Thread: Strange News

Rare copy of 1787 Constitution up for auction, with $1M opening bid

One of only a handful of ratified copies of the United States Constitution is expected to be auctioned off later this month with a starting bid of $1 million.

North Carolina homeowners found the document while rummaging through an old filing cabinet as they prepared to sell their house, which sits on property bought by then Gov. Samuel Johnston in the 1700s.

This listing is a copy of the document that was both signed by then-Secretary of Congress Charles Thomson and originally printed, according to the auction house.

The auction house said that the sale, expected to take place on Sept. 28, is the only one for a signed and ratified copy of the document since 1891.

“We don’t know if that copy still survives, and if it does, whether it is now among the eight known institutional copies,” it wrote in the listing.

The listing is currently at $1 million but the auction house expects the next bid to be at $1.1 million or more, according to the website.

Six-year-old abducted from California park in 1951 found alive after seven decades

A man who was abducted as a six-year-old while playing in a California park in 1951 has been found more than seven decades later thanks to the help of an online ancestry test, old photos and newspaper clippings.

The Bay Area News Group reported on Friday that Luis Armando Albino’s niece in Oakland – with assistance from police, the FBI and the justice department – located her uncle living on the US east coast.

Albino, a father and grandfather, is a retired firefighter and Marine Corps veteran who served in Vietnam, according to his niece, 63-year-old Alida Alequin. She found Albino and reunited him with his California family in June.

On 21 February 1951 a woman lured the six-year-old Albino from the park in West Oakland, where he had been playing with his older brother, and promised him in Spanish that she would buy him candy.

Instead, the woman kidnapped the Puerto Rico-born boy, flying him to the east coast, where he ended up with a couple who raised him as if he were their own son, the news group reported. Officials and family members didn’t say where on the east coast he lives.

For more than 70 years, Albino remained missing but he was always in the hearts of his family and his photo hung at relatives’ houses, his niece said. His mother died in 2005 but never gave up hope that her son was alive.

Oakland police acknowledged that Alequin’s efforts “played an integral role in finding her uncle” and that “the outcome of this story is what we strive for”.

In an interview with the news group, she said her uncle “hugged me and said ‘Thank you for finding me’ and gave me a kiss on the cheek”.

Oakland Tribune articles from the time reported that police, soldiers from a local army base, the Coast Guard and other city employees joined a huge search for the missing boy. San Francisco Bay and other waterways were also searched, according to the articles. His brother, Roger Albino, was interrogated several times by investigators but stood by his story about a woman with a bandana around her head taking his brother.

The first notion that her uncle might be still alive came in 2020 when, “just for fun”, Alequin said, she took an online DNA test. It showed a 22% match with a man who eventually turned out to be her uncle. A further search at the time yielded no answers or any response from him, she said.

Early this year, she and her daughters began searching again. On a visit to the Oakland public library she looked at microfilm of Tribune articles – including one that had a picture of Luis and Roger – which convinced her that she was on the right track. She went to Oakland police the same day.

Investigators eventually agreed the new lead was substantial, and a new missing persons case was opened. Oakland police said last week that the missing persons case was closed, but they and the FBI considered the kidnapping investigation to still be open.

Luis was located on the east coast and provided a DNA sample, as did his sister, Alequin’s mother.

On 20 June, investigators went to her mother’s home, Alequin said, and told them both that her uncle had been found.

“We didn’t start crying until after the investigators left,” Alequin said. “I grabbed my mom’s hands and said, ‘We found him.’ I was ecstatic.”

On 24 June, with the assistance of the FBI, Luis came to Oakland with members of his family and met with Alequin, her mother and other relatives. The next day Alequin drove her mother and her newfound uncle to Roger’s home in Stanislaus County, California.

“They grabbed each other and had a really tight, long hug. They sat down and just talked,” she said, discussing the day of the kidnapping, their military service and more.

Luis returned to the east coast but came back again in July for a three-week visit. It was the last time he saw Roger, who died in August.

Alequin said her uncle did not want to talk to the media.

“I was always determined to find him, and who knows, with my story out there, it could help other families going through the same thing,” Alequin said. “I would say: don’t give up.”

‘A beacon of hope’: Indigenous people reunited with sacred cloak in Brazil

Denmark sends 300-year-old feathered cloak considered an ancestor by Tupinambá de Olivença to Rio

The scene resembled a funeral: seven Indigenous people, overcome with tears, gathered around a loved one resting in a coffin-like wooden box.

