Plants cry out when they need watering
And other stories from the stranger side of life

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Plants cry out when they need watering but humans can’t hear their cries, said scientists. Recordings of tomato, tobacco, wheat, corn and cactus show that they make “occasional ultrasonic popping noises” that are “similar to bubble wrap”, said The Telegraph. Therefore, concluded Professor Lilach Hadany from the School of Plant Sciences and Food Security at the Wise Faculty of Life Sciences at Tel Aviv University, “an idyllic field of flowers can be a rather noisy place, it’s just that we can’t hear the sounds”.
Man accidentally orders 60 pairs of glasses
A man mistakenly ordered 60 pairs of reading glasses after misreading the quantity he was ordering. Chris Arnold posted an image of his dad on Twitter with the stacks of boxes of glasses next to him. Tom Arnold, from Perranporth, Cornwall, thought he had ordered 10 or 12 pairs of reading glasses so he was shocked when 60 pairs were delivered. Asked by the BBC if he had his glasses on when putting the order in, he replied: “Well, I thought I did, but trying to remember back, I might not have had them on.”
Campaign to cancel hash browns
The English Breakfast Society is demanding that hash browns be blacklisted from the traditional breakfast and replaced by the more traditional bubble and squeak, said The Times. The campaign group, which is dedicated to the history, heritage, and culture of the English breakfast, said “somebody had to put their foot down” or we’d “find kebab meat in our English breakfast before long”. The spokesperson added: “We’re all about bringing back the bubble.”
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A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
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.
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