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It's Spooky: Other Firsts

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yeti

This time of year, a lot of news gets directed at what happens first. Usually there's a lot of talk about the first child born in 2009, this time It looks like it was Elijah Emmanuel Williams, born in Milwaukee Wisconsin at 12:02 am. Additionally, death—like birth—is another milestone for 2009. Back when it was alive, the Times' irreplaceable Homicide Blog would report on the sad news of the city's first murder of the year (that's a link for 2008, not 2009), always much sooner than we'd expect or want. This year there's a lot of talk over our nation's first 2009 execution, which was carried out in Texas (almost needless to say) just yesterday at 6:21 p.m. in Huntsville. There was the first UFO sighting of the year, that happened not long after it struck midnight in Bucharest, Romania. A weird triangle object that rivals the Westchester Boomerang in ominous hovering capacity. Maybe someday I'll get to see one of these things. Someday. But one of the most notable 2009 firsts—at least for me—is the first official Yeti hunt of the year, which commenced yesterday in Nepal. This is arguably the widest scale Yeti Hunt carried out in almost 50 years, with helicopters and everything. Cryptomundo has the details below:

History and MonsterQuest, the sponsors of the two-pronged expedition to separate areas, will be filming the search for later broadcast. The digital filming shall occur in the Himalayan mountains and valleys of Nepal, while the investigative team gathers Yeti evidence during their trip lasting from January 13th until the 27th.The primary members of the expedition are: Adam Davies, Kuniaki Yagihara and Ian Redmond. Besides camera and crew, the team will consist of British explorer and author of Extreme Expeditions Adam Davies, Japanese mountaineer and recent Yeti expedition leader Kuniaki Yagihara, and the chief consultant to the UN Great Apes Survival Project and Yeti hair analyst Ian Redmond.

I'm excited to see what other firsts we're in store for. We're only 15 day in and already making weird news history.

Image taken by Flickr user Hillary H and used under a Creative Commons License.

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