IRISH TIMES ODDITIES:SCOTSMAN HAS FIRST MEAL IN 392 DAYS
A 26-year-old Scotsman, Angus Barberieri, of Maitland Street, Tayport, Fife, had his first proper meal yesterday for over a year. Exactly 392 days ago Angus decided that at 33st 10lb it was time he lost weight. He went into Maryfield Hospital, Dundee, and the advice to him was to stop eating.
Angus has since then lived on cups of tea, water, soda water, coffee, and special vitamins to keep his body chemicals balanced. After a year’s fast his weight was down by 20 stone. He is now a mere 12st and 11¼1b. When he tried on his old clothes another two people could get into his suit beside him. During his drastic diet his weight dropped by as much as three-quarters of a pound a day. Two weeks ago doctors decided he was slim enough and put him on a salt diet. Last week he was given sugar.
Then yesterday, at 10am, Angus’s first meal was set before him – a boiled egg, a slice of bread with some butter and a cup of coffee. One effect of the fast was that Angus lost all craving for food. “I’d forgotten what food tasted like, but it went down okay. I feel a bit full, but I thoroughly enjoyed it,” he said afterwards.
July 12th, 1966
FREAK FLASH OF LIGHTNING
The freak of a flash of lightning in Co Mayo was before the Royal Meteorological Society at their last monthly meeting at the Civil Institute of Engineers, when Mr RH Scott, FRS, read a paper, “Note on a lightning stroke presenting some features of interest.”
On January 5th a house near Ballyglass, Co Mayo, was struck by lightning and some amount of damage done. A peculiar occurrence happened to a basket of eggs lying on the floor of one of the rooms.
The shells were shattered so that they fell off when the eggs were put in boiling water, but the inner membrane was not broken. The eggs tasted quite sound.
The owner’s account is that he boiled a few eggs from the top of the basket, the rest were made into a mummy, “the lower ones all flattened, but not broken.”
December 27th, 1890
MILLION-TO-ONE CHANCE
Against odds of a million to one, Mr Alvin Roth, of Washington, playing in the British-American world championship bridge tournament, picked up his 75th hand yesterday and said: “Why, I’ve played this hand before. I can tell you what cards everyman around the table holds.” And so he did, reciting from memory the cards of the 65th hand down to the last deuce. He told amazed officials that somebody had apparently forgotten to shuffle the cards in the intricate duplication system of the tournament. Officials said that that was impossible, because cards of a different colour had been used in the 65th hands. They put it down to coincidence that might happen once in a million times, and ordered a replay of the 75th hand.
January 12th, 1955
FREAK CALF
A cow the property of Mr Charles Gillen, Hillhead, Ballycastle, has given birth to a calf which possesses neither eyes nor a tail. The animal is alive and in a healthy condition.
February 6th, 1932