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Published 22 Jun, 2019 07:07am

The weekly weird

Woman gets stuck in child’s plastic car

Zoe Archibald, climbed into the plastic toy car for a joke, but ended up being stuck that there was no way out. She tried to wriggle free for an hour, but in the end the whole car had to be sacrificed to set her free. Her dad Kevin used a bread knife to saw through the plastic chassis and free her.

Her nephew Matthew Shepherd-Bull, who filmed her release, said: ‘There was no way she could get herself out. She was in there for an hour. We had to cut the back off the car to get her out.

“No matter what we did, she wasn’t able to get out. Everyone found it funny, even Zoe. She was a bit panicked but mainly found it funny. It was just a joke. Her dad had to cut her out. The best thing we could find was a bread knife…. It took about 15 minutes to cut through the plastic.”


World’s largest terrarium

A shopping mall in Warsaw, Poland, has the world’s largest terrarium, Guinness World Records has confirmed.

The terrarium, defined as a sealed container in which plants are grown, weighs 2,244.74 pounds. The massive glass container, with the phrase “Najwieskszy las w slouiku,” or “Largest forest in a bottle” was created by Warsaw’s Galeria Polnocna shopping mall, and sits within the 200-store mall.


Island covered in millions of locusts

Farmers on an Italian island shared video of a massive swarm of millions of locusts that have descended on the area.

Coldiretti, Italy’s farming association, said the grasshoppers are causing damage to crops and posing a danger to livestock near the city of Nuoro in Sardinia.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation said the cause of the swarm is unclear. Cordiretti officials theorised an unusually cool May could be to blame for the influx of insects. They said the sudden warming of temperatures this month may have caused eggs laid in the autumn to hatch all at once.

The farming association said it is looking into options to prevent similar swarms from occurring in the future.


Pink tap water in Ohio village

Residents in Coal Grove reported the water coming out of their taps was bright pink, leading village officials to initially warn locals not to drink the odd-coloured liquid.

Officials later said the pink colour came from a malfunction at the water treatment centre that saw a large quantity of sodium permanganate end up in the water. Stephen Burchett, the water treatment plant operator for Coal Grove, said the chemical is not dangerous if ingested, but it could dye clothes washed in the affected water.

The village flushed the water at the treatment plant several times and officials said the water will return to its usual transparent appearance once all of the pink water has been run out of the pipes.

Published in Dawn, Young World, June 22nd, 2019

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