President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was most likely shot from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository – not the grassy knoll, as widely believed. That's the claim yesterday from a group of scientists who recreated the assassination using modern blood splatter analysis, new human body surrogates and 3D computer simulations.
Advances in blood splatter analysis aided the experts in their research. But it wasn't just innovations here that helped; the team also used some of the "most advanced artificial human heads in the world" for the ballistic tests, MSNBC reports.
According to computer graphics expert Doug Martin, the technology used for the 3D crime scene simulations to help reconstruct events and gather evidence will be used by criminologists in the future.
Meanwhile…
In other news, a trigger-happy police officer managed to taser himself when attempting to make an arrest following a police chase in Texas (the self-tasering is believed to be a rare occurrence).
A keen bidder shelled out $205 on eBay for a slice of toast miraculously sporting Barack Obama's face, and you can sleep easy this week knowing that the Royal Society of Chemistry has defined the perfect Yorkshire pudding.
Speaking of eBay, an American man has become the first vendor on the online auction site to surpass the one million feedbacks mark.
Jack Sheng, 33, has been selling electronics accessories on eBay through his own company since he started up in 2000. The No. 2 feedback holder on eBay, a DVD and CD seller, has a long way to go if he wants to catch up; he's trailing with a score of about 754,000.
TroopTube
The US military has launched a new video-sharing website for the armed forces, their families and supporters.
TroopTube follows in the same vein as sites such as YouTube, allowing members to personal videos from anywhere in the world, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. It comes a year and a half after the Defence Department banned the use of YouTube and similar sites due to security and bandwidth concerns.
Gadget therapy
It seems that in the past we may have been overeager in our assertions that electricity plus water equals bad. That's if Marieke Staps' mud-powered Soil Lamp, which utilises the 'metabolism' of organisms found in mud, has anything to do with it.
By enclosing the mud in cells containing copper and zinc, she claims enough electricity can be conducted to light an LED lamp. Apparently it'll slash your electricity bill; all it needs is the occasional "splash of water". Volunteers make a queue here…
And finally…
The mayor of Batman, a city in south-eastern Turkey, has accused Batman producer Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros of using the city's name without permission. According to Variety, Huseyin Kalkan is preparing to sue for royalties from the recent Dark Knight blockbuster.
Kalkan has amassed a series of charges, including attributing the blame for a number of unsolved murders, along with the town's female suicide rate, on the "psychological impact that the film's success has had on the city's inhabitants".
At the time of writing, no one had yet explained why it has taken so long to take legal action. Warner Bros denies being served with a lawsuit.
