Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news

Brugge(Belgian city) asks tourists to let the cobblestones sit in the streets.

Translation:

The Flemish city of Bruges is calling on tourists not to take cobblestones home as souvenirs. During the tourist season, fifty to seventy cobblestones disappear from the streets every month, especially from tourist streets and squares in the city centre.

The historic city centre of Bruges is on the Unesco World Heritage List. The cobblestones are important for this. "Few things are as typical for Bruges as its cobblestones", writes De Standaard. "The streets and squares of the historic city centre are littered with them."

Alderman Franky Demon asks tourists to show them respect. "Anyone who walks through Bruges is stepping over centuries of history. Leave those cobblestones where they belong."

Cost item
The theft also results in an additional cost item. "It is regrettable that our employees constantly have to go out to repair holes and loose stones. This causes a lot of extra work and costs, around 200 euros per square metre of reconstruction", according to Demon.

In addition, people can trip over loose stones or over holes left in the road surface.

It is possible that the same type of souvenir hunters are responsible for the theft of street signs in other cities. And cobblestones are also regularly taken as souvenirs from the route of the cycling classic Paris-Roubaix.

Eyelash mites are normal part of body's microbiome

Eyelash mites, also known as Demodex mites, are a type of eight-legged parasite. They live in or near the hair follicles on the face and eyes and are found primarily near the eyelashes and the eyebrows. They have a short life cycle, about 14 to 18 days, during which they feed on the oils and dead cells that are found on the surface of the skin. At about three-tenths of a millimeter in size, Demodex mites are invisible to the naked eye. Under a microscope, however, you would see a semi-transparent body shaped somewhat like a cigar. Their eight legs are arranged in four pairs, which makes it easier for them to grasp tubular structures like an eyelash or an eyebrow hair.

It may be unsettling, but we all have a small number of these mites living in the folds and along the edges of our eyelids. They stay hidden in the hair follicles during the day and emerge at night to eat, lay eggs and excrete waste. The mites are part of our body’s natural microbiome, and by cleaning up dead skin cells and excess oils, they’re actually doing us a service.

Magna Carta 'copy' miscatalogued in 1940s found to be original

An issue of the Magna Carta, which was wrongly catalogued as a copy in the 1940s, has been identified as original.

Harvard Law School Library bought what it thought was a stained and faded copy of the document from London book dealers Sweet & Maxwell in 1946 for 27 dollars and 50 cents.

The book dealers had acquired it at a Sotheby's auction a month earlier from a First World War pilot for £42. It was wrongly dated as being made in 1327 under King Edward III.

But two researchers have now found that the "copy" is a rare original from 1300 issued by King Edward I and is worth millions of dollars, although Harvard does not intend to sell it.

Cat on train tracks? 20 minutes to retrieve it, France says

Once a passenger has reported an animal missing, SNCF staff have 10 minutes to "clear up any doubts" by trying to spot the animal from the platform, according to the new rules.

If the missing pet is spotted, staff have a maximum of 10 minutes "to remove the animal without entering the danger zone" and accessing the tracks.

If the animal still does not emerge, the train is required to proceed at very low speed to give it a final chance to escape.