Since 2009, 32-year-old Shanyna Isom has been suffering from a mysterious skin condition that causes fingernails to grow out of the hair follicles all over her body. The mystery illness is so inconceivably strange that even after five years, doctors have no idea what is wrong with her. According to physicians treating her at the Johns Hopkins Medical Center, in Baltimore, Shanyna is the only person in the world suffering from the bizarre disease.

It all started in 2009, when Shanyna – then a law student at the University of Memphis – suffered a massive asthma attack. She went into the emergency room where was given a large dose of steroids. Soon after, she developed an allergic reaction to the steroids, and her skin began to itch uncontrollably. Although she was prescribed Benadryl and other allergy drugs , her condition kept getting worse.

“It was uncontrollable and we didn’t know what it was. Black scabs were coming out of her skin,” Shanyna’s mother Kathy Gary explained. “The nails would grow so long and come out and regrow themselves. They are hard to touch and stick to you.” Soon, her legs started to turn black.

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Reverend Clyde Lott is a revivalist preacher and cattle rancher from Mississippi, who attempted to hasten the end of the world in a rather unusual way – by shipping red cows to Israel. He took up the challenge in accordance with an obscure injunction in the Book of Numbers, which states that without the sacrifice of a red heifer, the Jewish people cannot be purified and enabled to rebuild the Third Temple.

According to the Hebrew Bible, the apocalyptic countdown will play out something like this: Jews would return to Israel after 2,000 years – the Holy Temple would be rebuilt – billions of people would perish during seven years of natural disasters – the antichrist would rise and rule the world – the battle of Armageddon would commence somewhere near Israel – Jesus would return to defeat Satan’s armies and then preside over Judgment Day.

For things to turn out as prophesied, the Holy Temple needs to be rebuilt, of course, and purified with the sacrifice of a blemish-free red heifer. Some people even believe that the construction of the temple cannot be resumed unless a red cow that fits the description is actually born, signalling the beginning of the end. The heifer in question is mentioned specifically in Numbers 19:2: “Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish and upon which never came a yoke.”

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In a geeky display of love, a game designer from Guangzhou city, China, confessed his feelings to a co-worker, surrounded by 99 brand new iPhones. The extravagant gesture cost the man a whopping 500,000 yuan (over $80,000) – two years’ worth of his savings.

The man stacked up the 99 boxes of phones in the shape of a heart in the middle of the office parking lot during break. He then stood in the center with a bouquet of roses, ready to profess his undying love. The woman arrived at the scene after some cajoling and pressure from the rest of the co-workers. She apparently heard him out, but hasn’t given him a reply yet.

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A new taxi service in Stockholm is offering its passengers a chance to relieve stress on the go. They’ve got psychotherapists occupying the back seats of three different cabs, offering free consultations. The two-week initiative was started late last month by a company called Taxi Stockholm, which claims it’s the first project of its kind in the world.

The idea was conceived when the owners of Taxi Stockholm realized that people are more likely to talk about their problems on dull, quiet drives. They even have data to back up the theory; according to spokeswoman Natalia Santos, a study revealed that “around 70 percent of people said their taxi journeys were a good time for reflection and that they often found their minds wandering.”

“And when you think about it, the drivers can even become like therapists,” she added. “So we decided to put the two together for all Stockholmers – especially considering it’s getting so cold and dark now.”

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When Andrew Iwanicki lost his job in August, he probably expected to be spending a lot of time in bed. Little did he know that he’d actually be paid to do it. The very next day, he received an offer to join a NASA study that required him to lie in bed for three months straight, in exchange for a whopping $18,000!

“My bed is in the NASA Flight Analog Research Unit in Houston, Texas, where I’m being paid $18,000 to lie down for 70 days while NASA researchers study me,” he wrote. “I have been in this bed for three weeks now, and I will be here for seven weeks more.”

Andrew explained that the study – CFT 70 (Countermeasure and Functional Testing in Head-Down Tilt Bed Rest Study) – is part of a three-year effort to learn about bone and muscle atrophy in space. The team of NASA researchers have studied 54 people so far, and Andrew is the last participant.

“I had applied to the study a year earlier on a whim, assuming I’d never be chosen from the pool of 25,000 applicants and I’d never be able to halt my hectic life for 15 weeks,” he explained. But as fate would have it, he suddenly found himself with an empty schedule and an offer in hand.

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Fresh, clean laundry is one of the most comforting things in life, but unfortunately not everyone has access to it. A couple of engineering students from Brisbane are trying to change that. They’ve started Orange Sky Laundry – Australia’s first mobile laundry service for the homeless.

20-year-old Lucas Patchett and his friend Nicholas Marchesi were inspired to start the service during an overseas trip. When they got back in July, they decided to stop talking about it and just do it. So they got an old van fitted out with two donated industrial washing machines and two dryers, which can wash and dry 20 kilograms of laundry in an hour.

Getting the machines to fit in the van wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, but they managed it pretty well. “The architect who helped us said: ‘they’ll probably fit’, but we found we needed to build a platform above the wheel arches – it wasn’t very scientific but we ended up banging the wheel arches out a bit and taking some panels off. We squeezed them in,” said Lucas.

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‘Mr. Yo’ is a millionaire investor with a very peculiar habit – for the past 11 years, the Korean businessman living in Bahrain has been waking up every morning before dawn to clean up the streets of his city. He even takes the time to sort out and recycle the garbage that he collects. Asked why he has been doing this for 11 years, he simply answered “because I want to!”

Korean-born Yo has earned himself the nickname ‘Boss of Cleaning’, thanks to his diligent morning habit. He seems genuinely interested in keeping the streets clean, and making sure that everyone enjoys a healthy neighborhood. “There is a lot of garbage, and this makes people sick,” he explained. “It causes problems.”

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If your name is Elizabeth Gallagher, you might just be the lucky winner of a free three-week vacation around the world. The generous offer was made public by 27-year-old Jordan Axani, from Canada, who broke up with his girlfriend after all the plans for the trip had been finalized. Now that his girlfriend won’t be joining him, he’s searching for a Canadian woman with the same name, so she can use her ticket.

“In March I booked a fairly wicked trip around the world for this Christmas for my ex and I,” Jordan explained on Reddit. “While our relationship has come to a close, I am still planning on going on the trip and she is not (naturally). And because I hate the idea of a ticket around the world going to waste, I am looking for a Canadian named Elizabeth Gallagher who could use the ticket.”

The itinerary for the epic trip – starting December 21 – includes cities like New York, Milan, Paris, Bangkok and New Delhi. “The tickets were frankly so cheap and on so many different airlines that they’re not worth the headache or money to cancel,” he admitted. So he thought it best to share the ticket with someone who is “sane, smart, and (hopefully) interesting”, who has “always wanted to travel” and is “ready for a rather spontaneous life experience.”

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Meet Nguyen Hoang Hung, a sword-wielding hairdresser from Vietnam. Believe it or not, this man actually cuts his clients’ hair with a sword! And his unusual ‘weapon of choice’ doesn’t affect the speed or quality of his haircuts – he manages to produce brilliant results every single time.

Hung said that he picked up the unique skill four years ago, when he participated in a game show where he was required to cut hair without scissors. He had used a handsaw at the time, and enjoyed the process immensely. Later, he evolved to the more sophisticated sword as a haircutting tool.

He began by using it on women with longer hair, and then moved on to shorter styles like bobs and pixie cuts. He admitted that it was difficult and risky at first, but he just kept practicing on training wigs. And after four years of rigorous, unrelenting practice, Hung is now able to create beautiful hairstyles within minutes.

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‘Haute Butch’ is an up-and-coming fashion line developed by Napa Valley designer Karen Roberts. It caters to women and who prefer a masculine edge to their clothes, but have trouble with the fit of men’s clothing.

Roberts, who studied fashion merchandising before enlisting in the U.S. Navy, had always found herself disappointed with the sartorial choices available for butch women. “I knew I was really good at what I did but what I wore really ate away at my confidence,” the 52-year-old said.

During the time that she worked in real estate, she would often dress herself in rolled-up men’s blazers, rolled-up slacks, and a rolled-up dress shirt. Everything she wore just felt awkward and wrong when compared with her female colleagues’ chic business casual attire.

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Englishman Pete Mckenzie has been walking barefooted for the past 50 years. “I won’t put the buggers back on until the day I die,” the 69-year-old former telephone exchange engineer proudly proclaimed one day, after throwing away his shoes. And he has held true to his promise, renouncing footwear even on important occasions like his wedding.

Pete’s bizarre resolution has made him something of a legend in Birmingham’s pubs, where he is popular as ‘Pete the Feet’. He spends a major chunk of his day at these pubs, hawking homemade merchandise like stickers and cigarette lighter covers branded with his personal logo of two bare feet.

“I don’t like shoes, or in fact anything on my feet,” he explained. “Even when I got married, I didn’t wear shoes – and that was in a church. My wife has maybe seen me wearing shoes once or twice, but my daughter hasn’t and my granddaughters definitely haven’t.” Pete has been happily married for 44 years and luckily his wife doesn’t have a problem with his barefooted obsession.

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Residents of Jinshicun village in China’s Hunan Province have discovered a rather crappy way to keep healthy. They’re actually drinking a revolting concoction of mashed cow dung and goat poop that they think is a miracle cure for cancer and other illnesses.

The villagers say they stumbled upon the medicine when an elderly local woman suffering from cancer woke up one day with a bizarre request – she asked her son to collect as much animal feces as possible. Her son complied, without the faintest idea of what was she was up to.

“I was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer last January and despite going in and out of the hospital nothing was helping,” explained 66-year-old Ma Shuang. “And then I had a dream where a voice was telling me to mix the dung of a cow with the droppings of goats. When I woke, I instructed my son on what he had to do and although clearly thinking I had lost my mind, he went and did it anyway.”

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While most parents punish kids by sending them to their room, Sofia Petrova’s mother went a little further than that – she exiled her misbehaving daughter to another country. The 18-year-old hasn’t been home in three years; her mother hasn’t permitted her to return in spite of repeated apologies and pleas.

So how does a parent actually convince a 15-year-old high school freshman to board a plane to Siberia? Well, it turns out that Sofia was tricked. Her mother and stepfather told her that they were sending her on a three-week vacation to visit her biological father for the first time. But when Sofia reached Novosibirsk city, she realised the chilling truth – there was no return ticket.

That’s when her mother and stepfather informed her that she was actually being ‘punished’ for her typical teenager behavior – flunking school, running away from home and stealing money. She was to remain in Siberia with her father until she learned to change her ways. Sofia was pretty much helpless; although she grew up in the US, she was born in Siberia and had a Russian passport. So she needed her mother’s consent to return.

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SnookBall is a combination of snooker and football – it’s crazy fun because you actually get to kick the balls into pockets instead of using a cue stick. The sport is played on a giant billiards table that multiple players can walk on. All the rules are the same as snooker, except that you use your feet instead of a cue and the balls are replaced by footballs.

The wacky sport is the brainchild of a couple of French entrepreneurs – Aurélien and Samuel – who are well known for their weird ideas. It is generally a two player game, but the table can accommodate up to four players. All the footballs retain the look of standard billiards balls, but are obviously larger and lighter. The white striker ball is slightly heavier than the rest, just to make the game more interesting.

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This picture of an elderly man eating out with a photo of his late wife has melted the hearts of thousands after it went viral last week. It was tweeted by Madina Bashizadah, who clicked the picture while having lunch with a friend at In-N-Out Burger in Fremont, California. Since she uploaded the pic on October 22, it has been retweeted over 8,000 times.

Madina said that she noticed the man seated at a nearby table, eating his meal while staring at a framed photograph in front of him. She immediately interpreted that the woman in the photo must be his deceased wife. This moved her so much that she burst into tears and couldn’t bring herself to approach him.

“When I saw him, I got very emotional and started tearing up,” she later said. “My best friend wanted me to talk to him but I couldn’t without breaking down.” Other diners at the restaurant, however, did pluck up the courage to speak to the old man and ask him about the photo. He confirmed that the woman was indeed his wife who had passed away five years ago, and he seemed excited to talk about her and share their beautiful love story .

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