Instead of grief, however, it was a moment of celebration: the long-awaited reunion between the Tupinambá de Olivença people and a sacred feathered cloak that was taken from Brazil at least 335 years ago.

The relic – which the Indigenous people consider not as an object but as an ancestor – had been at Denmark’s National Museum until July, when it was sent to Rio de Janeiro.

It will be publicly unveiled at a ceremony at Brazil’s National Museum on Thursday attended by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. But the first private encounter between the Tupinambá of Olivença and the cloak took place on Sunday, in an intimate moment witnessed by the Guardian.

The reunion had been eagerly anticipated: after the cloakÂ’s return to Brazil, the Indigenous group had complained that they were not initially given the chance to perform their reception rituals for the sacred relic, which they refer to in the same terms they would to a person.

“We spoke to him, and he responded,” said Cacique Maria Valdelice Amaral de Jesus, 62, known as Jamopoty Tupinambá.

Jamopoty said the cape had returned to resolve the numerous land disputes threatening Indigenous communities across Brazil, adding: “He said we must have our lands demarcated.”

She was joined in the temperature-controlled room by six other representatives of the Tupinambá de Olivença, who for about 20 minutes prayed and spoke to the cloak, which lay under an oxygen-free glass dome, as technicians carefully monitored the humidity.

JamopotyÂ’s remarks were recorded by the documentary director Carina Bini who, with the Indigenous leaderÂ’s consent, shared them with the Guardian.

“You’re lying down, but you’ll stand up. We came to visit you,” she said.

“I don’t even have words. It’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” she said as tears ran down her face, which was painted with the red dye of annatto seeds.

Her partner, Averaldo Rosario Santos, told the cloak that its return was “a beacon of hope for all the Indigenous peoples that remain in this once-invaded Brazil”.

Tupinambá cloaks – typically made from thousands of scarlet ibis feathers – were used as ceremonial vestments by coastal Indigenous peoples, said Amy Buono, an assistant professor of art history at Chapman University.

“These capes probably functioned as supernatural skins, transferring the vital force from one living organism to another,” said Buono, who has studied this cloak and 10 others still in European museums in Denmark, Italy, France, Belgium and Switzerland.

“Tupinambá capes were some of the most sought-after artefacts in the early 16th century,” she said. Several Tupinambá cloaks were worn by the courtiers during a 1599 procession at the court of the Duke of Württemberg in Stuttgart.

The newly returned cloak was first inventoried by Denmark in 1689 as part of the collection of Frederick III, possibly after it was taken from Brazil by Dutch forces, which occupied the state of Pernambuco from 1630 to 1654.

“When the cloak was taken from us, it weakened our community,” said Jamopoty.

The Tupinambá de Olivença’s fight for the cloak’s repatriation began in 2000 when it was loaned for an exhibition in São Paulo. Jamopoty’s mother, Nivalda Amaral de Jesus, who was known as Amotara, visited the exhibit and demanded its return to Brazil.

At the time, the Tupinambá were not even officially recognised as an Indigenous people – they were even described as extinct in history books.

Under pressure from Amotara (who died in 2018) and other leaders, the Tupinambá de Olivença were finally recognised in 2001 by the Brazilian government.

Eight years later, the first step was taken towards demarcating their territory – an area of 47,000 hectares spanning three municipalities in Bahia.

Since then, however, the Brazilian government has made no further progress in mapping their territory, which has led to land grabs by cocoa farmers and tourism developers.

About 200 Tupinambá de Olivença made the 1,250km journey to Rio to receive the cloak, camping near the National Museum, which is still being rebuilt after a huge fire destroyed about 85% of its collection in 2018.

The museumÂ’s director, Alexandre Keller, said the cloak would go on display to the public when the museum reopens in April 2026. Until then, it will be available only to researchers and Indigenous people.

There is no indication that any other Tupinambá cloak will be repatriated but Buono argued that they should all return to Brazil: “These capes were collected by Europeans to be displayed as curiosities and studied for their materials.

“But for the Tupinambá these were, and continue to be, sacred, living forces. Their presence in Brazil will be an extremely important marker of communal identity and evidence for land rights and other legal matters,” she said.

Briton becomes youngest woman to climb world’s 14 highest peaks

A 23-year-old has become the youngest woman to climb all 14 of the world’s 8,000-metre-plus peaks.

Adriana Brownlee reached the 8,027-metre summit of Shishapangma in Tibet on 9 October, becoming the second British person to complete the gruelling feat. It came three years after Brownlee reached the top of Everest and resolved to climb all 14 of the world’s highest peaks, the Times reported.

