- Title: VARIOUS: LIFE! REVIEW OF THE YEAR 2001
- Date: 14th January 2001
- Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (MAY 12-13, 2001) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) VARIOUS OF WARM-UP BEFORE WALK (3 SHOTS)
- Embargoed: 29th January 2001 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: VARIOUS LOCATIONS - SEE SHOTLIST
- City:
- Country: Various
- Topics: Quirky,Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
- Reuters ID: LVAAR7UT2AA98U1SJITM29PPXE9S
- Story Text: From flying tomatoes to talking vodka bottles, from amorous frogs to dangerous sheep, the lighter side of life in 2001 has turned up the wild, the wonderful and the downright weird.
An army of naked, ash-smeared Hindu holy men started the year off with a charge into the holy River Ganges in northern India to wash away their sins.
The "Maha Kumbh Mela" festival in Allahabad saw the greatest-ever gathering of human beings, with 100 million pilgrims making the journey to the river by the festival's end.
Hindus believe the confluence of the Rivers Ganges, Yamuna and a third mythical river is one of four places where the gods spilt a drop of the elixir of immortality. Records suggest the bathing festival could be some 2,000 years old.
A dip in the Ganges is believed to earn bathers wealth, fertility and absolution of their sins.
A dip in a knee-deep pool of tomato pips and juice, however, is probably less spiritually significant. That didn't stop tens of thousands of Spanish revellers pelting each other with tonnes of ripe tomatoes, though.
One hundred and twenty tonnes of the fruit was hurled by some 30,000 people at the annual "Tomatina" festival in village of Bunol in August, painting the town bright red in an hour-long throwing frenzy.
No one really knows how the festival started, but few seemed to care.
"It's sensational. Throw more tomatoes!" yelled an Australian dripping with tomato juice, before disappearing off to do just that.
But while tomatoes generally explode on impact, leaving only a sticky residue, being hit in the face by an orange can cause serious harm.
So it was a braver type of reveller who took part in the orange-pelting festival in northern Italy in February.
Missiles sailed through the alpine air of the quiet town of Ivrea as townsfolk re-enacted a medieval battle by pelting each other with hundreds of thousands of oranges.
Legend has it that the festival celebrates the murder of a wicked and cruel tyrant in the Middle Ages. The daughter of the local miller lured the vicious lord into her bed and chopped off his head. The flying oranges apparently symbolise the lord's head and are flung back and fourth between warring "soldiers".
"What a thrill. It's better than going with a woman..."
said participant Luigi Fino.
Although he admitted: "I haven't been with a woman for a while but I think this is better."
From Medieval battles to Medieval castles - sandcastles that is. A 50-strong Dutch team spent three weeks in July building the world's tallest sandcastle, complete with princesses, elves and even giants.
Sixteen million kilogrammes of special river sand was brought by the truck load to Almeerderzand in the Netherlands to build constructions so strong that they will eventually have to be bulldozed.
The sandcastle made it into it into the Guiness Book of Records standing at a height of 20.91 metres, the same as a ten storey apartment block.
That is quite high enough for most of us to think twice before flinging ourselves off the top. But not quite high enough for the forty-eight skydivers who spent a week in August jumping off the world's tallest building, the Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia.
The 73rd floor of one of the 452 metre-high towers saw a queue of jumpers waiting eagerly for their turn to plunge towards the pavement.
Workers and tourist watched as the divers went into freefall for several seconds to clear the building before deploying special maneuverable parachutes to guide them towards a nearby target.
French stuntman Terry Do was not as fortunate. His attempt to paraglide around the Statue of Liberty was to end in embarrassment and arrest.
The parachute of the paraglider got caught on the torch of New York's famous landmark and left him dangling hundreds of feet from the ground before he was hauled to safety.
Kazakhstan's national sport of Sayat - hunting with golden eagles - experienced a revival in 2001. It was just in time for the majestic birds, whose population has fallen sharply in recent years.
Hunters came from all over the region in February to a remote mountain area near the Chinese border to display their hunting skills.
Kazakh's Golden Eagles are regarded as one of the world's best hunting birds. They are huge predators, weighing up to ten kilograms with a wingspan of up to two metres. Their chosen prey rarely stand a chance.
From the snowy planes of Kazakhstan to the snowdrifts and glaciers of Greenland, where the World Ice Golf Championships took place in April.
