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Sky is the limit

Updated on: 17 January,2021 08:46 AM IST  |  France
Agencies |

Indian street food staple that was launched from the UK, crash lands into France

 Sky is the limit

The samosa captured in the sky by an accompanying camera. Pic Courtesy/Screenshots from the Chai Walla Video

Restaurateur Niraj Gadher of Bath, UK, who runs the Chai Walla restaurant, launched a samosa and a wrap into space, only to have to ask a stranger to rescue it when it reappeared 300 miles away. The food was put in a box, and attached to a helium balloon along with a GoPro camera and a GPS tracker. After two failed attempts, the third time the package slowly took flight, and the camera captured its every move, rising over the Bath skyline and into the sky, where it even came close to an airplane. However, the GPS malfunctioned when it went higher into space, and it was gone.


Gadher launching the samosa in space
Gadher launching the samosa in space



The next day, the GPS miraculously came back to life, alerting Gadher that it had landed in a forest in Caix, France. After an exchange of messages on social media, he and his friends found an Instagram user who hesitantly agreed to forage for it in the wild. After driving for an hour, Alex Mathon chanced upon the remains of the balloon in the middle of a field, with a GoPro in it. The food was possibly wolfed down by the local wildlife. “It was like a treasure hunt, I thought it was crazy! We usually see this kind of story in the United States. Well, this is in a lost field in Picardie,” Mathon told France3.


Niraj Gadher, owner of Chai Walla, with the package containing the samosa and the wrap
Niraj Gadher, owner of Chai Walla, with the package containing the samosa and the wrap

Gadher’s video of the samosa’s space odyssey on YouTube garnered over 58,000 views in three days. “I love space and I wanted to find a way to combine it with my business,” Gadher said to Somerset live. Concerned about the environmental impact of the two helium balloons that got away, he promised to be more organised in the future. Surprisingly, this is not the first time a samosa has made it into space. Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams also carried her favourite food on her trip to space.

Meanwhile...

French wine, headed home after year in space

The International Space Station bid adieu to 12 bottles of French Bordeaux wine and hundreds of snippets of grapevines that spent a year orbiting the world in the name of science. The wine hitched a ride to the space station in November 2019 aboard a Northrop Grumman supply ship. The carefully packed wine each bottle nestled inside a steel cylinder to prevent breakage remained corked aboard the orbiting lab.

In this file photo from November 2, 2019, provided by Space Cargo  Unlimited, researchers from the company prepare bottles of French red wine to be flown from Wallops Island, to the International Space Station. PIC/AP
In this file photo from November 2, 2019, provided by Space Cargo Unlimited, researchers from the company prepare bottles of French red wine to be flown from Wallops Island, to the International Space Station. PIC/AP

Space Cargo Unlimited, a Luxembourg startup behind the experiments, wanted the wine to age for an entire year up there. In February, the company will pop open a bottle or two for an out-of-this-world wine tasting in Bordeaux by some of France’s top connoisseurs and experts. Months of chemical testing will follow. Researchers are eager to see how space altered the sedimentation and bubbles. Nicolas Gaume, the company’s CEO and co-founder said, “Our goal is to tackle the solution of how we’re going to have an agriculture tomorrow that is both organic and healthy, and able to feed humanity, and we think space has the key.”

Man passes driving test in 158th attempt

Driving

An unnamed driver from the UK has managed to pass the driving knowledge test after failing 157 times and spending Rs 3,00,000 in the process. With this, he set a new record with The United Kingdom’s Driving and Vehicle Standards Agency. Mark Tongue, director of Select Car Leasing, said, “Whether you fail once or 157 times, there’s no shame in picking yourself up and having another go.”

Mayor chosen by pulling name from hat

Mayor

The race to be the mayor of a Houston suburb ended with the winner’s name being drawn from a top hat. Sean Skipworth and Jennifer Lawrence were vying to be the next mayor of Dickinson, but they each ended up with 1,010 votes. According to Texas law, a tie in a race for public office can be resolved by casting lots. Skipworth became mayor after his name was pulled out of a hat.

Cat reunited with family after 10 years

Cat

Julie Sinclair and her family were reunited with Cuddly the cat 10 years after the pet went missing from their Ontario home. The feline was recently picked up and taken to the Humane Society of Kitchener Waterloo and Stratford Perth, where workers scanned him for a microchip and got Sinclair’s contact information. The cat was found a few miles from where the Sinclair family lived.

Price of a tattoo

Tattoo

Photos of a young topless man wrapped in plastic foil and tied to a tree in Hanoi for allegedly failing to pay for his tattoos, has gone viral on social media. He bore a sign that read “I hate paying for tattoos”. In a social media post, the tattoo parlour owner explained that the young man had indeed come in for some ink work, but when it was time to pay, he only settled part of the bill. The tattoo artist’s entourage managed to get a hold of him, brought him to the shop and decided to teach him a lesson.

Shrooms in the blood

Shrooms

A 30-year-old man injected ‘magic’ mushrooms into his bloodstream as self-medication for opioid dependence and depression, only to find that they had started growing in his veins. This man boiled the mushroom, filtered it and injected it directly into his bloodstream. When he developed serious symptoms of organ failure, he was rushed to the emergency room, where after several tests, it was found that the mushrooms he had injected himself with, had begun growing in his bloodstream. It took 22 days to treat him.

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