As she neared the top of Shishapangma, she told the newspaper, “I started to cry. I hadn’t reached the summit yet, I couldn’t even see it, but I knew it was going to happen. It took another hour before we reached the incredible summit. By this time it was just sunrise and we had a beautiful clear sky.

“It was the most incredible moment. I cried again remembering that I had just summited all 14 8,000-metre peaks and made history.”

Brownlee, who grew up in south-west London and attended the University of Bath, is said to have laid out her ambition as an eight-year-old at primary school, writing: “I would like to be famous for climbing the highest mountain in the world … and be one of the youngest girls to do this.”

The 14 highest peaks are Everest, K2, Kangchenjunga, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Dhaulagiri I, Manaslu, Nanga Parbat, Annapurna I, Gasherbrum I, Broad Peak, Gasherbrum II and Shishapangma.

For her last climb, Brownlee climbed without the use of supplementary oxygen, making it an even tougher challenge.

“It’s all about intrinsic motivation for me and wanting to push my body and achieve my personal goals,” she said. “Mountaineering is my escape in life, it makes me feel free and truly connected with myself so it becomes an obsession to go back.

“I quit university and my degree to pursue a career in mountaineering and sacrificed friendships, regular teenage life and more, but it was all worth it.”

Looking ahead, she said she wants to work with others with an enthusiasm for mountaineering. “I will stay in the mountains, but now want to help others achieve their dream by creating a new generation of high-altitude mountaineering and trekking experiences which focuses on safety and clients’ past experiences.”

Fewer than 100 people have climbed all 14 peaks, all of which are in the Himalayas and Karakoram range. The first British climber to do so was Alan Hinkes in 2005.

Hinkes told the Times: “I have followed Adriana’s determined progress since first meeting her in 2021. It is great news to hear another Brit has climbed all 14 eight-thousanders.

“To climb all these mountains in less than four years is a remarkable achievement. It took me 17 years. None of these giant mountains are easy or safe and she has shown extreme dedication, as well as enduring a lot of suffering and risk to complete all the 8,000-metre peaks.”

Oooooh, very strange ​news.

After 67 days adrift, a Russian man was rescued but his brother and nephew are dead

A Russian man was rescued in the stormy Sea of Okhotsk after surviving for more than two months in a tiny inflatable boat that lost its engine, but his brother and nephew have died, officials said Tuesday.

The prosecutor’s office in the far east of Russia said that the man was rescued Monday by a fishing vessel off the Kamchatka Peninsula.

It didn’t name the survivor, but Russian news reports identified him as 46-year-old Mikhail Pichugin, who in early August set on a journey to watch whales in the Sea of Okhotsk together with his 49-year-old brother and 15-year-old nephew. Their bodies were reportedly found in the boat when the Angel fishing vessel rescued Pichugin.

Media reports said the three men traveled to the Shantar Islands off the northwestern shore of the Sea of Okhotsk in early August. They went missing after setting off for Sakhalin Island from Cape Perovsky in the Khabarovsk region on Aug. 9. A rescue effort was launched but failed to locate them.

Russian media reported that the trio had a small food ration and about 20 liters (5.2 gallons) of water when their engine failed and they found themselves adrift.

Pichugin weighed about 50 kilograms (110 pounds) when he was found, having lost half of his body weight, news reports said.

When the crew of the fishing vessel spotted the tiny inflatable boat on their radar, they initially thought it was a buoy or a piece of junk, news reports said, but they turned on the spotlight to make sure and were shocked to see Pichugin.

He didn’t immediately say how he managed to survive in the Sea of Okhotsk, the coldest sea in East Asia and known for its gales, and how his brother and nephew died. The crew of the ship that rescued Pichugin found their bodies tied to the boat to prevent them from being washed away by the sea, news reports said.

When Pichugin was rescued, his boat was drifting about 11 nautical miles off Kamchatka’s shore, about 1,000 kilometers (about 540 nautical miles) from their departure point on the other side of the Sea of Okhotsk.

A video released by the prosecutor’s office showed an emaciated man in a life jacket desperately shouting “come here!” and the crew working to pull him back to safety.

“I have no strength left,” Pichugin said as he was taken to safety.

Prosecutors said that they launched an investigation into the incident on charges of violation of safety rules that resulted in deaths.

Pichugin was rushed to an emergency care unit at the Magadan hospital. Chief doctor Yuri Lednev told reporters that he was suffering from dehydration and hypothermia but was in stable condition.

