Covering an area as big as five football fields and selling over 100,000 products in 25 different departments, Gekås Ullared is not only the largest department store in the world, but Sweden’s most popular tourist attraction by a large margin.

Ullared, a small, unassuming town in the south of Sweden is home to about 800 people, according to the country’s most recent census. It’s really not the most beautiful place to visit in the Scandinavian country, and yet thousands of people from all over the world flock to Ullared every single day. It’s all because of Gekås Ullared the world-famous department store founded in 1963 by entrepreneur Göran Karlsson, which currently holds the record for the largest department store in the world. It has a total of 2,000 employees and can accommodate up to 5,500 shoppers at the same time.

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In order to prevent his drunken son from getting behind the wheel of his BMW and possibly causing an accident, a Spanish man vandalized the vehicle, smashing the windows and denting its metallic body with a pickaxe.

A father’s love for his children is usually very strong but it can manifest in unusual ways. Take this story of a 60-year-old man from Logroño, Spain, who went to extreme lengths to make sure that his inebriated son doesn’t get behind the wheel of his black BMW and potentially cause a tragedy. Last week, local police received calls about a man vandalizing a vehicle parked on a public road in Logroño by smashing it with a pickaxe. A squad driving toward the reported location of the incident, noticed a white van fleeing the scene and managed to pull it over. Inside were an elderly man and a visibly drunk younger passenger.

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Balakrishnan Palayi, an Indian man from Kasaragod, claims to have eaten nothing but coconut for the last 28 years in order to treat his gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).

Imagine eating only one thing for over two decades. As a foodie with access to so many delicious treats, the mere thought of restricting one’s diet to a single food for a month, let alone 28 years, sounds almost impossible, but one Indian man claims that it has kept him healthy and fit. Balakrishnan Palayi, a man from Chandera in Kasaragod, was diagnosed with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), a condition that caused him to lose all his strength to the point where he could hardly move around. As part of his treatment, he started eating coconut, and he felt so much better that he soon decided it was the only thing he was going to eat moving forward.

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A Spanish court recently ordered a Malaga businessman to pay his ex-wife 204,000 euros “as compensation for unpaid domestic work done in the home” during the 25 years they were married.

A woman who dedicated 25 years of her life to supporting her entrepreneur husband and taking care of their two daughters was recently granted 204,000 ($215,000) in compensation for all her unpaid work. The couple married in June of 1995, when they were in their twenties, and signed a separation of assets the very next month. The document basically stated that each spouse retained exclusive ownership of property acquired during the marriage. This turned out to be a lot more beneficial to the husband, who started multiple businesses, while the wife took care of their two young daughters and did all the domestic work.

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The town of Herringen, in central Germany, is home to a heap of sodium chloride (table salt) so massive that it has come to be known as Monte Kali. It is the world’s largest artificial salt mountain.

The origin of Monte Kali can be traced back to the year 1976, when potash salt started being extracted from mines around the town of Hessen. Back then, potash was used to make products like soap and glass, but today it is an important ingredient in several fertilizers, synthetic rubber, and even some medicines, so extraction intensified over the last few decades. The problem with potash is that mining it generates a lot of sodium chloride as a byproduct, so you need somewhere to store it. The company operating the mines started dumping all this salt a few miles from Herringen, and over the years it created a giant salt mountain locals named Monte Kali or Kalimanjaro (puns for Kalisalz, the German word for ‘potash’).

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An Argentinian teacher must have had the shock of her life when coming to school for the opening day to find a large banner accusing her of sleeping with the married father of one of her students.

The first day of school is usually one full of joy and excitement for both students, teachers and parents, but that was not the case at one Buenos Aires school where the general feeling was one of shock. Parents taking their kids to school and faculty coming to greet them were treated to a rather bizarre sight – large handwritten banner hanging outside the school gates accusing a certain member of the faculty of ‘ruining a family’ by sleeping with one of her student’s father despite knowing that he was married.

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An Indian man recently made national news headlines after filing a police complaint against his own father, accusing him of seducing his wife and eventually eloping with her.

They say all is fair in love and war, and that love is blind, but there is also such a thing as forbidden love. Pawan Vairagi, a worker from India’s Rajasthan state, is accusing his own father of falling in love with his wife and luring her away from him. Vairagi, who hails from a village called Silor, told authorities that he had been spending a lot of time away from his family because of work, which allegedly gave his father the opportunity to spend more time with his wife and seduce her. The pair recently eloped, leaving Pawan’s six-month-old daughter behind.

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The Bodi tribe of southern Ethiopia holds a yearly festival in which the man with the biggest belly is honored and celebrated. To prepare for this big event, the men go on a grueling six-month fattening journey.

