8 minute read
That’s Odd
multi-hour delays bad weather often causes. Additionally, many more passengers are heading to the skies. In May, nearly 50 million airport passengers passed through TSA, up 19% from April. So far, in June, the TSA has registered almost 35 million passengers.
Claudette Rips Through Alabama
Claudette gained power as it rushed off the coast of the Carolinas on Monday, regaining its tropical storm status after ripping through Alabama.
The storm killed 14 in Alabama, including nine children who died on Saturday in a multi-vehicle crash along with one of the children’s 29-year-old father.
Another victim, a 31-year-old man, died after falling into floodwaters, while a 24-year-old man and a 3-year-old boy were killed when a tree fell on them outside their home.
The storm hit a maximum sustained wind speed of 45 miles per hour, the National Hurricane Center said.
Claudette is expected to pass just south of Nova Scotia, Canada, on Tuesday.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as many as ten hurricanes could form this season, including 3-5 possibly “major” storms with windspeeds of 111 miles per hour or higher.
A Picasso in the Potatoes
Think the walls of Gourmet Glatt aren’t exciting enough? Head to Essonne, France, where a work of art by Picasso adorns the walls of a local
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Picasso painted “L’Atelier” in October 1955 in memory of his close friend, Henri Matisse. The painting belongs to the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou Museum in Paris, but is now on display in the grocery store as part of a project to make art more accessible to the public.
Lest you think shoppers may haul the artwork home with their tomatoes and cucumbers, the painting is being watched very carefully by police officers and clandestine security officers.
“I am delighted that this work is presented in the midst of pumpkins, watermelons, and beers, where reality is, where people’s lives are,” Serge Lasvignes, president of the Centre Pompidou, said. “It is not the collection of the Centre Pompidou but that of France, because it is national, and we share it with all French people, wherever they are.”
One customer spoke to the Capital about the painting, noting that the painting “does something to me.”
Sylvie Carillon, the mayor of the nearby town of Montgeron, found the display quite touching. “I was very moved to see that even supermarket employees were looking at the painting with big eyes,” Carillon said. “There was a lot of emotion.”
The installation is part of an ongoing attempt to take art masterpieces out of “ordinary locations” in the heart of Paris, squiring them out of high-priced museums and plopping them smack dab in the midst of the public. Previous works have popped up at a courthouse and several prisons.
I can definitely picture it there.
Five Alive
It may not sound all that exciting, but Will Cutbill is now a Guinness Book of World Records winner. The 23-year-old from Solihull, England, spent hours stacking M&Ms. After exerting lots of effort he managed to stack five little candies and was crowned the champ.
Cutbill always dreamed of earning a Guinness accolade but Covid pushed him to achieve his goal.
“It was during the third lockdown in January. I was in the living room, eating a bag of M&Ms, and I was incredibly bored, and I just decided to see how many of them I could stack on top of each other,” Cutbill told Birmingham Live.
“I started thinking: I wonder if there’s a world record for this, so I looked it up online and found out the most anyone had ever stacked was four,” he said.
It took Cutbill two to three hours full of attempts before managing to stack all five chocolate candies.
“It’s not something I would normally have taken the time to do – especially now that the sun is shining and the pubs are back open – but at the time, there wasn’t much else to do so it seemed like time well spent,” he said.
The record of four M&M’s had been jointly held by Silvio Sabba of Italy and Brendan Kelbie of Australia before the record-keeping organization verified Cutbill’s video and issued him a certificate.
“When I managed to finally stack five M&Ms, I was absolutely ecstatic. I thought, ‘Oh, my goodness, I’ve actually done it,’” he said. “Five M&Ms doesn’t sound like a lot, but it was near impossible to do. So, I was chuffed when I achieved it. I thought about attempting six, but there’s no chance. Five was hard enough.”
Talk about dreaming big.
A Dog’s Life
One intrepid canine made the trek from Manhattan to Queens last week after crossing the boroughs via the Queens Midtown Tunnel.