Prosecutors said that they launched an investigation into the incident on charges of violation of safety rules that resulted in deaths.

Good idea, hit him while the trauma is fresh.

Man Couldn’t Buy Lottery Ticket He Wanted, Then He Won $9.2M Prize

Man Was Angry He Couldn’t Buy the Lottery Ticket He Wanted. Then He Won $9.2M Prize: 'Speechless'

An Illinois man got the surprise of a lifetime when a broken machine led him to buy a ticket for the wrong lottery game, but he still ended up winning a $9.2 million prize.

“It was a normal day, just like any other," the man, who has chosen to remain anonymous, told Illinois Lottery officials in a press release obtained by PEOPLE.

"I was picking up groceries at Jewel and on my way out the door, I decided to buy a lottery ticket,” he added.

However, he went on to say that he "wanted to buy a ticket for a different game" but the "machine got stuck on Lotto."

"I was a bit frustrated. I said, ‘What is going on? The machine won’t give me the right game!’" he added. But, eventually he decided to just go with it and buy the Lotto ticket.

“The morning after the drawing, I scanned the ticket at a machine to check if it was a winner. When the machine showed the $9.2 million prize amount, I couldn’t believe it!,” the winner told lottery officials.

“I looked at my wife and she was completely speechless," he added. "We are laughing over how angry I was at the broken machine – and we're so grateful for how it all turned out."

Per the Illinois Lottery, this win marks the second largest Lotto prize won this year in the state.

It is almost Halloween. That means it is time for a bat beauty contest

The Bureau of Land Management has hosted the online competition since 2019 to raise awareness about the animal’s ecological importance. The federal agency posts photos of bats on its Facebook and Instagram accounts, and then asks people to vote for the cutest one. The bats are part of wild populations living on public lands, and are photographed by agency staff.

The first round of voting began Thursday and pitted a Townsend’s big-eared bat named “Sir Flaps-A-Lot” from Utah against a hoary bat fittingly named “Hoary Potter” from Oregon. The contest coincides with the start of Bat Week, during which bat experts across the country and the world hold educational events celebrating the only flying mammal.

The defining feature of a Townsend’s big-eared bat is, unsurprisingly, its ears, which can reach a length of 1.5 inches (38 millimeters). The large ears funnel sound into the ear canal, provide lift during flight and help with temperature regulation, the Bureau of Land Management said in its Facebook post presenting the first two contestants.

Hoary bats, meanwhile, are known for swift flight and wrapping themselves in their own tails to mimic leaves and hide from predators, the agency said. Due to this attribute, it estimated Hoary Potter would be “the perfect candidate for seeker on this year’s Quidditch team,” referring to the game in Harry Potter that is played on flying brooms.

Neither species are federally listed as endangered. However, Oregon has included them on its list of species needing conservation attention, and Utah has done the same for the Townsend’s big-eared bat.

Emma Busk, the BLM wildlife technician who photographed Hoary Potter, said bats around the world play a key role in the environment by eating insects and pollinating flowers and fruits. But they’re increasingly facing the threats of habitat loss, disease and light pollution, and are often misunderstood as scary disease carriers, she said.

“There’s a lot of fear and misconceptions around bats,” she said, noting that people often associate rabies with the animal. “But less than 1% of all bat populations actually carry rabies, and the bat-to-human disease transmission is actually really low.”

Busk is rooting for Hoary Potter in the hopes that an Oregon bat will win the beauty contest for a third time. Last year, “William ShakespEAR,” a female Townsend’s big-eared bat from southern Oregon whom Busk also photographed, claimed the crown. And in 2022, a canyon bat named “Barbara” similarly hailing from southern Oregon was declared the winner.

“Our effort every year is to just collect as much data as we can on the species in our resource area, so that we do know how to better protect them moving forward,” Busk said.

The beauty contest will continue in rounds over the next week. It’s timed to wrap up on Halloween next Thursday, when the winner will be announced.

Ancient Mayan city discovered in Mexico jungle by accident | BBC News

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Lost Mayan city found in Mexico jungle by accident

PhD student finds lost city in Mexico jungle by accident

A huge Maya city has been discovered centuries after it disappeared under jungle canopy in Mexico.

Archaeologists found pyramids, sports fields, causeways connecting districts and amphitheatres in the southeastern state of Campeche.

They uncovered the hidden complex - which they have called Valeriana - using Lidar, a type of laser survey that maps structures buried under vegetation.

