And other stories from the stranger side of life
by The Week team
7 May 2021
A farmer in Belgium has inadvertently redrawn the country’s border with France. The man was annoyed to find a large rock in his tractor’s path and moved it inside French territory. Later, a local historian was walking in the forest when he noticed the rock, which marks the boundary between the two countries, had moved 2.29m. “We should be able to avoid a new border war,” said the mayor of the adjoining French village, Aurélie Welonek.
Woman gives birth to nine babies
A woman from Mali who was expecting seven babies has actually given birth to nine. Halima Cisse delivered the nonuplets - five girls and four boys - at a hospital in Morocco. She and the newborns are said to be “doing well”. Two sets of nonuplets have been recorded in the past - one born to a woman in Australia in 1971 and another to a woman in Malaysia in 1999 - but none of those babies survived.