By The Editors of WorldMag.com
Out in the cold
Highlighting the inherent danger of Alaskan endurance sports, a biker in the little-known Iditarod Trail Invitational fell off the trail and spent much of the first week of March lost in the freezing climes of the Alaskan wilderness. On March 7, a helicopter pilot spotted 53-year-old Australian adventurist Yair Kellner after the Aussie spent four days stranded in near-zero temperatures with winds gusting above 30 mph. Days earlier, Kellner crashed through ice and into a creek after taking a wrong turn during the 350-mile bike race. Once soaked in quickly freezing water, Kellner managed to drag himself and his bike ashore and negotiate his way to the top of the embankment, where he managed to light his portable stove. He tried to wring out his wet clothes, but, according to Kellner, no matter what he did, they kept developing icicles. To prevent hypothermia, Kellner built snow caves to escape the wind until his rescue.
No B’s, please
When the Kansas Jayhawks lost to underdog Baylor early in the Big 12 men’s basketball tournament on March 12, the Kansas Senate had had enough. On a voice vote the body passed a (purely symbolic) resolution that the Jayhawks should not play schools that begin with the letter “B” during March. Baylor, after all, wasn’t the first heavy underdog to beat Kansas in March: The Jayhawks, last year’s national champion, lost in the first round of the 2005 NCAA tournament to Bucknell and in 2006 to Bradley. The NCAA apparently wasn’t listening. Among the teams sharing a bracket with Kansas for this year’s NCAA tournament: Boston College.
Pillow case
Because people didn’t play nicely, San Francisco authorities say they may shut down the city’s burgeoning Valentine’s Day tradition: the mass pillow fight. This year, up to 3,000 people flocked to a city park as they have since 2006 for the pillow fight. But after the feathers flew, few stayed to clean up the mess. The city had to dispatch nearly 70 sanitation workers and a street sweeper to the park to straighten things up. “It was quite a mess, much more than we have experienced in previous years,” Mohammed Nuru, deputy director of the Department of Public Works, told United Press International. “Everywhere was feathers.”
Picture project
What did you do in high school? These four Spanish high-schoolers took pictures of Space. For a science project, students Gerard Marull Paretas, Sergi Saballs Vila, Marta Gasull Morcillo, and Jaume Puigmiquel Casamort rigged a $60 weather balloon with a $78 camera to float 20 miles above ground and into the stratosphere. After reaching 100,000 feet, the students’ balloon began loosing helium, but not before snapping off a series of dazzling digital images. The long descent back to the ground didn’t damage the camera’s image card. “We were overwhelmed at our results, especially the photographs, to send our handmade craft to the edge of space is incredible,” Marull told the Telegraph.
‘Not just another job’
In a sign of growing pressures on just about every sector of the American economy, bartender and Boston institution Eddie Doyle got the pink slip from bosses at the Bull & Finch Pub. For the uninitiated, the Bull & Finch served as the model bar for the hit sitcom Cheers while Doyle, a 35-year veteran of the Bull & Finch, served as the model for the show’s lead character, Sam Malone. “This bar, for me . . . it was not just another job,” Doyle said. “It was the perfect job.”
