The Creeping Devil is a rare and fascinating species of cactus that is not only capable of cloning itself to survive, but also of detaching from its major shoot to move through the desert over time.

Also known by its scientific name, Stenocereus eruca, this unusual species of cactus is endemic to the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California Sur, and is the only known moving cactus in the world. Unlike most other species of cactus, which typically grow vertically, toward the sky, the creeping devil is different – it lies flat on the ground with only its tip slightly raised. This plays a major role in the plant’s survival in isolation, but also in its unique capacity to migrate along the desert over long periods of time.

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No one knows exactly when the people of Yap, a tiny Micronesian island, started using giant limestone disks as money, but their unique stone money have definitely been around for centuries and are still in circulation today.

Micronesian islands use the US dollar as their official currency, but on the island of Yap people also use a very unusual form of money – giant limestone discs, some of which weigh more than a car. There are hundreds of these discs scattered all over the island, some located outside of hotels, others stored deep in the forest, but most of them are kept in stone money banks located in virtually every village. There are an estimated 13,000 stone discs in circulation on Yap, ranging from 30 centimetres to 3.50 meters in diameter, with the largest ones being considered the most valuable.

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There are only a handful of glass beaches in the whole world, and it’s their rarity that makes them so popular. However, Japan is home to a beautiful glass beach that is so obscure it doesn’t even have a name.

Unlike California’s famous glass beach, or the one in Ussuri Bay, on Russia’s Pacific shoreline, where nature had to work hard to erode truckloads of sharp glass and porcelain shards dumped as trash into rounded pebbles that you can safely walk on, the colored glass grains of this nameless Japanese beach, in Omura City, were actually recycled beforehand. I guess the Japanese thought they’d give Mother Nature a break for a change and did the work for her.

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If you’re looking for the world’s easiest mountain to climb, head to Shouguang, in China’s Shandong Province, where you’ll find ‘Jingshan’, the smallest mountain in the country, and probably the world. It measures only 0.6 meters from ground level to its highest point, and can be conquered with a single step.

Jingshan may not be the most impressive mountain in the world, but as the only mountain in Shouguang district, it is a symbol of the region and one of its most popular tourist attractions. Mentions of the mountain in the district’s official records can be traced back over 100 years, including its precise location, dimensions and the fact that despite its laughable size above ground, it seems to be the tip of a much larger underground mountain.

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From cat cafes to toilet cafes and even cafes dedicated to female thighs, themed cafes are all the rage these days. Usually, entrepreneurs go for funny or exciting themes to attract as many people as possible, but one cafe in Thailand is based on the most morbid theme of all – death.

The Kid-Mai Death Cafe looks more like the scene of a funeral than a place you’d want to hang out with your friends. Black is the dominant color, but that’s probably the least morbid thing about this establishment. Funeral wreaths are used as floral decorations, items on the menu have names like “ageing”, “painful”, “illness”, and “death” and are displayed as funeral photos at the bar, and there’s even a coffin that visitors can lie down in to get a small discount.

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Imagine scuba-diving in the peaceful waters of a picturesque lake and coming face to face with Friday the 13th killer Jason Vorhees. It’s not the plot of a horror flick, but an actual possibility, thanks to the clever prank thought up by a Minnesota diver.

Inspired by the ending of Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, where Megan and Tommy manage to defeat the infamous Jason Vorhees by trapping him in the bottom of Crystal Lake, diver Curtis Lahr came up with one of the scariest pranks ever. In 2013, he created a life-size statue of Jason, complete with his iconic hockey mask and machete, and dumped it to the bottom of Crystal Lake, not the one in New Jersey, but Crosby, Minnesota. It’s been sitting there ever since, waiting to give unsuspecting divers a heart-attack.

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The Bridegroom’s Oak, a 500-year-old tree just outside of Eutin, in Germany, has its own postal address and actually receives around 40 letters every day. They are sent by love seekers from all around the world, in the hope that someone will read them and write back.

With so many dating apps and services available nowadays, sending letters to a tree in Germany hardly sounds like the most effective way to find love, but for true romantics, there’s really no comparison. There’s just something undeniably charming about sending a letter and allowing fate to work its magic, so the Bridegroom’s Oak remains very popular even in this digital age.

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According to the Guinness Book of World Records, a Sitka Spruce growing on New Zealand’s southernmost subarctic island, is the loneliest and most remote tree on Earth. Not only is it the only tree on Campbell Island, but the nearest other tree can be found over 200 kilometers away, on the Auckland Islands.

Located about 700 km south of Bluff, Campbell Island is one of the harshest places in the world. With strong winds blowing almost all year round, less than 600 hours of sunshine and only 40 days per year without rain, it’s not exactly an ideal place to live, which is probably why, except for occasional visits by research scientists, it has remained deserted for over half a century. Trees aren’t supposed to be growing here either, a fact made evident by the wind-tolerant shrubs and grasses covering the island, which only makes the thriving “loneliest tree on Earth” so much more impressive.

