Burger bought 20 years ago, still looks new

David Whipple, from Utah (US) said he bought McDonald’s burger July 7, 1999, at the McDonald’s in Logan, Utah, to use in presentations on enzymes and deterioration.

Whipple said the burger ended up forgotten in a coat pocket for several years and it ended up with viral fame when he rediscovered it in 2013.

He said the burger was placed in a Big Mac tin and remained there for six years before being taken out again this week. Unbelievably, the burger still has the same appearance as when he bought it, but gives off the smell of cardboard.

A collection of 2.7 million baseball cards!

Recently, a man from Idaho was awarded a Guinness World Record for the largest private baseball card collection when the record-keeping organisation verified he had more than 2.7 million cards.

Paul Jones’ parents said his love of baseball and card collecting began at the age of 10. They said he has Asperger’s syndrome and learning disorder, so it was difficult to find hobbies that interested him.

Paul Jones said he uses Facebook and other tools to correspond with players during the winter and get them to autograph his cards. During the spring and summer he attends games with his father and tries to get autographs in person.

“The players, the sounds, the smells. I just love the whole entire game of baseball in general,” Paul Jones said.

Lord of the Rings’ inspired Airbnb

A North Carolina couple unveiled their newest Airbnb offering: an underground hobbit home inspired by the Lord of the Rings books and film series.

Mike and Caroline Parrish, who offer unusual Airbnb cabin experiences with their Treehouses of Serenity properties, said the newest structure on their property is a Shire-style Lord of the Rings Airbnb that’s 90 percent underground.

The 800-square-foot dwelling features round doors, one bedroom, one bathroom and a kitchen for guests to use.

“We’re coming up with what we hope will be the coolest hobbit home on the East Coast,” Parrish said.

Parrish said the hobbit house is expected to be available on Airbnb in early 2020.

Crater of largest known meteorite to ever hit Earth found

The crater left behind by the largest meteorite ever to hit Earth has been discovered, underneath a large volcanic field in Southern Laos, after going undiscovered for a century.

The evidence takes the form of a “field of black glassy blobs” also known as tektites, according to researchers in a recently-published article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) journal.

The crater, which is about 15km in diameter, is located in Southern Laos and it’s buried beneath a 910km young volcanic field. It was only by studying the tektites — gravel-sized bits of natural glass ejected in the instance of a meteorite impact — that scientists were able to plot out exactly where the meteorite hit our planet.

The implied presence of “young weathered” pieces of basalt rock at the location and time of the meteorite impact, as well as an outcrop of crudely layered sandstone and mudstone some 10 - 20km from the centre of the impact, both support the research team’s theory that the impact of the biggest piece of outer space debris to ever strike Earth has been discovered.

Published in Dawn, Young World, January 11th, 2020