A Chinese mother was left heartbroken after a DNA test showed that the child she had raised for 28 years was not her real son. Her ex-husband became suspicious and demanded the test because he couldn’t understand how the boy had turned out so handsome.

The young man’s mother, referred to only as Zhang by Chinese media, said that ever since her son was born, friends and family had always been surprised about how different the child looked, and how handsome he was compared to them. Over the years, all these comments sowed the seeds of doubt in her husband’s mind, and affected their marriage. All the arguments about their son being “too good looking” eventually ended in a divorce, but that wasn’t enough to lay the man’s suspicions to rest.

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The Nossa Senhora da Consolação church, in downtown Sao Paolo, Brazil, used to have a serious pigeon problem. The pesky birds would fly through the place during sermons, poop on  the benches and leave feathers everywhere, but ever since they had these colored circle panels installed in the windows and doorways, no pigeon gets close anymore.

Regular parishioners at Nossa Senhora da Consolação describe the pigeon situation as a “real hell”. Dozens of birds had made the place of worship their home, flying in and out whenever they pleased, making a lot noise during mass and dropping stones and bits of plaster on people. Every morning, the floor and wooden benches had to be cleaned of bird droppings, and at one point it all became too much to bear. The church wanted to find a humane way of driving the pigeons away, but they never imagined hypnosis would be the answer.

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26-year-old Helena Fernandes likes to draw, but she is not particularly good at it. But did that small detail stop her from opening her own tattoo shop and permanently inking people with her mediocre designs? Of course not! If anything, her poor drawing skills actually contributed to her success.

Helen did her first tattoo about a year ago, when she inked her boyfriend for fun. Apparently, their friends found her work appealing, because it was natural and different, and some of them asked her to work her magic on them as well. She bought her own tattooing kit on the internet, and due to the high cost of materials, she started charging for tattoos, investing all the proceeds into better quality supplies. She started working as a professional tattoo artist in March, inking people at a studio she set up at her home.

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Carolyn Hartz, a 70-year old entrepreneur and mother-of-three from Perth, Australia, recently shocked the world with her shockingly youthful looks. She claims that it’s all do to a healthy lifestyle and cutting sugar out of her diet 30 years ago, but a lot of people believe that her wrinkle-free face and bikini body are the result of cosmetic procedures.

Photos of Carolyn Hartz have been doing the rounds online for over two months now, and for good reason. At 70 years of age, she looks much better than most women do at 50, and we know how obsessed people are with turning back, or at least slowing down the clock. But while most are in awe of her youthful looks and describe her as an inspiration, there are also those who accuse her of not being completely honest about how she manages to look so good at her age.

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Families in Ghana are increasingly turning to troupes of dancing pallbearers to send their loved ones off in style, and bring some joy to what is usually perceived as a very sad event.

Dancing pallbearers not only lift the casket at a funeral, they also lift the mood of attendees by putting on a show. They parade the casket on their backs and shoulders, while at the same time executing a complex choreography that often involves spinning around, dropping to the ground and even pretending to drop the casket, all to the delight of the audience. It’s definitely an unusual display, but families in Ghana are increasingly paying for the services of such troupes to give their loved-ones an upbeat send-off.

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Woody Woodpecker’s exploits only seemed possible in the popular Looney Toons cartoon, but one real-life woodpecker recently proved that the birds can some pretty incredible things, if they put their mind to it, like peck through an entire wooden power pole.

Last week, a photo posted by the Snohomish County Public Utility District did the rounds on social media, garnering dozens of shares and comments, and for good reason. It showed a wooden power pole barely hanging on by a thread, after having been pecked by a hard-working woodpecker. How the pole was still standing, considering the damage that had been done to it, is anyone’s guess, but a few more pecks or a strong gust of wind would have probably brought it down in a day or two. Luckily, Snohomish County staff managed to change it in time.

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Elisabeth Anderson-Sierra, a 29-year-old mother-of-two from Beaverton, Oregon, suffers from a rare condition known as Hyperlactation Syndrome. She produces about 1.7 gallons of breast milk per day, almost 10 times as much as most lactating women, and spends around 10 hours every day nursing and pumping her milk. She has so far donated 600 gallons (2.5 tonnes) of breast milk to milk banks and families in need of it.

Ever since falling pregnant with her older daughter, Isabella, who is now two and a half years old, Elisabeth estimates that she has fed thousands of babies with her breast milk. She virtually spends her whole day pumping the liquid gold, which she then stores in four large freezers in her home, for local mothers who cannot breastfeed their newborns, gay couples and breast milk banks for premature babies. Despite the huge amount of time and the discomfort that goes into pumping the milk, the 29-year-old considers it a “labor of love”.

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Can you imagine receiving dozens of letters from strangers every day, having your utilities cut off, or not being able to unsubscribe from certain services, all because of an unfortunate address? That’s what life is like at 1234 AB, 123 (changed for privacy reasons), the address that most hackers, as well as everyday people in the Netherlands, use when filling out online forms. They do it out of laziness, or to protect their own privacy, without realizing that some of the things they do online actually affect the people at that address.

