Joe Bagley, a 20-year-old self-confessed “jungle boy”, has turned his one-bedroom apartment in Loughborough, UK, into an indoor jungle with over 1,400 potted plants.

From cacti and succulents to tropical flowers and vines, you can find all sorts of plants growing in Joe Bagley’s home. They are everywhere, on the dining table, on bookshelves, even in the bathroom, pretty much wherever there is any spare space that hasn’t been occupied by something else. There isn’t that much space available, s cramming 1,400 potted plants into it has made it look like a sort of indoor urban jungle. As you can imagine, looking after so many houseplants takes a bit of time, and Joe admits that he spends most of his free time watering them and making sure they are healthy.

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As countries around the world struggle to come up with ways of keeping people from going outside and slow down the spread of the novel coronavirus, Indonesian settlements are trying an unconventional solution – volunteer ghosts.

In Kepuh village, Central Java, people brave enough to venture outside their homes at night risk coming face to face with ‘pocong’ or shrouded ghosts, legendary figures believed to be represent the souls of dead people trapped in their funeral shrouds. The pocong monitor guests coming into the village and make sure that residents stay indoors as much as possible, to prevent them from spreading the potentially deadly coronavirus. Quite unusual for ghosts known as scary and creepy in Indonesian folklore, but then again, these aren’t your usual pocong.

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Summer at the beach doesn’t sound that enticing this year due to the threat of Covid-19 and social distancing measures, but one Italian company has conceptualized a solution and it involves Plexiglas beach cubicles.

Having to pass on the summer vacation season entirely would be catastrophic for Italy’s massive tourism sector, but  Modena-based Nuova Neon recently unveiled a type of transparent Plexiglas cubicles that could be set up on beaches to ensure that people can enjoy some time in the sun while still maintaining a safe distance from each other. These large  transparent boxes are designed to delimit the bathers’ spaces; they surround individual groups of people thus avoiding interactions with other vacationers.

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Indonesian soap opera actor Galih Ginanjar was recently sentenced to 2 years and four months in prison for humiliating his ex-wife by claiming that her genitalia smelled like “salted fish”.

In June 2019, Galih appeared as a guest on a popular YouTube show hosted by TV personality Rey Utami, where he answered all kind of questions about his personal life.When asked about his marriage to Indonesian actress Fairuz A Rafiq, which ended in 2015, the young soap opera didn’t shy away from vulgar language to describe intimate details. Among other things, he said that intercourse between them usually lasted about 15 minutes, and that her privates smelled like “salted fish”. This made the host burst into uncontrollable laughter, but enraged Fairuz, who quickly filed a police report for “immoral content”.

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A 76-year-old man from rural China can consider himself lucky to be alive after he had a four-inch-long rusty knife surgically removed from his brain, 26 years after being stabbed in the head.

The case of Duorijie, an old farmer from the rural county of Haiyan in China’s north-western Qinghai Province, can be considered nothing short of a miracle. Stabbed in the head in 1994, during a violent mugging, Duorijie had reportedly been living with a long knife blade stuck in his brain ever since. Lucky to have survived the attack, the farmer had been experiencing all kinds of troublesome symptoms because of the knife blade in his brain, like lost vision in his right eye and chronic headaches. Now, thanks to a team of doctors, he is finally able to enjoy a pain-free life.

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A life-threatening pandemic isn’t exactly what you would call the best time to find love, especially with social distancing and self-isolation measures in place, but one New York man is trying to make it work.

If you’ve been jogging through Central Park or any of the Big Apple’s running paths, you may have seen these bizarre flyers from a “healthy, attractive and well-employed man” allegedly looking for a “germ-free, healthy, fit and clean” woman interested in a monogamous relationship. It’s not the most original or the most romantic way to find a partner, but the man who came up with it says it’s a more “targeted” alternative to online dating services.

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In life, Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov was one of the most brilliant medical minds in human history, pioneering practices and procedures that are still used today. In death, he retained his legendary status as a medical genius, but he also gained attention for becoming the world’s oldest modern mummy.

Born in 1810, in Russia, Pirogov spent most of his life various kinds of surgical operations, developing his own technique of using plaster casts on broken bones, and he was the first to use ether anesthesia in a field hospital, saving thousands of lives in the process. He is widely regarded as one of Russia’s greatest physicians and a father of modern surgery. But, having been embalmed hours after his death, in 1881, Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov is also known as the oldest modern mummy in the world, as well as one of the best preserved ones.

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A family of five from Russia’s Sverdlovsk region took social distancing recommendations to the extreme by self-isolating in a forest several kilometers away from the nearest human settlement.

