Purple squirrel captured in Pennsylvania
A purple squirrel was found in Jersey Shore, Pa., on Sunday, by Percy and Connie Emert.
"We have bird feeders out in our yard, and the squirrels are constantly into them," said Jersey Shore resident Connie Emert. "My husband traps them and then sets them free elsewhere so they don't get into your bird feeders."
Emert said she had spotted a purple squirrel on her property but no one believed her.
"I kept telling my husband I saw a purple one out in the yard. 'Oh sure you did' he kept telling me," said Emert. "Well, he checked the trap around noon on Sunday and sure enough, there it was."
It was a warm and sunny day in Jersey Shore, Pa., on Sunday.
"The squirrel's been eating peanuts. That's what we used in the trap," she continued.
The Emerts currently do not know why the squirrel is purple.
"We have no idea whatsoever. It's really purple. People think we dyed it, but honestly, we just found it and it was purple."
The Emerts plan to release the squirrel back into the wild in the next few days.
"We put him in an extra big cage so he has room to run around, and we'll release him soon. In the meantime, all the neighbors have been by to see him. No one can believe we have a purple squirrel!"
The AccuWeather.com team is currently investigating why this squirrel is purple. Stay with AccuWeather.com for more developments.
Some AccuWeather.com employees have their own theories. Expert Senior Meteorologist Henry Margusity said, "The squirrel could have been looking for somewhere warm and fallen into a port-a-potty or something similar."
AccuWeather.com Expert Senior Meteorologist Dan Kottlowski has a different idea. "Squirrels get into all kinds of stuff. He could have gotten into some purple ink or purple paint at some point."
Local squirrel enthusiast Erik Stewart said, "If it has white hair on it at all, it's probably not dyed. I've had multiple squirrels as pets, though, and I've certainly never seen a purple one. I've seen dark red, light red, gray and brown, but never purple. Also, I've tried to dye my dog before, and trust me it didn't look like this. Though, I've only seen a picture, so your guess is as good as mine." - accuweather
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Kenneth Arnold's daughter talks about her father
Kim Arnold is the daughter of Idaho pilot Kenneth Arnold, who reported a series of chevron shaped flying objects in 1947. He plays an important role in modern UFO history because this sighting created a media frenzy, and it was the genesis of the term Flying Saucer.
UFO history just keeps getting stranger. Kim is speaking out now, over 60 years since the event, and the story is much stranger than just a respected pilot seeing something odd in the sky. Seems like there was more going on, he saw multiple UFOs on three occasions, he was fascinated by synchronicities, he thought that UFOs were probably living organic entities - and - he even witnessed orbs in his home! Do to 'Kenneth Arnold's daughter talks about her father' for the download.
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Space pioneer, astronaut Janice Voss dies
Astronaut Janice Voss, a veteran of five spaceflights and a former science director for a NASA exoplanet-hunting spacecraft, has died after a battle with cancer. She was 55.
"Just got the very sad news that U.S. astronaut Janice Voss passed away last night," the Association of Space Explorers, an international organization representing more than 350 individuals who have flown in space, wrote on Facebook. "Our thoughts go out to her family and friends."
NASA confirmed Voss' death in a statement released on Tuesday (Feb. 7), saying she had passed away overnight.
Chosen by NASA for the astronaut corps in January 1990, Voss served as a mission specialist on five space shuttle missions, including the only repeat flight in the program's 30 year history. She flew with the first commercial lab, rendezvoused with Russia's Mir space station and helped create the most complete digital topographic map of the Earth.
Voss launched on her first and final missions on board the shuttle Endeavour. As a member of the STS-57 crew in June 1993, she helped conduct biomedical and material science experiments in the first commercially-developed Spacehab module, a pressurized laboratory mounted in the orbiter's payload bay that more than doubled the work area for astronaut-tended activities.
In February 2000, Voss again launched on Endeavour, this time for the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission. After deploying a nearly 200-foot (60-meter) mast, Voss and her crewmates worked around the clock in two shifts to map more than 47 million square miles (122 million square kilometers) of the Earth's land surface.
Her second flight to space marked the first time a space shuttle came within the vicinity of Russia's space station Mir. Flying on shuttle Discovery, Voss and her STS-63 crewmates — including Eileen Collins, the first woman to pilot a U.S. spacecraft — rendezvoused with the Russian outpost to verify flight techniques, communications, and navigation and sensor aids. The February 1995 "Near-Mir" mission set the stage for the first shuttle-Mir docking later that year.
Voss' two other spaceflights, STS-83 and STS-94, were the only time in the shuttle program's history that an entire crew was launched twice to achieve the same mission. The crew's first attempt began with a liftoff on Columbia on April 4, 1997. Three days into the mission however, a problem with one of the orbiter's three power-generating fuel cells resulted in the flight being cut short and the crew members returning to Earth.
