He lost Rs 50,000 as he suffered 1% less injury

(UNLUCKY: Narendra Lodhia suffered extensive injuries on the 6.07 Virar-bound local on July 11, 2006.)

Narendra Lodhia is not a student, but he knows the importance of one per cent. The 44-year-old damaged his hearing on July 11, 2006, when the 6.07 Virar-bound local he was in, blew up.

And, if being part of that disaster was not enough, the railway tribunal has refused to pay him the Rs 50,000 compensation, as he has suffered only 69 per cent injuries. The eligibility for compensation is 70 per cent.

"The blast and the deafening sound damaged my eardrums, cut one of my fingers and damaged my skull. The shrapnel injured my eyes and I have a permanent speech problem.
But the railway authorities have declared it to be 69 per cent and rejected my claim," said Lodhia.

Lodhia has certificates from JJ Hospital and Ali Jung Yavar Hospital at Bandra Kurla Complex about his disability, but the railway officials have not honoured them.

He's not alone

Lodhia who cannot hear without the help of hearing aids has also suffered professionally. He was working as a senior accountant with a religious trust in Mumbai Central during the time of the blast. According to him, the management brought in another person in his place and has not given him the due promotion.

According to former BJP MP Kirit Somaiya, who has compiled information on blast victims and has helped many get compensation, "Around 80 per cent of the victims have had hearing loss." There are around 65 people who have had successive surgeries for hearing loss, 200 people now depend on artificial hearing aids and 25 have undergone three to five surgeries in the last two years and are still unable to hear.

Deep Sea Explorers haul in treasure worth $500 million

17th May, 2007

TAMPA, Florida: Deep-sea explorers said Friday they had salvaged what could be the richest shipwreck treasure in history, bringing home 17 tons of 400-year-old silver and gold coins worth an estimated $500 million from an undisclosed site in the Atlantic Ocean.

A jet chartered by Odyssey Marine Exploration, based in Tampa, landed in the United States recently with hundreds of plastic containers brimming with coins raised from the ocean floor, said Odyssey's co-chairman Greg Stemm. The more than 500,000 pieces are expected to fetch an average of $1,000 each from collectors and investors.

"For this colonial era, I think it is unprecedented," said Nick Bruyer, a rare-coin expert who examined a batch of coins from the wreck. "I don't know of anything equal or comparable to it."

Citing security concerns, the company declined to release any details about the ship or the wreck site Friday. Stemm said a formal announcement would come later, but court records indicate that the coins might have come from a 400-year-old ship found off England.

Because the shipwreck was found in an area where many colonial-era vessels went down, there is still some uncertainty about its nationality, size and age, Stemm said, although evidence points to a specific-known shipwreck. The site is beyond the territorial waters or legal jurisdiction of any country, he said.

"Rather than a shout of glee, it's more being able to exhale for the first time in a long time," Stemm said of the haul, by far the biggest in Odyssey's 13-year history.

He would not say whether the loot was taken from the same wreck site near the English Channel that Odyssey recently petitioned a federal court for permission to salvage.

In seeking exclusive rights to that site, an Odyssey attorney told a federal judge last fall that the company had probably found the remains of a 17th-century merchant vessel that sank with valuable cargo aboard, about 40 miles, or 65 kilometers, off the southwestern tip of England. A judge signed an order granting those rights last month.

In keeping with the secretive nature of the project, dubbed "Black Swan," Odyssey is also not talking yet about the types, denominations or country of origin of the coins.

Bruyer said he observed a wide range of varieties and dates of likely uncirculated currency in much better condition than artifacts yielded by most shipwrecks of a similar age.

The Black Swan coins - mostly silver pieces - will probably fetch several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars each, with some possibly commanding much more, he said. Value is determined by rarity, condition and the story behind them.

Controlled release of the coins into the market, along with their expected high value to collectors, will probably keep prices at a premium, he said.

The richest-ever haul from a shipwreck was yielded by the Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha, which sank in a hurricane off the Florida Keys in 1622. Mel Fisher, the treasure-hunting pioneer, found it in 1985, retrieving a reported $400 million in coins and other loot.