Obesity and big bellies are usually seen as banes of modern life that not only have a negative impact on health, but are also considered generally inesthetic. However, in a remote area of Omo Valley, southern Ethiopia, big bellies in men are considered impressive, even attractive. The Bodi, a tribe of agriculturists and cattle herders, celebrate their love of big bellies during a yearly festival called Ka’el, in which the man with the biggest belly is crowned ‘fat man of the year’ and earns the respect of the entire tribe for life. But in order to earn this honor, the men must go on a fattening diet of cow’s milk or yogurt, raw blood, and honey for several months before the festival.

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The Japanese town of Tsuruta is famous for hosting a unique annual competition – a popular game of tug of war in which bald men attach suction cups to their heads and pull in opposite directions.

The Covid-19 pandemic threw a wrench in all aspects of Japanese society, but it’s fair to say that social gatherings and events were among the most impacted. Tsuruta, a town in Japan’s Aomori Prefecture, recently held its annual “Suction Cup Tug-of-War” tournament for the first time in three years, and it was just as fun as people remembered. Thought up by the Tsuruta Hagemasu Association as a way of shedding a positive light on baldness, suction cup tug-of-war is a fun game in which two people sitting opposite from each other attach suction cups connected through a string to their heads and pull. The person whose suction cup detaches first loses.

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They say real life is stranger than fiction and this bizarre Indian love square proves it. After his wife eloped with another man, a scorned husband decided to marry the lover’s wife.

Neeraj and Rubi Devi, both from India’s Bihar state, tied the knot in 2009 and had four children together. At one point, Neeraj learned that his wife was having an affair with another man, named Mukesh, and despite his attempts to have Rubi cut ties with her lover, she ended up eloping with Mukesh last year and later marrying him. Neeraj turned to the elders in his Khagaria District village to hold a ‘panchayat’ (special assembly) and resolve the matter, but Mukesh and Rubi declined to attempt and they have been on the run ever since. But the story doesn’t end here…

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The Sandhills of North Carolina is said to be the only place in the world where bees produce purple honey, an iridescent concoction that looks more like alien goo than the sweet nectar we know and love.

From the expensive yet bitter Corbezzolo Honey to the meat honey produced by vulture bees, we’ve featured some unusual types of honey here on Oddity Central over the years. However, none of them are as visually striking as the purple honey produced in North Carolina. It sounds like the stuff of legends, something to lure honey and beekeeping aficionados from around the world, but this extremely rare liquid is quite real. Purple honey is said to be sweeter than the amber kind and apparently has some subtle fruit notes as well.

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Amanita phalloides, commonly known as the ‘death cap’ mushroom, has always fascinated scientists both because of its deadly amatoxins and the way it manages to conquer new lands in record time.

The death cap originated in Europe where it grows by burrowing into the roots of European Oak trees and forming a symbiotic relationship with them, but it has somehow managed to colonize every single continent except Antarctica. This impressive feat has been puzzling scientists for years, because of how fast the process seemed to be. Most likely introduced in California sometime in the 19th century, by hitching a ride with soil-potted seedlings from Europe, the poisonous mushroom quickly spread across the US state, from the Bay Area further up the coast, eventually becoming more abundant than in its native Europe. After decades of research, scientists now know how the rapid conquest happened.

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The Lingcod, a fish native to the North American west coast, usually has brown-red or even greyish skin and white flesh, but about 1 in 5 specimens are actually neon blue both inside and out, and no one really knows why.

Popular both among recreational fishermen and seafood lovers for its delicious meat, the lingcod is a bottom-dwelling fish that can grow up to a size of 152 centimeters. It’s a voracious predator that feeds on virtually anything that moves and fits into its large mouth and has only a couple of species of seals and human fishermen to worry about. The Lingcod is sometimes referred to as ‘smurf cod’ due to the fact that about 20 percent of specimens have neon blue flesh that looks either alien or affected by nuclear radiation. Interestingly, while scientists have theories about this bizarre coloration, we have yet to establish why some lingcod have blue flesh.

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A Chinese man who carried out a gas station robbery in 2009 and walked away with 156 yuan ($22.50) spent the last 14 years of his life hiding from the cops in a remote mountain cave.

Liu Moufu, from a village in  Enshi City, China’s Hubei province, was in his mid-30s when he took part in a gas station robbery along with his brother-in-law and another accomplice. They ended up with 156 yuan ($22.50) between them, 60 of which they quickly spent on some food and fireworks, which left them with just 32 yuan ($4.6) each. The three men parted ways, but it wasn’t long before police found Liu’s accomplices and arrested them. The man realized it was only a matter of time before authorities showed up at his doorstep, so he decided to go into hiding rather than risk prison time. Little did he know he would spend the next 14 years in a prison of his own making…

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