Man proud of his 12 fingers and 14 toes

Heramb Ashok Kumthekar, a 22 year old marketing student from Pune was born with 12 fingers and 14 toes Photo: BARCROFT MEDIA

Heramb’s extra digits are caused by the medical condition polydactlyism Photo: BARCROFT MEDIA

… Heramb does not even hold the official Guinness world record for most digits on a person because some of his fingers are technically attached, even though they have separate bones.

The official Guinness honour belongs to his fellow countryman Devendra Harne, a 13 year old boy from Kolkota, who has 12 fingers and 13 toes on his feet.

However, there is some consolation for Heramb as he is included in the Indian equivalent of the Guinness Book of Records, the Limca Book of Records.

Heramb, who is currently studying for a Masters in Business Management at his college in the western Indian town of Pune, has always seen his extra digits as something to be proud of.

“I am happy about it because I have something that others don’t have,” says Heramb.

… Heramb’s extra digits are caused by the medical condition polydactlyism, which translates from the Greek for “many fingers”. The congenital condition occurs in one in every 500 births and famous holders of extra digits include the beheaded ex-wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, who was rumoured to have an extra finger on her left hand. Indeed, Heramb shares the condition with one of his idols, the Bollywood superstar Hrithik Roshan. Roshan, 34, who is one of Indian cinema’s rising stars, boasts one extra digit on each hand.

Because of the sheer number of digits he has Heramb does not have the requisite amount of nerve endings available to feel all his fingers and toes. Aware of his extra digits, but unable to move them, the awkwardness this causes has led to some friendly jibes from his friends. “My friends sometimes kiddingly say that my hands and feet resemble that of an alien,” he laughs. – telegraph

Is legendary Bigfoot in Kenora? — SEE FOOTPRINT

Randy Fobister’s pictures have been circulating through Grassy Narrows like gossip this week.

They are of a 15-inch long, six-toed, “big” footprint.

Driving to a blueberry picking site Tuesday, about an hour north of the Grassy Narrows First Nation reserve located 80 km northeast of Kenora, Helen Pahpasay and her mother saw something they’ve never seen before. “I seen a black, um … thing,” Pahpasay said. “It was tall and lanky and it was walking towards our way. “I thought I was seeing things, so I didn’t say anything,” she said. “I looked over to my mom and she was rubbing her eyes.” About eight feet tall. Slender. Black as night. Bigfoot was out for a walk, she said.

“It was just walking casually. I know it wasn’t an animal, cause it was upright. It was human like, like the way we walk,” she said. Scared, the women drove back to their community. Pahpasay told her family, who turned her right around for the hunt. What they found is six-toed footprints somewhere in the woods, near a beaver pond. It appears it leaped over a dam, into the pond, Fobister said.

“Sort of like one big-foot jump.” – sau

Police swamped by wave of UFO sightings

A BUNCH of balloons sparked fears at the weekend that Scotland was being invaded by aliens.

Police were swamped with phone calls from locals worried about strange lights floating over their homes.

But inquiries soon revealed that planet Earth was safe. It turned out that guests at a party in the area had been tying candles to balloons and releasing them into the sky.

Police said: “It’s a game where people make a wish and release the balloons, hoping their wish will come true. We had call after call saying it was UFOs.”

Cops in Grangemouth, Stirlingshire, received more than a dozen calls about the “aliens” on Saturday night.  – dailyrecord

Morgan Freeman crash: the curse of The Dark Knight?

Seventy-one year old Academy Award winning actor Morgan Freeman was involved in a heavy-duty car accident down South on Sunday night. -cin

Freeman was driving a 1997 Nissan Maxima and went off a road on f Mississippi Highway 32 and flipped many times during the accident. The actor was able to speak to troopers who came to his aid and a hospital spokesman has said that he is currently listed in serious condition. – cl

Morgan Freeman’s accident is the latest disaster to befall those connected with Batman movie The Dark Knight. The actor plays Lucius Fox, Bruce Wayne’s trusty advisor, in the big screen blockbuster.

The greatest tragedy to hit the film was the death of Heath Ledger in January. The Australian star was found dead in his Manhattan apartment after taking an accidental drugs overdose. His performance as The Joker is widely expected to garner an Oscar nomination.

His was not the only death to mar The Dark Knight. The film’s closing credits carry a dedication “in memory of our friends Heath Ledger and Conway Wickliffe”.

Wickliffe, a New Zealand-born special effects technician, died while working on the film. He was on a camera truck filming a stunt car when it crashed into a tree in October last year. Wickliffe previously worked on Bond film Casino Royale and the Tomb Raider films with Angelina Jolie.