Regarding its latest find, Odyssey said it would probably return to the same spot in the Atlantic Ocean to retrieve more coins and artifacts from the sunken ship.

"We have treated this site with kid gloves, and the archaeological work done by our team out there is unsurpassed," said Odyssey's chief executive, John Morris. "We are thoroughly documenting and recording the site, which we believe will have immense historical significance."

The news is timely for Odyssey, the only publicly traded company of its kind.

The company salvaged more than 50,000 coins and other artifacts from the wreck of the SS Republic off Savannah, Georgia, in 2003, making millions of dollars. But Odyssey posted losses in 2005 and 2006 while using its expensive, state-of-the-art ships and deep-water robotic equipment to hunt for the next mother lode.

"The outside world now understands that what we do is a real business and is repeatable and not just a lucky one-shot deal," said Stemm, the company co-chairman. "I don't know of anybody else who has hit more than one economically significant shipwreck."

In January, Odyssey won permission from the Spanish government to resume a suspended search for the wreck of the HMS Sussex, which was leading a British fleet into the Mediterranean Sea for a war against France in 1694 when it sank in a storm off Gibraltar.

Historians believe the 157-foot, or 48-meter, warship was carrying 9 tons of gold coins to buy the loyalty of the Duke of Savoy, a potential ally in southeastern France. Odyssey believes those coins could also fetch more than $500 million.

But under the terms of a historic agreement, Odyssey will have to share any finds with the British government. The company will get 80 percent of the first $45 million and about 50 percent of the proceeds thereafter.

When a BRA saved a women's life

London: God bless those who made the bra – these might be the words American hiker Jessica Brown must be chanting after she was rescued from a mountain fall.

The 24-year-old was given up for dead by mountain rescuers but was later saved when she threw her bra into a cable car.

Jessica Brown had fallen off a ledge in the mountains and was stranded injured for 70 hours in freezing temperatures.

Mountain rescue teams had been looking for her in the wrong place and gave up the search because they believed she'd fallen to her death

But Jessica spotted a cable car on its way up the mountain and quickly flung her bra into a container carrying food as it passed her.

Workers higher up the peak realized the undies must have been thrown in as a message and sent out a search party. "It certainly beats,” The Sun quoted a rescuer, as saying.

Dead baby was alive

The baby in an incubator at Sion Hospital.

Miracle baby declared dead and kept in mortuary for four hours, gasps for breath just as her dad lowers her into grave

“I opened the gauze, covering my dead daughter’s face to see her one last time before I buried her and as I looked at her, I heard a distinct gasp. I peered at her and realised my darling was alive.”
Bhagwan Gaikwad, the baby’s father

The miracle baby, Sion Hospital doctors declared “dead due to a cardiac arrest”, had in fact, survived four hours in a mortuary in 0°C, next to dead bodies. She was also three months premature and extremely fragile at just 1.4 kg. For her parents, hence, it’s nothing short of a rebirth.

This was Aruna Gaikwad’s first baby after nine years of marriage.

For the Karjat couple, Bhagwan (30) and Aruna (26), the baby had always been that much more special, because it was their first after nine years of marriage. On June 16, Aruna was in her sixth month and went for a check-up to Sion Hospital.

Why she survived

>>Usually cotton wool is stuffed in the mouth, nostrils and ears of a dead body so that body fluid doesn’t ooze out. Here, the hospital staff wrapped the baby in white linen gauze, which allowed her to breathe.

>>The baby would have been subjected to an autopsy, but luckily, the death certificate stated that the baby had a cardiac arrest and was not operated on.

Sion gynaecologist suspended pending enquiry

The doctors asked Bhagwan to organise medicines as an emergency Cesarean had to be performed. “At 7 pm, the staff said my wife had delivered a girl and it was normal delivery. Aruna was still unconscious and the staff showed me my daughter for a bit, before taking her away,” recalls Bhagwan.

“A few minutes later, the staff told me my daughter was dead. I was shocked and speechless,” he added.

