A couple from France are so obsessed with dolls that they’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to transform themselves into real-life Ken and Barbie. They’ve had over 15 procedures between them so far and plan to keep going until they achieve perfect doll-like appearances. And to complete the effect, they’re legally changing their names to ‘Ken’ and ‘Doll’!

Anastasia Reskoss, 20, and Quentin Dehar, 23, met at a boat party in 2013, and they quickly bonded over their fondness for the plastic lives of dolls. “When I’d laid eyes on Quentin for the first time, I knew that I’d found the love of my life,” Anastasia said. “Quentin walked over to me and said: ‘I’ve found the Barbie to my Ken.’ It was so straightforward. We both knew we had met a partner who was going to enable us to become the Ken and Barbie we had always dreamed of being.”

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When it comes to idol groups in Japan, good ol’ music just doesn’t cut it anymore. They’ve got to throw in an additional gimmick or two, just to standout among the massive competition. And Hamburgirl Z is doing just that – it’s the world’s only hamburger-themed girl band!

In the words of Japanese culture blogger Tofugu, the new West Japan band is a “group of cute, smiling girls dancing and singing in hamburger costumes. Their sole purpose is to serenade hamburger lovers, by singing only about, well, burgers.

The girls are dressed like different hamburger ingredients – there’s beef, lettuce, egg, tomato, fish, chicken, onion, pork/bacon, avocado, pineapple, and even eggplant. There are a total of 15 members in the band sporting 14 ingredients. They perform at a variety of events across West Japan, and sell merchandise after the concert is over.

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For the past 45 years, Martin and Sinforosa Colomer have been the only two residents of La Estrella, an abandoned village in Spain. The only living beings they have for company are three dogs, four hens, a rooster, about 25 cats, and a few bees. The closest inhabited town is at least 25 kilometers away!

It’s a strange way to live, without any human contact, almost like they’re the last two people on earth. But the tiny village was not always this isolated. It was once bustling with life, with hundreds of inhabitants, a church, two schoolhouses, and several bars. In fact, La Estrella has an interesting past – legend has it that the village was constructed exclusively for the mistresses of many wealthy men.

According to various sources, a torrential storm in 1883 killed nearly half the inhabitants and destroyed at least 17 houses. The village square, vicarage and church remained unharmed, and a memorial was erected for all those who died. The place lost its charm after that and locals slowly began to abandon their homes.

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When 27-year-old Quinn Duane’s finance dumped her just a week before their wedding, the young woman decided to make the best of the situation. Instead of cancelling the wedding venue and catering, she invited the city’s homeless to partake in the elaborate feast.

Quinn herself was too devastated to attend what should have been her own wedding reception, but her family stood in for her to welcome the guests at Sacramento’s Citizen Hotel. “When I found out Monday that the wedding would not be taking place, it just seemed like, of course, this would be something that we would do to give back, Quinn’s mother Kari told local media. “I feel a lot of heartache and heartbreak for her, but I will take away something good from this.”

The meal, prepared by the hotel’s four-star restaurant ‘Grange’, consisted of salad, appetizers, gnocchi, salmon, and steak. It was originally intended to feed 120 guests, after the $35,000 ceremony at the hotel. The wedding, sadly, was not meant to be, but Quinn and her family decided to go ahead with the meal, only with an entirely different guest list.

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Li Yongzhi, 48, is fondly known as the ‘king of chilli’ in his home village of Shawoli,  Henan Province. He starts his day with a chilli mouthwash and continues to eat copious amounts for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He recently told local media that he’s loved spicy food since childhood, and that chilli is his staple food – he could eat meals without meat or eggs, but never without a handful of chillies.

“Most people brush their teeth in the morning, I just eat chillies to freshen up my breath,” he proudly stated. “Without chillies, any meal is tasteless.” In fact, Li’s chilli needs are so great that he grows his own supply of eight different types of peppers in his backyard.

