Woman Who Lost Her Nose Now Has a Selection of Prosthetics

Jayne Hardman’s nose issues began in 2012 when her mastiff jumped up and accidentally hit her in the face. She wound up having a lot of nose bleeds and noticed that her nose soon began to swell. It turns out that Hardman was diagnosed with vasculitis, a rare disease where the immune system attacks blood vessels, causing swelling and eventual organ and tissue death. “If you don’t get treated, you’re dead within a year,” explained Hardman. She says because the accident with her dog alerted her to what was going on with her nose, he actually ended up saving her life. Over the next few years, she wasn’t put on the best treatment, and by 2017 her nose had collapsed. The only option was for doctors to remove it. Six weeks after the surgery, she was given her first prosthetic nose, which enabled her to feel normal again. The prosthetic attaches with magnets that are embedded on the edges of the surgical site. Now Hardman has a selection of prosthetic noses that she keeps in a Twinings tea box. She’s now in remission, and undergoes chemotherapy every six months to manage her disease.

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Dead Man Walking: Court Rejects Man's Claim That He's Alive

Constantin Reliu left Romania for Turkey in 1992, cutting off all contact with his family. After years of silence from her estranged husband, Reliu’s wife assumed that he had died in an earthquake that happened in Turkey and obtained a backdated death certificate for him. He may never have found out about his death in his homeland had he not been apprehended by Turkish authorities for having an expired visa and deported back to Romania. Reliu had planned to renew his passport in Romania and return to Turkey, but on arrival, he was detained by immigration officers who informed him that he had died in 2003. Reliu asked the court to overturn the death certificate, but the court rejected his petition solely because the legal appeal window had passed, leaving him officially dead despite standing alive in court. Reliu wasn’t going to give up, so he filed a separate lawsuit in a different jurisdiction. The new court accepted his claim and officially annulled the invalid death certificate, restoring his status as a living citizen.

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This 104-Year-Old Romanian Clown-Shoe Car Pioneered Automotive Aerodynamics

There are many unforgettable names in the history of the automobile that represent massive achievements in both engineering and design, but there’s one who’s been mostly forgotten: Aurel Persu. In 1922, the Romanian engineer and designer created a vehicle that may look strange by modern standards, but actually represented a breakthrough in aerodynamics. If it was built today, only a handful of cars would beat it in that department. Persu was granted a patent for an aerodynamic automobile that had its wheels tucked into the bodywork. That was a big deal, as most cars at that time were open-wheeled. What he came up with was a car that looked like a raindrop, with a big, smooth front end that tapered off to a much smaller, narrower rear. The car had a wheelbase of just over 10 feet, an overall length of 15 feet, and a much wider front wheel track up front (3.9 feet) than at the rear (2.2 feet). It was reportedly capable of 62 mph. Persu only made one example of his slippery shoe-shaped car and used it as his daily vehicle. He clearly enjoyed driving it, as his raindrop-shaped car has over 100,000 miles on it. Even though he built just one car, it was one of the most innovative automobiles of all time. Today the car is on display at the Dimitrie Leonida Technical Museum in Bucharest, Romania.

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The World’s First Giant Anteater Reintroduction Appears To Be Succeeding In Brazil

The giant anteater is one of the most unique mammals in the world, and also one of the most threatened. As their name implies, giant anteaters are insectivores that primarily eat ants and termites. Giant anteaters are virtually blind, finding their prey by using their excellent sense of smell, which is 40 times more sensitive than a human's. They have enormous claws on their front feet, which are used to tear open ant nests and termite mounds. Their sticky tongues can reach up to 18 inches and move in and out of their mouth at a rate of almost 3 times per second. Since they have no teeth, giant anteaters crush the insects against their palate. Their stomach also has hardened folds that constrict to grind up the insects, a process assisted by the small bits of sand and soil that the anteater ingests. Though they don't produce stomach acid, the formic acid that ants and termites secrete help with the digestion process. It’s been almost 20 years since Argentina launched what was at the time the world’s first attempt at reintroducing the giant anteater to a landscape it had disappeared from, and now the population has grown from zero to around 200. 

 

 

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