They believe it is second in density only to Calakmul, thought to be the largest Maya site in ancient Latin America.

The team discovered three sites in total, in a survey area the size of Scotland's capital Edinburgh, “by accident” when one archaeologist browsed data on the internet.

“I was on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organisation for environmental monitoring,” explains Luke Auld-Thomas, a PhD student at Tulane university in the US.

It was a Lidar survey, a remote sensing technique which fires thousands of laser pulses from a plane and maps objects below using the time the signal takes to return.

But when Mr Auld-Thomas processed the data with methods used by archaeologists, he saw what others had missed - a huge ancient city which may have been home to 30-50,000 people at its peak from 750 to 850 AD.

That is more than the number of people who live in the region today, the researchers say.

Mr Auld-Thomas and his colleagues named the city Valeriana after a nearby lagoon.

The find helps change an idea in Western thinking that the Tropics was where “civilisations went to die”, says Professor Marcello Canuto, a co-author in the research.

Instead, this part of the world was home to rich and complex cultures, he explains.

We can’t be sure what led to the demise and eventual abandonment of the city, but the archaeologists say climate change was a major factor.

Valeriana has the “hallmarks of a capital city” and was second only in density of buildings to the spectacular Calakmul site, around 100km away (62 miles).

It is “hidden in plain sight”, the archaeologists say, as it is just 15 minutes hike from a major road near Xpujil where mostly Maya people now live.

There are no known pictures of the lost city because “no-one has ever been there”, the researchers say, although local people may have suspected there were ruins under the mounds of earth.

The city, which was about 16.6 sq km, had two major centres with large buildings around 2km (1.2 miles) apart, linked by dense houses and causeways.

It has two plazas with temple pyramids, where Maya people would have worshipped, hidden treasures like jade masks and buried their dead.

It also had a court where people would have played an ancient ball game.

There was also evidence of a reservoir, indicating that people used the landscape to support a large population.

In total, Mr Auld-Thomas and Prof Canuto surveyed three different sites in the jungle. They found 6,764 buildings of various sizes.

Professor Elizabeth Graham from University College London, who was not involved in the research, says it supports claims that Maya lived in complex cities or towns, not in isolated villages.

"The point is that the landscape is definitely settled - that is, settled in the past - and not, as it appears to the naked eye, uninhabited or ‘wild’," she says.

The research suggests that when Maya civilisations collapsed from 800AD onwards, it was partly because they were so densely populated and could not survive climate problems.

Rare dime bought by Ohio farm family and hidden for decades fetches $500,000 at auction

An extraordinarily rare dime whose whereabouts had remained a mystery since the late 1970s has sold for just over $500,000.

What You Need To Know

• The coin has President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and it is one of two known coins without the distinctive "S" mint mark

• Three sisters inherited the dime after their brother died

• The sisters wish to remain anonymous

The coin, which was struck by the U.S. Mint in San Francisco in 1975, depicts President Franklin D. Roosevelt and is one of just two known to exist without its distinctive “S” mint mark.

Three sisters from Ohio inherited the dime after the death of their brother, who had kept it in a bank vault for more than 40 years.

The coin sold for $506,250 in an online auction that concluded Sunday, according to Ian Russell, president of GreatCollections, an auction house based in Irvine, California.

The only other known example of the “1975 ‘no S’ proof dime” sold at a 2019 auction for $456,000 and then again months later to a private collector.

The mint in San Francisco made more than 2.8 million special uncirculated “proof” sets in 1975 that featured six coins and were sold for $7. Collectors a few years later discovered that two dimes from the set were missing the mint mark.

Russell said the sisters from Ohio, who wanted to remain anonymous, told him that they inherited one of those two dimes but that their brother and mother bought the first error coin discovered in 1978 for $18,200, which would amount to roughly $90,000 today. Their parents, who operated a dairy farm, saw the coin as a financial safety net.

Rare coin sells for lots of money.

very strange news.

Butt still hurting climate denier or are you lonely again and need some attention

By the way,……..thought you had me on ignore

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Ruby slippers from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ are for sale nearly 2 decades after they were stolen

A pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz” is on the auction block nearly two decades after a thief stole the iconic shoes, convinced they were adorned with real jewels.

Online bidding has started and will continue through Dec. 7, Heritage Auctions in Dallas announced in a news release Monday.

The auction company received the sequin-and-bead-bedazzled slippers from Michael Shaw, the memorabilia collector who originally owned the footwear at the heart of the beloved 1939 musical. Shaw had loaned the shoes in 2005 to the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.

