New device ‘could silence boring people’
And other stories from the stranger side of life
Scientists have created a small, wearable sensor that could silence “pub bores”, said The Times. The size of a postage stamp, the device sticks to the upper chest and tracks the vibrations associated with talking and singing. The user can set a limit for how many minutes of vocal activity they will allow themselves in a certain period. When they near their personal threshold, the app will alert them. The app could encourage boring people to “pipe down”, said the paper.
Scorpion loose on British Airways flight
Passengers on a flight from Texas to London said they had to leave their seats when a scorpion was spotted loose on the plane. Luke Taylor, 25, was on the British Airways flight when the crew started searching for a loose scorpion. “They couldn't find it, and they had to move everyone in that area to empty seats scattered across the plane,” he told told LBC. Texas is home to 18 types of scorpions.
Man receives letter posted in 1916
A man in London who received a letter addressed to a former resident of his home was surprised to discover it had been posted in 1916. “We noticed that the year on it was ‘16. So we thought it was 2016,” Finlay Glen told CNN. “Then we noticed that the stamp was a king rather than a queen, so we felt that it couldn't have been 2016.” Royal Mail said it appreciates that people will be “intrigued by the history of this letter from 1916”, but said it had “no further information on what might have happened”.
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Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.
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