Sleepy city commuters rubbed their eyes in surprise as Tower Bridge was opened - for a hot air balloon.
In what was claimed to be a new aeronautical feat, more than 500 mini balloons were woven together to create the contraption which sailed through the famous bridge. The mini balloons, stitched together with 18 miles of thread, made their way upstream from Wapping aided by a tug boat to keep them on course.
The event was to promote a new balloon-related comedy film, Up, in cinemas from next Friday. (PA)
IgNobel awards
Engineers who invented a brassiere that converts quickly into a gas mask, pathologists who determined that beer bottles can crack your skull even when empty and Irish police officers who mistakenly wrote tickets to "Driver's License" all won spoof "IgNobel" prizes last Thursday.
Prizes also went to Zimbabwe for issuing banknotes that range in value from one Zimbabwean cent to 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollars.
The IgNobel prizes - a play on the name of the Nobel prizes awarded every October from Stockholm and Oslo - are given out by the Harvard-based humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research.
This year the Public Health prize went to Elena Bodnar of Hinsdale, Illinois and colleagues who des-igned and patented a bra that can be quickly converted into a pair of gas masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander. (Reuters)
Cuba opts for 'no free lunch'
There may soon be no such thing as a free lunch, even in Cuba where the communist-run government began an experiment to close state-run lunchrooms and give workers money to buy their own meals.
Lunchrooms were closed at four government ministries in a trial that could be extended to the rest of the state's 24,700 lunchrooms across the country. About 3.5 million lunches have been served daily by the state. Instead of receiving lunch, the ministry workers will get a daily stipend of 15 pesos, the equivalent of about 70 US cents.
The government has said it is spending more than $350 million a year on the free lunches, which it can ill afford in the midst of a global recession that has hit Cuba hard.
The closings are aimed at ending one of a variety of state subsidies Cubans have received for years, but that President Raul Castro says are draining the economy. (Reuters)
Swimming to work
A BBC employee swam to work in a swimming pool fixed to the top of a lorry in an unusual fundraising challenge.
Harry Whinney, 38, from Barke-stone, Nottinghamshire, swam lengths of the pool as the lorry drove 17 miles down the A52 towards BBC Nottingham, where he works as a graphic designer.
The father of three undertook the unconventional commute as part of a five-day fundraising challenge he dreamed up himself involving canoeing, cycling, running, horse-riding and swimming. He aims to raise £10,000 for the East Midlands' air ambulances. To make a donation, visit www.harrys10grandchallenge.co.uk. (PA)
University thriller
The University of Florida's em-ergency contingency plans include one for if the campus is overrun by flesh-eating zombies.
The exercise lays out how university officials would respond to attacks by "flesh-eating, apparently life impaired individuals".
It notes that a zombie outbreak might include "documentation of lots of strange moaning". (PA)
Dinosaur eggs
Geologists have found a cluster of fossilised dinosaur eggs, said to be about 65 million years old, in a village in the indian state of Tamil Nadu.
"We found layer upon layer of spherical eggs and body parts of dinosaur and each cluster contained eight eggs," M. Ramkumar, a geologist at Periyar University who led a survey team, said.
The eggs, about 13-20cm in diameter and lying in sandy nests were discovered during a study funded by Indian and German scientific institutions. The clusters were under ash from volcanic eruptions on the Deccan plateau, which geologists said could have caused the dinosaurs to become extinct.
The nesting site was found along the banks and bottom of streams in the Cauvery river basin, containing clusters of fossilised eggs, dung and bone remains of dinosaurs. (Reuters)