IT MUST BE TRUE… I read it in the tabloids

Thomas Thomson, a 19th century Scottish scientist, has had a statue erected in his honour in St Petersburg, even though he had no connection to the city whatsoever. The sculpture, erected in 2011, was meant to commemorate Jean-françois Thomas de Thomon, a French architect who designed several of the city’s 18th and 19th century buildings. But as a local website has discovered, Alexander Taratynov, the chief sculptor, modeled his work on a mislabelled picture in Thomas de Thomon’s Wikipedia entry, which turned out to be an image of Thomson, former regius professor of chemistry at the University of Glasgow. “We were confident the internet would give us the correct information,” explained a chastened Taratynov. Keeping chickens as domestic pets has become such a fad in the US that a whole new industry has grown to meet it: chicken diapers. Pampered Poultry, a site selling “fashionable attire for feathered friends”, now brings in $50,000 a year for its owner, Julie Baker, who has a small farm in New Hampshire. She started selling the diapers in 2010 after her daughter kept bringing her favourite chicken into the house. Demand is now so high that the site has branched out into chicken dresses and tutus.

A teenage hiker in Northern Ireland was taken to hospital after being hit by a falling sheep. The Mourne Mountain Rescue Team said the boy was strolling along when a sheep jumped down from a nearby crag and felled him. No harm was done, said the team: the boy was soon discharged and “we believe the sheep left the area unaided”.