15th Mar 2012 The Most Unusual News TipBits This Week

The longest coin rows in history ~
 
Just registered in the Guiness Book of Records is the longest row of currency coins, in the Philippines, of 28 cent pieces, measuring 73.02 kilometres long. The coins used for the display were afterwards donated to several charity institutions, to construct public schools in needy districts of that country. The coins added up to 21,000 dollars.
Country grass slippers ~
If you are a city dweller and miss the open space and greenness of nature, the Kusa ''flip flops' with articicial grass base soles, wound give you the sensation of walking bare foot in a park or in the country. They are made in 4 sizes and cost about 20 €.
A natural carrot hand ~
Peter Jackson, a retired gardener of Shropshire (UK), had a surprise of his life while harvesting carrots in his field. He found a hand, well, exactly like a human hand but it's one of the carrots. Just as well he took a photo of it or, his wife would have just cooked & eaten it,  and nobody would ever believe his tale about this most unique carrot.
 

Tags: flip-flops, carrot, coins

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15th Mar 2012 Visual Chronicle Of A Shipwreck

The channel 'Discovery Max' showed last night a documentary, the reconstruction of the recent tragic shipwreck in January, of the cruiser 'Costa Concordia' The cruiser ran aground and still stuck there now in front of the coast of Tuscany.The film could have been more dramatic than say, the 'Poseidon Adventure, but ends up as pure Italian neorealism.

 

What really happened at the moment of the accident? What roll the captain Francesco Schettino played in the tragic outcome? How the passengers & crew were evacuated? How were the search & rescue carried out? etc. were some of the questions that this film 'Concordia, The Tragedy From Within' tries to answer. The document also asks questions like whether the salvage team could save the boat, dismount the enormous body shell and the structure, and explains not just what they have done since, also what is being planned for the recuperation and restoration to follow.

 

The production reconstructed scenes and some actual sequences, unedited, of the captain & the crew on the bridge of command, deciding what to do while the passenger are panicking and fighting for their lives. One can see the captain talking on the phone, lit only by emergency lights, not yet given order to abandon ship. One can hear clearly the captain asking urgently for tugboats.

 

The making of this documentary counted on the collaboration of forensic specialists of the Maritime Academia of Massachusetts, who analysed the errors that caused the disaster. After reconstructing the accident minute by minute, the experts considered that the change of direction of the wind that was 'pushing' the ship towards the coast had saved thousands of lives.

 

Tags: visualchronicle, shipwreck

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