The greens were white and the balls pink. Hazards included an iceberg or two, and balls were more likely to get stuck in a snowdrift than a bunker. Players enjoyed sunny conditions and a balmy temperature of eight degrees Celsius.
But at least the participants were permitted to wrap up warm. At the World Ice Swimming Championship event in Finland in March, only a tiny pair of bathing trunks stood between competitors and temperatures of minus ten degrees Celsius.
Pool attendants hardly had time between races to fish the ice out of the pool before another round of hardy swimmers took to the freezing water. Even the spectators had trouble keeping warm as temperatures plunged and snow fell.
Yet more than 1,000 brave people signed up for the icy weekend events. The 30-to-39 year old men's series world title was won by a novice ice swimmer, Richard Grauel from England.
Warm clothes were strictly optional at an alternative
"Olympic Games" in Australia in January. A group of nudists stripped off for a day of sack races, frisbee-throwing and the traditional 'Olympic' event of "Best Bottom Competition".
The event has been running for 18 years and participants insist no one is offended by their activities.
"Nobody who has been down here observing it has found it offensive," said Chris Howden of the Southern United Naturists.
Another unusual sporting event took place in the Bavarian hamlet of Gaissach in June. About 150 men of all ages dressed up in Bavarian national costume, fortified themselves with strong Bavarian lager, hooked their middle fingers around a leather strap and pulled with all their might.
The history of finger wrestling is a relatively short one, dating back about 50 or 60 years, to a joke between two friends who wanted to test their strength against one another.
Today, it is an organised sport, with participants divided into nine weight classes. Rules are simple: if you pull your competitor across the dividing table or tear the band from his finger, you win. And you both go home with very sore fingers.
And from an all-male event to a mostly-female one. The fourth annual Bra Walk took place in London in May, with participants putting on a "brave front" and stripping down to their bras for a breast cancer charity.
After a strenuous warm up, the women walked the 26.2 mile London Marathon course in their specially-decorated cleavage-enhancing underwear.
Also doing his bit to raise awareness of a serious health issue was Philadelphia's Mayor John Street, whose city was named the fattest city in the United States.
"All I needed to do was walk the streets of Philadelphia and I knew that we were probably out of shape and overweight"
said the Mayor, who had himself lost 80 pounds (36.36 kilos).
Apart from lack of exercise, much of the blame for Philadelphia's flabbiness was placed on the city's famous Philadelphia cheesesteak sandwich, a long roll stuffed with beef, covered with sautéed onions and smothered in cheese.
But not everyone agreed with the "overweight" tag.
"Healthy, that's what I like to say," said one resident,
"Pleasantly plump".
If you're aiming to lose weight, probably the last thing you need is a vodka bottle that encourages you to drink more.
But that's what a Russian engineering team has come up with: a bottle that toasts, cheers, and jeers drinkers as they down Russia's favourite drink.
A small microphone and a computer chip tucked neatly into the bottle cap gives out a recorded cheer when the bottle is opened.
When the cap is placed on the table, it periodically yells out toasts, sings songs, makes noises, and simply reminds everyone to keep their priorities straight -- drink! One young vodka-drinker wasn't sure it was such a good idea.
"I am drunk already." she said. "It is offering toasts very fast."
But there's no escape. If you try to close the bottle, it suggests to you go out and get another one! From entrepreneurial vodka bottles to an entrepreneurial dog. A hard-up dog in Thailand has taken to begging for a living. 'Men', a homeless mongrel in Bangkok, sits every day with a cup between his paws, gazing up pleadingly at passers-by. Few fail to be touched by his "hang-dog"
expression.
In Rwanda, a Reuters cameraman had a lucky escape while covering the horrific story of two rare mountain gorillas which were found shot and partly eaten in the Volcano National Park. As he was filming an adult gorilla broke cover and ran at the group of journalists.
A New Zealand postman wasn't so lucky when he came across a sheep which thinks it's a dog. Most postmen are used to running the gauntlet of the neighbourhood dog in order to deliver the mail.
Robert Knight, however, found himself being terrorised by a neighbourhood sheep, who charged at him and knocked him off his bicycle.
"Normally it's dogs biting me or chasing me" he said.
"This is the first time it's a sheep."
Almost as frightening, at least to small children, is the Jordanian man with the unusual ability to pop his eyeballs out. Doctors were amazed at Abdullah Al-Basri's unique talent.
