Dog smells breast cancer!

Maureen Burns’ hero is her red collie cross dog called Max. The Mirror reported (23/02/09) the amazing story of how Max detected Maureen’s illness - and his persistence prompted her to have a health check. It was a hounding that quite simply saved her life! Woof!

The 64-year-old realised something was wrong when Max started acting strangely. Max changed from being a lively, clever canine, to being very withdrawn. More notably, he also repeatedly sniffed Maureen’s breath and nudged her right breast.

The odd behaviour of her beloved pooch prompted Maureen to check her breasts and she discovered a small lump in the right one. (The growth did not show up on a hospital mammogram.)

Additional information: Study shows that dogs do detect cancer and danger in patients' breath. Link to National Geographic News

World's Longest Car

The longest car ever built is a 30.5-m long (100-ft), 26-wheeled limousine, designed by Jay Ohrberg of Burbank, California, USA. The longest car is mainly used in films and exhibitions. The car can be drive as a rigid vehicle or can be changed to bend in the middle.

Fancy selling out £5,000 for a 400-year-old stale egg?

Its mother has long since departed the scene. As, indeed, has its entire species.
But this giant egg is a great survivor. It was laid around 400 years ago by one of the great elephant birds of Madagascar.
Before becoming extinct in the 17th century, the flightless creature was the world's largest bird, standing 10ft tall and weighing half a ton.


The egg, which is more than 3ft in circumference, was discovered by Victorian explorers and has since been held in private collections.
Its current owner is antiques dealer John Shepherd, of Ashford in Kent, who bought the egg after seeing David Attenborough discover one while filming in Madagascar.
Mr Shepherd, a trained palaeontologist, has decided to sell the egg, which is on display at the Chelsea Antiques Fair, which runs until Sunday.


It is expected to fetch at least £5,000. He said: 'The egg is a talking point. It's very eye-catching and it has a wonderful simplicity about it. It stands on its own.
'It has a great social history. The Madagascan elephant bird was the only giant bird to exist with man and man caused its extinction.
'It's nice to be able to show children today about environmental issues that have been going on for hundreds of years.'


Great elephant birds became extinct after being hunted by the natives of Madagascar.
Even though the bird weighed about half a ton, it also suffered at the hands of other predators such as pigs who ate their chicks and destroyed their eggs.

The flightless bird, the largest to have ever lived, resembled a heavily-built ostrich. It had long legs, talons and stood at more than 10ft tall.

But despite its fearsome appearance, it was a herbivore.


The bird as it would have looked 400 years ago, and right its skeleton reveals how much larger it was compared to its giant eggs

Mummified Japanese Monks Enlightened Through Punishment

More than two dozen mummified Japanese monks who were followers of an ancient sect of Buddhism known as Shugendô, have been discovered in Northern Japan.

Their beliefs were extreme and included the strict denial of any earthly comforts. The process of self-inflicted torture according to them, was the only path to enlightenment.


This practice is more than 1,000 years old and was first executed by a priest named Kuukai, who is considered to be the founder of this extreme and deadly Buddhist scion.

There were three steps in the process that eventually led to eternal mummification, each one harsher than the one before.

Evidence suggests that these priests who lived and died over one thousand years ago, tortured themselves in an attempt to mummify their own remains; a process which took up to ten years and was the result of deliberate self denial.

The first part of the process involved a change of diet; a 1000-day period in which the priest ate only nuts and seeds that could be gathered in the forest surrounding his temple. Physical hardship was deliberately imposed with the goal of reducing the body fat to nearly nothing, allowing for easy decomposition.

Believe it or not, the second 1,000-day stage was even more restrictive. Now the priest could only eat bark and roots from pine trees, a process insured to turn any human being into a walking skeleton and to decrease the amount of body fluids, making preservation even easier.


Then the priest had to ingest a poisonous tea which further reduced body fluids and killed any maggots or insects that tried to eat the priest’s remains after death, (not to mention the priest).

The final 1,000-day period the priest was entombed in a stone room just big enough for a man to sit lotus style. As long as the priest could ring a bell, a tube remained in place to supply air, but when the bell stopped, the tube was removed and the tomb was sealed.

This resulted in some mummification for which the priest was immediately ranked a Buddha, but most of the poor fellows simply rotted away without any rank at all.

Outlawed in the late 19th century, this weird practice continued into the early 20th.

