India: Train passengers spurred into action by plight of elephant in hole
A baby elephant is stuck in a ditch near the railway track in Goalpara Photo: Barcroft
A young elephant was rescued after slipping from a railway embankment and becoming trapped.
The accident happened near a railway track in Goalpara district of Assam state, north east India. A passing train stopped and passengers disembarked to help the animal out of its predicament.
Although the elephant was frightened by its fall, it had not injured itself, and was later helped to safety.
Accidents featuring elephants are not uncommon in India.
Maria von Trapp, third from left, performed with her family around the US
Maria von Trapp died at her home in Vermont on Tuesday, her brother, Johannes von Trapp, told the Associated Press.
He said she was a “lovely woman who was one of the few truly good people”.
Von Trapp and her family fled Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938 and ended up performing around the US.
Their story eventually inspired the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, The Sound of Music, and subsequent 1965 hit film.
It tells the tale of a young woman who leaves an Austrian convent to become a governess to the seven children of a naval officer widower, Georg von Trapp.
‘Remarkable’
Maria von Trapp was the second-oldest daughter of Capt von Trapp – with his first wife – and was portrayed as Louisa in the musical.
Her family moved to the US state of Vermont in 1942 after visiting during a singing tour, and later opened a lodge in the town of Stowe, which they still operate.
Writing in a blog post on the lodge’s website, von Trapp described how it was her ill health as a child that led her father to employ a governess to teach her and her siblings.
“She came to us as my teacher and after three years became our second mother,” she said.
Marianne Dorfer, a family friend who runs the von Trapp Villa Hotel in Salzburg told the Austrian Times that von Trapp had suffered from a weak heart since childhood.
Ms Dorfer said it was because of Maria’s ill heath that her father decided to hire a governess. “That of course then led to one of the most remarkable musical partnerships of the last century,” she added
The Sound of Music was based loosely on a 1949 book by the governess, who became Capt von Trapp’s second wife and died in 1987.
Man attempts 360 degrees Loop the Loop run
Running upside down on a Loop the Loop – it sounds almost impossible.
But stunt-man and gymnast Damien Walters spent over four months planning with Mechanical Engineers in Boston to try to complete the seemingly gravity-defying feat.
They built a 10ft high Loop the Loop and the scientists calculated that it should be possible for Walters to complete the stunt if he ran at a constant velocity of 8.65mph around the 360 degrees track.
Watch the video to see how he did it:
From London’s Daily Telegraph
