NEWS OF THE WEIRD
Bits and pieces of the bizarre, the horrific and the downright puzzling, scooped up from various parts of the web so you don’t have to. Yer welcome.
Big bang theory?
Autoblog recently reported a story about a semi truck carrying 13 tons of Degree deodorant in aerosol cans that exploded at an Oklahoma truck stop. The spray cans fired off as projectiles in all directions — even bouncing off the fire truck that responded to the blaze.
The explosion occurred early morning at a Love’s truck stop off I-44 near the town of Big Cabin, northeast of Tulsa, where the driver had stopped with brake problems. The hot brakes caught the tires on fire, and the blaze spread to the trailer and its explosive contents.
“It looks like Roman candles going off,” Big Cabin Fire Chief Kevin Oakley told local media “And you’re walking through everything, it looks like a war zone. Especially at 5 o’clock in the morning.”
The most interesting thing about the whole event wasn’t the fire but rather the aftermath — thousands of incinerated spray cans scattered like spent shell casings , as the chief said, a war zone.
On the bright side, a reporter tweeted, “To certain degree, the scene smelled lovely.”
Kids find the darndest things
Motor 1 had a recent story about teenagers in Brazil who broke into an old building only to discover a huge collection of classic cars that looked like they’d been gathering dust for decades.
The kids filmed their escapades and posted the video on WhatsApp. It has now become a police matter.
The cars belonged to a collector who basically kept a private museum there. In addition to the cars, there was a technical library, various parts for the machines, a collection of gas pumps, and even a reconstruction of an old coffee shop.
The vehicles included cars built between the 1920s to the 1970s, including a Ford Model T and Citroën DS. The first floor alone included a Chevrolet Corvair, 1952 Chevrolet Styleline, , and Hudson Hornet.The license plates indicated they hadn’t been on the road in decades.
On a second floor, rare vehicles were on wooden planks that appeared ready to collapse. The machines included an Austin A90 Atlantic coupe and convertible, Chrysler Airflow, 1938 and 1940 Ford coupes.
Until the 1990s or 2000s, it was visited only by collectors and friends of the owner and was never open to the public. Time passed, and the owner locked the building. Among the heirs who were twins, one wanted to keep the collection together, and the other preferred to sell everything.
Over time, the place essentially became abandoned. That is, until a group of 10 teenagers, who were around 15 years old, decided that it was time to find out what was inside that “castle” and invaded the private property.
They broke into the collection and got into the cars without the slightest ceremony. They screamed with excitement at their magnificent “discovery.” Instead of keeping it a secret, they preferred to film everything and spread the images through WhatsApp. The next day, the police were already on the scene, and the cops were in contact with the kids’ parents.
Biogas reduces CO2 emissions by 95%
Scotch whisky giant Glenfiddich has begun the process of converting its delivery trucks to run on low-emission biogas made from waste products from its whisky distilling process as part of a “closed loop” sustainability initiative.
Glenfiddich said it has installed fueling stations at a distillery in northeastern Scotland that uses technology developed by William Grant & Sons to convert its production waste and residues into an Ultra-Low Carbon Fuel (ULCF) gas
Stuart Watts, distillery director at family-owned William Grant & Sons, said traditionally Glenfiddich has sold off spent grains left over from the malting process to be used for a high-protein cattle feed.
But through anaerobic digestion — where bacteria break down organic matter producing biogas — the distillery can also use liquid waste from the process to make fuel and eventually recycle all of its waste products this way.
The distiller, which sells more than 14 million bottles of single-malt whisky a year, said its waste-based biogas is already powering three specially-converted trucks that transport Glenfiddich spirit from production at Dufftown through to bottling and packaging, covering four William Grant & Sons sites in central and western Scotland.
The distiller said the biogas cuts CO2 emissions by over 95% compared to diesel and other fossil fuels, and reduces other harmful particulates and greenhouse gas emissions by up to 99%. Glenfiddich currently has a fleet of around 20 trucks.
Each truck will displace up to 250 tons of CO2 annually, Glenfiddich said.
The trucks Glenfiddich is using are converted vehicles from truckmaker Iveco that normally run on liquefied natural gas.
The Scottish whisky industry hopes to hit carbon net zero targets by 2040
And finally….
The kids are alright?
Spotted on a highway in Catalunya, Spain, the Audi RS6 Avant was being driven with two kids in the trunk. Taking into consideration they were unable to close the tailgate, chances are those were a couple of teens riding in the trunk area.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the RS4 Avant was being driven at highway speeds, so it’s fairly easy to imagine a worst-case scenario, be it a rear-end collision or hard braking. With no seatbelts for those teenagers to hold them tightly in place, things could go horribly wrong in a matter of seconds.
Local reports say a French tourist was behind the wheel of the RS4 Avant and was heading to the Costa Brava, a coastal region of Catalonia in northeastern Spain. He was pulled over by the police and handed an €840 (nearly $1,000) fine for breaking no fewer than six driving laws: two violations for carrying two kids under the age of three in the back seats without proper child restraints, one for reckless driving, one for carrying more people than seats, and two more for putting two teenagers in the trunk.
