Little mermaid
Brave toddler Rosanna Ogden overcame a life-threatening heart tumour — by learning to swim.
Rosanna was just six weeks old when she had open heart surgery. Doctors suggested swimming could help her recover — and she has not looked back.
She could swim in a pool before she could walk.
Next month the two-year-old will be the youngest person to take part in a charity swim for the British Heart Foundation.
“Little Mermaid” Rosanna was diagnosed with rhabdomyoma — a benign heart tumour so rare there have only been three similar cases in the UK in the last decade. Parents Mick and Sanam were told she might not survive the eight-hour operation.
Mum Sanam, 26, said: “It was terrifying. Without the surgery she couldn’t have lived. One of us was allowed in theatre to kiss her. Mick was too upset, so I did it. They had to wrestle me out again though.”
Surgeons managed to remove most of the tumour — the rest will shrink as she grows.
They said swimming could help build up her strength.
Sanam first tried her in the pool when Rosanna was ten weeks old. Sanam, from Manchester, said: “She loved it so much we started taking her several times a week. “She had no problem going underwater and never cried. The doctors were very pleased and said she was getting stronger even faster than they hoped,” she said.
Rosanna first swam unaided on a holiday in Spain aged 13 months. A proud Sanam added: “She hadn’t even taken her first steps yet — but she could swim like a baby mermaid.”
Rosanna, who has gained her ten-metre certificate, likes diving and swimming underwater, and can do front crawl and butterfly strokes.
Source: thesun.co.uk
Loos that will analyse your poo!
Yes you heard it right — toilets that can monitor what we poop. And 3D contact lenses and doors which open when you look at them. Cupboards with sensors that tell you when stocks are getting low and send orders directly to shops.
All this and much more may be possible in the next 15 years thanks to futurologist Dr Frank Shaw from the Centre for Future Studies.
CEO Jamie Ford said: “The next 15 years will see an exciting transformation take place, where we integrate ‘smart devices’ into the home, and the net becomes much more about rich services.”
If one looks at the changes that Dr Shaw has predicted will be common place by 2027, all of us will be the stars of our own sci-fi movie!
Here are some of Dr Frank’s ideas for the future:
- Face recognition software in doors to run strangers’ faces against a criminal database
- Pre-programmed smart home technology to take care of day-to-day chores
- Sensors to calculate healthy diets based on personal needs
- You will just have to think about what you want to see and do in your future home entertainment centre and it will become reality in an instant.
- 3D contact lenses to allow you to have whatever information you need instantly
- 3D holographic conferencing so you can present in any office in the world. Source: thesun.co.uk
Leaning tower of pancakes
An Australian chef battered his way into the world record books on Pancake Day.
Andy Wrobel claimed the title for the world’s tallest stack of pancakes, reports Metro.
He beat a 2008 record set in Croatia after building a 76cm tall stack of 60 pancakes at the Pancake Parlour in Melbourne.
The leaning tower of pancakes eventually toppled over, but only after the record was confirmed by Guinness officials.
The chef flips over 100,000 pancakes every year at the popular restaurant where he has been working for over 25 years.
Mr Wrobel said: “We tried last year and we got to 61 centimetres and did pretty well. We thought we’d give it another go and this year we actually did it. We had a lot of practices, spent about 50 hours, probably used another quarter of a ton of buckwheat mix, and we finally got to the point where we needed to go”.
Source: web.orange.co.uk
Objectionable litter
Residents of a New Zealand city said they are upset about the growing number of dog poop bags left to fester beneath city lampposts.
Nelson residents said there are dozens of bags of dog poop accumulating under lampposts in the near the Nelson Golf Club and the problem has been worsening recently, The Nelson Mail reported.
“They’ve been down there for weeks. I just can’t believe Nelson people could do that in a town like this,” said resident Tunny Gill, who walks through the area every morning.