That summer, someone smashed through a display case and stole the slippers. Their whereabouts remained a mystery until the FBI recovered them in 2018.

Now the museum is among those vying for the slippers, which were one of several pairs Garland wore during the filming. Only four remain.

Grand Rapids raised money for the slippers at its annual Judy Garland festival. The funds will supplement the $100,000 set aside this year by Minnesota lawmakers to purchase the slippers.

The man who stole the slippers, Terry Jon Martin, was 76 when he was sentenced in January to time served because of his poor health. He admitting to using a hammer to smash the glass of the museum’s door and display case in what his attorney said was an attempt to pull off “one last score” after an old associate with connections to the mob told him the shoes had to be adorned with real jewels to justify their $1 million insured value.

The auction of movie memorabilia includes other items from “The Wizard of Oz,” such as a hat worn by Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West and the screen door from Dorothy’s Kansas home.

Wreck of lost US second world warship known as ‘the dancing mouse’ found

The wreck of the long-lost US warship USS Edsall, sent to the bottom of the sea during the second world war by the Japanese, has been discovered, US and Australian officials announced on Monday.

The warship was sunk on 1 March 1942, three months after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The Edsall was traveling across the Indian Ocean south of Java when it was sunk by Japanese dive bombers.

The Edsall’s formidable display in evading attacks before its demise led the Japanese to dub the ship “the dancing mouse”.

“I am honored to acknowledge the role #AusNavy played in discovering the wreck of @usnavy USS Edsall, a warship that holds a special place in our shared naval histories,” wrote Caroline Kennedy, the US ambassador to Australia, in an Instagram post to commemorate Veterans Day.

“We will now be able to preserve this important memorial and hope that the families of the heroes who died there will know their loved ones rest in peace,” said Kennedy in an accompanying video.

The second world war ship, only about 300ft in length, was carrying 153 sailors and several dozen army air forces pilots and soldiers. It had sustained damage from an earlier attack and deemed unfit for combat but was deployed to aid another ship when it encountered Japanese naval forces at about 4pm.

Despite its damaged state, the Edsall successfully dodged attacks for over an hour, swerving to avoid the hundreds of fired shells. The Edsall counterattacked with a smokescreen and torpedoes before eventually being overcome by Japanese dive bombers.

Historians say that a few people on board survived the sinking ship but were immediately picked up by enemy forces and later beheaded in a prison camp.

According to the US navy, the wreck was first discovered late last year south of Australia’s remote Christmas Island submerged in 18,000ft of water. The US cooperated with Australian officials to confirm the wreck was in fact the Edsall.

Mark Hammond, chief of the Royal Australian Navy, said in the video that the wreck was found by the MV Stoker, an Australian naval support ship that is normally used for hydrographic surveying.

The wreckage was subsequently examined with underwater robots and sonar. The Australian navy has not disclosed what the Stoker was doing when the Edsall was found, citing “operational security sensitivities”, according to the Washington Post.

More than 1,000 mariachis belt out classics like 'Cielito Lindo' in a Mexico City plaza

More than 1,000 mariachis gathered in Mexico City’s main plaza Sunday, strumming guitars and singing classics like “Cielito Lindo” to end a mariachi congress celebrating the musical form.

The number of musicians apparently topped the previous record of 700 mariachis at an earlier gathering in the Mexican city of Guadalajara.

The Guinness World Records organization hasn’t replied a message from The Associated Press asking whether Sunday's gathering broke the previous record.

The musicians, many of whom had arrived in Mexico's capital from other cities, expressed their joy at singing in the giant iconic plaza, saying the music is a family tradition they start learning at a young age.

Jesús Morales said his father taught him to play the violin at age 8, and at 13 he began playing with his uncles in the Mariachi Morales in the city of Hidalgo.

“The heritage that my dad mainly instilled in us is having respect for music and respect for our roots,” he said.

The mariachis played guitars, trumpets, violins and other instruments.

Aida Juárez is a mariachi with 20 years of experience. She is a pioneer of women’s mariachi groups.

“We feel proud that we broke (the record) it is a pride because we are Mexicans,” she said.

Diana Rocío Campos is a merchant who attended the event and loves the music.

“Anyone who listens to (the mariachi) gets very excited, whether they are Mexican or not,” she said. “People come from many countries like Colombia or Japan” to listen to the mariachis.