Motherboard Netherlands recently learned that 1234 AB, 123 was the most spammed address in the country, and decided to investigate if such an address actually existed. A Google search revealed that there was a indeed a place in the Noord Holland province with that exact address, and it even showed up on Streetview. They were soon able to find some phone numbers of the people living there, to ask them if living at the most spammed address in the country affected their lives in any way. Turns out it does, “bigly”!

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The Bespoke Coloring Book is being hailed as the “world’s most luxurious coloring book” and has a price tag to match – $30,850 for 10 bespoke illustrations created by famed illustrator Ian Beck, based on your personal preferences.

Adult coloring books have become insanely popular in the last few years, with more and more grownups turning to them as a way to relax, combat stress and let loose their inner child. You can find them in virtually any bookstore, and there are literary thousands of themes to choose from. But luxury goods&services company Very First To did some research and found that there was no luxury coloring books for rich people, so they decided to make one. And boy did they come up with something special.

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A man from Surrey, UK, lost consciousness and had to be hospitalized after he and a few friends shared a bottle of Satan’s Shot vodka, a special liquor infused with Carolina Reapers, the hottest chillies in the world.

Emma Mirrington, 42, from Farncombe, bought a bottle of Satan’s Shot vodka at Guildford Cheese and Chilli Festival, on Sunday, and decided to share it with some friends. They all gathered at at The White Hart pub to sample the rare spirit, ignoring the label warning “Only Satan himself is brave enough to drink this vodka neat, if you feel fearless and want to drink with Satan, you will feel like you are burning in hell itself.” It turns out the bottling company wasn’t exaggerating one bit.

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Most commuters in Munich, Germany, spend hours stuck in traffic or trying to squeeze into one of the overcrowded subway trains, every morning, but for 40-year-old Benjamin David, commuting is actually a relaxing experience. Every day, he jumps into the Isar River and swims two kilometers to his workplace in Kulturstrand.

Benjamin David used to be one of the thousands of Münchners trying to make their way to work on busy roads and cycling paths, but two years ago he decided that he needed to find a simpler alternative and the Isar River seemed like the obvious answer. It flows right past his apartment in Baldeplatz, and, even though no one has been using it for traveling purposes in decades, it used to be the best ways to get around. People traveled up and down the Isar using rafts, and, at one point, it was one of the most popular routes between Rome and Vienna. But instead of paddling on a raft, Benjamin decided to swim to work instead, and that’s been his main commute for the past two years.

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At age 10, Caden Benjamin, from Mpumalanga, South Africa already tips the scales at a whopping 90 kg. He suffers from a rare genetic disorder known as Prader-Willi syndrome, which makes him feel hungry all the time.

Caden was always a hungry child, but his mother, Zola, realized that there was something unusual about his appetite at age 3, when he already weighed 40 kilograms. He took the boy to several doctors, but no one could explain why he was so hungry all the time and gaining so much weight. Finally, a doctor at Steve Biko Academic Hospital in Pretoria ran some tests and diagnosed Caden with Prader-Willi syndrome, an incurable condition that affects about 20 000 people worldwide.

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A 44-year-old man from Quzhou, China’s Zhejiang province, was recently hospitalized with severe kidney problems, after eating a whopping 54 ice creams in one sitting, and washing them down with ice water.

The man, surnamed Zheng, was at his home, on July 15, when he began to feel the effects of the heatwaves that have been sweeping China for the last few weeks. Tired and dehydrated after a hot day, Zheng went to his refrigerator and grabbed an ice cream to cool off. Problem was that that first ice-cream only made him crave another, and then another, so he kept eating them until he went through all the 54 frozen treats he had in his fridge. I’ve never head of anyone having that many ice-creams in their home, but apparently this guy did.

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Filmmakers usually strive to make their productions as entertaining and engaging as possible, but the people behind “Baa Baa Land”, an epic 8-hour movie scheduled for release this September, set out to do just the opposite. With no dialogue, no plot and no human actors, just lots and lots of sheep, the so-called “world’s dullest movie” was designed to put viewers to sleep.

Produced by Calm, a company that produces mindfulness meditation products, Baa Baa Land is being advertised as “the ultimate insomnia cure” and “better than a sleeping pill”. It was filmed in Essex, England, and consists of slow motion shots of sheep in a field. Basically, nothing happens for eight hours, but that was the whole the whole point. Producer Peter Freedman, said that he believed it could be the dullest film ever made, adding: “We hope that audiences will, too”.

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Asian media is abuzz with talk and photos of a 50-year-old Singaporean photographer who doesn’t look a day over 30. His name is Chuando Tan and to say that he has aged well would be a gross understatement.

I can think of quite a few celebrities in their 50s who look very well for their age, but looking at these photos of Chuando Tan just makes you scratch your head and scroll up to the title of the article to make sure you read his age correctly. I was skeptical about his age after finding some photos of him on an obscure Chinese website, but several online sources have already confirmed that the man is actually in his 50s, including The Straits Times, which did an interview with him 2001.

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