When Sophy Ijeoma, a makeup artist from Nigeria, decided to comment on an acquaintance’s Facebook marriage advert as a joke, she never imagined she would marry the man just seven days later, but I guess she underestimated the power of social media.

The day before New Year’s Eve, Nigerian furniture maker Chidimma Amedu decided it was to find a wife. Instead of probing his friends or going on a dating site, he just posted an advert on Facebook, asking all women interested in becoming his wife to reply to his post. It read “Am of age to and I am ready to say I do and I am wasting no time. Send in your applications. The most qualified will be married on January 6, 2018. Application closes 12 midnight, December 31, 2017. I am serious about this… and don’t say you did not see it on time. Goodluck.”

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A young Irish man whose teeth had almost rotted away completely due to his addiction to sweet fizzy drinks has recently been gifted a brand new smile by a dentist who noticed his excruciating pain when trying to take a bite from a sandwich.

Michael Sheridan, a father-of-three from Ashbourne, has endured constant pain for years and has had to live on a diet of soft foods as biting into anything solid caused him excruciating pain. He attributes his poor dental health to his addiction to fizzy drinks, of which he would drink up to six liters a day. Sheridan’s addiction was so severe that he would experience headaches and shakiness if he didn’t have a fizzy drink within half an hour of waking up every day. As his teeth began to rot, he would lay awake most nights in agony from toothaches. Over time he grew ashamed of his teeth and would hide his smile from even his partner and children.

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Five years ago, a compassionate Shanghai policeman took on the role of son to help comfort an elderly couple he had never met before. They had lost their own son in a tragic accident 15 years ago, and the policeman’s similar appearance helped comfort them.

In 2003, Liang Qiaoying and her son, Liang Yu, from North China’s Shanxi province, were exposed to poison gas, during a freak accident. The woman survived, but her young son did not. Liang, a former schoolteacher, was left paralyzed and mentally impaired following the accident, and her husband, Xia Zhanhai, could not bear to tell her the truth about their son. Instead, whenever his wife asked to see Liang Yu, he kept saying that he had gone to work in another city.

In 2010, while watching a television show about police work in Shanghai, Xia Zhanhai was stunned to see an officer that looked just like his deceased son. He immediately knew that the young man was the answer to making his wife smile again, but he had know idea how to get in touch with him. He hadn’t caught his name, and all he had to go by was that he was stationed in Pudong, 1,500 km away. But that wasn’t going to stop him.

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Anton Maltsev, an ex-member of Russia’s Special Forces and a Kossovo War veteran, was recently pardoned for turning his Moscow apartment into a veritable forces chuck full of traps, firearms and even a DIY titanium exoskeleton he used to fight off debt collectors.

Maltsev’s unusual story first made news headlines in 2016, when military bomb disposal experts were called to break down his apartment door, after debt collectors failed and triggered a pepper-spray trap in their attempt. Inside the apartment, the experts found several tripwire traps, reinforced doors, an AK47, several semi-automatic firearms, numerous pistols, a grenade launched, and eight kilos of explosives. But the most startling discovery was a home-made exoskeleton made up of titanium plates, aluminum, and featuring a bullet-proof helmet and vest. It was this contraption that earned him the nickname “Russian Iron Man”.

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Police in the Dutch city of Rotterdam is rolling out a new and highly controversial pilot program aimed at reducing crime. The program will target young men wearing designer clothing or expensive jewellery who supposedly look like they’re too poor to afford the items in question. If they’re unable to adequately prove to the police how they were able to purchase their clothes and/or accessories, the items will potentially be confiscated on the spot, with suspects expected to strip down in the street.

The controversial program will run for a limited time, to test its effectiveness, and the Rotterdam police department will be collaborating with the public prosecution department to help them determine what items they can legally confiscate. The main idea behind this endeavour  is to deter theft by sending a signal that perpetrators will not be able to keep their stolen goods.

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200 schools in Germany have begun asking hyperactive children, typically those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), to wear heavy sand-filled vests to calm them down and keep them in their seats during classes. The controversial vests, which weigh between 1.2 and six kilograms (2.7 – 13Ib), have sparked misgivings among parents and psychiatrists.

There are plenty of advocates, however, who claim to have witnessed remarkable changes in behavior among the children who have worn them and insisted that they help curb restlessness. There has been a growing number of ADHD cases diagnosed in Germany each year, and schools that use the vest claim that they are a gentler and less complicated way to tackle the phenomenon than administering psychiatric drugs such as Ritalin.

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A former nanny in China recently confessed to abducting a boy from her employers in Chongqing and raising him as her own son for the past 26 years. He Xiaoping, 48, from Nanchong, in southwest China’s Sichuan Province, confessed the kidnapping to local authorities, last August. Police have been investigating her story ever since, but are unable to open a criminal case based solely on her claim.

Xiaoping claims that after giving birth to two children and losing both in their infancy, she approached elders in her village for advice. They told her that the only way for her to have a child of her own, would be to raise one from another family. In 1992, Xiaoping went to the city of Chongqing with a fake ID card and found a job as a nanny for a 1-year-old boy. She claims that after working for three days, she took the boy back to Nanchong with her. She named the boy Liu Jinxin after her second son.

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In a report released on Tuesday, the journal BMJ Case Reports detailed the bizarre and somewhat frightening case of a 34-year-old British man who ruptured his throat by suppressing a particularly powerful sneeze. The man, described as “previously fit and well” attempted to politely contain his sneeze by “pinching the nose and holding his mouth closed”, which you are apparently not supposed to do.