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British man Ted Richards is so in love with his pet parrots that he wants to look just like them. So he actually went through a six-hour operation to have his ears removed. And now he’s planning to turn his nose into a beak, as well!

The 56-year-old retired shoe factory worker from Hartcliffe, Bristol, is passionate about extreme body art. He sports 110 tattoos, 50 piercings, a hot iron branded peace sign on his shoulder, and even has a split tongue. The tattoos on his face are like birds’ feathers, and he’s got two magnetic horn implants on his forehead. His eyeballs are tattooed too, and with the ears removed, he feels he’s getting closer and closer to resembling his parrots – Ellie, Teaka, Timneh, Jake, and Bubi.

“I think it looks really great,” he said. “I love it. It’s the best thing that has happened to me. I’m so happy, it’s unreal, I can’t stop looking in the mirror.” To keep his glasses in place, he has had small metal pins added to the side of his head. Read More »

Texas-based Paige Chenault loves birthdays, and believes everyone should have a chance to celebrate theirs. So she hosts beautiful parties for homeless children, giving them birthday celebrations they’ll remember for the rest of their lives. She started with a few parties in Dallas and went on to found a non profit called The Birthday Party Project, with chapters across the US.

Chenault, a former wedding planner, is perfect for the job because of her extensive experience. It all started when she read a magazine on a plane about kids’ birthday parties, when she was pregnant with her daughter. “I was just dreaming about all the great stuff that I could do for my daughter, just because I was an event planner, so I thought, ‘If anybody could throw a big bash, it was going to be me for my kid,’” she said.

And then she picked up another magazine and read about poor children in Haiti who didn’t have anything. That’s when it struck her that there are millions of children in the world who not only have shelter or food, but would never be able to enjoy the kind of celebration she had in mind. “That’s where the idea came from, and it really started stirring in me,” she said.

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Meet Gong Xunhui, a 62-year-old Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) patient who recently wrote a detailed autobiography using only her eyes!

Gong Xunhui has been suffering from ALS for the past 12 years. She’s been confined to a wheelchair since 2006, but despite her almost complete paralysis, she has actually managed to write a 150,000-word book on her life – something that even able bodied people might struggle with. And she did it with the only part of her body she still has full control over, her eyes. 

It all started about three years ago, when Xunhui’s family bought her an eye-tracking assistive device that she could use to communicate and also control a computer. After it was installed, the first line she typed was: “I am very happy today, and after I get better at typing with my eyes, I will probably write an autobiography.”

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Scientists and doctors have made a huge leap in cryonics – the effort to save lives through sub-zero temperatures – by freezing the body of a two-year-old child. Matheryn Naovaratpong is now the youngest person in the world to be cryogenically preserved.

Fondly known to her family as ‘Einz’, the little girl was diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer shortly after her third birthday. She died in January this year, just before she turned three. But her parents – both medical engineers – have decided to give her another chance at life using cryonics. 

Through cryonics, it is possible to preserve the bodies of humans and animals who cannot be cured through contemporary medicine, with the hope that they may be healed and resuscitated if extraordinary medical advances take place in the future. “As scientists, we are 100% confident this will happen one day – we just don’t know when,” Einz’s father Sahatorn said.

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Navy veteran Sean Mace is suing a California national park for $5 million after his skull was crushed in a freak accident. A giant pine cone apparently fell out of a tree and hit him on the head, causing serious, life-altering injuries.

The incident occurred last October at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, where Mace was reading a book under a grove of coniferous Araucaria bidwillii trees. He had been waiting to watch a Blue Angels air show when a 16-pound pine cone dropped from a tree and smashed his skull, knocking him unconscious. Mace suffered severe swelling and a brain hemorrhage.

He was immediately rushed to San Francisco General Hospital, where he underwent two emergency surgeries to relieve the pressure on his brain. A part of his skull had to be removed during surgery, in order to save his life. He now suffers from permanent brain damage, memory loss, depression, and ‘a tremendous degree of anxiety’. He cannot get a job, while he still has to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills. And he still has to get a third operation.