Indie, a dog rescued three months
ago from Kolkata, India, gave his sitter the slip on the evening of June 8 from the Upper West Side. He was spotted on security cameras heading into the Midtown Tunnel.
“I started to feel hopeless but I received a call that night from a Bridge and Tunnels officer who said she tried to stop a dog with an appearance similar to Indie while she was bolting through the Queens Midtown Tunnel,” Heather Angus told the New York Post.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials said workers were unable to capture Indie, but they directed tunnel traffic to keep the canine safe during her dash between boroughs.
Indie emerged on the Queens side of the tunnel and gave MTA workers the slip on the Long Island Expressway.
It wasn’t until seven days later that a worker at a warehouse in Queens’ Long Island City spotted a dog wandering in an area of the building known to be home to a family of feral cats.
The worker contacted Angus after seeing a flyer about Indie when he went to lunch.
Although Indie is a bit thinner and slightly dehydrated after her marathon, she is doing well back at home and is a bit dog tired.
What a Gem!
Botswana is now home to one of the world’s largest diamonds.
The 1,098-carat stone, believed to be the third largest “gem-quality” diamond ever found, was presented to President Mokgweetsi Masisi last Wednesday.
The diamond was unearthed earlier this month at the Jwaneng mine, around 75 miles from the country’s capital, Gaborone. The mine is operated by Debswana, a diamond company jointly owned by Botswana’s government and the De Beers Group, according to its official website.
An official government Twitter account wrote that “proceeds from the diamond will be used to advance national development in the country.”
“Debswana should use this latest discovery as an inflection point, for the mine to use its technology to realize more of these large discoveries,” it added.
Officially opened in 1982, the Jwaneng mine usually yields between 12.5 million and 15 million carats of diamonds a year. This month’s find is the largest gem unearthed by the company since diamonds were first discovered in Botswana in 1967.
The largest diamond ever recorded is the 3,106-carat Cullinan Diamond, discovered in South Africa in 1905. The Cullinan was subsequently cut into smaller stones, some of which form part of British royal family’s crown jewels.
The second largest discovery is believed to be the Lesedi La Rona, a 1,109-carat stone found by Canadian firm Lucara Diamond at the Karowe mine, also in Botswana, in 2015. The diamond was sold to luxury jeweler Graff for $53 million two years later.
Rough diamonds are usually classified as being gem-quality, near-gem or industrial-quality, depending on their color, clarity, size and shape. Another, even larger diamond was found in Botswana in 2019 – a 1,758-carat stone dubbed Sewelô – but that was not gem-quality. French luxury brand Louis Vuitton bought that stone in 2020 for an undisclosed sum.
That’s a gem of a find.
Supersize Me
A pair of Egyptian siblings now have five Guinness World Records between them after their hands, feet and arm spans were measured and deemed to be the largest in the world. Mohamed Shehata, 34, and Huda Shehata, 30, both developed a condition that involves a benign tumor of the pituitary gland that causes the excess production of growth hormone.
Mohamed Shehata now holds two Guinness World Records: widest hand span on a living person (male) and widest arm span on a living person (male). The span of his left hand was measured at 12.32 inches, and his arm span was measured at 8 feet, 2.5 inches.
“Since the age of 12, my life has been turned upside down. I wasn’t used to the new lifestyle of tall people. Everything seems small in my hands, even shaking hands with people has become a reminder of how I differ from others,” Mohamed said.
Huda Shehata holds the records for largest feet on a living person (female), largest hands on a living person (female), and widest arm span on a living person (female). Her right foot was measured at 1 foot, 1.02 inches; her left hand was measured at 9.56 inches; and her arm span was measured at 7 feet, 8.4 inches.
The siblings have a combined height of 13 feet and 7 inches, nearly as tall as a double-decker bus.
They live in a small village in Egypt with their mother. Generally, their clothes are custom-made by their local tailor, Terzi, who produces mostly Galabiyah, a loose-fitting garment, for them.
“I have always dreamed of dressing like other women, but I accept myself now and live with satisfaction and conviction,” Huda Shehata told Guinness officials.
Walk tall, Huda.
