ‘e’? Not so, says officials at the University of Southern California who sparked confusion this month when they unveiled a statue of legendary Trojan Queen Hecuba with a quote below it attributed to “Shakespear’s Hamlet’. They reportedly responded that the Bard’s name has been spelt in some two dozen different ways over the years and had settled on the spelling without an ‘e’, deciding that it fitted best with the ‘ancient’ feel of the statue.
Correction: This article originally said the statue in question in the third item was of Helen of Troy. It is actually of Hecuba.
