Sideswipe: March 6: Decapitate your ginger, Westies!

Decapitate your ginger, Westies!

Surveillance cameras ...

"There's a motorised camera at the traffic lights at the corner of College Hill and Beaumont St. The time is around 9.45am. Myself and a colleague were standing at the crossing waiting
to cross to go to the supermarket. On the opposite side a woman was walking past. The intersection was quiet as a cycle of vehicles had just been through and was about to
build up again. What did take our attention though was the whirring of the traffic camera as it moved away from the intersection view and followed the woman up College Hill. We
could even hear the zoom working, as I said, it was quiet enough to hear it. After a short
while of steady view in her direction, the camera whirred again and returned to the intersection view. My colleague and I had a good laugh and pointed at the camera and yelled 'busted'. Someone appears to be enjoying their job a little too much perhaps. I hope you print this one, let the watchers know they're also being watched."

Strange facts

The sailor man with the green stuff.

1. The comic strip character of Popeye was so popular during the Great Depression that spinach came third in a list of American children's favourite foods (after turkey and ice cream).

2. The floor of Jeff Bezos' new house contains the same floorboards on which Napoleon Bonaparte proposed to Josephine.

3. In AD 67, the Roman Emperor Nero competed in the Olympic chariot race. He didn't finish the race because he was thrown from his chariot, but he was declared the winner anyway on the basis that he would have won if he had not been thrown off.

Horror shower

In Kentucky in 1876, hunks of meat rained down from the sky. Some people ate the meat but couldn't work out what it was. Some said it was bear, others said mutton.

One theory, that a group of startled, recently fed vultures vomited causing the meat showers, was highly plausible.

Vultures don't typically vomit from feeling sick because their stomachs are super acidic, which allows them to digest all of the gross stuff they eat, like partially decayed carcasses.

But vultures tend to gorge themselves when they eat because they don't know when they'll get their next meal.

This means they have to sit and digest for a while after feeding, but if something startles them and they need to get airborne quickly, they have been known to vomit to lighten the load — they'll even vomit in the air as they're taking off, if they have to.

It sounds like something from a horror film, but the only horrifying thing is that a bunch of people most likely ate chunks of vulture vomit, trying to figure out what it was. (Via vice.com)