Bakry Al-Bitar, a leading eye surgeon in Jordan said it was the only case he has dealt with in his thirty years in the profession.
Abdullah al-Basri, a comedy actor, said he almost lost consciousness when he first looked in a mirror at his protruding eyeballs. Passers-by on an Amman street looked equally surprised.
Karaoke is not a new phenomenon. But two people on opposite sides of the world have come up with unusual ways of incorporating it in to everyday activities.
Lori Benson, a fitness instructor in New York, leads a class called "Cycle Karaoke". Each class features six songs that are probably standard on any karaoke circuit. While they are singing, Lori leads the group through a serious spinning workout.
Singing is not compulsory, and bashful types can gracefully bow out. But even if singing is not your forte, karaoke is a testament to the universal appeal of having a good chuckle at someone else's expense. In the cycle karaoke class, they just put a new 'spin' on it.
If this all sounds too strenuous and time-consuming, a taxi driver in Singapore will let you practice your karaoke while he takes you from A to B.
Jeffrey Tan installed the 1,400 U.S. dollar karaoke system three years ago and so far it's been a big hit.
"I set up this system for myself and for my clients, so that they can de-stress" he said. And if doing the singing yourself is too stressful, you can always listen to Jeffrey's rendition of his personal favourite, the Country and Western tune "Achy Breaky Heart".
Perhaps a spot of karaoke would have soothed the temper of a British motorist who allowed pre-Christmas frustration to overcome her and caused her to indulge in 'parking rage'.
A court in Winchester was told that Melanie Andrews had been waiting for a parking space when Julie Brown drove her car into the space from the other side. This proved too much for Ms Andrews who tried to push Ms Brown's car out of the space. She was convicted of dangerous driving.
The fashion world spent 2001 debating which colour was the new black and whether short or long was most "this season".
Welsh designer Julien MacDonald wowed London Fashion Week with his trademark tiny sparkly dresses, while Tanya Sarne's Ghost label provided understated elegance.
In Milan, Italian fashion house Prada returned to its roots with a collection dominated by simple basics. The Gattinoni show was all glamour with black leather and see-through chiffon.
Baby animals, as ever, charmed the world. China's bid to save its cuddly national symbol was boosted by the birth of twin pandas in September.
Twin cubs Shenshen and her brother Aoao were born after their 11-year-old mother Yaya was impregnated by artificial insemination. The cubs weighed in at around 185 grams. The newborns were taken from their mother at birth, but were returned at one month old.
Panda cubs are a vital part of China's efforts to save one of the world's rarest animals.
Conservationists at Kenya's Watamu Beach have been trying to save another of the world's endangered species: the Green Sea Turtle.
In October, volunteers from the Watamu Turtle Watch, along with locals and tourists, checked turtle nests and helped the hatchlings on their arduous journey to the sea.
The chances that Green Sea Turtles will reach sexual maturity is minimal. Turtles are a prized catch, and locals have hunted them for hundreds of years. But the conservationists say that the community is slowly becoming aware through education that the turtles are an endangered species and that it is important to conserve them.
Not endangered but extremely rare is the hybrid half-zebra foal, born to a Shetland pony on a British farm in June.
The owners of the pony, called Tilly, had no idea she was pregnant when they bought her from a wildlife park, where she had been kept in a field with a male zebra.
The foal would probably be called a zorse, although some commentators suggested it might better be termed a zetland! In February, Japan witnessed the birth of an orca whale calf - only the second to be born in captivity at an aquarium in Kamogawa. The aquarium was the only one in Japan to have succeeded in breeding the rare whale, with only 40 other known cases of similar captive births worldwide.
The baby girl was 2 metres long and weighed 180 kilos.
In Thailand an appeal went out from a group of Buddhist monks for help in looking after eight tigers who had become a wild part of their daily life.
The animals - which the monks treat like pets - were left at the temple in Kanchanaburi, in western Thailand, after being orphaned or abused.
But it was an altogether tougher life being an amorous frog in Russia in April. Thousands of migrating frogs risked their lives to hop across busy highways in search of springtime love. All too many had their journey cut short by speeding trucks until a group of "frog scoopers" was brought in to save the day.
Goups of volunteer students carried bucketfulls of frogs across the highway and dropped them off at their promised land.
Alive and well, the frogs were able to concentrate on the important matters in a frog's life. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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