Indian Elephant Bandit: Not Armed But Dangerous

The “Bandit Elephant” in northern Keonjhar district in Orissa state of India, is at it again! The wild pachyderm waylays motorists by refusing to let their vehicles pass unless they give him food.

Witnesses claim that the elephant forces motorists to roll down their windows and leave their vehicles after which it inserts its trunk (the new jimmy) into the car and scours it for food.


“If you are carrying vegetables and bananas inside your vehicle, it will gulp them and then allow you to go,” said Prabodh Mohanty, who has already had two encounters with the elephant.

If the passing motorist dares to defy orders and not roll down the window or resists opening the vehicle door, the bandit elephant pushes the vehicle and stands right in front of it until he can make his routine check for his idea of booty.

Forest officials claim that the elephant is old and looking for easy food. They warn commuters not to tease the elephant as it might retaliate if provoked.

Are there handcuffs large enough to hold this creature and what about paw prints and a jail cell big enough to hold him?

Malaysian Woman Jailed For Worshipping Tea Pot

Seriously, although the Malaysia constitution guarantees freedom of religion, a woman was recently arrested for joining a ‘Tea-Pot Worshiping’ cult.


The eccentric sect emphasizes unity between all religions and considers the teapot the symbol of purity and love “pouring from heaven.”

According to Malaysian Muslim law, born Muslims, such as Mrs. Ali who was arrested, are forbidden from converting to other religions. This lady had been arrested back in 1992 for the same reason and her case is an indication of the growing dissatisfaction of the non-Muslim Malaysians.

This narrow majority of ethnic Malays composes almost half of the total population, which is divided between Hindus of Indian origin, Christian and Buddhist ethnic Chinese. Their interests among all others are supposed to be protected by the government.

“This has to stop. They can’t be sending her again and again to prison for this. She informed the court that she is not a Muslim. She doesn’t come under Sharia court anymore,” said her lawyer, Sa’adiah Din, to the press.

The community stands behind the woman and has long standing grievances with the policies of the government concerning religious freedom. In the wake of this particular event, Christian churches made a rare political intervention, urging voters for the up and coming election to choose candidates who support freedom of worship.

Dead Sea, the World's Saltiest Lake with 35% Salinity

With 35% Salinity during dry seasons, not only is the Dead Sea the place with the world's lowest elevation, it is also the saltiest lake in the world. The lake is so concentrated with salt and other minerals that one can stay afloat without using a life jacket or any floaters.

Coprolite or Fossilized Dinosaur Dung Sold at Autcion at Almost $1000

A pile of Coprolite or fossilized dinosaur dung from the Jurassic era was sold at New York auction for almost $1,000. This dinosaur dung 130 million years old and looks like a rock on the outside and a colorful mineral inside.


The buyer was Steve Tsengas of Fairport Harbor, Ohio. The 71-year-old owns OurPets, a company that sells products to treat dog and cat waste. Tsengas bought the dung in hopes of motivating his employees and using it as a marketing tool by displaying it at the company's booth at trade shows, he said. "Poop," he said, "is a big business in the pet industry.

Canned Pork Brains with 3500mg Cholesterol

If you have a heart problem, this canned pork brains could be your last meal. With 3500mg cholesterol per serving, a can of this "delicious and nutritious" brain matter constitutes to up 1170% of your daily cholesterol recommended dietary allowance.

Tata Nano, World's Cheapest City Car To Date at US$2000

At approximately US$2,000 (Rs.100,000), the Tata Nano is the world's cheapest car to date. This city car is manufactured by Tata Motors of India and aimed primarily for the Indian market (too bad for the US market). It was presented on January 10, 2008, at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi, India and will be available in on March 23, 2009 to the Indian consumers.

With a dimension of 122 in. X 59.1 in. X 63 in. (LxWxH), it's amazing that this car has a capacity of four passengers and have four doors.


The prefix "nano-" derives from the Greek root 'nanos', meaning dwarf. "Nano" also means "small" in Gujarati, the native language of the Tata family, founders of the Tata Group.

Snailfish, World's Deepest Living Fish

Snailfish is the world's deepest living fish. In this video, scientists were able to film several snailfish nearly five miles below the surface of Japan Trench in the Pacific ocean. This is the first time snailfishes are filmed at this depth.

This video was taken by the a UK-Japan team using a remote-operated landers designed to withstand immense pressures to comb the world's deepest depths for marine life.