A Dutch woman has been photographed at a fairground shooting range almost every year since 1936. The chronological series begins with a 16-year-old girl from Tilburg picking up a gun and firing at the target. Now 92, Ria van Dijk still makes her annual pilgrimage to the shooting gallery. Every time her aim is true, it triggers the shutter of a camera and a portrait of the girl in firing pose is taken and given as a prize. The photographs have been collected together in a book, entitled 'In almost every picture 7'.
Participants in a Michigan charity ice fishing tournament brought home a different kind of fish tale. The Daily Press of Escanaba reports only one fish was caught by the more than 400 kids and adults participating in this weekend's Jig It Ice Fishing Extravaganza at Escanaba Yacht Harbor in the Upper Peninsula. Big Brother Big Sisters of Delta County sponsored the fundraiser and Jason M. Pepin of Escanaba had the lone fishing success during the competition. The perch he caught weighed 4.5 ounces and netted a $3,000 first place prize. The group's executive director Tanya Schuster says some people reported seeing fish swimming in the water, but they weren't biting. Schuster says the event to help fund area mentoring programs is "more fun when you do catch fish."
A Spanish man is kicking himself after everyone in his town won and shared a huge lottery jackpot - except him. About 70 households in Sodeto won a share of the £600 million jackpot in Spain's El Gordo lottery. But one man, filmmaker Costis Mitsotakis, was overlooked when a town homemakers' group made the rounds selling lottery tickets to raise money last year. Sodeto residents and people from 17 nearby villages bought tickets with the same winning number from the civic group. Every household that bought a share takes home the equivalent of at least £80,000, Newser reported. Mr Mitsotakissaid he was sad he didn't win anything. But he did get one lucky break - a neighbour used p[art of his windfall to buy a big chunk of land that he had been trying to sell.
A Croatian hospital has framed and mounted a selection of objects that have been removed from patients' bodies over the last 80 years. Needles, buttons, coins, animal bones and even a metal communist red star swallowed by patients have been carefully mounted in display boxes. They will now be put up on the wall in the main hospital in the southern town of Sibenik. Doctors decided to limit the display to items swallowed by patients. They also have a collection of items that patients had asked to be surgically removed after, they claimed, accidentally sitting on them. These include TV controls, salt pots, sex toys and deodorant cans.
Dating back more than 1,500 years, Japan’s rites of spring are deeply rooted in its agricultural past. As in all the world’s ancient cultures, such observances were believed to promote a successful harvest and produce many babies. It is ironic that Japan’s Penis and Vagina Festival is an annual event dating back to ancient times and today that nation has one of the world’s lowest birth rates. There are several penis and vagina festivals held throughout Japan, but the most renowned takes place every March 15th at Komaki City’s Tagata Shrine. In a desire to offend no one and include everybody, a neighboring village holds a vagina festival, which occurs a few days before. The Hime-no-miya Grand Vagina Festival is a sacred rite involving prayer, food and celebration. Parents dress up their children, pray for healthy babies, and consume sake along with beer and many snacks. An afternoon parade consists of 40 men carrying a massive vagina to the Ogata shrine, which is preceded by children bringing a small vagina to that same shrine in the morning. The penis festival draws more than 100,000 observers and involves a 90-minute procession with teams of men carrying a phallus carved from Japanese cypress that measures 2 X 6.5 feet in length. For the sake of the crowd, they stop to spin the giant penis around, cheering as they make their way strenuously up the path. Vendors have a heyday at this festival, selling penis-and vagina-shaped candies and chocolate-covered bananas. Candles, wood penis sculptures and penis earrings are also very popular.
