According to a recent report by state media, 96.7% of all counterfeit bills circulating in China originated from templates hand-drawn by Peng Daxiang, an elderly painter who was arrested in 2013.

Before being apprehended by police, 73-year-old Daxiang, a native of Shantou, Guangdong Province, had single-handedly managed to produce dozens of printing plates worth millions of yuan without the use of computers or other modern technology. Instead, he relied on simple tools like magnifying glasses and film cameras. He apparently made huge profits selling these templates to counterfeiting gangs, charging anywhere between 50,000 yuan ($8,000) and 120,000 yuan ($20,000) per plate.

Officials later discovered that Daxiang, a famous artist in his hometown, was also involved in forging graduate diplomas, official certificates and even food stamps. He was finally sentenced to life imprisonment in 2014, by the Shantou Intermediate People’s Court, on multiple charges including counterfeiting money and forging official documents. All of his possessions were confiscated by the state and he was deprived of political rights for life.

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Developed by Tattoo Art Magazine, in collaboration with Brazilian ad agency Lew’Lara TBWA, the “Skin Book” is a revolutionary product in the world of tattooing. It consists of synthetic pages, textured like human skin.

With the Skin Book, aspiring tattoo artists can now practice the art of inking skin before actually working on a real person. They have a chance to get acquainted with the texture of human skin, without the risk of leaving someone with a permanent ugly tattoo. Seasoned tattoo artists can also use the notebook to practice new designs with real needles, instead of using a pen or pencil on regular paper.

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Here comes the bride, all dressed in white and laying in… a coffin? Yes, that’s exactly how 58-year-old Jenny Buckleff arrived at her off-the-wall wedding – in a closed coffin, pulled by a motorcycle!

Jenny, who used to work as an embalmer at a funeral parlor, said that she wanted do “something different” at her wedding. “Instead of turning up in a horse-drawn cart, I thought I’m going to turn up in a coffin,” she said. So she decided to conceal herself in her brother Roger’s black coffin, while her sister-in-law Hayley pulled her all the way to the Llangefni registry office behind a VW Trike.

Interestingly, Jenny revealed that she isn’t actually into any bizarre or goth stuff. “I don’t normally dress like this and I’m not goth at all,” she told the media. “I work for Bet365, so you have to be well presented and I’m normally very smart. But my brother is different. He’s covered in tattoos so for once he looked the part. My brother and I are very close so it was nice to be able to do something to honour him and do something a bit different. He loved it and said it made his day.” Read More »

Superglue can fix a lot of things, but teeth are not one of them. That’s obviously common sense, but this British woman was so afraid of the dentist that she actually superglued her broken teeth to her gums. Needless to say, she ended up damaging her gums and spending nearly all her life savings on corrective surgery.

Angie Barlow, who works as a professional dog walker in Greater Manchester, England, said: “I’ve always been scared of the dentist because my mum died at 34 from throat cancer. She had a tooth out, and that’s how they found she had cancer. That fear has always been in the back of my mind. You just get your mindset and you think, ‘don’t go, don’t make that phone call.’”

But, at one point, her smoking had damaged her teeth so badly that Barlow began to lose her teeth. And instead of going to the dentist, she just used superglue to reattach them. “When the tooth comes out, I just put a little bit of glue and try and hold it in place to keep it, so I don’t have a gap in my teeth,” she explained in a video. “I use glue on the top of the tooth, and then I put it back in place until the glue is set.”

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American entrepreneur Jeremiah Raber recently risked his ‘assets’ in a bid to prove the efficiency of his bullet proof groin protector. He put on the product, called Nutshellz, and volunteered to get shot at with a rifle! Lucky for him, the protector worked as intended and his family jewels came away unscathed.

Raber, CEO of Armored Nutshellz, performed the stunt in collaboration with his friend Matt Heck (the guy with the rifle), and recorded it to raise publicity for his Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. The footage shows the 38-year-old placing the cup underneath his jeans and standing next to a tree while Heck takes aim. “We take product testing very seriously,” he later says on camera. “Don’t try this at home.” He then pulls down his jeans, and Heck pulls the trigger. Shockingly, Raber walked away from the life-threatening experiment unhurt, proving that his company does make the ‘strongest jockstrap in the world’. The video has been viewed over 90,000 times so far.

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In a puzzling turn of events, Indian authorities have arrested a pigeon on the suspicion of spying for the Pakistani government.

The dubious bird is believed to have landed on the terrace of a barber’s home in the village of Manwal, four kilometers away from the India-Pakistan border. The barber’s 14-year-old son noticed an Urdu message printed on its feathers that read: ‘Tehsil Shakargarh, district Narowal’, along with a series of numbers. The boy immediately turned the pigeon over to the police, asking them to investigate its appearance.

Intrigued by the message and by a wire-like object found on its body, officers rushed the bird to a veterinary hospital in the town of Pathankot for inspection. X-Ray reports did not reveal anything abnormal, but the police said that they plan to detain the bird until they find out more. They do have a hunch that the digits in the message may be a telephone number in Pakistan’s Narowal district and the tension was further intensified by the fact that the bird made an appearance during a top-secret inter-state security conference in India. So the bird was listed in police records as a “suspected spy”.

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Chinese media reports that a growing number of parents are taking their children on special tours of luxury villas, to stimulate their desire to become wealthy and successful.

On weekends, most parents take their kids to the playground, maybe to a museum, shopping mall or on a relaxing picnic, but in China, some parents use these family outings to inspire their young ones to study hard so one day they can afford to live a life of luxury.

