A Chinese man who swore to God that he didn’t owe money to a neighbour was hit by lightning a minute later.

The man, named Xu, made the oath in front of a crowd of neighbours in Fuqing city, reports Southeast Express.

He vowed that he had never borrowed money from Mr Huang, who claimed Xu borrowed 500 yuan, the equivalent of £40, from him three years earlier.

"He borrowed 500 yuan three years ago from me for a friend’s marriage gift, but he has denied it ever since then," said Huang, who went to Xu’s home to demand payment.

"I told him that if he dared to swear to God that he didn’t owe me the money, then I would waive his debt," said Huang.

Xu made the oath, but was suddenly struck by lightning a minute later.

He was immediately taken to hospital where doctors confirmed he had been hit by lightning. He is expected to make a full recovery. (Southeast Express)

ShareThis

Lego has launched the biggest model in its 74-year history – a 5,922-piece replica of the Taj Mahal.

Priced at £200 the model will be on sale from September and is considered to be so tricky that only those over the age of 14 are recommended to tackle it.

When finished the model measures 3ft wide and 2ft tall and uses a whopping 800 more Lego bricks than the company’s next biggest model – the Star Wars Millennium Falcon.

Lego spokeswoman Jenny Brown said the Taj Mahal model was designed only for very experienced enthusiasts, adding: "It will certainly present a worthy challenge to most Lego fans – but a fun one".

The original Taj Mahal, in northern India, was built in the 17th century in memory of an emperor’s wife. It took 22 years and 20,000 workers.

It won’t take Lego fans quite as long; they can build their own replica, complete with domes, minarets, arches and stairs, in a little under 40 hours. (Roundup)

ShareThis

Canadian police say they have caught the world’s most prolific bike thief.

Officers recovered 2,865 stolen bicycles from the owner of a Toronto bike shop, reports The Guardian.

Igor Kenk, 49, is awaiting trial on 58 charges of theft, attempted theft, possession of stolen goods and possession of burglary tools.

He was arrested after Toronto police, noticing that bike theft had spiked sharply in June, planted bicycles on the streets and watched to see who stole them.

As plain clothes officers hid in wait, Kenk and another man walked past. Kenk seemed to tell his companion to cut the locks on two bikes, which he did, before the pair attempted to pedal away.

When police raided the Bicycle Clinic, the shop was so jam-packed that the fire service had to remove the upper-floor windows and lower the bikes out by rope.

Later, 200 more bikes were seized in Kenk’s home, along with large quantities of drugs, in a smart neighbourhood in Toronto.

Ten landlords around the city also reported that they had rented garages to Kenk, which were chock-full of bikes.

Some 15,000 people have visited the police station garage where the vast collection was taken, hoping to pick out their own lost bikes.

Toronto police officers said about 500 people had so far been reunited with their bicycles. (The Guardian)

ShareThis

A man in the US has managed to catch and land a record-breaking catfish on a Barbie fishing rod just 2-and-a-half feet long.

David Hayes and his 3-year-old granddaughter Alyssa were angling in the pond behind his Wilkes County home when she asked him to hold her rod while she nipped to the loo.

"They hadn’t no more than closed the door than the cat hit the cricket and took off," Mr Hayes told the Hickory Daily Record.

"He turned the water over and I saw his tail was about as wide as my two hands."

Alyssa returned to find her grandad battling with the monster fish.

"She said, ‘Papa, you’re going to break my rod,’ because it was bent double," said Mr Hayes.

After 25 minutes, the pink plastic toy prevailed and Mr Hayes landed the 21 lbs,1oz catfish on the 6 lbs test line.

At 32 inches long, it was 2 inches longer than the rod.

A state fisheries biologist from North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission has certified the record, which was nearly three pounds over the previous mark. (AP)

ShareThis

A 55-year-old Indian woman has given birth to quadruplets in the northern Italian city of Mantua, a local newspaper there reported Thursday.

The woman, who has lived in nearby Suzzara for 15 years, had gone home to India to be artificially inseminated after trying unsuccessfully in Italy, La Gazzetta di Mantova said.

"We have been waiting for this moment for 15 years," the babies’ 38-year-old father Pabla Maghar Singh said. "We are really very happy."

The four boys, born a week ago, were named Manav, Manmeet, Roshan and Radveer.

They were born two months premature, weighing between 750 and 980 grammes (one pound, 10 ounces and two pounds, two ounces), and are in incubators at the hospital, but are doing well, the report said.

The mother works for a cleaning business, while the father is a metal worker.

