A customer enters the Wells Fargo bank at One Montgomery Street in downtown San Francisco.
A New Year's Eve to forget?
"Officials with a Wells Fargo Bank in California are being tight-lipped about how the bank ended up being unlocked for 48 hours," United Press International reports. "A customer at the bank on Arena Boulevard in Sacramento said he arrived at the closed location Monday and discovered it had been left unlocked when it closed for business Saturday, KMAX-TV, Sacramento, reported."
It's June in January
"Register office data shows that thousands more people [in Britain]are tying the knot between October and March than in previous years, to save money on hosting receptions," reports The Daily Telegraph. "Companies offering wedding services are also reporting booming business as couples take advantage of prices thousands of pounds cheaper than during the peak summer months. … The unpredictability of the British weather is also said to be a contributing factor in couples' choosing the colder months. [Belinda Hanks, editor of Confetti, an online bridal magazine]added: 'A lot of people are coming around to the fact that even if you book a wedding in the summer, the weather in Britain is not guaranteed to be good. Going for a winter ceremony means people's expectations are not raised, so it is one less thing to get stressed about when planning the big day.' "
Getting a glow on
– "In 1862, [U.S.]Civil War soldiers reported glow-in-the-dark wounds," says Smithsonian magazine. "In 2001, two Maryland teens proposed a reason. The men were hypothermic, and their lower temperatures made ideal conditions for a bioluminescent bacterium called Photorhabdus luminescens, which inhibits pathogens."
– "In an example of life imitating art, biologists and bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego, have created a living neon sign composed of millions of bacterial cells that periodically fluoresce in unison like blinking light bulbs," says the university.
Grade students on weight?
"France's top diet guru Pierre Dukan is urging the government to grade students on their weight in a bid to curb growing obesity," Agence France-Presse reports. "In a book to be published Thursday, Mr. Dukan suggests that students in their last two years of high school be awarded extra marks if they manage to maintain an acceptable Body Mass Index … 'Obesity is a real public health problem that is rarely – if at all – taken into account by politicians,' Mr. Dukan told newspaper Le Parisien ahead of the book's launch." The book is titled An Open Letter to the Future President and is being released ahead of a presidential election in France in April.
The Byron diet
Lord Byron was one of the first diet icons, writes historian Louise Foxcroft for BBC News. "Byron was thought of as the embodiment of the ethereal poet, but he actually had a 'morbid propensity to fatten.' Like today's celebrities, he worked hard to maintain his figure. At Cambridge University, his horror of being fat led to a shockingly strict diet, partly to get thin and partly to keep his mind sharp. Existing on biscuits and soda water or potatoes drenched in vinegar, he wore woolly layers to sweat off the pounds and measured himself obsessively. Then he binged on huge meals, finishing off with a necessarily large dose of magnesia. … At the infamous Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva, in 1816, Byron was living on just a thin slice of bread and a cup of tea for breakfast and a light vegetable dinner with a bottle or two of seltzer water tinged with Vin de Grave. In the evening, he stretched to a cup of green tea … To suppress the inevitable hunger pangs, he smoked cigars. By 1822, he had starved himself into a very poor state of health …"
Panda's odd appetite
"A camera at a Chinese nature reserve has spied a wild panda eating meat," reports MSNBC.com. "Pandas spend most of their days eating bamboo. Staff at the Wanglong Nature Reserve in southwest Sichuan province set up the camera after noticing dead animals with chew marks. In the footage taken on Nov. 9 by an infrared camera, the giant panda is seen eating a dead gnu. It was not known if the panda had killed the animals."
Thought du jour
"It is only a sentimental half-truth that the best things in life are free; while they may be, it is equally true that we need the money to buy the time to enjoy them."
Sydney J. Harris (1917-86)
American journalist