Men in drought-stricken Indian villages often take a second or even a third wife whose sole purpose is only to bring water to the family. They make several long trips to distant water sources every single day, carrying large vats of water on their heads.

Life is hard in dry villages, like Denganmal, 150 km from Mumbai. Husbands are busy farming and tending to the animals, while the women do house chores and raise the children. However, someone still needs to bring water from sources often several kilometers away, for about 8 months out of a year, when there is no rainfall in the area. That’s why having two or even three wives is not at all uncommon in these parts. The men only have children with their first wives, while the other’s sole purpose is to provide water for the family, in exchange for a roof over their heads and the social status of wife. They are paaniwaali bais, water wives.

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On its website, Pakistani company Axact calls itself the “World’s leading IT Company.” It claims to have ten “diverse business units” that offer over “23 world class products” to “prestigious clients worldwide.” It offers these clients services in the fields of software, application design, research, and education. But according to an investigative story by The New York Times, Axact actually makes its millions by selling fake high school diplomas and degrees!

The report suggests that Axact does sell some software as it claims to, but its main business is to “take the centuries-old scam of selling fake academic degrees and turn it into an Internet-era scheme on a global scale.” The company ostensibly designs websites for fake colleges with dubious names like ‘Barkley’, ‘Columbiana’, and ‘Mount Lincoln’, offering online ‘degrees’ in several subjects along with authentication certificates signed by Secretary of State John Kerry.

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In a bid to find a remedy for bedbugs, Canadian scientist Regine Gries has spent nearly a decade studying the parasitic creatures. In fact, she is so dedicated to the project that she actually allows thousands of hungry bedbugs feast off her own blood! Thankfully, her efforts have paid off – she and her husband Gerhard have perfected a chemical that is capable of luring bedbugs away from mattresses.

Regine and Gerhard are both biologists at Simon Fraser University, just outside of Vancouver, in British Columbia. Their lab features a Plexiglass-walled colony with about 5,000 bedbug residents. The bugs live inside glass jars – about 200 to a jar – each covered with a fine mesh that’s held in place using rubber bands. And once a month for the past nine years, Regine has rolled up her sleeves, inverted the jars on to her arms, and allowed the bedbugs to reach through the mesh to bite into her skin!

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IKEA has been selling food and furniture for years, but they recently managed to marry the two with a pop-up restaurant called ‘The IKEA Breakfast in Bed Cafe’. The uniquely themed eatery was furnished with luxurious beds instead of the traditional chair and table setup. Visitors were shown to their beds, from where they could order food and drinks, get expert advice from sleep specialists, and even take naps!

Located on Leonard Street in London’s hipster hub Shoreditch, the pop-up was open between 7am and 3pm, until May 20. Patrons chose between single and double beds, kicked up their heels, and relaxed, while being served by specially trained waiting staff. The menu included classic British breakfast food like salmon, toast, fresh juice, and sleep inducing teas, along with traditional Swedish breakfast options.

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Earlier this month, the residents of Goulburn – a small town in Australia’s Southern Tablelands – were spooked to discover their properties blanketed by millions of tiny spiders and mounds of their silky threads. The spiders had apparently rained down from the sky, silken thread and all, a phenomenon known as “Angel Rain”.

“Anyone else experiencing this Angel Hair or maybe aka millions of spiders falling from the sky right now?” wrote resident Ian Watson on the Goulburn Community Forum Facebook page. “I’m 10 minutes out of town, and you can clearly see hundreds of little spiders floating along with their webs and my home is covered in them. Someone call a scientist!”

That sounds positively frightful, but experts say that arachnid rains are actually a natural phenomenon, and not as uncommon as you’d think. It is referred to as ‘spider rain’ or ‘angel hair’ in scientific circles, and is actually a form of spider transportation called ‘ballooning’.