Italy has the greyest population in the European Union, and a slight increase in birthrate from 1.19 child per woman in 1995 to 1.32 in 2005 is attributed mainly to births among immigrants. (AFP)

ShareThis

A disabled tortoise has found love after being given her own set of wheels.

Arava arrived as a new resident at Jerusalem’s Biblical Zoo a few months ago, but staff quickly realised her rear legs were paralysed.

Weighing 25 kilograms, the ten-year-old spurred tortoise wasn’t strong enough to move herself using just her front legs.

So, staff built Arava a unique skateboard-cum-wheelchair by strapping a metal board to her stomach with two wheels attached.

Zookeepers reckon Arava’s renewed mobility has improved her quality of life no end.

She has even attracted the attention of an amorous male tortoise and the pair have begun mating. (roundup)

ShareThis

It doesn’t speak to you or give live traffic updates, but this is the world’s first sat nav – invented in the 1920s.

The Plus Fours Routefinder was designed to be worn on the wrist – relying on good old-fashioned paper maps wound around wooden rollers, which the driver turned en route.

The tiny scrolls also showed the mileage and gave a "stop" instruction at the journey’s end.

The device was intended to allow drivers to navigate around the UK, but with so few cars on the roads it never really took off.

Now consigned to the scrap heap of history, the Routefinder is one of many gadgets patented by inventors who were hoping to strike it rich with their bizarre contraptions.

It’s part of a collection of weird and wonderful inventions, all conceived between 1851 and 1951, which have gone on display at the British Library in London.

Other gadgets include a clockwork burglar alarm, a candle "blower-outer", a mechanical page turner and a skirt lifter – tongs that fitted to women’s waistbands to lift their skirts clear of puddles. (Ananova.com)

ShareThis

A British man has been banned from visiting his girlfriend’s home after neighbors complained about noisy sex, a local official said Thursday.

A court barred Adam Hinton, 32, from being within 110 yards of his 29-year-old girlfriend Kerry Norris’ apartment, Brighton and Hove City Council spokesman Mike Taggart said.

Residents of Norris’s publicly owned home had been complaining since 2006 about thumping music, banging headboards and screamed obscenities, Taggart said.

Neighbors also complained about Norris sunbathing naked in her yard, and were upset that a 6-year-old child in the building had been "subjected to the sort of obscenities you wouldn’t want a 6-year-old to hear," the spokesman said.

"She is a classic nightmare neighbor," Taggart said, insisting the case was not about sex. "It’s about allowing your neighbors to have a normal decent life without being disturbed."

The court granted the city council’s request for an injunction banning Hinton from the apartment because Norris had ignored a previous court order demanding that she be more quiet, Taggart said.

Norris last week was forced to pay $560 in fines and court costs for breaking the "noise abatement order," Taggart said.

Neither Norris or Hinton could be immediately located for comment. Brighton and Hove is located in southern England. (AP)

ShareThis

A pint-size down and out had made his home in a left luggage locker in a railway station.

Every evening, former art student Mike Kirsch, 29, slips into locker 501 at Dusseldorf station and beds down for the night.

At just 24 by 20 inches his railway residence may be handy for commuting but it’s certainly more bijou than palatial.

And even though he’s just eight stone, nine pounds and 5ft 6 inches, it’s still a squeeze for its occupant.

Mike hit the road after breaking up with his student girlfriend 10 years ago and quickly settled on the locker as a secure, dry bed for the night.

But now efficient German railway authorities are trying to remove him and have accused him of a breach of the peace.

Now Kirsch is facing nine months in prison but said: "Who knows. Maybe I will get another chance."(Ananova.com)

ShareThis

Meet Hailey Jo Hauer and Xander Jace Riniker – who were both born at 8:08 a.m. on 8/8/08, weighing 8 pounds, 8 ounces, in neighboring states in America.

Xander, born at St. Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is the eighth grandchild for his mother’s parents. And he is not the only one in his family with an unusual birthday: His 2-year-old brother, Kael, was born on 4/5/06.

Lindsey Hauer thought staff at Lake Region Hospital in Minnesota were joking when they told her the time of her daughter’s birth. And then she got a call from the birthing suite noting Hailey’s weight.

Nurse Jenny Harstad joked that she tried to shrink the baby to 18 inches from her actual 19.5 inches.

Several hospital staff members in Minnesota pledged to buy lottery tickets. And Chad Riniker, Xander’s father, said that eight had not been his lucky number before, but that now he was thinking about buying a lottery ticket.

‘I just might,’ he said. ‘If nothing else, with four children I should probably play the lottery.’ (AP/Metro.co.uk)

ShareThis