Every day, Michelle Philpots wakes up next to a man who has to convince her they are married.

When she expresses doubt, he takes out a photo album and shows her pictures of their wedding 13 years ago.

Michelle and Ian on their wedding day in 1997. She lost her short-term memory in 1994 and every day since then he has to convince her they are married. Some days he has to get out the wedding pictures to prove they are husband and wife.

The 47-year-old’s condition was caused by brain injuries sustained in two road accidents. She can recall everything up to 1994 but since then everything that happens on one day is forgotten the next.

Her case echoes 50 First Dates, the 2004 movie in which Adam Sandler tries to woo Drew Barrymore, who has no day-to-day memory following a car crash.

And it is not just loved ones Mrs Philpots struggles with. She uses hundreds of Post-It notes and reminders on her mobile phone’s calendar to keep her informed of appointments and everyday duties.

Anything she has done or anyone she has met must be logged for future reference. And on the rare occasions she ventures out of her home in Spalding, Lincolnshire, she goes armed with sat-nav programmed with her address.

There are some benefits, however. There is no such thing as a repeat on TV and every joke is funny because it’s the first time she’s heard it.

‘It’s like I am living the same day, day after day,’ said Mrs Philpots, who does voluntary work at a charity for people with disabilities three days a week.

‘I love to watch EastEnders but I can’t remember the characters or any story lines.’ Her husband, a 46-year-old fencer, said the secret of the success of their marriage was patience.

‘It can be very frustrating for me but I have to be patient and understand. I have to keep calm because I love her,’ he said.

‘I’ve known her for 25 years so I am lucky we met before she had the accidents because she can remember me. Luckily we have lots of photos to remind her, otherwise she would forget it all.’

Mrs Philpots suffered brain injuries in a motorbike crash in 1985 and a car accident in 1990. The couple have no children.
Enlarge The aftermath of one of the car crashes which caused Mrs Philpots to lose her short term memory

Mrs Philpot’s case is similar to the storyline in the film 50 First Dates, starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. Her character, Lucy, suffers from short-term memory loss and forgets her love interest Henry, played by Sandler, every day

Dr Peter Nestor, a neuroscience specialist at Cambridge University, said Mrs Philpots was suffering from anterograde amnesia.

He added: ‘It is reasonably rare but it does exist. You are capable of carrying out day-to-day things and don’t forget how to do certain things like speaking.

‘But if someone was to ask you what you did yesterday, you wouldn’t have a clue.’

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A four-year-old girl dubbed Two-Face by her playmates has had the second of two operations to save her from a lifetime of torment after her mum begged medics for help.

Half of little Tan-Jia’s face was covered with a huge dark birthmark while the other half was completely normal.

“It has been very hard for her because other children can be so cruel and call her names. To make it worse, she has a twin brother who was born completely normal.

“They used to call her Two Face from the Batman film and some said she had been touched by evil,” explained mum Shan Tan from Heilongjiang, northern China, who has to shave hair from her daughter’s birthmark twice a month.

Now the youngster has begun a series of facial reconstruction operations to remove the birthmark in sections and replace it with skin grafts from her tummy – with the second of three operations now complete.

Surgeons at Xinqiao Hospital, in Chongqing, central China, agreed to carry out the ops for free after desperate Shan Tan contacted them about her daughter’s plight.

Dr Lei Lang explained: “It’s very rare to see such a large and severe birthmark, but the patient can be cured through transplants of her own skin.

“After two phases of surgery, she will no longer have a birthmark on her face.

“Although she is a twin she and her brother developed from different embryos and we believe she has been suffering from a genetic mutation of her pigment cells.”

Now mum Shan Tan hopes her daughter’s nightmare will soon be over.

“I was reading her a fairytale about the ugly duckling and she asked me if she was an ugly duckling because everybody said she was ugly and laughed at her. It broke my heart.

“Now she has a chance to be normal,” she said.

His lawyer calls it a foolish prank, but a judge isn’t laughing.

A 17-year-old high school student from  admitted in family court Thursday that he defecated in a classmate’s soda during an auto-shop class.

Prosecutors dropped an aggravated assault charge in exchange for the boy’s guilty plea to a charge of tampering with a food product.

Authorities say the victim sipped the soda, then spit it out as his classmates laughed on March 29.

A judge ordered the boy to serve probation, serve 200 hours of community service, write a letter to the victim to apologize – and to write a 1,000-word report on why it’s unhealthy to ingest fecal matter. [Leggi Tutto]

A youngster dubbed turtle boy by cruel bullies is starting a new life after a miracle two hour operation to remove a giant shell of hard skin from his back.

Maimaiti Hali, eight – from Heping, northern China – was born with a hard, mutated growth covering most of his back.

Dad Maimaiti Musai said: “We were told surgery wasn’t possible when he was very young so we waited. But the growth got bigger and harder and became like a turtle shell.

“People bullied him and we were determined to end it. He is such a good and brave boy and he never complained. We are so glad that he is now on the mend.”

Medics at Urumqi Military General Hospital say they have cut away the growth and replaced it with skin grafts from Hali’s scalp and legs.

Chief surgeon Ye Xiangpo explained: “The skin we removed was as thick as a bull’s hide. We used scalp hair on the graft because it grows back very quickly. We expect him to make a full recovery.”

Hali added: “It was a bit painful, but I won’t worry about other kids laughing at me any more. I am looking forward to going out in the sun without my shirt on and to going swimming with my friends.”

Previously we talk about Tian Yunting, The Turtle Girl.

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The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra makes unique organic music, using instruments made from vegetables.

Pepper trumpets, leek violins, celery bongos, cucumberphones, pumpkin drums – these are just a handful of instruments used by the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra to entertain audiences everywhere, with their organic music. This one-of-a-kind music group was born when its current members were students. At first they started playing vegetable instruments, as a joke, but quickly realized they might be on to something, and took their work more seriously.

The dozen members of the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra carve their instruments themselves, using whatever vegetables are available, at the location of their performance. After 12 years of making vegetable music, the group has learned what type of vegetables sound better in every country, judging by a range of factors, such as temperature and water content.

The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra needs 70 kilograms of fresh vegetables for every concert, and three hours to carve the instruments they use. But their music wouldn’t exist without modern technological equipment, like amplifiers or sophisticated microphones. Combined with the squeaking of cucumbers, crackling of cabbage leaves and banging of aubergines, they create a hypnotic type of music, described as something between techno music and whale songs.