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When Canadian scientist Christopher Charles discovered six years ago how badly Cambodians were suffering from anemia, he decided to try and solve the problem. Unfortunately, tried-and-tested methods such as iron supplements and iron-rich diets didn’t work because they weren’t affordable. So he came up with the novel idea of using a small iron fish as a cooking ingredient!

The people Charles was working with were the poorest of the poor, and couldn’t afford red meat or expensive iron pills. The women couldn’t even switch to iron pots because they were too heavy and costly. “Some nights I wondered what I had got myself into; here I was in a village with no running water, no electricity and no way to use my computer — it was like a (research) baptism by fire,” Charles recalled.

But inspiration struck eventually, and he decided that the best way cure anemia was to literally add iron to the food. “We knew some random piece of ugly metal wouldn’t work . . . so we had to come up with an attractive idea,” Charles said. Along with his research team, he came up with small, circular chunk of iron, but the women were hesitant to add it to their pots. They changed the prototype to a lotus shape, but the women didn’t like that either. So Charles dug deeper into Cambodian history and culture, and decided upon a piece of iron shaped like a fish – a symbol of good luck in Cambodia. And it worked! Women were more than happy to add it to their cooking pots and follow Charles’ instructions.

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Grigory Mamurin, grandson of Russian multi-millionaire Igor Neklyudov, is making waves for his bizarre display of wealth. The 16-year-old made a video of himself asking people to perform humiliating tasks like stripping in public and drinking his urine in exchange for huge sums of money. Most people walked away while some accepted the challenge, but one man was so angered by the suggestion that he punched the rich kid in the face.

The short video, shot in Moscow’s Gorky Park, has gone viral with over one million views on YouTube. It starts with Grigory sitting in his expensive Mercedes limousine, talking to his audience. “Today we have come to Gorky Park in order to find out how much humiliation people are ready to experience for the sake of money,” he says.

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True to its name, ‘Anty Gin’ is literally made from red wood ants. British distiller Will Lowe collects thousands of ants from the forests of Kent and prepares the gin at his lab-style distillery in Cambridge. The bizarre concoction is the world’s first gin to be made from insects, so naturally, it doesn’t come cheap. Each 70cl bottle costs £200 ($313), and contains the essence of 62 ants.

The idea for Anty Gin came about when Danish organisation Nordic Food Lab contacted Lowe, who makes custom gins for a living. “We were approached by a company from Copenhagen called Nordic Food Lab who explore the culinary qualities of insects and argue for the eating of them in western cuisine. They asked us to come up with a gin where the typical citrus flavor came not from lemon or lime peel, but from ants.” Lowe said.

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California residents have come up with an innovative solution to brighten up their dry lawns, in the midst of their fourth year of drought: they’re painting their lawns green! The extreme measure became popular after statewide water restrictions were announced for the first time in history, in order to combat one of the region’s most devastating droughts.

The restriction leave average Californians with virtually no water for their lawns, but that hasn’t stopped them from wanting to keep their front and back yards looking green. Lots of them are now turning to lawn painting, which is a whole lot cheaper than artificial turf, at 25 cents per square foot. The service was once limited to athletic fields and golf courses, but is now being sought out homeowners, hoteliers, and wedding planners, among others.

The green dye is apparently plant based and completely harmless to humans and animals. It’s also water resistant, although no one would mind if a little rain were to wash it away. The effect lasts for about three months, after which the lawn has to be spray painted again.

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When American man Dave Reynolds hurt himself in the bathroom one night, he decided that no one should ever have to go through the same ordeal. So he invented the world’s first glow-in-the-dark toilet seat that can be spotted and used safely in the dark. Thanks to his creation, you don’t need to worry about fumbling with the light switch or tripping in the dark anymore.

“It eliminates the problem of not knowing where you are or where you’re going,” said Reynolds, a former employee of Virgin Records. “This could help anyone from a grandparent to children.”

