Why Yorkshire town’s Christmas tree is still up
And other stories from the stranger side of life
A town in East Yorkshire still has its Christmas tree up because a wood pigeon lives in it. Although Beverley town council planned to take the tree down in January, the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 states that it’s illegal to mobe, damage or destroy the nest of any wild bird while it’s in use or being built. “Six months on from the end of the festive period the tree is certainly looking worse for wear”, said Metro, and “its green needles have turned a rather unattractive shade of brown”.
Intelligence chief says we’re not alone
A US intelligence chief has claimed that we are not alone in the universe, reported the Daily Star. Speaking on a documentary, David Charles Grusch, who worked for the US defence department’s National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, said: “We are definitely not alone. Absolutely the data points empirically that we're not alone.” He added that he had seen photographs and read reports relating to crashed spacecrafts.
Family find one million copper pennies
A family in California found one million copper pennies in an old home, reported Fox News. John Reyes, a realtor from southern California, was helping his wife clean out her father’s Los Angeles home, when he found the coins stowed away in a cramped crawlspace. The coins are worth anywhere from $10,000 at face value to potentially much more. However, the family are having trouble cashing them in after banks but said there were far too many coins for their vaults to handle.
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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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