On April 6th, Sverdlovsk police received a phone call from a woman in the village of Krasnogvardeisky who claimed that her brother had taken his wife and three children ages four, eight and ten years old into a nearby forest to escape the threat of coronavirus infection. The family had left the village a day before and hand’t been in touch since, so the woman was worried about their well-being, especially the young children. After organizing a search-party, police found the family living in the indicated forest, under the open sky.

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A luckless Chinese man who reportedly spent almost two months in his home after being quarantined three times in a row became a trending topic on Chinese social media this week.

Mr Xiong, from the city of Jining, in East China’s Shandong Province, spent almost the whole month of February and half of March cooped up in his home in an unlucky triple quarantine that the media hilariously dubbed “buy one, get two free”. The first time Xiong was confined to his apartment was when Jining went into lockdown on February 8th, two days after returning from the Philippines. He was forbidden from leaving his home for 14 days, which was tough, but not as tough as spending 50 days inside…

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In March of 2018, an 11-year-old girl accidentally dropped an apple from the balcony of her family’s 24th floor apartment in Dongguan, China. This simple act ended up costing a toddler its future and the girl’s parents a fortune in compensation…

On March 9, 2018, the unnamed girl was reportedly trying to feed the family dog while holding an apple on the balcony of their apartment, when she accidentally dropped the fruit. At the same exact time, 3-month-old Tongtong was in the arms of her grandmother, taking a walk around that same apartment building in Dongguan. As fate would have it, the dropped apple plummeted down and landed straight on the toddler’s head, rendering her unconscious. She was rushed to the hospital, where doctors notified her family that she had suffered severe head trauma, skull fractures, ruptured blood vessels in the skull, and traumatic shock. Tongtong underwent surgery to stop the bleeding in her brain, but she remained in a coma.

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The Ukrainian city of Dnipro has so far registered only 13 coronavirus infections and no fatalities attributed to Covid-19, but the local authorities have already dug over 600 fresh graves, just to be sure.

Unwilling to risk the same kind of insubordination from his constituents, the mayor of Dnipro, a city of almost one million people, has gone to extreme lengths to make sure locals understand the dangers of ignoring social distancing measures. Last week, Mayor Borys Filatov wrote on Facebook that local authorities were preparing for the worst, adding that over 600 new graves have already been dug in in preparation for anticipated deaths.

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Even you’re not the kind of person who keeps their business cards in a bespoke holder, heck, even if you don’t have business cards, you’re going to fall in love with this awesome steampunk card holder.

Looking at this crazy contraption created by Japanese design company SMD Factory, you’re tempted to think it’s some kind of futuristic device from back in the 1930’s. It’s all metallic, but features decorative elements like a small osciloscope and an astrolab, as well as interconnected gears and latches. It’s as steampunk a device as you can imagine, but it’s really just a card holder, a really cool card holder.

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The Covid-19 pandemic is a problem that even Batman would have a tough time solving, but this Mexican version of the caped crusader is doing his best to help.

Authorities in the Mexican city of Monterrey have received assistance from a very unlikely source in their efforts to keep people in their homes as part of a social distancing plan to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. A real-life Batman wearing the iconic costume of DC’s superhero and driving a custom version of the Batmobile has been patrolling the city streets and asking people to stay at home. The unidentified man has been spending his days blasting a pre-recorded message from his Batmobile, encouraging people to minimize physical interaction.

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Four years ago, Rita Gaviola was a 13-year-old street beggar in the Filipino town of Lucban. Since then she has worked with some of the world’s hottest brands as a fashion model, starred on hit reality TV shows and gained over 100,000 Instagram followers. And it was all thanks to a random photo…

Rita Gaviola’s incredible ‘rags to riches’ story began in 2016. Back then, she was asking for alms on the streets of Lucban, to help her family make ends meet. Her father worked as a garbage collector and her mother stayed home to look after her and her five siblings. None of the children attended school at the time and the family barely managed to put food on the table, so Rita often went out to beg for change or food donations. That’s how she was spotted by Filipino photographer Topher Quinto Burgos, who happened to be attending the Pahiyas Festival in Lucban, in May 2016. He was attracted by her natural beauty and posted the photos of her on the internet, changing the girl’s life completely with a single click of the ‘upload’ button.

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A prominent South African politician who passed away last week was laid to rest in his Beloved Mercedes limousine instead of a regular casket, as per his last wish.

Tshekede Bufton Pitso, a former leader of the United Democratic Movement (UDM) in Eastern Cape, died last week, after collapsing in his driveway as he was making his way to his second-hand 1990s Mercedes E500 limousine. The former businessman had once had an entire fleet of luxurious Mercedes cars, but was forced to sell them in recent years, after falling on hard times. He did manage to buy a used E500, and even though it had broken down and couldn’t be driven, he still enjoyed spending time in it and listening to the car radio. It was his favorite thing in the world and he even told his family he wanted to be buried in it when his time came. Last weekend, they honored his wish.

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