Good Morning and Welcome To MOT-Morning Open Thread
Casual Friday is a collection of odd, strange or weird news stories from the week along with some jokes, tweets, and other assorted funnies.
Huge Elephant Bird Egg Sold For $101,813 in U.K. Auction
Christie's auction house said Wednesday that the foot-long, nearly nine-inches in diameter egg fetched 66,675 pounds ($101,813). It had been valued at 20,000 to 30,000 pounds pre-sale, and was sold to an anonymous buyer over the telephone after about 10 minutes of competitive bidding.
Elephant birds were wiped out several hundred years ago. The oversized ovum, laid on the island of Madagascar, is believed to date back before the 17th century.
Flightless, fruit-gobbling elephant birds resembled giant ostriches and could grow to be 11 feet high (3.4 meters). Christie's says their eggs are 100 times the size of an average chicken's.
Obama threatens family tattoo if daughters get their own
Speaking on NBC's "Today" show in a segment originally filmed before the Boston Marathon bombings, President Barack Obama revealed the strategy he and First Lady Michelle Obama have been using to keep their daughters away from tattoos.
"What we've said to the girls is, 'If you guys ever decide you're going to get a tattoo, then mommy and me will get the exact same tattoo, in the same place, and we'll go on YouTube and show it off as a family tattoo,'" Obama said.
"Our thinking is that might dissuade them from thinking that somehow that's a good way to rebel."
Thief with conscience returns cremated remains in Washington state
The truck owner had been golfing in a Tacoma suburb when his vehicle was broken into by a thief who stole a briefcase filled with 3,000 prized Oregon sunstone gemstones, more than 30 silver and gold sunstone rings and a bracelet with 34 multi-hued stones, said Pierce County Sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer.
Also taken was a green suitcase containing the cremated remains of the truck owner's son, he said. Days later, the thief anonymously mailed back the ashes to an address on the truck owner's business card, which had also been taken.
"The case is unique because of the high dollar amount of the gems and because you've got a criminal, a thief, who has somewhat of a heart," Troyer said, without giving a value for the stolen valuables.
McDonald burger survives 14 years without deteriorating
David Whipple of St. George said he bought the hamburger -- topped with a pickle, mustard and ketchup -- July 7, 1999, at a McDonald's in Logan and let it age for a month for a lesson on enzymatic action he gave to a group of weight loss advocates, KSL-TV, Salt Lake City, reported Wednesday.
"At the little meeting, I showed the hamburger and the pickle, which was just starting to disintegrate," Whipple writes. "There was no decomposition to the meat or bun, nor any mold, fungus or smell. It had no bad odor at all."
Whipple said he put the burger in his jacket pocket, where it spent a summer in the trunk of his car before being discovered in a closet a year or two later.
"It was purely a fluke about hanging on to it," Whipple said.
Whipple said the burger has since survived without refrigeration or any other types of preservation and still looks like it did the day he bought it, sans pickle.
He said he does not know how the burger managed to survive for so many years without any signs of mold or decomposition.