Ekaterinburg

Here are two videos shot in Ekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia.

The first is another bit of bad driving (see Whoaaaaaaaa!), this time by a driver who apparently was so intent on beating the red light that he wasn’t keeping an eye on the road.

It’s been suggested that a gas main burst, causing the road surface to rise up, and that stopped the van dead. One wag commented, “In Russia cops don’t stop you for running a light, the road does.”

The second video is a beautifully-filmed time-lapse tour of Ekaterinburg, shot in January 2013 by Dmitry Krylov.

Uplifting!

Ethan Schlussler has been building a tree house. It’s nine meters (thirty feet) from the ground – quite a long climb by ladder. Ethan decided there had to be a better way, and built a lift using an old bicycle. It reminds me of the lift I built to get to my treehouse when I was about eleven years old. Mine wasn’t as sophisticated, nor did it need to climb so high, but it worked quite well.

The full story on Ethan and his lift is here.

Watch Ethan’s own video of the lift in use:

Those daring young men on the… ferris wheel?

Last Thursday, Oddity Central featured India’s Dangerous Human-Powered Ferris Wheels:

How do you keep the fun going at fairs in a country affected by frequent power cuts and blackouts? Simple, just hire a bunch of workers to dangle from the bars of manual ferris wheels to keep it in motion.

It kind of looks more like fun than dangerous, but I imagine it gets rather tiring and boring after a while. The two videos below show some of these young guys at work. The second shows the view from one of the gondolas.

Tribute to a funny man

SBS reports:

Clive Dunn, who played Corporal Jones in the hit sitcom Dad’s Army, has died in Portugal aged 92.

The actor, who played Corporal Jones in the hit sitcom, is believed to have been ill for a few weeks.

His agent Peter Charlesworth said the star will be “sorely missed”.

He said: “He will be a real loss to the acting profession.”

Dunn, who leaves his wife, children and grandchildren, was born in London into a show business family and started out with a number of small film roles in the 1930s before the war.

He served in Greece before being captured and spent four years as a prisoner of war.

After the war he resumed his career and in 1968 landed the role of Corporal Jones in the much-loved sitcom about life on the home front.

The character, a World War One veteran-turned butcher, was notorious for his often rambling recollections of his time in the army and his much-used catchphrase “Don’t panic”.

Dunn also had a number one hit in 1970 with Grandad and went on to play the title character in a children’s show of the same name.

He’ll be best remembered, however, as Corporal Jones, seen in this video telling one of his rambling stories and (as usual) getting up Colonel Mainwaring’s nose: