This little girl from Huzhu, China’s Sichuan Province, looks like an ordinary preschooler. Except she is actually 19 years old! Zeng Yushan apparently suffers from a rare medical condition that caused her to stop growing at the age of seven.

When she was seven years old, Zeng was diagnosed with a tumor on her pituitary gland, which caused a deficiency in growth hormones. While the condition is treatable, her parents unfortunately couldn’t afford it. Instead, they fought bitterly and divorced, leaving Zeng in the care of her father Yul Wei.

Shortly after the divorce, Yul was also diagnosed with a serious illness. Unable to pay for either of their medical bills, the father and daughter duo were forced to beg on the streets. They frequently traveled from their home to the cities of Zigong, Chengdu, and Guiyang, in the hope that Zeng’s unusual appearance would earn them some cash.

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Alberto Julian Meza, a strange South American con man, was arrested recently in Paraguay for tricking people into believing that he was a lost, overgrown child. The 25-year-old mainly targeted older women – he dressed up in nappies and sucked on lollipops, pretending that he was lost and searching for his mummy. Believe it or not, it worked.

According to locals in the town of Villa Elisa, a suburb of Asuncion, Meza was regularly seen walking around in his adult diapers.. At first they had assumed that he was mentally ill, but in reality, he would fool women into letting him into their homes, and later steal whatever he could when they were fixing him a snack or bringing him a drink.

“I am surprised that the police have only just now arrested him,” said local resident Lara Orta Ornelas. “He has been doing this for years and I know the police have had complaints before, but it’s incredible they never realized the baby is actually a fully grown man.

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A mysterious mummified monk found almost perfectly preserved in a lotus position last month is causing controversy after a well-known Buddhism expert claimed he isn’t actually dead but in a deep meditative trance.

Interestingly, the monk came to the attention of the authorities after a man was attempting to sell him on the black market in the Songinokhairkhan province of Mongolia. Mongolian police have arrested the man, and the mummy is now being guarded at the National Center of Forensic Expertise at Ulaanbaatar. They believe that the man might have stolen the mummy from another part of the country – a cave in the Kobdsk region – and then hid it in his home. Scientists are currently conducting forensic examinations on the 200-year-old mummy that was found wrapped in cattle skins. They are trying to determine how the body was so well-preserved, although they do suspect that the nation’s cold weather could have played a part. Read More »

With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, lots of single people are probably dreading an onrush of uncomfortable questions from parents and other nosy relatives. Thankfully, there’s a new app called the ‘Invisible Boyfriend’ that could help them get through the awkward situation with ease.

The genius app, which recently went from private to public beta, allows users to pay for “believable social proof” that they’re actually in a relationship. The app generates everything that would exist in a real-life relationship, like photos, text messages, and even voicemails – all fake, but realistic.  “It really helps people tell a better story about a relationship they’re not in,” said Matthew Homann, who created the app along with Kyle Tabor. 

He revealed that he first purchased the domains ‘invisibleboyfriend’ and ‘invisiblegirlfriend’ nine years ago, just after a divorce. He didn’t do much with them for a long time, but at a 2013 Startup Weekend in St. Louis, he decided to pitch the idea. Matthew and his team won first place, after which there was no looking back. 

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‘Instabreasts’ is a revolutionary new procedure that gives women the chance to temporarily experience the effects of breast augmentation before deciding whether to go for permanent implants. Offered by New York plastic surgeon Dr. Norman Rowe, the procedure involves injecting saline solution right into the breast.

“I don’t think there is any way currently available other than the Instabreast to give a patient an adequate representation of what a breast implant would feel inside of the body,” Dr. Rowe explained. The procedure is rather simple – he inserts a needle directly through the areola and injects about eight ounces of saline into each breast.

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Limb-lengthening operations are a growing trend in the field of cosmetic surgery. The procedure is generally viewed as a godsend for people whose short stature affects their lives and psychological well-being, as the operations can add a good two to three inches to their height, but they do come at a cost. Not only are they ridiculously expensive, but they also involve having your legs broken!

The painful surgery was once reserved for people with dwarfism or children with uneven limb length. But now it seems that men and women with below-average height are willing to brave the torment for purely cosmetic reasons. The arduous and prolonged procedure begins with a doctor breaking the patient’s shin bones and inserting a telescopic rod into them. Over time, as the bones heal, the rod pulls the bones apart gradually – approximately one millimeter per day. As the bone is stretched, new bone, nerves, arteries, and skin grow to fill in the gap. The process is complete in about three months time, adding two to three inches to overall height. After this, the patient would need several months of physiotherapy to recover completely.
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If you’re looking for a quirky futuristic hairstyle, you may want to give “Xpresionpixel” a try. This new trend basically involves dying the hair in block-like sections of varying colors to create a digital-inspired pixelated image.

Created by Spanish colorists, Jose Luis Almendral, Marco Antonio Restrepo and Jorge Cancer, of Madrid’s  X-presion Creativos salon, pixelated hair has gotten a lot of attention on social media, both from true fashionistas and girl geeks looking for a new hairstyle to best suit their personality. Many in industry seem convinced the futuristic style is set to become the next big thing in hair styling, a prediction apparently shared by cosmetics powerhouse Revlon, who used pixelated hair in an ad for last year’s autumn campaign.

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If you’ve been complaining about having to drive long hours to and from work, wait till you hear about this Detroit worker’s commute. For the past 10 years, James Robertson has been walking 21 miles a day, just to get to work. What’s even more remarkable is that he hasn’t missed a single day of work so far.

For five days a week, 56-year-old Robertson walks from his home in Detroit to the factory where he works in Rochester Hills, Michigan. He began the arduous commute ever since his 1988 Honda Accord conked out over 10 years ago. He claims that his $10.55-an-hour wage is not sufficient for him to buy another car, and there’s no decent bus service either. So he just covers the 21-mile round trip to and from work on foot.

“I set our attendance standard by this man,” said Robertson’s boss Todd Wilson, a plant manager at Schain Mold & Engineering. “I say, if this man can get here, walking all those miles through snow and rain, well, I’ll tell you, I have people in Pontiac 10 minutes away and they say they can’t get here. He’s never missed. I’ve seen him come in here wringing wet.”

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While a lot of women resort to expensive plastic surgery to get rid of wrinkles, this woman just decided to nip the problem in the bud by not smiling. Believe it or not, 50-year-old Tess Christian claims she hasn’t smiled, laughed or giggled in the past 40 years!

Although Tess insists that she has a sense of humor, she said that she made a conscious decision not to laugh or smile – not even when her daughter was born – in order to maintain her youthful appearance. Admittedly, the technique seems to have worked in her favor.

“I don’t have wrinkles because I have trained myself to control my facial muscles,” she said. “Everyone asks if I’ve had Botox, but I haven’t, and I know that it’s thanks to the fact that I haven’t laughed or smiled since I was a teenager. My dedication has paid off, I don’t have a single line on my face.”

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After dating for several years and failing to find the man of her dreams, a 40-year-old woman from Houston, Texas, decided to marry herself in an elaborate ceremony that involved friends and family.

Yasmin Eleby’s wedding was quite similar to a traditional one, except the bride wore purple, there was no groom, and it was the bride’s mother, not her father who walked her down the aisle.  Since self-weddings aren’t legally recognized in the U.S., the ceremony – conducted by three ministers – was described as a spiritual one. Yasmin made heartfelt vows to forgive, honor, and love… herself!

“I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support that was shown to me during my celebration of love and life,” Yasmin wrote on Facebook, after the ceremony. She also added that she “couldn’t imagine the ceremony being any more poignant and meaningful.”

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A Kosovan Hitler lookalike is making news for claiming to be the reincarnation of the infamous German dictator. Emin Djinovci regularly stuns locals by walking around the town of Mitrovica, in the partially recognised state of Kosovo, with a toothbrush moustache and jet black hair brushed over to one side.

Mitrovica is a city of simmering ethnic tensions and political instability. Emin moved there from Germany in 1998, to join the fight of the Kosovan Albanians for secession from Serbia. But it wasn’t until he returned to Germany for a surgery to treat multiple war wounds, that he realized he could make a living by dressing himself up as Hitler.

“It was when I was there for my operation that I was forced to grow out part of my mustache. The doctors would come into my room and just look at me,” he recalled. So he realized the potential for profit, and when he got back to Kosovo, he started to impersonating Hitler and charging for photographs. Read More »

Have you ever read a book so engaging that you just couldn’t put it down, fearing that it might explode if you did? Well, bestselling author James Patterson decided to turn that fear into a reality with a self-destructing book that literally explodes 24 hours after it’s been opened.

The self-destructing book is actually a marketing scheme to promote Patterson’s newly released novel, Private Vegas. The unique book comes with a hefty price tag of $294,038, but includes a first-class ticket to an undisclosed location, two nights’ stay in a luxury hotel, 14-karat gold-plated binoculars and a five-course dinner with the author.

The promotional video for this one-of-a-kind book is really quite hilarious. “Welcome to an experience that will blow your mind,” its protagonist says. “Hopefully not literally.” It describes the feeling of reading the book as ‘the most thrilling experience money can buy, created by James Patterson’. Although it doesn’t clarify exactly how the book will explode once the time is up, the experience will involve a bomb squad for safety purposes.

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After their highly successful 2013 product Sprayable Energy, Silicon Valley startup Sprayable are back with a new product involving transdermal technology – ‘Sprayable Sleep’. It is the world’s first topical melatonin spray that helps you fall asleep naturally and wake up refreshed.

While melatonin pills have long since been used to treat sleep related disorders, the makers of Sprayable Sleep claim it has several benefits over the pills. Ben Yu, 22, and his partner Devan Soni, 35, say that the effectiveness of the hormone in the pill form could be lost to the digestive process, but this doesn’t happen with the spray.

“Sprayable gives you the exact level of melatonin you need (often 30 times less than you ingest with pills) and delivers it gradually over time – mimicking how your body naturally produces and uses melatonin,” the creators said. “Sprayable Sleep puts you in control of your sleep. Whether you’re traveling and have jet lag or are working the night shift, Sprayable will help you get sleep when you want so you’re refreshed and alert when you need it most.”

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When 27-year-old business school graduate Mason Wartman quit his Wall Street job to sell $1 pizza slices, to many of his friends it seemed like the anticlimax of a brilliant career. But the man was simply trying to achieve a different sort of greatness with his no-frills pizza shop, Rosa’s Fresh Pizza, in Philadelphia’s Center City. In the past one year, the shop has served 8,500 free slices of pizza to homeless people, by harnessing the generosity of its patrons.

The shop operates by a ‘pay it forward’ system – customers who walk in to buy pizza can also sponsor a slice for a homeless person. In this way, about 30 to 40 homeless people are able to eat for free at Rosa’s every single day.

Even before the pay-it-forward scheme was implemented, Rosa’s Pizza, which is located on an almost vacant block, used to always give away free slices to hungry homeless people in the neighborhood. But one day last March, a customer asked if he could pay for the next homeless person who walked in. Wartman immediately agreed, and then put up a sticky note on the wall, just to keep track of the pre-paid slice.

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Luxury travel company Oliver’s Travels is offering its wealthy clients an innovative wedding service – a sky clean up. For a hefty fee of over $150,000, they actually offer to pop clouds and induce rain up to a week before their wedding, in order to ensure clear blue skies on the day of the ceremony.

It might sound ridiculous, but cloud seeding is actually a legit scientific technique. It involves the firing of rockets filled with silver iodide crystals into rain clouds from a light aircraft, or from the ground. The icy silver particles freeze the water droplets in the clouds so that they continue to grow in size and eventually fall out of the cloud as snow, turning into rain just before hitting the ground.

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