The force of the sneeze backfired into his throat and perforated his pharynx, the part of the throat right above the larynx and esophagus. He was unaware of the damage initially, but after realizing that his voice had changed and his throat hurt when he swallowed, he knew something was wrong. His neck began to swell up as well, and whenever he moved his head, he experienced an unsettling sensation of popping and crackling.

The man went to the emergency department at Britain’s Leicester Royal Infirmary where doctors were able to diagnose his condition. X-rays revealed that the sneeze had ruptured his throat allowing air bubbles to make their way into the tissue and muscles of his chest, a condition known as subcutaneous emphysema and pneumomediastinum, which caused the popping sensation from his neck to extend all the way to his rib cage. Doctors had to take action quickly as the rupture left the man at risk for complications such as deep neck infection.

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A retired British businessman with the lifelong dream of building a majestic yacht has almost achieved his goal. Mike Ludgrove, 63, is putting the finishing touches on the 60ft boat that he has spent the past 12 years painstakingly crafting by hand. He has spent £1.3 million ($1.8 million) and several thousands of hours on the classic sailing yacht that he has named ‘Helena’.

Ludgrove, who trained at Lyme Regis Boatbuilding Academy, originally estimated that he could complete his dream yacht in just three years, at a cost of around £500,000. He soon realized, however, that both the timeline and budget were overly ambitious. To raise more funds, Ludgrove and his amazingly supportive wife Elaine sold their London flat, their primary home in Exeter, Devon, and now live in a rented ex-council house. Five years ago, the couple sold their health food business to raise additional money for the boat. Ludgrove also enlisted the help of his son and some friends to work alongside him to make his dream a reality. Ed Burnett, the naval architect who designed the Queen’s Jubilee barge, provided the plans for Ludgrove’s yacht.

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A young woman from the Russian Republic of Iacutia who was allegedly assaulted in a local disco went to the hospital to have her wounds registered so she could press charges, but was shocked to discover that the doctor on duty was the same man who had attacked her. Instead of checking her wounds, the doctor started hitting her again.

A short video that has been doing the rounds on Russian social media for the past couple of days shows doctor Vladimir Naumov threatening and physically assaulting 20-year-old Anastasia Dmitrieva, at the hospital in Neryungri, eastern Russia. The woman had allegedly come to the hospital to have the wounds she had sustained a few hours earlier, at the local disco, looked at, only to find that doctor Naumov was the same man who had inflicted them.

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If you’ve ever had to chop an onion, you probably know that it’s one of the most annoying cooking experiences. It just fills your eyes with tears and, apart from wearing goggles, there’s not too much you can do about it. Scientists and farmers have been working on a solution to this problem for decades, and they’ve apparently come up with a tearless onion.

Called the “Sunion”, this new vegetable is the result of a natural cross-breeding program that’s been going on farms in Nevada and Washington since the 1980s, which should put consumers worried about genetically-modified produce at ease. It’s supposedly a sweet, mild-tasting onion that doesn’t leave that strong, pungent aftertaste, but what really sets it apart from most other onion varieties is that it doesn’t cause teary eyes when it’s chopped.

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A former Japanese yakuza boss who had been on the run for more than fourteen years was finally arrested in Thailand this month, after photos of his impressive tattoos began circulating online.

Thai police arrested 74-year-old Shigeharu Shirai last Wednesday in a province north of Bangkok, where he had been hiding for more than ten years to escape murder charges in Japan. Shirai was apprehended while out shopping in the central market town of Lopburi.

Japanese authorities had been seeking to arrest Shirai over his alleged role in the shooting of rival gang member Kashihiko Otobe, the deputy leader of rival Kamiya gang, back in 2003. He fled to Thailand before they could apprehend him, where he married a local woman and enjoyed a peaceful retirement. Shirai’s Japanese associates visited him in Thailand two to three times a year bringing him cash gifts to help sustain his life of leisure.

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An incredible new library has opened in the Çankaya district of Ankara, Turkey featuring a collection of salvaged books once destined for landfill.

Local sanitation workers, who spent months collecting abandoned and discarded books from the streets, established the library to be used by themselves and their families. As the collection grew, however, word spread throughout the community, and locals began to donate books that they would have otherwise discarded. In September of last year, the Sanitation Department decided to open the library up to public use.

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A Taiwanese man recently had his petition for divorce approved  by the New Taipei City District Court after claiming psychological torture due to his ex-wife’s hygiene habits, or lack thereof. The woman, surnamed Lin, allegedly bathed just once a year and only occasionally washed her hair or brushed her teeth.

The unnamed plaintiff said that Lin’s hygiene was questionable at the time they were dating when she bathed weekly, but that her behavior worsened after their wedding. Her weekly showers became monthly showers, then biannual, and when she started bathing only once a year, he just couldn’t take it anymore. The man said that due to Lin’s unsanitary habits they only had sex once a year, which prevented the couple from producing any children in their decade-long marriage.

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A devoted father in the eastern Indian state of Orissa has single-handedly constructed an 8-km (5 miles) stretch of mountain road so that his children, who live away from home for school, can visit him more frequently. For the past two years Jalandhar Nayak, 45, set out every morning with an ax and crowbar and spent up to eight hours a day cutting rocks and moving boulders.

Nayak, who has never received formal education himself, lives in an isolated village, 10 km (6 miles) from the residential school where his three sons study. It would be a small distance with proper roads, but the commute takes the sons three hours as their route includes a trek across five hills to reach their home. “My children find it difficult to walk on the narrow and stony path while going to their school,” the man recently told Kalinga TV. “I often saw them stumbling against the stones, and I decided to carve a road through the mountain so that they can walk freely.”

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