Banana taped to wall sells at auction for $6.24 million

"Comedian," Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan's piece that features a single banana duct-taped to a wall, sold at auction Wednesday night for $6.24 million, auction house Sotheby's said.

Why it matters: The controversial work first sold in 2019 for $120,000, and Sotheby's had estimated Wednesday's sale at $1 million to $1.5 million.

Catch up quick: "Comedian" debuted at Art Basel Miami in 2019 and caused a stir over the nature of art and commentary.

• The work is simply a banana from a grocery store, taped to a wall.
• The gallery owner who exhibited the fruit called it a "symbol of global trade."
• Cattelan later successfully defended a suit from another fruit-taping artist accusing him of copyright infringement.

By the numbers: The monthly average retail price for a pound of bananas was 57.4 cents nearly five years ago and now stands at 61.7 cents, according to the USDA.

• That's an increase of 7.5%.
• The price of a banana taped to a wall has now risen 5,100%.

Footprints in Kenya ‘show distant relatives of modern humans coexisted’

About 1.5m years ago a big-toothed cousin of prehistoric humans walked quickly along a lakeside in Kenya, footprints marking the muddy ground. But they were not our only distant relative on the scene: treading the same ground was the early human Homo erectus.

Researchers say an analysis of fossilised footprints discovered in deposits of the Turkana Basin, northern Kenya, suggest the marks were made by two different species on the human family tree who were in the same place within hours or days of each other.

While skeletal fossils have previously suggested these species may have coexisted, the timespans they can be dated to, and the size of the deposits they are found in, are too large to pin down interactions.

“This is the first direct snapshot of the two species together on the same immediate landscape,” said Dr Kevin Hatala, the first author of the research from Chatham University in the US.

Writing in the journal Science, Hatala and colleagues reported how, along with fossilised tracks from birds and other animals, they discovered a continual set of footprints in the deposits made by a single hominin individual.

The stride length of the trackway, they noted, suggested that individual was walking at a modestly fast pace. However, the impressions differed from those observed in modern humans, in terms of foot anatomy and the patterns of contact made by walking.

Instead, they said, the impressions appeared to fit with footprints expected from Paranthropus boisei, a species also known as Nutcracker Man in reference to its big teeth, which is not a human ancestor but sits on a side branch of our family tree.

“There are aspects of their big toe anatomy, in particular, that seem consistent with the patterns that we see in the footprints,” said Hatala.

The team also found three separate prints close by that were in different orientations to this trackway.

These, the researchers said, did appear similar to those observed in modern humans, suggesting they were made by Homo erectus, an ancestor of our own species that lived in the region at the time.

“I would expect the two species would have been aware of each other’s existence on that landscape, and they probably would have recognised each other as being ‘different’,” said Hatala. “This raises lots of fascinating questions about how they would have interacted, and we don’t have all of those answers yet.”

The researchers added that when they looked back at other examples of fossilised hominin footprints found in east Turkana from a similar time period, they realised some also showed signs of having been made by two different hominin species.

Prof Chris Stringer, the head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London and who was not involved in the work, described the research as fascinating, noting that while it was impossible to be completely sure which species made the tracks, the team had been careful in assessing the probabilities.

“It’s wonderful that these early human relatives can now be placed directly in a lakeside landscape, walking and wading on wet surfaces, and probably feeding on the plant and animal resources there,” he said. “[The authors] suggest that the two species with their different diets were probably not competing strongly at this time, hence their close and tolerant proximity in time and space.”

World's oldest known wild bird lays her first egg in four years at age 74

The world's oldest known wild bird is hatching a plan to continue her legacy.

Wisdom, a 74-year-old Laysan albatross, just laid her first egg in four years in Hawaii, according to U.S. Wildlife officials.

The queen of seabirds returned to Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Pacific Ocean last week and began interacting with a new male partner, the Pacific Region of the US Fish & Wildlife Service said in a post on X on Tuesday.

Wisdom returns to the same nesting site each year to reunite with her mate, and if possible, lay one egg, USFWS Pacific said. This is customary behavior for the Laysan albatross species, called mōlī in Hawaiian.

Each year, millions of them return to Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge to nest and raise their young. Wisdom, specifically, has been doing this since the Eisenhower administration, according to a Facebook post from USFWS Pacific.

For decades this wise bird reunited with the same partner, Akeakamai, but he hasn't been seen for many years, USFWS Pacific said.

Officials aren't sure how old Wisdom's new partner is, but said he was given a leg tag last week for future monitoring. By the looks of it in a video USFWS Pacific posted on X, the two wild birds are getting along egg-cellently. Wisdom can be seen rubbing her head against her new partner before he sat down to incubate their egg.

