526 teeth removed from boy’s mouth

A boy suffering from a swollen jaw turned out to have 526 teeth that needed to be removed.

Saveetha Dental College and Hospital in Chennai said the boy’s parents first noticed the jaw swelling when the boy was three years old, but they did not want him undergoing any procedures at such a young age.

Now, the parents decided to have their seven-year old boy examined when the condition continued to advance. A surgeon discovered a ‘compound odontome,’ a bag-like mass, in the boy’s mouth, and it was removed. The mass turned out to contain 526 tooth-like structures. The objects varied in size, but each had a crown and root-like structures, giving them the shape of teeth.

“It was reminiscent of pearls in an oyster,” the dental surgeon said.

The hospital said it was “the first ever case to be documented worldwide where so many minute teeth were found in a single individual.”

Snake inside gas pump screen

We, in the urban setting, hardly think of encountering a snake. However, these slithery, slippery creatures are often spotted in residential areas of various cities and towns around the world.

One such incident occurred recently when a customer at a Kansas gas pump captured a video of a bizarre sight — a snake slithering behind the gas pump’s touch screen.

Holly Malkames said she initially thought what she was seeing on the screen at the Minit Mart in Gardner was a video of some sort, until she realised it was a snake inside the mechanism.

The gas station said an employee disassembled the screen the next day and freed the snake, which appeared much smaller in person.

Record-breaking dog photo shoot

Recently, a pet event took place in Ohio, where 368 canines participated in the Guinness World Record-breaking dog photo shoot.

The event, PAWSitively Pinecrest, held at Pinecrest’s Central Park, gathered some 368 dogs to be photographed during the five-hour carnival in order to break the Guinness record for largest dog photo shoot.

Guinness adjudicator Brittany Dunn said the number was based on the individual dog photos taken during the event, not the group shot taken by a drone. The previous record of 123 dogs participating in a photo shoot was set in the Philippines in 2017.

Company offers $1,000 to spend a weekend offline

These days staying online, whether on computers, mobiles or tablets, has become an everyday routine. However, to test people’s patience, an internet provider is offering a one-weekend ‘dream job’ to someone willing to take a weekend vacation free from phones and computers. Wow!

SatelliteInternet.com said the “Digital Detox Challenge” is offering $1,000 to someone willing to spend a weekend at Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California, but they have to “give up using any tech devices for two of the three days.”

The selected person, who will be chosen on August 26 from applications on the firm’s website, will be put up in a ‘retro Airbnb’ with amenities including air conditioning, a hot tub, a pool and running water.

“Instead of hunching over your tech devices all day, you can explore nearby hiking trails, take a dip in the pool, read a book, meditate, relax in the hammock and watch the stars,” the website states. It would be an ‘out of this world’ experience!

Published in Dawn, Young World, August 17th, 2019