Two things that aren’t April Fools…

By | April 4, 2016
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Well, it was April Fools day on Friday… but I haven’t got an April fools for you.  I decided to do things differently and tell you about two things that sound like they could be April Fools, but are actually true.

First, did you ever see the film Back to the Future? I seem to remember watching it a long time ago. Anyway, in one of the sequels, they went forward to the far future – 2015.

As you might expect, things haven’t quite worked out as the film-makers thought they might. And one thing they had in particular was self tying shoes.

Well, it’s not as crazy as it sounds. Nike have now come up with a shoe that has self-tying laces. You can watch it in action here – this is Nike’s own info about it.

To be fair, I was a little bit disappointed – it’s more self-tightening than properly tying. You can’t buy them just yet but they said they’ll be on sale later this year.

It’ll be interesting to see whether anyone buys them – it doesn’t strike me as all that useful!

Aliens on the Space Station
Did you know that when the radio version of War of the Worlds came out, lots of people thought it was real – that we really were being invaded by Martians. You can imagine the panic.

Well, astronauts Tim Peake and Scott Kelly have been fighting aliens in space – but don’t panic just yet.

They were trying out an “augmented reality system” – where you wear special goggles and you can see the real world, but also can see computer generated things as if they were in the real world.

They’re used for sensible things like various kinds of training – but the astronauts tried them out by playing a space invader game

Anyway, if you want to have a look, here’s the video of it.

4 thoughts on “Two things that aren’t April Fools…

  1. Ann Thom

    At 84 I would welcome a shoe which was not unselftying!! Even when double knotted they still come undone and can be lethal. I have swapped to velcro fastenings but still have quite a few laced shoes which I like apart from the above problem. The idea is good but probably too expensive and not for everyday life.

    Reply
  2. Barbara Pound

    I can only say – wait till you are in your eighties and maybe had a hip op, you may think differently

    Reply
  3. Jean Taylor

    Having an arm in plaster for several weeks I have had to have someone come in to tie my shoelaces for me on a daily basis. I never knew there were so many different ways of tyeing a knot for this purpose, some of them really crazy! Knots have a fascinating history – and prehistory – so get a good book out of the library and learn a bit about them. Your shoelaces may not be helping – try changing to some with a little more ‘give’ in them, for a better grip in the knot. Hope this helps!

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