Monolith Down, Alps Up, Extreme Gin and More Mysterious News Briefly — December 4, 2020

Mysterious News Briefly — December 4, 2020

Just when you thought monolith mania couldn’t get more maniacal, Vice reports that the California monolith was knocked down and carried away by men who replaced it with a wooden cross while spouting racist platitudes. This is one time when you wish these monoliths really were planted there by avenging aliens.

A hacker used his pandemic downtime to develop a way to hack into any nearby iPhone using a Raspberry Pi and $100 worth of Wifi equipment – a technique that doesn’t require touching the phone or having the owner do anything. Finally, an alibi for when your neighbor asks about that huge stack of Amazon boxes on your doorstep.

A paranormal investigator in Smithfield, Rhode Island, has moved into what he claims is the haunted basement of a house that belongs to a relative and plans to stay for a year to conduct a thorough investigation. “Make him show you the ghost first,” said every parent with a kid who moved back into the basement using the same excuse.

A man admitted to a Chicago emergency room with breathing problems was in worse shape when he noticed that the urine in his catheter bag had mysteriously turned green, but doctors eventually traced it to the general anesthetic propofol. Get ready for his new book, “I Do Not Like Green Pee Exams, I Do Not Like Them, Sam I Am.”

A new Swiss study found out that the Alps are rising faster than they’re eroding and the result is a steady increase in altitude. “Now you tell us,” said ski jumpers complaining about their scores.

Using submerged sediment cores sampled during ship expeditions in the North Sea, researchers found that some parts of Doggerland, the ancient land mass between Great Britain and the Netherlands, survived the massive Storegga tsunami and remained inhabited by Stone Age humans for thousands of years. Now they need to find either a stone chip fryer or stone ice skates to determine which side they belonged to.

Anno Distillers has unveiled Anno Extreme 95 Gin, the “world’s strongest gin” at 95% AVB or 190 proof, which comes with a small beaker to help measure the proper amount for mixed drinks. One martini with this stuff and you’re shaken, two and you’re no longer stirring.

An Enigma encryption device used by the Nazis to send secret message during World War II has been found on the bottom of the Baltic Sea by workers retrieving abandoned fishing nets. Was it abandoned to keep it out of Allied hands or thrown out by a frustrated slow Nazi typist with two left thumbs?

Long believed to have originated during World War I, trench fever – caused by a bacteria from lice that affected 500,000 British soldiers – has been traced back 2,000 years using the teeth of ancient Romans who lived in unsanitary conditions. Trench fever is actually making a comeback – is there anything 2020 won’t subject us to?

Scientists at Korea University have developed a microscope that uses penetrating laser beams to see the brains of living mice without having to drill a hole in their skulls. No, it won’t work if you shine a flashlight in your brother’s ear, but you already tried that, didn’t you?

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