He first got the idea for the unique product when he suffered a bathroom mishap shortly after moving to Lebanon, Pennsylvania, in the fall of 2012. “I went to the bathroom one night and literally fell off the toilet in the dark,” he recalled. “On my way down, I felt something was wrong. I bounced off the toilet, fell to the ground and halfway into the bathtub. The next morning I was all banged and bruised and I told my family what had happened and, of course, they all laughed at me.”

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A man in Beijing, China, is so obsessed with Friends that he’s transformed his entire life to mirror the iconic ’90s sitcom. He legally changed his name to Gunther, married a woman named Rachel (yay!), and named his son Joey. His apartment is decorated just like Joey and Chandler’s, he owns a real-life Central Perk cafe and even has a pet named Smelly Cat!

Beijing-based Gunther said that he first discovered Friends while going through a rough break-up. “My first love had left me,” he said. “Every day I was almost crying. One of my friends told me, ‘You have to watch Friends.’” So he ended up binge-watching the episodes, and it helped him get past the difficult time.

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When 37-year-old Kristy Mazins realised how much people hate confrontation, she developed an entire business plan around it. The former nurse from Melbourne started a service called ‘Sorry It’s Over’ that helps people avoid the uncomfortable task of breaking up with someone. For a fee of AUS $5.50 (US $4.44) or more, Mazins will do the dirty work via text, email, handwritten letter, or even a phone call.

Mazins only needs her customers to provide her with a brief outline of what they want to say, and she will convert it into a heartfelt message designed to ease the pain. Additional services like sending flowers, a box of tissues, a sympathy basket, or a message delivered in person are also available.

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Inspired by an ancient beauty secret, a group of Icelandic students are hoping to cash in on people’s love of all things organic with a bizarre shampoo made from cow urine.

The six students from the University of Reykjavik said that they had come across historical records of women adding cow urine to their bathwater to clean their hair and give it a shiny look. This discovery inspired them to revive the tradition by making a urine-infused hair cleaning product. If their claims are to be believed, the urine-infused ‘Q Shampoo’ is chock full of vitamins and minerals, which do wonders for the hair.

“Despite the critics, some people will think it exciting and want to give it a try,” said co-creator Anton Reynir Hafdisarson. “Icelandic history tells us that girls used to mix urine into their washing water to clean and beautify their hair.” Read More »

Australian company HommeMystere specializes in sexy lingerie for men. The idea of guys wearing lace underwear, silk bralettes and G-strings may seem strange or funny to a lot of people, but apparently the undergarments are in such high demand that the company has had to expand online just to keep up with incoming orders.

HommeMystere has been around since 2008; its co-founders Brent and Laura Krause started designing men’s lingerie when they realised that men who wanted to dump their boring boxers were forced to shop at women’s stores. So they wanted to give men the option of buying sexy underwear that’s designed with the male form in mind.

Their idea turned out to be a big hit, and the small hobby-sized business soon grew to epic proportions. Today, HommeMystere is a global online store that serves a wide range of clients from over 30 countries, including Canada, America, and Russia.

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A University of California – San Diego (USCD) professor is making waves for requiring his students to strip naked during their visual art final exam. The drama intensified after a student’s mother got a whiff of what was going on. Speaking to the media, she lashed out at the professor’s unorthodox teaching methods.

“It bothers me, I’m not sending her to school for this,” the woman told 10News . “To blatantly say you must be naked in order to pass my class… it makes me sick to my stomach. It’s just wrong. This is a memory that my daughter is going to carry with her for the rest of her life.” The woman, who chose to remain anonymous, broke down in tears during the phone conversation.

Professor Ricardo Dominguez, who has been teaching Visual Arts 104A: Performing the Self  at UCSD for the past 11 years, confirmed that his students do have to be in the nude during the final exam. “The class focuses on the history of body art and performance art in relation to the question of the self or subjectivity,” he explained. “At the very end of the class, we’ve done several gestures, they have to nude gesture. The prompt is to speak about or do a gesture or create an installation that says, ‘what is more you than you are.”

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