The star of The Dark Knight, Christian Bale, has not escaped the curse. Bale, who plays Batman, hit the headlines last month when he was arrested for allegedly assaulting his mother and sister shortly before the film’s London premiere. He was bailed pending further inquiries and denies the allegation. – telegraph

Here is an update, he is doing well after surgery.

FBI investigates new attacks on Calif. scientists

The FBI is investigating two firebombings targeting scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, as the latest in a rash of attacks against biomedical researchers who experiment on animals, authorities said.

One scientist and his family, including two small children, were forced to flee from a second-story window Saturday after a firebomb was lit on their front porch, filling the off-campus house with smoke, Santa Cruz police said. An adult was treated for minor injuries at a hospital and released.

Police were investigating the attack as attempted murder, said Santa Cruz police Capt. Steve Clark. – msnbc

Do they really think the earth is flat?

In the 21st Century, the term “flat-earther” is used to describe someone who is spectacularly – and seemingly wilfully – ignorant. But there is a group of people who claim they believe the planet really is flat. Are they really out there or is it all an elaborate prank?

… After all, most schoolchildren know that ships can disappear over the horizon, that satellites orbit the earth and that if you head along the equator you will eventually come back on yourself.

What about all the photos from space that show, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the Earth is round? “The space agencies of the world are involved in an international conspiracy to dupe the public for vast profit,” says Mr McIntyre. John Davis also says “these photos are fake”….

Ms Garwood says it is an “historic fallacy” that everyone from ancient times to the Dark Ages believed the earth to be flat, and were only disabused of this “mad idea” once Christopher Columbus successfully sailed to America without “falling off the edge of the world”. In fact, people have known since at least the 4th century BC that the earth is round, and the pseudo-scientific conviction that we actually live on a disc didn’t emerge until Victorian times. … In the 1870s, Christian polemicist John Hampden wrote numerous works about the Earth being flat, and described Isaac Newton as “in liquor or insane”. – bbc

Suprising, but then again, most people believe in several things which don’t match the available evidence.

Chinese restaurant takes the cake for naming error

The internet has been filled with hilarious mistranslations of sign names, restaurant menus and street signs for many years – but at LIVENEWS.com.au we don’t think we have seen one quite as outstanding as this. – livenews

August 4 is U.S. Coast Guard Day

Aug. 4 is celebrated as Coast Guard Day to honor the establishment on that day in 1790 of the Revenue Cutter Service, the predecessor of today’s Coast Guard. On that date, Congress, guided by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, authorized the building of a fleet of 10 cutters, whose responsibility would be enforcement of the first tariff laws enacted by Congress under the Constitution.

The Coast Guard has been continuously at sea since its inception; although, the name Coast Guard didn’t come about until 1915 when the Revenue Cutter Service was merged with the Lifesaving Service. The Lighthouse Service joined the Coast Guard in 1939, followed in 1946 by the Bureau of Navigation and Steamboat Inspection. In 1967, after 177 years in the Treasury Department, the Coast Guard was transferred to the newly formed Department of Transportation. In 2003, the Coast Guard became a member of the Department of Homeland Security where it is today. – sai

Ice age happened in less than one year.

THE last ice age 13,000 years ago took hold in just one year, more than ten times quicker than previously believed, scientists have warned. Rather than a gradual cooling over a decade, the ice age plunged Europe into the deep freeze, German Research Centre for Geosciences at Potsdam said.

Cold, stormy conditions caused by an abrupt shift in atmospheric circulation froze the continent almost instantly during the Younger Dryas less than 13,000 years ago – a very recent period on a geological scale.

The new findings will add to fears of a serious risk of this happening again in the UK and western Europe – and soon. – scotsman

Get ready to have some company if we have another ice age year in our lifetimes. Does this also mean that a large part of the planet could turn into a desert in one year?

A quick fix for global warming

It’s the stuff of science fiction, but could mirrors in space or sea water sprayed in the air be shortcuts to halt global warming?

“It’s Dr Strangelove. But it’s the kind of Dr Strangelove you could see governments really using.”

That’s how one expert describes geo-engineering – the idea that we can use a kind of technical quick fix to cool the planet if global warming accelerates. Plans for geo-engineering can sound bizarre.

They range from placing millions of tiny mirrors in space to reflect back some of the sun’s rays, to using rockets to launch tons of sulphur into the stratosphere to create a kind of planetary sun shade. That plan was inspired by watching what happened after the eruption of the Mount Pinatubo volcano in the Philippines in 1991. Sulphur ejected into the atmosphere spread around in subsequent months to create a layer believed to have had a temporary cooling effect as it blocked some of the sun’s warmth.

Other suggestions include spraying sea water into the atmosphere to make it cloudier, or pumping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere or out of the oceans.

Until recently, policymakers have dismissed this as science fiction, a complete distraction from the fight against global warming. Now, attitudes seem to be changing.