Nelson City Council dog control manager Stephen Lawrence said laws against dumping dog poo are difficult to enforce. “Policing of that, of course unless we actually see them doing it or somebody else sees them doing it, is difficult. However, if we get a concern from a resident or a number of residents about an increase (of poo) in an area, we’ll increase our patrols,” he said. Source: upi.com
Lego achieves stardom
If you want to see the top ten most popular movie scenes in one go, the short film prepared by Harry Bossert, from Surrey, England is the perfect visual treat. The lead roles are played by lego characters and the entire movie has been recreated using just lego mini-figures and bricks.
The video features the most popular movie scene ever as voted by film fans, in which ET makes a bicycle fly through the air in Stephen Spelberg’s acclaimed E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.
It also has lego recreations of the second most popular moment, Marilyn Monroe standing above a subway vent in The Seven Year Itch, and the third, Gene Kelly singing and dancing in the rain in 1952’s Singing in the Rain.
Other famous scenes featured include the ‘rolling boulder’ section in Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, the clay pottery scene in Ghost, and the moment when Ursula Andress walks out of the ocean in Bond film Dr No.
Currently studying drama at the Brit School in London, Bossert has been producing lego videos since 2007. Source: thesun.co.uk
Thou shall floss everyday
A Chinese man set a new world record when he balanced 23 wooden benches on his teeth.
Li Hongxiao, 30, performed the stunt in front of amazed shoppers in Chongqing city centre.
He managed to balance all 23 benches in the air for 11 seconds. The previous record was 14 benches.
The one metre long benches weighed a total of nearly 70kg.
The China-based Jinisi World Record Office issued a certificate to Li at the scene. Source: web.orange.co.uk
Purr-fect meal? No thanks!
A California man is in jail for allegedly cooking and eating cats.
Jason Louis Wilmert is being held in the Kern County Jail on charges alleging animal cruelty and using a pet or domesticated animal for food. Both charges are misdemeanours.
Neighbours called sheriff’s deputies when they heard cats wailing and screeching at the 36-year-old’s house in the Bakersfield suburb of Oildale.
Sheriff’s spokesman Ray Pruitt says he has “never seen anything like this.”
Pruitt says investigators found evidence that led them to believe “he had the intent to use a cat for food,” but he couldn’t comment directly on the evidence. The case has been sent to the district attorney. Source: huffingtonpost.com
History no more!
30,000 year old flower blossoms again. A team of Russian scientists have successfully grown ancient plants from tissue material that stayed frozen in the Siberian region for about 30,000 years. If scientists continue at this rate, one day we may have dinosaurs in the zoo instead of the museum!
According to a report published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists extracted the so-called “placental tissue” from immature seeds and put it in a special nutrient solution, which imitated a growing plant.
There were only subtle differences in the shape of petals and the sex of flowers between the “resurrected” plants and the modern-day Silene stenophylla, which still grows in the Siberian tundra.
The research team suggested that tissue cells were a perfect material for their experiments because they contain high amounts of sugar, which helped the plants to survive in a hibernated state for so long. AFP
Want to own McPresident?
A Nebraska woman is auctioning a three-year-old McDonald’s chicken McNugget she believes resembles America’s first president, George Washington. And it looks like she wants to make some cash in the sale. But, it’s all for a good cause.
The Sioux City Journal reports that Rebekah Speights is selling the McNugget to help raise money for a church summer camp. So far the McNugget had received 17 different bids and was going for $356 (Rs32,344) on Ebay.
So, how did she discover the politically-themed piece of poultry? Speights writes on her Ebay page: “As I was cleaning up, I noticed one particular nugget and began to laugh. I picked it up for a closer look, and sure enough it was in the likeness of President George Washington. I decided to take it home and show my husband this hysterical find.” Source: news.yahoo.com
Published in The Express Tribune, February 25th, 2012.
COMMENTS (4)
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This seems like something else...not pancakes. I am sure many people will agree with me and is quite obvious what it actually seems. :)
Not too subtle ET....its obvious
@ Sky, It is just you.
Is it just me or is there something really wrong with the picture?