Passenger opens plane door for 'fresh air' and other tall tales

Our pick of the strange but true stories from around the world.

Plane passenger 'wanted fresh air'

A Chinese passenger on board a Xiamen Air flight from Hangzhou to Chengdu startled flight crew and passengers by opening the emergency exit shortly before take-off because he "just wanted fresh air". The incident is the latest in a spate of such incidents and comes just days after another traveller opened the door and deployed the evacuation slide on a China Eastern Airlines plane because he was in a hurry to get off.

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Hacker's typo foils massive bank heist

A spelling mistake in an online banking transfer instruction has led to the collapse of a massive bank heist in Bangladesh, which some reports suggest could have netted the thieves up to £700m. Hackers had broken into Bangladesh Bank's systems and begun transferring cash from the Federal Reserve Bank in New York to a series of fake accounts. However, one of them misspelt the word "foundation" as "fandation", prompting Deutsche Bank to question the transfer and expose the scheme. Despite the error, the unknown hackers had taken more than £56m before they were detected.

Police hunt for chimp in a top hat

Scotland Yard detectives are on the hunt for four baboons, a sloth, two lions, a zebra foal, a king penguin and a chimp in a top hat. It might sound like the "plot of a Disney animation", says The Times, but the animals were actually from one of the country's largest taxidermy collections. Around £100,000 worth of items were stolen from London Taxidermy's collection of props for hire, which have appeared in film franchises such as Harry Potter and James Bond. "It was clear that some of the animals were missing," said director Alexis Turner. "The ground floor was considerably less populated."