QUIRKY WORLD ... A daily look at some of the world’s stranger stories
A man in Australia endured a painful hospital visit after a 2cm cockroach burrowed into his ear and his efforts to suck it out with a vacuum cleaner failed.
Darwin-based Hendrik Helmer’s ordeal began in the early hours of Wednesday morning when he was woken by a sharp pain in his right ear, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation said.
“I was hoping it was not a poisonous spider... I was hoping it didn’t bite me,” he said, adding that as the pain got worse he tried to suck the insect out with a vacuum cleaner before squirting water in his ear.
“Whatever was in my ear didn’t like it at all,” he told the broadcaster.
With the pain becoming excruciating, his flatmate rushed him to hospital where a doctor put oil down the ear canal.
This only forced the 2cm roach to crawl in deeper, before it eventually began to die.
“Near the 10-minute mark ... somewhere about there, he started to stop burrowing but he was still in the throes of death twitching,” said Helmer.
At that point the doctor put forceps into his ear and pulled out the cockroach.
“She [the doctor] said, ‘You know how I said a little cockroach, that may have been an underestimate’,” he said.
“They said they had never pulled an insect this large out of someone’s ear.”
Here is a picture of the cockroach that burrowed its way into an Australian man's ear. (Pic Sky News) pic.twitter.com/fGjm211iDG
— Jonathan Healy (@jonathanhealy) January 10, 2014
Google has apologised after a major square in Berlin regained its Nazi-era name “Adolf Hitler” on its popular online Maps page for a few hours.
Lena Wagner, spokeswoman for the German unit of the US internet giant, said it was not immediately clear how a street at Theodor-Heuss-Platz in the German capital had again become “Adolf-Hitler-Platz” late on Thursday, the name it bore from 1933 to 1947.
“We were made aware of a false and inappropriate street name on Maps and corrected it immediately,” she said. “We apologise for this mistake.”
The Nazi leader’s name was no longer visible on Google Maps last night, and a search for Adolf-Hitler-Platz redirects users to Theodor-Heuss-Platz.
The square was renamed after Hitler in 1933 and was to have played a prominent role in the planned “Germania” overhaul of the city into a global capital planned under the Third Reich.
Its name was changed after the war and finally given the name of Heuss, Germany’s first post-war president, in 1963.
The error sparked outrage in social networks and German media.
Police in Connecticut say a pool company worker has been arrested after he drained a swimming pool onto a road in freezing temperatures and caused several car crashes.
Police charged 34-year-old Alfredo Bahena-Benitez with misdemeanour reckless endangerment.
Police say they were called to Flax Hill Rd on Thursday after a woman’s car hit a rail because the road became icy after Bahena-Benitez emptied the pool.
A 4x4 spun out shortly afterward and was struck by a car. Another vehicle struck the 4x4 and hit a salt truck. Nobody was seriously hurt.
Bahena-Benitez is due in court on Jan 21.
Two Czechs have breathed new life into telephone booths made obsolete in the mobile phone age, converting them into mini libraries, with the first installed at a Prague hospital this week.
On the shelves of the red booth, patients of the IKEM hospital will find a plethora of genres, including works by US crime writer John Grisham, Czech and Russian titles, and Diana: Her True Story by Andrew Motion.
Library mastermind Monika Serbusova, 27, said she and a friend drew inspiration from a similar project in Britain.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