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Ever felt so angry that you could break everything in the room? Well, a new stress busting trend in Russia is letting people do just that. The art project, known as ‘Debosh’, offers stressed out folks the opportunity to destroy an entire room with sledge hammers, baseball bats, clubs and more!

So whether you’ve had a bad day at work, a huge fight with your spouse, or you just need a way to vent out all that passive aggressive frustration, all you have to do is fork out $160 to $450 – depend on the cost of the furniture involved, which is mostly cheap, old mid-century stuff – and you can go crazy on the place.

So far, the service has proved a big hit. There are other ‘rage room’ services in Moscow, but Project Debosh is so popular because it allows a huge amount of customization. Users can select the furniture through an a la carte service and they can have a car placed into the room to take their frustration out on.

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A Russian TV show recently risked a man’s life, just to prove the strength of a new type of superglue. They had their producer hanging upside down below a hot air balloon, with nothing but superglue to hold him in place!

The crew glued the soles of the producer’s shoes to a wooden board attached to the underside of the balloon, before flying it up to a height of 5,000 ft. Thankfully, the glue proved to be strong and the man did not fall.

The bizarre experiment was shown as a segment on the Russian show Chudo Tehniki (Wonders of Technology), and the footage has now gone viral on the internet.

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New York woman Jennifer Connell is being called the world’s worst aunt after she tried to sue her 12-year-old nephew for breaking her wrist four years ago. The kid, Sean Tarala, apparently jumped into her arms because he was excited to see her at his eighth birthday party in March, 2011.

The awkward embrace resulted in a broken wrist, for which Connell, 54, is now seeking a compensation of $127,000. She admitted in court that her nephew was ‘very loving’ and ‘sensitive’ towards her, but she believes that the boy should be held accountable for his behavior.

The lawsuit alleged that the boy’s “negligence and carelessness” caused Connell’s injuries and subsequent losses. It stated that “a reasonable eight years old under those circumstances would know or should have known that a forceful greeting such as the one delivered by the defendant to the plaintiff could cause the harms and losses suffered by the plaintiff.”

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China’s very own Walter White was arrested late last month, after being hunted by the police for months. The former chemistry teacher was found in possession of 31.5 kg of meth and 185 kg of toxic raw materials. He also had a high pressure cooker and other other equipment stashed away in his three bedroom apartment in Nanning, Guangxi. A police officer confessed that it was the most advanced drug making paraphernalia he’d ever seen!

According to local media, investigations began in March, when the narcotics department of the local police force was tipped off about drug trafficking in the region. The detectives managed to infiltrate an online platform used for drug deals, and arrested three dealers. All three of them confessed to having purchased their drugs from a man named ‘Lumou’ in Nanning.

‘Lumou’, obviously a fake name, proved difficult to track down. After following a series of clues, they finally were led to a 35-year-old admissions director at a vocational school, who had quit his job in 2012, after he himself became addicted to drugs. 

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Although most young Argentinians aren’t even thinking about marriage these days, they seem quite fond of wedding ceremonies. So they’ve come up with a bizarre party trend of fake weddings, where groups of 20- and 30-somethings get together to attend wedding-themed parties complete with fake bride and groom.

The idea was the brainchild of 26-year-old publicist Martin Acerbi, who, a couple of years ago, organised a fake wedding with four of his friends in La Plata, about 32 miles away from Buenos Aires. “It all started two years ago with a group of friends: we realised we hadn’t been to a wedding in a long time because hardly anybody is getting married anymore,” Acerbi says.

To his surprise, the event was a huge success which got him thinking about a new business. The friends went on to found ‘Falsa Boda’, a fake wedding organising company, in November 2013. They rent out real wedding locations, hire caterers, florists, and DJs, and make everything look like a real wedding. Except, there is no ‘happily ever after’.

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