According to USFWS Pacific, he is "quite content" doing so and will remain incubating the egg for about three weeks until Wisdom relieves him.

Jon Plissner, a supervisory wildlife biologist at Midway Atoll NWR, said Wisdom seems to still have the energy and instincts for raising another chick and called her first egg in four years "a special joy."

"We are optimistic that the egg will hatch," he said.

Officials estimate that Wisdom has produced 50 to 60 eggs in her lifetime and has mothered as many as 30 chicks.

Wisdom was first identified and banded with number Z333 in 1956 after she laid an egg, according to USFWS Pacific. She would have been around six-years-old at the time, and large seabirds like her aren’t known to breed before age five.

The typical lifespan of a Laysan albatross is 68 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

More than 3,000 fake Gibson guitars seized at Los Angeles port

More than 3,000 fake Gibson electric guitars shipped from Asia were seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at the Los Angeles-Long Beach Seaport, authorities said.

Had the guitars been authentic, they would have been worth $18 million, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement. The agency said Gibson confirmed the guitars that were intercepted were counterfeit.

Gibson, founded in 1894 and based in Nashville, Tennessee, has the top market share in premium electric guitars and all its guitars are handcrafted in Nashville and Bozeman, Montana.

“These fraudulent guitars may look and feel legitimate for unsuspecting consumers buying them from third party online sources, street markets, unauthorized retailers, and person-to-person transactions,” said Cheryl M. Davies, CBP director of field operations in Los Angeles. “As we approach the busy Holiday shopping season, consumers should pay attention on where they are buying these goods and how much they are paying, and if is too good to be true it probably is.”

Gibson guitars have been such a fixture in music history that rock-and-roll visionary Chuck Berry was laid to rest with his instrument, blues musician B.B. King affectionately named his “Lucille,” and rock guitarist Eric Clapton borrowed one from George Harrison to play the solo on the Beatles’ song “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

“This is really emotional and personal for us not only because of the protection of our players, but because of our Gibson team at large, including the artisans at our craftories in Nashville, TN and Bozeman, MT, who are generations of American families that have dedicated their entire lives to handcrafting Gibson instruments,” Beth Heidt, chief marketing officer at Gibson, said in a statement.

Authorities announced the seizure Tuesday but didn’t say when the guitars were taken, which country they came from, or who made them.

The investigation involving the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is ongoing.

Violating intellectual property is a felony that can result in a $250,000 fine and 10 years in prison.

4,000-year-old canals used for fishing by Maya predecessors discovered in Belize

Long before the ancient Maya built temples, their predecessors were already altering the landscape of Central America’s Yucatán peninsula.

Using drones and Google Earth imagery, archaeologists have discovered a 4,000-year-old network of earthen canals in what’s now Belize. The findings were published on Friday in the journal Science Advances.

“The aerial imagery was crucial to identify this really distinctive pattern of zigzag linear canals” running for several miles through wetlands, said study co-author Eleanor Harrison-Buck of the University of New Hampshire.

The team then conducted digs in Belize’s Crooked Tree wildlife sanctuary. The ancient canals, paired with holding ponds, were used to channel and catch freshwater species such as catfish.

Barbed spearpoints found nearby may have been tied to sticks and used to spear fish, said study co-author Marieka Brouwer Burg of the University of Vermont.

The canal networks were built as early as 4,000 years ago by semi-nomadic people in the Yucatán coastal plain. According to the study, the canals were used for about 1,000 years or longer, including during the “formative” period when the Maya began to settle in permanent farming villages and a distinctive culture started to emerge.

“It’s really interesting to see such large-scale modifications of the landscape so early – it shows people were already building things,” said the University of Pittsburgh archaeologist Claire Ebert, who was not involved in the study.

At the height of the Maya civilization, people in this region built temples, roads, pyramids and other monuments. They also developed complex systems of writing, mathematics and astronomy. Scientists know far more about this era because there are many other significant archaeological sites, said Ebert.

But this new study reveals a link between the earlier people on the landscape and the later emergence of Maya culture. These ancient channels for catching fish may have played a role in helping later Maya pyramids rise above the Yucatán rainforest.

“This shows continuity,” said the University of Pennsylvania archaeologist Jeremy Sabloff, who was not part of the research.

On a practical level, the fish-trapping canals helped the early people in the region diversify their diets and feed a growing population, building a foundation for later cultural heights.