44-foot pyramid of washing machines

A British company raised awareness of electronics recycling and broke a Guinness World Record by assembling 1,496 recycled washing machines into a gigantic pyramid.

Guinness World Records said Currys PC World earned the record for largest washing machine pyramid when it arranged the appliances into a pyramid measuring 44 feet and 7 inches tall.

The pyramid’s square base was composed of 256 washing machines, measures 31 feet, 7.5 inches on each side. The attempt was aimed at raising awareness of recycling services for electronics.

Home Alone house is open for overnight stay

The house prominently featured in the 1990 film Home Alone, starring Macaulay Culkin, is listed for a single one-night stay scheduled for this month.

The listing is being hosted by ‘Buzz,’ actor Devin Ratray’s older brother to Culkin’s Kevin McCallister.

“You may not remember me as particularly accommodating,” Buzz wrote in the announcement, “but I’ve grown up, and I’d be happy to share my family home — my pizza, even — with you this holiday season.”

The stay includes holiday decorations, booby traps inspired by the film, pizza and a candlelit dinner of microwavable Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, a screening of Home Sweet Home Alone, and the new Home Alone Lego set.

New dinosaur species with unique slashing tail

The new species of dinosaurs, described in a study in the journal Nature, has something never seen before on any animal: seven pairs of “blades” laid out sideways like a slicing weapon used by ancient Aztec warriors.

“It’s a really unusual weapon,” said lead author Alex Vargas, a University of Chile palaeontologist.

The plant-eating critter had a combination of traits from different species that initially sent palaeontologists down the wrong path. The back end, including its tail weapon, seemed similar to a stegosaurus, so the researchers named it ‘stegouros elengassen’.

After Vargas and his team examined different DNA analyses, they concluded it was only distantly related to the stegosaurus. Instead, it was a rare southern hemisphere member of the tank-like ankylosaur family of dinosaurs.

Published in Dawn, Young World, December 18th, 2021