Three months later with Columbia back in working order, Voss and her six STS-83 crewmates launched again, this time as the STS-94 crew. During the successful 15-day flight, Voss and her fellow fliers worked inside a European Spacelab module, conducting experiments as part of the Microgravity Science Laboratory (MSL) mission.
In total, Voss logged over 49 days in space, traveling 18.8 million miles (30.3 million km) while circling the Earth 779 times. Her five missions tied her with the record for the most spaceflights by a woman.
Four years after returning to Earth for a final time, Voss transferred from Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas to NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., where she headed the science program for the agency's Kepler space observatory. Designed to search for Earth size planets orbiting distant stars, Kepler was launched in March 2009 and to date has confirmed 61 exoplanets and identified more than 2,000 planetary candidates.
Voss left Ames in 2007 and most recently served as the payload lead in the astronaut office's space station branch at the Johnson Space Center.
"As payload commander of two shuttle missions, Janice was responsible for paving the way for experiments that we now perform on a daily basis on the International Space Station," chief astronaut Peggy Whitson said in a statement. "By improving the way scientists are able to analyze their data, and establishing the experimental methods and hardware necessary to perform these unique experiments, Janice and her crew ensured that our space station would be the site of discoveries that we haven't even imagined."
"During the last few years, Janice continued to lead our office's efforts to provide the best possible procedures to crews operating experiments on the station today," she said. "Even more than Janice's professional contributions, we will miss her positive outlook on the world and her determination to make all things better."
A native of Rockford, Ill., Voss received her bachelor of science in engineering science from Purdue University in 1975, a master of science degree in electrical engineering and a doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977 and 1987, respectively.
Voss' first work with NASA was during her undergraduate studies at Purdue. A member of Johnson Space Center's co-op program, she worked on computer simulations in the engineering and development directorate in the years leading up to the start of the shuttle-era. Voss returned to the Johnson in 1977 for a year, working as a crew trainer teaching entry guidance and navigation.
Before becoming an astronaut, Voss worked at the Orbital Sciences Corporation, supporting mission integration and flight operations for the Transfer Orbit Stage that launched the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite from the space shuttle in September 1993, and NASA's ill-fated Mars Observer from a Titan rocket in 1992.
A multiple recipient of NASA's Space Flight Medal, Voss donated her personal papers documenting her spaceflight career to Purdue Libraries' division of archives and special collections in 2009.
"Knowing that someone else got from here to there brightened many of my days at Purdue," Voss said at the time, referring to the university's earlier astronaut alums. "Maybe my papers will help someone else feel that they aren't that different from me."
"If I can do it, then so can they," Voss said. - collectspace
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Bigfoot In Ohio: The Truth is Out There
A terrific winter storm moved across Northeast Ohio the night we — staff photographer Jeremy Aronhalt and I — were to embark on an expedition to hunt for the legendary elusive beast. With parts of the Snow Belt receiving up to a foot of snow, the trip was cursed with a sense of doom well before we even began to venture out, a curse I fear might still linger.
Initially the trip was undertaken with a jovial air, but as the reality of the situation presented itself, the fun seemed to be stripped from the assignment, weighed down like an ice-covered tree limb. This was supposed to be a fact-finding mission on one of the planet’s oldest mysteries: the legendary Bigfoot creature.
The story behind the story began well before that fateful journey. Editor-in-chief Michael Nasvadi received a tip about the sighting of the beast just south of Massillon in Strasburg. One of his sources presented him with photographic evidence (see picture above), captured by a deer cam, of an alleged Sasquatch.
Knowing the importance of the story, Mike instantly contacted his staff ace. Unfortunately, Seth Borgen was unavailable, so he called me. Read more at buzzbinmagazine
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I was with zombies, 'resurrected' man says
A man claiming to be resurrected maskandi artist Mgqumeni will appear in the Nquthu Magistrate's Court on Tuesday.
Detectives from provincial headquarters had been dispatched to Dundee to investigate the man's claims, Colonel Jay Naicker said on Monday.
The man was taken in for questioning on Sunday on suspicion of fraud after he made his first public appearance. He remains in police custody.
He claimed to be the multi-award winning traditional Zulu folk music artist who was buried in 2010, whose real name was Khulekani Khumalo.
Khumalo died in December 2009 after drinking something he got from a traditional healer. He was buried by his family in the KwaGxobanyawo cemetery in early 2010.
The man claiming to be the resurrected artist, told The Times newspaper: "I have been suffering a lot at the place where I was kept with zombies. It was hell there and I am so grateful that I was able to free myself and return to my family and you, my supporters."
Investigations would determine whether the police needed to file a High Court application to exhume the body thought to be Khumalo's.
After news broke on Thursday of Khumalo's arrival at his family's homestead in Nquthu, near Dundee, hysterical fans went to the village, according to weekend reports. - new24
