‘Darth Vader house’ listed for $4.3 million

The 7,000-square-foot home in the University Place neighbourhood is nicknamed the “Darth Vader house” due to the exterior’s resemblance to the Dark Lord of the Sith’s helmet in the science fiction franchise Star Wars.

The house was built in 1992. It is currently listed for $4.3 million by Wade Knight with Martha Turner Sotheby’s International Realty. The house features four bedrooms, four and a half bathrooms and a four-car attached garage.

Robot dolphins take over sea life parks

Quarter-tonne robot dolphins costing £18 million each could replace the animals in controversial sea life parks.

The 2.5-metre creations are clad in medical-grade silicone and can swim underwater and behave just like their real-life counterparts, even performing tricks for crowds.

It is the brainchild of an animatronic company, which has made creatures for Hollywood blockbusters such as Free Willy, Deep Blue Sea, Avatar and Anaconda.

Created by New Zealand firm Edge Innovations, these dolphins come with a high price tag that is four times what a live dolphin would cost theme parks. However, these robotic dolphins do not require the same amount of care and temperature monitoring, and outlive their live counterparts, which only survive for an average of 20 years in captivity compared to between 30 and 50 years in the wild.

400-year-old English coin found in Maryland

Travis Parno, from the Historic St Mary’s City Museum, said archaeologists working to locate the original site of St Mary’s Fort, one of the earliest English settlements in North America, found a 17th century silver coin bearing the image of King Charles I.

“It didn’t exactly have the date printed on it, but … it had a maker’s mark that was only used in 1633 and 1634, so it might as well have had the date printed on it, to be honest.” Parno said.

The team has now identified the location of the fort, which was first settled around the same time the coin was minted. The excavation efforts at the site of the fort are ongoing.

A spittle-free way to blow out birthday candles

A Virginia man used his free time during the Covid-19 pandemic to invent a device that allows birthday candles to be blown out without spittle flying.

Mark Apelt said he came up with the idea for the ‘Blowzee’, a birthday cake candle extinguisher while at a child’s birthday party, before the pandemic.

Apelt said he was chatting with other parents and they wondered whether there was a consumer product designed to stop birthday cake candle blowers from getting their saliva on the cake. Apelt designed the Blowzee, which allows children to still use their own lungs to blow, but the air that travels over the cake doesn’t come from their lungs.

The Blowzee was such a hit with kids and parents at local birthday parties that he is now selling his invention online.

Published in Dawn, Young World, June 12th, 2021