QUIRKY WORLD ... Girl flipped and said yes to aquarium proposal
Louis Harrison, 23, proposed to his girlfriend, Bethany James, 20, during a visit to the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth.
The aquarium’s team worked with Mr Harrison.
The spectacular proposal involved the aquarium’s divers plunging in the second-largest tank — the Eddystone Reef — and holding up a “Will you marry me?” sign when the couple entered the exhibit.
Ms James was left speechless, when her boyfriend got down on bended knee to ask for her hand in marriage. She accepted and the couple celebrated with a champagne toast alongside the Eddystone Reef’s residents, among them smooth-hound sharks, bull huss sharks, colourful cuckoo wrasse, and other fascinating species.
The 1,000-year-old practice of printing laws on goat and calf skin will continue, a minister has said just days after the House of Lords signalled the tradition would end.
Peers said printing two copies of each act of parliament, one for the parliamentary archives and one for the national archives, on the parchment known as vellum, was “extremely expensive”.
A switch to archival paper, which can survive for up to 500 years, had been expected to save £80,000 (€103,600) a year. However, Matt Hancock, the minister for the cabinet office and paymaster general, said the technique was “cost-effective”.
Super skyscrapers, underwater cities, and 3D-printed homes will all be a reality in 100 years’ time, according to a new report.
The SmartThings Future Living Report, commissioned by Samsung-owned internet-of-things firm, SmartThings, was compiled by academics and futurologists, who say that humans will be able to live in “Earth-scrapers” of 25 underground storeys.
The academics, who include future architects and urbanists, as well as lecturers from the University of Westminster, suggest that “bubble cities” will be created underwater, making the depths habitable for humans. They also believe personal drones will become a staple mode of transport.
A Pittsburgh woman jailed for four store robberies told police she needed money for dog food and kitty litter.
Police said a clerk at a Sunoco petrol station, who was robbed last month and again last week, recognised Melissa Santoro, 28, when she came in to buy cigarettes. Santoro also admitted robbing a Pittsburgh Rite Aid last month, and Jet’s Pizza in neighbouring Dormont.
She told officers a gun she carried was plastic, and she needed money for her pets and to help her mother.
An international animal advocacy group has withdrawn its protest against a New Hampshire winter carnival event that was billed as a “greased pig on ice”. There is no pig in the act, just a man on skates wearing a pig costume.
Carnival organiser, Steve Smith, said People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) launched its alert, despite his reassurances that no pigs would be harmed. Mr Smith said he received 100 emails from concerned animal lovers.
Peta investigator Daphna Nachminovitch told the Associated Press that Mr Smith had not clarified what the event would entail.
After losing out on his love interest, a wild elephant has turned his attention to cars. Authorities in southern China said the male elephant wandered out of a reservation, following a failed courtship, and started playing with cars parked along a highway, damaging more than a dozen.
The government of Xishuangbanna prefecture said the animal had recently lost to another male elephant in a battle for the affections of a female, and that his temperament was moody.
New flower species
Scientists have discovered a species of ancient flower trapped in amber. US researchers found the two Strychnos electri buds encased in a piece of 15m-year-old fossilised tree resin.
Biology professor, George Poinar, of Oregon State University, who made the discovery, said: “These flowers looked like they had just fallen from a tree. I thought they might be Strychnos.”
Botany expert, Lena Struwe, from Rutgers University, in New Jersey, verified that the specimens did not belong to any known species. “The discovery of this new species, in a 30-year-old amber collection, highlights that we still have many undiscovered species hidden away in natural history collections worldwide and not enough taxonomic experts to work through them,” she said.
“Strychnos electri has likely been extinct for a long time, but many new species living and, unfortunately, soon-to-be-extinct species, are discovered by scientists every year.”
