Real-Life Weirdness

[William]

An article on the center of the world, as marked by a pyramid and a satellite-visible compass rose in a little town in the California desert called Felicity. It's tended (and being expanded) by a rich old French man with an eclectic taste in history, which he's using to surround the place with an expanding collection of stone monuments commemorating historical topics ranging from George Washington's taste in beer to the invention of the safety pin.

Some mages just know how to relax and do some sacred architecture on a grand scale.

[Daigoro]

Wales- A prehistoric forest, an eerie landscape including the trunks of hundreds of oaks that died more than 4,500 years ago, has been revealed by the ferocious storms which stripped thousands of tons of sand from beaches in Cardigan Bay.


.... and whatever other horrors were buried at the time.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...igan-bay-wales

[Anders]

Someone stole a 10 tonne mango in Queensland.

[Joe]

Another Australian one, while we're in the hemisphere:

An empty, fairly new looking four-wheel-drive just washes up on an Australian beach...

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/mystery-ca...303-33yok.html

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by Joe

Another Australian one, while we're in the hemisphere:

An empty, fairly new looking four-wheel-drive just washes up on an Australian beach...

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/mystery-ca...303-33yok.html

Did it have registration plates? If not, might have been lost off a freighter.

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by Joe

Another Australian one, while we're in the hemisphere:

An empty, fairly new looking four-wheel-drive just washes up on an Australian beach...

Watch where it's pointing before using the dashboard lighter.


Hans

[tantric]

Originally Posted by adm

On the cannibal rats aspect of the story.

Anybody who has ever raised mice or rats for food for reptiles or ferrets is well aware of their tendency to eat one another when over crowded. This appears to be more of the all to common poor research sensational type reporting.

WHAT? Okay, let's get this straight: the natural diet of ferrets is bananas, raisins and peanut butter. And anything they can steal from your take out. No mice. We have evolved.

Yes, I speak for the weasels. It says so on my t-shirt.

[Joe]

16th century rocket cats, anyone?

http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...warfare-manual

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by tantric

WHAT? Okay, let's get this straight: the natural diet of ferrets is bananas, raisins and peanut butter. And anything they can steal from your take out. No mice. We have evolved.

Yes, I speak for the weasels. It says so on my t-shirt.

I understand the humor. But that much sugar doesn't sound very healthy for a carnivore.

[William]

Did ancient Minoans trade copper with the Great Lakes? Are millions of pounds of copper "missing" from ancient American Indian mines around the Great Lakes? Is the tablet that was revealed in Newberry, Michigan in 1896 really a sample of Cypriot writing from centuries B.C.?

No, of course not. But it could make a fun alt-history. Mediterranean ships exit the Strait of Gibraltar and follow an Iceland-Greenland route for copper; when Greek culture takes over the Minoans and begins interacting with Asia, the route is forgotten and lost. Fleeing craftsmen and scholars from Crete (leaving behind an intellectually impoverished island considered backwards by the Greeks) show up in the Great Lakes region and assimilate into the local culture. The Columbian exchange gets slow-walked over the next few centuries, and by the time the Dark Ages roll around, literate, iron-using medieval American nations have established territories in the Western Hemisphere.

Permanent contact comes:

1.) When Columbus makes his way across in 1492. Transatlantic scuffles and alliances proceed for the next 500 years.
2.) Earlier, when an Iroquois explorer, looking for a sea route to California, finds Europe in the way -- either under control of the Moors, or later, during the Renaissance.
3.) When a California or Oregon explorer, following the coast and the Aleutian chain, makes his way down the Asian coast and contacts Japan, perhaps during the Heian period.