Companies like Heming Island Resort and Spa, in Qingyuan, Guangdong Province, offer families the chance to visit luxury villas worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, which are meant “to stimulate a child’s desire to become wealthy and successful”. These holiday homes are apparently becoming a popular tool for parents who want their offspring to learn that being rich is a sign of “high social status and success”.

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For most of us a cruise around the world aboard a luxury ship is nothing but a fantasy, but for Lee Wachtstetter it’s everyday life. The 86-year-old has been living on the Crystal Serenity cruise ship for the last seven years, hardly ever setting foot on dry land.

The Florida woman sold her five-bedroom home in Fort Lauderdale shortly after she lost her husband ,Guy Mason Wachtstetter, to cancer, and moved into the stateroom of a Holland America Line ship. When that ship discontinued its dance host program, she moved to the 1,070-passenger Crystal Serenity, where she has been living for the past seven years!

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A shopping mall in Shanghai recently sparked controversy with its special, super-sized parking spaces for female drivers. The pink-colored spots are six meters long by three meters wide, making them half a meter larger than normal parking spaces. Although mall staff insist that they are intended to make parking safer and more convenient for women, plenty of netizens have deemed the move sexist.

The four pink-colored spaces on the B1 level of Wandu Center, on Xingyi Road, feature the image of a woman, similar to the ones used to designate restroom doors, on the floor and the walls behind them are to be painted pink for easy identification. Men are obviously not allowed to use these spots, but strict action won’t be taken against those who do, at least not at first. “Whether the ladies-only spaces will be properly used still depends on public awareness,” said mall employee Li Ming.

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Six-year-old Amina Al Musa is a seemingly normal child: She goes to school and loves playing hide-and-seek. But her after-school snack is so unconventional that it has attracted media attention across the world. Amina happens to be breastfed by her mother every single day, and the little girl seems to love it!

Extended breastfeeding is highly unusual in today’s world, which is why Amina’s case is making headlines. At age 52, her mother – belly dancing expert and human rights activist Maha Al Musa – is one of the oldest women in the world to be breastfeeding. Although she’s garnering a lot of interest and some criticism, Maha says that she’s only responding to her daughter’s natural desire.

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17-year-old Lamont Cathey, who was jailed for breaking into a pizza parlour in Chicago, is proving to be a costly inmate to handle. For the past 16 months, mentally disturbed Cathey has been consuming metal objects – ranging from toe screws to needles, to drawing pins, and even strips of leather. He has been rushed to the prison’s hospital 24 different times to have these items removed, costing the State a whopping $1.3 million!

Cathey used to be a promising basketball player until he was accused of stealing money from a safe at a pizzeria over a year ago. He is yet to go on trial, and as he waits for a sentence, he has taken to eating “anything he could get his hands on” around his cell. He reportedly swallowed parts of a security camera, tore apart a $50,000 hospital bed, and broke open a medical device to swallow the parts inside.

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A Czech TV show is making waves for its controversial format, depicting the brutal lives of ordinary people under Nazi rule. The reality show, titled ‘Holiday in the Protectorate’, features a modern family living in recreated conditions of the German occupation during the WWII. A prize money of 1 million Czech Krunas (over $40,000) awaits the family if they manage to survive the two-month ordeal.

The three-generation family was selected after rigorous auditions in which 200 other families participated. The show was recorded in the summer of 2014, and the 8 hour-long episodes will be airing from May 23 to June 13. Although the family participated in normal tasks typical of that time period, like harvesting crops or milking cows, they also went through wartime struggles like food rationing, frequent hunger, simulated air raids, intimidation by Nazi informants, and interrogations by the Gestapo.

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Long before selfies became a way of life, this Alaska man began to take pictures of himself every day. Now, 16 years later, Jonathan Keller has released an extraordinary time-lapse video consisting of a whopping 5,840 pictures of his face! The three-and-a-half minute video shows his transformation from a 22-year-old young adult to his current 39-year-old self.

Keller’s project, titled ‘Living My Life Faster’, began on October 1, 1998. Ever since, he’s been taking one picture of himself every single day, wearing the same emotionless expression. His goal, it seems, is to show that the daily changes to his appearance are almost insignificant when viewed in chronological order. But the ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures show that he has indeed aged visibly.

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In a bid to live her life to the fullest, artist Michelle Poler has decided to face 100 biggest fears. She’s calling the project ‘100 Days Without Fear’ and her goal is to do one thing that scares her, every day for 100 days.

Originally from Venezuela, Michelle recently moved to New York to get a Master’s Degree in Branding at the School of Visual Arts. She revealed that the experience of living in the city inspired her to take on the project. “Trying to control New York has been a nightmare,” she said. “But what has really pushed me to pursue this project was not the controlled lifestyle I left behind, it is the frustration of not enjoying this city and life in general to the fullest.”

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11-year-old child prodigy Tanishq Abraham is in the news for graduating from college with not one, not two, but three different degrees. The talented kid from California made headlines last year as well, for completing high school at the age of ten and earning a congratulatory letter from President Barack Obama. And now, just a year later, he’s finished college with three associate degrees.

Last week’s graduation ceremony at the American River College in Sacramento was attended by Tanishq’s parents – his mother Taji, a vet, and his father Bijou, a software engineer. His sister Tiara, also a child prodigy, was present as well. They cheered for Tanishq as he was awarded associate degrees in math and physical sciences, general science, and language studies. He wore a rainbow colored scarf that his grandmother had knit specially for the occasion, and a cap with his favorite Toy Story-quote: ‘To Infinity and Beyond.”

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