An army of 1,001 Chinese volunteers has set a new Guinness world record for “mattress dominoes”.
The volunteers, most of whom are domino lovers, first carefully arranged and leaned against 1,001 mattresses in an empty section of a shopping mall in Shanghai.
It was 10 minutes before the last one came down to finish the rally.
The former holder of the Largest Human Mattress Dominoes record is La Quinta Inns & Suites in the United States. Some 850 American volunteers participated in that event in New Orleans in February this year.
Are pens weapons?
Japanese customs officials who impounded 200 pens more than a year ago said yesterday the writing implements needed a weapons import licence because they were shaped just like bullets.
The pens, which are made from a mixture of titanium and other metals, are fashioned to resemble bullets on the non-writing end.
A Nagoya customs official said that under international regulations, the pens are classified as self-defence weapons, adding: “Special procedures are needed for the import of such products.”
UFO posters ban upheld
More than a decade after Swiss police barred a UFO religious group from putting up posters depicting aliens, Europe’s top rights court has ruled that the sect’s free speech had not been violated.
Police in the Swiss canton of Neuchatel in 2001 banned the Raelian group, which claims aliens created life on earth, from putting up the posters. They said the posters presented a public order threat because Raelians promote human cloning and “geniocracy”, in which leaders are picked according to their intelligence.
The poster was about one metre tall and across the top in big letters were the words: “The Message from Extraterrestrials”, according to the court.
Underneath was the phrase holding that: “Science at last is replacing religion.”