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Let’s be honest, finding clean and decent-smelling gas station toilets is hard enough, but one that makes you feel like royalty? Normally, I would say such a place doesn’t exist, but I recently saw these photos of a unique toilet in Quezon, the Philippines.

To be honest, I kind of already knew that gas station toilets in the Philippines can be quite different than what most of us are used, after writing about this Shell Gas Station toilet in Tagbilaran City, Bohol, which featured wood furniture, a bookshelf and even a phone next to the toilet bowl. But I didn’t know the island nation actually had a public toilet fit for a king until seeing some photos of a Petron gas station toilet in Quezon.

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Hardcore feminists searching for a vacationing spot where they don’t have to interact with men at all need look no further than SuperShe Island, a women-only island resort off the coast of Finland.

SuperShe Island is the brainchild of American entrepreneur Kristina Roth, who decided to invest in a women-only resort after realizing that being around men was distracting to other women. While vacationing at the Ashram in Calabasas, Calif., and the nearby Ranch Malibu, Roth noticed that women would focus more on the men than themselves, so she started contemplating the idea of a women-only resort where visitors could relax without any male distractions.

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The Didu Cafe in Moscow, is one of the most interesting-looking cafes in the world. Its walls are covered with over 140,000 colorful plasticine figurines made by visitors over the years. It’s also home to the largest plasticine Mona Lisa on Earth.

The founder of Didu Cafe wanted to give patrons a chance to leave their mark on this place in a semi-permanent way, but also give them something to do while waiting for their food and drinks. Plasticine was the perfect solution. It’s easy to work with, colorful and ends up looking good, or at least funny, even in the hands of someone with no artistic talents. So he placed boxes of plasticine on all the tables and started inviting guests to create small artworks out of it and decorate the walls and ceiling of the cafe with them. Today, Didu is home to over 140,000 plasticine artworks, from abstract designs and childish figurines, to popular symbols and even profane messages.

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Welcome to Monowi, Nebraska, population 1. According to 2010 U.S. Census data, Monowi is the only incorporated town in the country with only one resident.

As the only person living in Monowi, 84-year-old Elsie Eiler, is the town’s mayor, clerk, treasurer, librarian, bartender, among other functions. Every year she hangs a sign in the tavern advertising mayoral elections and then votes for herself. Federal law also requires her to produce a municipal road plan annually to secure state funding, and pay $500 in taxes to keep the water and electricity turned on. She also does the required paperwork to keep Monowi’s incorporated status and prevent it from becoming a ghost town.

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An unusual restaurant in the Jinbocho district of Tokyo offers meals in exchange for 50 minutes of labor. This unique “open-source” eatery, called Mirai Shokudo, is the brainchild of former engineer Sekai Kobayashi, 33, who wanted to create a place for hungry people who otherwise couldn’t afford to eat out.

There is no permanent staff other than Kobayashi at the restaurant, which seats 12 at a counter. Customers can either pay for their meals or work one of two daily shifts to earn their meal. The lunch shift consists of serving orders, clearing tables, and other such tasks, while the evening shift, which starts after closing, consists mainly of cleaning. The shift can be exchanged for either a free meal or can be “paid forward” in the form of a voucher that is left at the front door for a hungry but broke patron. First-time customers must eat at the restaurant once before working a shift to familiarize themselves with the setting. So far over 500 people have opted to work for their meals.

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There is a piece of Estonian land where men are a very rare sight. The island of Kihnu, located in the Baltic Sea, seven miles off the country’s west coast, is a domain ruled by women. This quaint place of pastoral tranquility and just 400 inhabitants is one of the world’s last matriarchal societies.

It’s not that the women of Kihnu have anything against men; it’s just that they have no choice but hold the social and administrative reins. That’s because the male population is away for months on end, providing for the small community by fishing. This leaves the ladies responsible for running things and they have been doing so for centuries – raising the kids, working in the fields, and handling matters of governance.

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In a remote region of the western Pacific, just north of the equator, lies the ruins of the ancient and enigmatic city of Nan Madol. The magnificent ruin, built in a lagoon on the east side of Micronesian island Pohnpei, consists of 92 artificial islets constructed on coral reefs which are linked by a network of canals, giving it the nickname Venice of the Pacific.

Nan Madol is an engineering wonder, with massive basalt walls reaching 16 meters high in some places. Carbon dating indicates the structures are around 900 years old, but the islets themselves date even further back to the 8th and 9th centuries AD. The basalt stones originated on the opposite side of Pohnpei from a volcanic plug, where magma had hardened within the vent of an active volcano. What has modern archeologists mystified is how these massive stones were moved from one side of Pohnpei to the other using what primitive technology would have been available at the time. Furthermore, once the basalt had been successfully transported, it would have then been hoisted to heights of 16 meters. The effort required to build the megalithic structures would have rivaled that of the Egyptian pyramids, with a total area of 75 hectares, and an estimated total weight of 750,000 metric tons.

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