Zombie Minks, Havana Syndrome, Strange Auroras and More Mysterious News Briefly — May 19, 2021

Mysterious News Briefly — May 19, 2021

The European Space Agency and NASA’s Solar Orbiter finally got its day in the sun, so to speak, when it recently captured its first view of a coronal mass ejection or solar eruption with its Solar Orbiter Heliospheric Imager – and it was an accident that happened while passing behind the sun where its normally not recording. Did Mercury sneak in for a photobomb?

Blockchains – the cryptographic databases essential to cryptocurrencies – were once thought to be unhackable, but the popular exchanges Coinbase and Gate.io admit they’ve both been hacked recently and Gate.io actually had cryptocurrency stolen. Do crypto-bank robbers wear digital masks?

Those zombie minks – millions of COVID-infected minks killed and buried only to rise again as decomposition gasses pushed them out of their mass graves – are being dug up in Denmark and burned in waste incinerators used to generate electricity. If your toaster suddenly begins to move towards you – run!

Scientists examining the remains of 36 bubonic plague victims from a 16th century mass grave in Germany have found the first evidence that evolutionary adaptive processes caused by the disease may have helped pass immunity to later generations – proving once again that survival of the fittest is a good thing when it comes to plagues. Time to get back to the gym?

Bad news for fairy tale fans – a new study found that the ‘wicked stepmother’ was strictly fictional and having a real stepmother is better than having just one parent. Cinderella and Snow White are demanding that Disney reshoot some scenes.

A third suspected case of “Havana Syndrome” in the U.S. may have occurred near the entrance to the White House grounds where a White House official is said to have suffered severe symptoms and required “immediate medical treatment” due to possibly being hit by a directed energy weapon. The worst part is the cancellation of those celebratory Cuban cigar smokes on the White House roof.

While taking a new look at old video footage shot in Churchill in Manitoba, Canada, in 2002, scientists discovered a never-before-seen aurora called the Diffuse Auroral Eraser that was hidden by another aurora. Once again, your mom was right – never throw anything away.

Bad news for alligators – climate change may be messing with alligator sex ratios as changes in temperatures are causing entire populations in certain areas to be totally male or totally female. If you want to know what a predominantly male alligator swamp looks like … Congress!

Neutron stars – those dead stars that don’t become black holes – were thought to have a mass about 1.4 times the size of the sun but only 10 km in diameter, but a Florida State University researcher using new measurements says they may be larger than that, possibly as big as 14.25 km across. There goes any plans for the Neutron Star 10K race.

Test subjects using ancient Australian Aboriginal memory techniques – such as attaching facts to stories and landscapes to help “picture” where information is stored — were three times more likely to remember things than they were before learning the technique. Unfortunately, ancient Australian Aborigines had no concept of keys, remote controls or “why did I come in here?”.

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