Colin and Donna Craig-Brown were weeding their garden in New Zealand when Colin’s hoe struck something huge just beneath the soil’s surface.
As the couple knelt down and began digging around the object, Colin wondered if it was some kind of strange fungal growth. After Colin pried it out with his garden fork, he scratched away a bit of the skin and took a taste — it was a potato.
“We couldn’t believe it,” Donna said. “It was just huge.”
It was not exactly pretty, either. Donna describes its appearance as ugly and mutant.
It is quite possibly the largest potato on record. When the couple lugged it into their garage and put it on their old set of scales, it weighed a remarkable 7.9kg. That is equal to a couple of sacks of regular potatoes, or one small dog.
In the weeks since their unusual find on Aug. 30, the couple’s potato has become something of a celebrity around their small farm near Hamilton. They have named the potato Doug, after the way it was unearthed, and Colin even built a small cart to tow Doug around.
A more official weigh-in at a local farming store put Doug at 7.8kg. The current Guinness World Records entry for the heaviest potato is a 2011 monster from Britain that weighed in at just under 5kg. The couple say they have applied to Guinness to have Doug recognized and are waiting to hear back.
As the couple showed the potato off, it began drying out and losing weight. Mold started growing from its wounds.
So Colin cleaned up Doug as best he could and put the potato in a freezer, where it remains.
As an amateur brewer, Colin said he is eager to turn Doug into a nice bottle of potato vodka.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
RSS