The infant was wrapped in a white linen gauze and kept in the ward until midnight. Later, the ‘corpse’ was moved to the hospital mortuary, near unclaimed bodies, where temperatures range between zero and two degrees.


At 2 am, seven hours later, Bhagwan collected his daughter only to realise she was alive at the cremation ground. The baby was then taken back to the hospital around 3.30 am and put in an incubator, where she is recovering. She weighs around 1.4 kg.

On Wednesday Additional Chief Commissioner (health) Kishore Gajbia suspended gynecologist Dr Ashma, who had declared the infant dead.

Shubadha Gudakar, chairman health committee, said, “It’s a serious matter and prima facie, it shows the gynecologist was negligent.” Added BMC Commissioner Jairaj Phatak, “We will take action against the doctor who wrongfully declared the infant dead, after getting the inquiry report.”

Dr Ashma refused to comment saying, “I have nothing to say.”

Sailing Alone ~ Zac Sunderland will become the youngest ever person to do so, if he succeeds

A teenager is looking to snatch the record of the youngest person to sail solo around the world set by an Australian 12 years ago.

On Saturday, when most people his age were settling into summer break, 16-year-old Zac Sunderland of Thousand Oaks, California, embarked in the afternoon in his 36-foot sailboat Intrepid in his attempt to circumnavigate the world.


A crowd of about 200 and a Coast Guard helicopter saw him off yesterday.

“There was a stiff breeze. But after Zac got settled, he was cruising comfortably,” Sunderland’s mother, Marianne Sunderland, wrote in a post on his website, www.zacsunderland.com. “He has a lot to do in the next days; stowing, organising and finding everything that was stowed and organised for him!”

If Sunderland completes the trip, he would become the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe solo.

According to Guinness World Records, the youngest to pull off the feat is Australian David Dicks, who circled the globe at 18 in 1996.

Sunderland’s plan, which will inevitably go through many changes, is to complete his voyage in 11 months and return to California in April, when he will be 17.

World’s most ancient date seed — 2,000 years old — was discovered 40 years ago and planted in 2005

(The plant grown from the 200 year old date seed.)

An ancient date seed that is 2,000 years old has been successfully germinated, marking it the most ancient ever to have been grown into a plant.

The seeds had been recovered from Masada, the foreboding, cliff-side fortress where Jewish Zealots killed themselves to avoid capture by Roman invaders.

One was planted in January three years ago — the traditional Jewish New Year of Trees — and an analysis confirms that the resulting plant, nicknamed Methuselah, had indeed grown from the oldest seed ever germinated.

Today, in the journal Science, a dating study shows that the seed surpasses the prior record of 1,300 years for a lotus seed by seven centuries.

The date seed was discovered 40 years ago by Prof Yigal Yadin during the archaeological excavations of Masada, the palace built by King Herod on the shores of the Dead Sea.

The fortress was stormed by the Romans in 73 AD, after the inhabitants had committed suicide.
The seed was planted by Israeli scientists in January 19, 2005, and more than two years later, the resurrected Judean date palm tree had reached a height of nearly four feet.

Good condition

Coaxed to germination by plant specialist Elaine Solowey, Methuselah remains healthy, says the initiator and director of the project Dr Sarah Sallon, with only a few white spots on early leaves.

“It is the oldest seed ever to be grown,” she says, adding that it was the extremely dry and hot local conditions which probably kept the seed in good condition.

World War II tanker unearthed

The tank was dug out from its muddy grave in France in near-perfect condition.

An American tank that formed part of the 1944 D-Day invasion force was discovered buried under a street in northern France.

French bomb disposal experts were brought in to ensure the military vehicle posed no danger before it was dug out from its muddy grave in near-perfect condition.

It is thought the tank from the 31st Tank Battalion formed part of the invasion force that liberated France from the Nazis more than six decades ago.

Older residents recalled the tank entering the city where it had been carrying out reconnaissance when it either ran out of fuel or broke down. When France was liberated it was pushed down a hole and buried, one resident said.