Things that make you go: "Hmmmm"....

SPIDERS IN SPACE
An experiment into spider webs in space was conducted in 1973 aboard Skylab involving two female European garden spiders (cross spiders) called Arabella and Anita. The two spiders were taken into outer space on the Skylab 3 mission. The aim of the experiment was to test whether the two spiders would spin webs in space, and, if so, whether these webs would be the same as those that spiders produced on Earth. The experiment was a student project of Judy Miles of Lexington, Massachusetts.

After the launch on July 28, 1973 and entering Skylab, the spiders were released by astronaut Owen Garriott, into a box that resembled a window frame. The spiders proceeded to construct their web, while a camera took photographs and examined the spider's behavior in a zero-gravity environment. Both spiders took a long time to adapt to their weightless existence. However, after a day, Arabella spun the first web in the experimental cage, although it was initially incomplete. The web was completed the following day. The crew members .were prompted to expand the initial protocol. They fed and watered the spiders, giving them filet mignon. The first web was removed on 13 August, to allow the spider to construct a second web. At first, the spider failed to construct a new web, but, supplied with additional water, a second web was built, this time more elaborate than the first. Eventually, both spiders died during the mission, probably due to dehydration.

When scientists were given the opportunity to study the webs, they discovered that the space-webs were finer than a normal Earth web, and although the patterns of the web were not totally dissimilar, variations were spotted, and there was a definite difference in the characteristics of the web. Additionally, while the webs were finer overall, the spaceweb had variations in thickness in places, some places were slightly thinner, and others slightly thicker. This was unusual, for Earth webs have been proven to have uniform thickness.

AMAZING SURVIVOR
JAT Airways Flight 364, registration YUAHT, was a McDonnell-Douglas DC-9 aircraft which exploded over Hermsdorf, East Germany while en route from Copenhagen to Zagreb and Belgrade on January 26, 1972. The aircraft spun out of control, crashing near the town of Srbska Kamenice in Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic). 27 of 28 of those on board were killed in the accident; one crewmember survived.

The surviving crewmember, flight attendant Vesna Vulovi, fell from 10,160 meters (33,330 feet) inside the tail section of the aircraft. She was entered into the Guinness Book of Records for the highest fall survived without a parachute. Vulovi was temporarily paralyzed from the waist down but lived to tell about it. She continued working for the airline, holding a desk job.

As of October 2006, this is the only fatal accident to occur to a JAT Airways aircraft.