'Smart' toilet wins Nobel prize

And other stories from the stranger side of life

A dual toilet flush
(Image credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

"Reanimated spiders" and "smart toilets" have triumphed at the Ig Nobel prizes ceremony, said The Guardian. The prizes celebrate unusual areas of research that "make people laugh, then think", said the paper, and the Ig Nobel mechanical engineering prize went to the team that worked on reanimating dead spiders for use as mechanical gripping tools. The prize for public health was awarded to a smart toilet that monitor human waste for signs of disease uses an anal-print sensor to identify the user.

Ruins 'could prove Noah's Ark story'

Ruins found in Iraq could prove that the Noah's Ark story in the bible is true, according to a documentary. The Bible Conspiracies programme claims a remains found in the Babylon Province of Iraq match the description of the Tower of Babel, which is integral to the biblical flood story. The documentary also insists that the true son of God was not Jesus Christ, but a Greek philosopher, noted The Mirror.

Mystery white object in US sky

Police in a US town are trying to identify a mysterious white or translucent object seen flying in the daytime sky, said UPI. Illinois police boss Bruce Franks said he was off-duty when he received a call about a crowd that had gathered to watch a mysterious object in the sky. A spokesperson said police are still trying to identify the object, but they do not believe it originated from space or from China.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

For more odd news stories, sign up to the weekly Tall Tales newsletter

Explore More

 
Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.