Louisiana cemeteries sinking, washing away due to coastal erosion

The Associated Press reports from Leeville, La. — As a young adult, Kathleen Cheramie visited her grandmother's grave in a tree-lined cemetery where white concrete crosses dotted a plot of lush green grass just off Louisiana Highway 1.
Now, the cemetery in Leeville is a skeleton of its former self. The few trees still standing have been killed by saltwater intruding from the Gulf. Their leafless branches are suspended above marsh grass left brown and soggy from saltwater creeping up from beneath the graves.
"It was a beautiful place to visit," said Cheramie, 67, who lives in nearby Golden Meadow. "It hurts to see it now."
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Mammoth carcass found in Siberia

A well-preserved mammoth carcass has been found in the permafrost of northern Siberia by an 11-year-old boy. The remains were discovered at the end of August in Sopochnaya Karga, 3,500km (2,200 miles) northeast of Moscow. A team of experts from St Petersburg then spent five days in September extracting the body from frozen mud. The mammoth is estimated to have been around 16 years old when it died; it stood 2m tall and weighed 500kg. It has been named Zhenya, after Zhenya Salinder, the 11-year-old who found the carcass while walking his dogs in the area. Alexei Tikhonov, from the St Petersburg Zoology Institute, who led the team excavating the mammoth, said this specimen could either have been killed by Ice Age humans, or by a rival mammoth. Full Story

What if the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck today?

Photographer Shawn Clover finds the exact spot each photo was taken and waits for the right light conditions. He studied archives of old photos taken at the time of the disaster. Around 25,000 buildings were destroyed by fire that raged for four days after the quake


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NASA loses moon rocks and much more

In a report issued by the agency's inspector general on Thursday, NASA concedes that more than 500 pieces of moon rocks, meteorites, comet chunks and other space material were stolen or have been missing since 1970. That includes 218 moon samples that were stolen and later returned and about two dozen moon rocks and chunks of lunar soil that were reported lost last year.

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Rare Cyclops Shark Found

In this world of Photoshop and online scams, it pays to have a hearty dose of skepticism at reports of something strange — including an albino fetal shark with one eye smack in the middle of its nose like a Cyclops.

But the Cyclops shark, sliced from the belly of a pregnant mama dusky shark caught by a commercial fisherman in the Gulf of California earlier this summer, is by all reports the real thing. Shark researchers have examined the preserved creature and found that its single eye is made of functional optical tissue, they said last week. It's unlikely, however, that the malformed creature would have survived outside the womb.

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'First Irish case' of death by spontaneous combustion

Deaths attributed by some to "spontaneous combustion" occur when a living human body is burned without an apparent external source of ignition.
'First Irish case' of death by spontaneous combustion

Schweddy Balls: Ben & Jerry’s Newest Vermont Export

Ben & Jerry's announced their newest ice cream flavor—which might not immediately sound appealing. Schweddy Balls, an homage to Saturday Night Live, is vanilla ice cream with a hint of rum and a huge scoop of cheekiness.

The name comes from a skit featuring regular host Alec Baldwin, Molly Shannon and Ana Gasteyer. Baldwin plays Pete Schweddy, owner of a holiday bakery called Season's Eatings. Shannon and Gasteyer play NPR radio hosts interviewing him for a culinary show. And the central joke of the bit goes like this:

"There are lots of great treats this time of year," Schweddy says. "Zucchini bread. Fruitcake. But the thing I most like to bring out at this time of the year are my balls."
Schweddy Balls