‘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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12-year-old Landon Jones, from Waterloo, Iowa, hasn’t felt hungry or thirsty since October 14, 2013. He went to bed on a full stomach of pizza and ice cream the night before, and when he woke up, he had simply lost all sensation of hunger and thirst. Instead, the once energetic kid has been sick and suffered dizziness ever since.

A year later, Landon’s parents are still baffled by his condition; they have no idea what is wrong with him or how to help him. “Landon always laughed, he was always very energetic, always wanting to ride his bike, wanting to go to the park,” said Mr. Jones. “Then on October 14 of last year, he woke up and it stopped. He lost all sensation of hunger, he lost all sensation of thirst.”

Landon’s pediatrician in Iowa prescribed antibiotics, but they made no difference at all. He was then taken to doctors in other cities – Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, Madison, and the world renowned Mayo Clinic in Minnesota – but no one has been able to give the Jones’ any answers. Dr. Marc Patterson, a child neurologist at the Mayo Clinic said Landon’s case might be the only one of its kind in the world.

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Kickstarter features the most awesome inventions! The latest one we’ve found is the ‘Whiskey Element’, a simple tool that claims to make cheap whiskey taste like fine expensive liquor in just 24 hours. “Customize your whiskey in 24 hours,” the product page reads. “It’s your whiskey, drink it the way you want.”

The product is the brainchild of a Portland-based company called Time & Oak. They argue that the best and most expensive whiskeys are made after they are aged in quality oak barrels. But if you can’t afford to buy the finest whiskeys, you can probably settle for their Whiskey Elements, which are nothing more than specially designed oak sticks.

By simply adding the stick to a bottle of cheap whiskey, they claim that you can replicate the taste of high quality liquor in no time at all. That’s because their ‘accelerated transpiration through capillary action’ can properly age cheap whiskey into a quality one by filtering impurities and infusing additional wood flavor in the spirit.

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The Seven Mile Beach Kiosk Café in Gerroa, New South Wales, doesn’t just serve its customers good coffee, but also a lesson in politeness. In order to reinforce the importance of being nice, the café’s owners are actually charging people different rates for coffee, depending on how they ask for it.

Just so this doesn’t confuse their customers, they’ve put up a sign outside the café explaining their innovative pricing policy. According to the sign, merely asking for “A coffee” will set you back by $5.00. But saying, “A coffee, please” will bring the price down to $4.50. And if you want to go the whole mile, you could say “Good morning, a coffee please.” Then they’ll only charge you $4.00.

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As an increasing number of Japanese women put their careers ahead of starting a family, the number of services that cater to single women is on the rise. One such service is the ‘Solo Wedding’ – a full wedding day experience during which a woman gets to be bride without actually getting hitched.

The absence of a groom at a wedding might sound abnormal, but the concept is surprisingly popular. Ever since Kyoto-based company Cerca Travels launched Solo Weddings in June, at least 10 single ladies have used the service. These are women who have dreamed of wearing a wedding dress all their lives, but never really had the chance to do it.

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A pretty young woman from Shanghai is on a mission to get a new boyfriend in every city she visits in China. The 19-year-old created a stir online after she posted recruitment notices on social media, asking for temporary boyfriends. She said that she’s looking for male friends to be her travel partners, and to fund her travel expenses.

“Travel with me: Post-’95, adorable girl recruiting temporary boyfriends from all parts of China to be my travel partners,” her post read. She explained that she wanted to “recruit one temporary boyfriend from the local area when/before visiting the city” so that she could “travel all over China on ZERO yuan.”

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Almost half a century after Thai beauty queen Apsara Hongsakula was crowned Miss Universe, she is back in the news for her astonishingly youthful looks. The 67-year-old doesn’t appear a day over 35, and her recent photographs have been causing quite stir on the internet!

Born in 1947, Apsara was only 18 when she won the most coveted beauty pageant title in the world. However she chose to step out of the limelight soon after, and most people had forgotten about her. But when a recent photograph of her surfaced online last week, people were amazed at how little she had aged since she was last seen in 1965.

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Comfort eating is said to help in coping with emotional distress, but this Chinese woman might have taken it a bit too far. Recently dumped by her boyfriend, 26-year-old Tan Shen actually stayed inside a KFC for an entire week, gorging on chicken wings the whole time. When she finally came out, she said she did it because she just ‘needed time to think’.

Clearly hit hard by the breakup, Shen stepped into a KFC last week, near a train station in the area where she lives. “I was walking around feeling miserable and decided to stop off at the KFC at the train station,” she said. “I hadn’t planned on staying there long, I just wanted some chicken wings. But once I got in there and started eating I decided I needed time to think. I didn’t want to go back to my apartment because it was full of memories of him. So I stayed.”

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Beggars in China are stooping to new lows in order to gain sympathy (and money) from impressionable passers-by. Horrific pictures show deliberately mutilated camels that are being used to beg for donations. Apparently, the trick has worked wonders so far – the beggars’ collections have increased because people are quite sympathetic and end up donating generously to help the poor animals.

The latest case was discovered in Fuzhou city, China’s Fujian Province, where two men in ragged clothes were spotted kneeling down and begging, while holding the reins of a camel. When the police approached them, they found that the camel had no hooves, and the wounds indicated that they had been deliberately cut off.

In another incident, Fuzhou Evening News reported the case of a camel found by the roadside. It had been led through the streets by a beggar, and then abandoned. News reports suggest that beggars have been spotted with injured camels in several other cities such as Shenzhen, Wenzhou, Shaoxing, Xiamen, Guangzhou, and Hefei. Read More »

A young tuhao (Chinese nouveau riche) from Shaoxing city, China, is making the news for his uncharacteristic behavior. A few nights ago, he was spotted getting out of his swanky new Porsche, only to set up a makeshift roadside stall on the pavement to sell scarves to passers-by. He was accompanied by a lady friend, who assisted him with sales.

Onlookers were so bewildered by this that they couldn’t help asking him what on earth he was doing. That’s when he explained: “I sell scarves here just to earn money to buy gas for my car.” He told reporters that while his parents had gifted him an expensive car, he didn’t think it was right to ask for gas money as well. The girl added that they were also interested in gaining experience in entrepreneurship and business, along with making some pocket money.

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