The weekly weird
A treat for the cocoa lover
A BRAND new teapot made entirely out of chocolate created by Nestle chocolate scientists is here.
Master chocolatier John Costello and his team from the Nestle Product Technology Centre (PTC), in York, were given the task to create a working piece of equipment. Their challenge, witnessed by BBC One’s The One Show, was to develop a teapot that could withstand boiling water enough to let the tea brew for two minutes before pouring.
Mr Costello enlisted some of the PTC’s top scientists and engineers to help in its development and spent next six weeks contemplating the project and developing a way to make a chocolate teapot work. He chose dark chocolate made with 65 percent cocoa solids, since the low fat content would help it hold its shape better.
After a range of experiments, the teapot was a success, surviving having boiling water poured into it. Tasting the final brew, the team concluded the tasty cup of tea had slight hint of chocolate, proving that a chocolate teapot is quite useful after all.
Mutant giant spider dog
ANYONE would freak out seeing a giant spider, as huge as a dog, on the road. And that’s what happened to people in Poland where, according to a report, Sylwester Wardega, a prankster dressed his dog as a giant spider and set up scenarios for the costumed pooch to scare members of the public while he filmed their reactions.
He then posted the video on the net. One scene shows two women discovering the giant spider apparently attacking a man in an elevator, leaving the women to flee in terror, while another features a man in a train station, who discovers body parts dangling from giant pieces of web before being chased by the dog spider into a giant web.
Wardega is famous for playing pranks on public and posting them on the web.
Black chicken anyone?
DO you think the chicken in this picture has been photoshoped? You are absolutely wrong! this rare Ayam Cemani chicken is real and is completely black from comb to talon.
The eyes, beak and even tongue are all jet black, while their feathers also shine emerald green in certain lights. Amazingly, the chickens’ dark hue runs right through their core, with their bones, meat and organs also being black.
The birds are native to Indonesia and they get their black colouring from a natural generic trait known as ‘fibromelanosis’. But unfortunately, like all rare beautiful things these chickens are way too expensive then you can even imagine, and if you still interested in a black chicken feast than you need to have $2500 (£1519), convert it to Pak rupee and make sure you don’t faint!
WE all love superheroes and doesn’t it feel great to look like one? Engineers and artists are using 3D printers to design and build cheap but functional prosthetic hands for kids who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford them. And taking things one step further, Aaron Brown, a volunteer at E-nable, (a group which collectively develops open-source designs and creates 3D-printed prosthetics hands for those in need) has designed a set of fake Wolverine claws to make kids wearing the prosthetics feel like superheroes.
To give it an original look, these fake claws have rounded tips and a silver-painted finish so that they give a feel of steel.
The good thing is that they’re pretty safe, and can easily be removed or attached. With a little imagination, it takes a few moments to make kids with prosthetics feel like they can take on super-villains.
Coma victim wakes up in hospital speaking fluent Chinese
AN English speaking Australian man who woke from a week-long coma after surviving a horrific car crash found he could only speak Mandarin.
Ben McMahon, says he woke up and saw a nurse who looked Asian standing by his bed and said to her, “Excuse me nurse, I feel really sore here,” in Chinese. His new-found language skills baffled his doctors and family. Despite taking Mandarin at school, Ben had never been fluent at the language. “I wasn’t consciously thinking I was speaking Mandarin, it was what just came out and it was what was most natural to me,” he said. It took him Ben a couple of days to fully speak English.
Since then, Ben’s language skills have opened up new opportunities for him, including leading Chinese tours of his hometown and even hosting a Mandarin television programme. This bizarre incident is not the first of its kind. In 2010, a 13-year-old Croatian girl woke up had replaced her fluency in her native language with speaking German.
While more recently, in July 2013 is a US navy veteran, who was found unconscious in a motel room and had no recollection of who he was, started speaking fluent Swedish.