DAVID ADAMS provides a round-up of some stories on the odder side of life…
PICTURE: DarkCalamari RedRavens/Unsplash
• Having recently mentioned Repect Your Cat Day, it’s only fair we also mention World Rat Day – an annual celebration of all things rat – held this week. The day, the origins of which go back to 2002 with the first day celebrated in 2012, apparently came about after members of ratlist, an online mailing group for owners and admirers of pet rats, decided they needed an annual day to celebrate the small creatures. The 4th April is the day the list was founded.
• The annual “Dummy Downhill” ski event was held at a resort in Canada last weekend – and yes, the name does refer to the participants. The event saw 13 dummies assembled by employees and residents at the Apex Mountain Resort try their luck in the event with, not unexpected, some spectacular crashes. “It’s the highest flying dummy downhill in the world that we know of, because it goes off our aerial site, no other dummy down hill goes off an aerial site,” the resort’s general manager, James Shalman, said. “So these dummies are literally 60 to 70 vertical feet in the air before they crash land.” The event, which was watched by a crowd estimated at 500 people, marks the closure of the ski season.
• A giant QR code was seen over the city of Dallas, Texas, late last week in an April Fool’s Day prank which aimed to “Rickroll’ the entire city. People who scanned the code were taken to a YouTube video featuring Rick Astley’s song, Never Gonna Give You Up (you know the song!). The QR Code was created using 300 drones and was reportedly the brainchild of digital content creator Jared Guynes, best known as the creator of the “Epic Nerf Battles” events who teamed up with drone display company Sky Elements Drone Shows to put the code in the sky. “That’s right Dallas. You were witness to the first ever drone rickroll in history. I thought you’d get a kick out of it,” Guynes said on Facebook.
