Former nurse says NHS made her ‘fart against her will’
And other stories from the stranger side of life

A former nurse has sued the NHS, claiming that she was subject to hypnosis “experiments” at work which made her “fart against her will”. Xandra Samson, who worked at Ealing Hospital in London before being sacked in December 2019, told a tribunal she was the target of a little-known hypnotic practice called the “ideomotor phenomenon”, which allegedly forces people into unconscious behaviours. She lost the case.
Britain’s UFO hotspot is revealed
Yorkshire is the UK’s centre of UFO reports, with over 200 encounters being logged there over the past two decades. The most recent sighting came in June in Leeds, when two thin, black and curved elongated triangles were seen flying above and then stopping in mid-air. Nationally, between March and April 2020 the county racked up 192 UFO reports, a 200% increase on the year before.
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50p coin could be worth £60
An old 50p coin that is rarer and harder to find than the collectable Kew Gardens design could be worth up to £60. Released between 1992 and 1993, the EC 50p features a birds-eye view of a conference table with 12 chairs around it for each of the ministers, with the UK at the top of the table. Only 109,000 of the coins were minted - around half of that of the Kew Gardens coin, which has sold for as much as £100.
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