According to the BBC, doctors at Memorial Springs Hospital for Children in Colorado Springs, CO, made this discovery while operating on 3-day old Sam Esquibel in October.

Experts believe this is a case of “foetus in foetu,” where a twin forms inside its sibling — though this rarely occurs inside the brain.

Sam is now fine and recovering, with only a small scar as evidence of what happened. It may be years, though, before he can tell us if he keeps hearing footsteps…

Note: image is a stock photo, so don’t freak out.

Hitler’s deficit had been widely rumored, even celebrated in song, like this one from World War II England:

“Hitler has only got one ball,
Göring has two but very small,
Himmler is somewhat sim’lar,
But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all.
Hitler has only got one ball,
The other is on the kitchen wall,
His mother, the dirty bugger,
Chopped it off when he was small.”

A Soviet autopsy had revealed that Hitler wasn’t playing with a full deck. And now, the medic’s confession has been revealed, confirming what everyone had suspected.

Makes you wonder if history would have been different had Hitler been able to pick up a spare…

photo by Green Putty in My Armpit, courtesy Creative Commons

According the Journal of Experimental Botany*, “these investigations provide the oldest documentation of cannabis as a pharmacologically active agent.” The remains were those of a Caucasian, approximately 45 years old at the time of his death, and most likely a wandering holy man of high status, as indicated by his possessions: bridles, archery equipment, a harp, and a well-preserved bowl of weed. It’s not clear how he consumed the marijuana, since no relevant implements were found, but scientists used “botanical, phytochemical, and genetic investigations to demonstrate that this cannabis was psychoactive and probably cultivated for medicinal or divinatory purposes.”

Not much more is known about this ancestor from the Stoned Age, but apparently, ancient man was not averse to having a gay old time.

*No relation to “High Times” magazine

photo by warrantedarrest, courtesy of Creative Commons

Japanese scientist Sayaka Wakayama has successfully cloned mice from cells frozen for 16 years. That could open the doors to reviving history in a big way…

Could scientists now clone woolly mammoths, which went extinct thousands of years ago? Entire mammoth carcasses have been found frozen in Siberia. The DNA is likely highly degraded, but as we say at The Worldwide Scoop, you never know till you try…

Unfortunately, author Michael Crichton, who popularized the idea of cloning extinct species back to life in Jurassic Park, died this November 4th, just before Dr. Wakayama made his announcement. And there’s no confirmation to the rumor that Crichton’s DNA has been preserved in a ball of amber…

Skeptics call it an Asiatic bear or maybe a wild boar rearing on its hind legs. But according to the BBC, new testing of the bizarre hair samples has turned up something even more startling: this creature is neither bear nor boar; indeed, its hair has a “startling resemblance” to those of another mysterious creature… the Abominable Snowman.

Sir Edmund Hillary, the first European to conquer Mt. Everest, had brought back hair samples from an ape-like creature he claimed to have sighted during his adventure. For years, they were stored by a museum in the UK and quietly forgotten.

Then came the discovery of giant “dragon teeth” in the stores of Chinese apothecaries. These teeth were identified as belonging to gigantapithecus: a giant prehistoric ape that had once roamed this area.

Now come the mande barung hairs. Preliminary microscopic testing has been conducted by primate expert Ian Redmond, who noted, “We now know for definite that these hairs do not belong to Asiatic black bear, they do not belong to a wild boar and they do not resemble hairs from various species of macaque monkeys. These hairs remain an enigma.”

Now it’s up to DNA testing to see if the abominable is identifiable…

The small Canadian island village of Gabriola has been thoroughly creeped out by a morbid discovery — make that, discoveries: five shoe-encased feet that have washed up on its normally peaceful shores over the past year…

While police have DNA’d the severed appendages, they have no matches. Or clues.

Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer told reporters that disarticulated feet occasionally pop up in the oceans, since rotting bodies tend to fall apart at the joints. Rubber sneakers keep them afloat, sole-side up.

But where are the bodes that come with the feet? And why are they all right feet?

No one knows, but the Worldwide Scoop will keep you posted when we find out more.

(Random photo of foot courtesy of Creative Commons.)

Imagine waking up in the middle of the night to take a leak and finding this in your toilet: the head of a snake. A living snake. Attached to six feet more of living snake…

That’s what the residents of one Australian apartment discovered today: a six-foot-long black-headed python in their toilet. While snakes are not uncommon in the city of Darwin, Australia, they’re not exactly common in apartment plumbing — particularly up on the 10th floor of a high-rise building, which is where this one was found.

A professional reptile catcher was called in to wrangle and capture the serpent. “When I saw it I was pretty shocked,” he said. “I had to give him a wash because he was wet and a bit smelly.” Fortunately, no one was harmed, not even the snake. We can only imagine what could have happened…

Despite the temptation, the Worldwide Scoop staff politely declined these servings of Chateau de Cat Corpse — we’ll happily stick to Red Bull and vodka.

In the journal “Medical Hypotheses,” Swedish scientist Jarl Flensmark claims that “Heeled footwear… led to the occurrence of the first cases of schizophrenia.” He adds, “The oldest depiction of a heeled shoe comes from Mesopotamia, and in this part of the world we also find the first institutions making provisions for mental disorders … In the beginning, schizophrenia appears to be more common in the upper classes.” His explanation?

“During walking, synchronised stimuli from mechanoreceptors in the lower extremities increase activity in cerebellothalamo-cortico-cerebellar loops through their action on NMDA-receptors. Using heeled shoes leads to weaker stimulation of the loops. Reduced cortical activity changes dopaminergic function, which involves the basal gangliathalamo-cortical-nigro-basal ganglia loops.”

If that sounds like Swedish to you, The Worldwide Scoop has provided a quickie translation: Walking in heels causes your calves to tense in an unusual way. This prevents the neuroreceptors in your calves from releasing the hormone dopamine at normal levels. Dopamine regulates brain activity, and has been linked to schizophrenia in some patients.

Flensmark does NOT mention that the body also produces dopamine in response to sexual activity. And research conducted by our Woldwide Scoopers reveals that women in high heels tend to be more sexually active than women in, say, flats. Does that contribute to Flensmark’s theory or contradict it? We invite our readers to conduct research on their own — and to keep us posted.