Letter Sent Via Ballon Returns 15 years later by way of Fish

I noticed another interesting story from Friday. It turns out that fifteen years ago a school in Japan was celebrating its 120th year in operation and as part of their celebration the school had their students write short notes, attach those notes to balloons and send them skyward. The notes had a simple message - something like "My name is ________ and I am a student at ________school. We are celebrating our 120th year! Please send a return note." One balloon with such a note sailed at least 93miles away over the ocean popped and eventually came to rest on a sticky fish. Fifteen years later a fisherman caught the fish and returned the note. The young lady that wrote the note is now 21 years old and in college. Pretty interesting. I wonder what kind of pen that note was written with and what kind of paper was used? I think this story would make a good pen commercial for sharpie or some other pen company.

Brain Helmet Cure For Alzheimer's- Today's Odd News Award

A helmet has been created that can reverse the effects of memory loss and stimulate growth of brain cells! Wow! The helmet utilizes low levels of infra-red light and the three doctors credited with inventing the helmet claim that if worn as little as ten minutes a day, the damage from Alzheimer's and dementia can be reversed. Why stop here? If this helmet can reverse memory loss and stimulate brain cells, I could use one. Could this helmet help stimulate the next step in human evolution? We would look kind of strange walking around with helmets on, but I bet there would be a whole lot of us willing to suffer looking strange all day long in exchange for a better brain. While I think our best bet for medicine advancing the human race is nanotechnology, this is still a really cool idea. Congratulations - "Brain Helmet" - you are the oddest, most interesting news for Friday January 25, 2008.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html?in_article_id=510172&in_page_id=1774

Today's Odd News Award Goes To . . .?

Will it be "Woman' s Lost Father Turns Out to be Her Ex-Boss," "There is a Frog in My Salad - Curious," "Texas UFO Coverup?" or "Hershey's Crack,"

Each of these articles could prove to be today's Odd News Award winner, but there can be only one. And the winner is:

Hershey's Crack:
Hershey's came to it's senses today by discontinuing a candy that it has been producing that is easily confused with crack cocaine. What Hershey's realized was that they didn't need to make anything that looked like crack cocaine because most of the products that they produce are already highly addictive. Congratulations to the Odd News Award winner of the day. http://www.myfoxphilly.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=5578582&version=2&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.2.1

Woman's Lost Father Turns Out to be Her Ex-Boss: This is a strange and touching story of vietnamese woman who set out to find her father with few clues. This woman's mother died leaving only a ring, a photograph, and the knowledge that her former boyfriend (the father) was a Taiwanese national. The daughter moved to Taiwan to find her father and ended up accidentally leaving the photo and the ring in the possession of her boss. Her ex-boss, who up to this point was unaware of that he had a daughter, recognized the ring and the photo as items he had given his former girlfriend. The father and daughter reunited and DNA test confirm that they are father and daughter. That's a pretty good story! On the other hand, it technically is not today's story. It has been around for a few days. http://www.straitstimes.com/Latest+News/Asia/STIStory_198912.html

There is a Frog in My Salad - Curious: A Brooklyn lady bought some lettuce at an organic grocery and had kept it in her home refrigerator for several days before deciding to make a salad. She discovery a live tiny frog living in the lettuce - gross! Organic or not, you should thoroughly wash all vegetables before consumption. The lady's daughter named the frog "Curious." It is kind of odd that Curious the frog survived in a refrigerator for several days and even more peculiar that Curious didn't hop off of his lettuce leaf sooner, but I am not picking this one for today's Odd Award. It is not odd enough. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/01/24/2008-01-24_live_frog_in_lettuce_stuns_mom.html?ref=rss

Texas UFO Coverup: While the UFO sighting over Stephenville Texas occurred a few days ago, today the Air Force tried to clear up the matter by announcing that F-16 fighter planes were in the area for an exercise. When the sightings were first reported Air Force officials said that there were no Air Force aircraft in the area. Why give a statement at all without double checking? To add to this some of the observers were expert enough to know the difference between what they saw and F-16 fighters or even flares. Does the Air Force's attempt to resolve this situation: provide resolution or add to the mystery? This is an interesting development in the latest UFO sighting. Still, I'm not picking it as today's Odd Award winner.http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-ifos_24met.ART.North.Edition1.3787cf0.html

"Life On Mars" is today's Odd News Winner

Is there life on Mars? Take a look and see for yourself. Today NASA images from Mars show what appears to be bigfoot on Mars. Anderson Cooper on CNN suggested that the images could be an outcropping of rocks and he is probably right but if you haven't seen these images, you really should. You can google "life on Mars" and get several sources. If you do not want to go to the trouble here is a covenient link http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7205004.stm .

To me it looks like bigfoot but I don't for a minute believe that bigfoot is hanging out on mars. Still, "Life On Mars" is my pick for the first daily Odd News Award.

About the Odd News Awards

Welcome to the Odd News Awards!

The Odd News Awards have been created so that you can become the envy of the office, an interesting person, the life of the party. The Odd News army, an army of one - me, is dedicated to finding the most peculiar, most interesting news of the day so that you can save countless hours surfing for news that will wow your family, friends, and coworkers. Reading this blog could very well change your dismal social life by finally giving you something interesting to start a conversation with. At the very least, I hope to share with you something entertaining to talk about and provide a standard by which to judge the odd news of the day.