A Chinese food stall owner was recently arrested after admitting to adding poppy husk powder to his dishes to get patrons hooked on them.

In late August of this year, the Lunan Police Station in Lianyungang City, China’s Jiangsu Province, received information that a local hot noodle stall owner might be using illegal ingredients to make his food more appetizing and more addictive. Apparently, the anonymous whistleblower had recently watched public safety warning videos about shady businessmen lacing their food with poppy husks to make them seem more appetizing, and wondered if the food stall that made the delicious hot noodles he loved so much was doing the same thing. As it turned out, they were in fact adding poppy husk powder to the noodles, to make them literally addictive, as a way to boost business.

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Police in Quintana Roo, Mexico, recently received an unusual complaint from a local woman who accused her 23-year-old neighbor of hanging her underwear in plain sight in order to seduce her husband.

42-year-old Yuvitza E. decided to file a formal accusation against her “shameless” young neighbor, accusing her of breaking “good morals and decency”. She told police officers that it was no coincidence her young neighbor always washed her thongs on Saturday, around noon, when her husband was at home and free to gawk at her from their home. Yuvitza explained that she had repeatedly walked in on her husband staring at their neighbor’s underwear, and despite asking the woman to quit trying to seduce her man, she kept at it.

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Nicolas Gentile, a 37-year-old fan of Tolkien’s fantasy, decided he wanted more than just to read about the life of his favorite characters, the hobbits, so he started living as a real-life hobbit himself.

A pastry chef by training, Nicolas Gentile grew up reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s books and watching the popular Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movie trilogies. He had always been a fan of fantasy literature, movies, and games, but it was Middle Earth that captured his imagination the most. Only at one point, reading about and imagining the world and characters he loved wasn’t enough anymore. Gentile was tired of experiencing the adventures of others and decided that he could be a character in his very own real-life adventure, so he decided to start living as a hobbit.

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A Chicago-based couple recently sparked a heated debate on social media, after posting photos of invoices they sent to wedding guests that confirmed their presence at the event but eventually decided not to attend.

Doug Simmons, 44, and Dedra McGee, 43, invited 109 guests to their fairytale wedding reception at the Royalton Negril Resort & Spa in Jamaica. However, some of them repeatedly confirmed their presence, but ultimately failed to show up on the big day, which left the couple feeling so aggrieved that they decided to create invoices for the cost of the absentees’ meals. A model of the invoice posted on Facebook demands that the no-show guests pay $120, or $240 in case of a plus-one, as compensation for the expenses incurred by the couple on their behalf.

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Afraid that having children with her “ugly” but otherwise great husband would cause them to end up looking horrible, a Ghanian woman allegedly decided to secretly have four kids with her handsome ex-boyfriend.

African social media has been abuzz with news of a vain Ghanian woman who married a successful, hardworking, and caring man despite his less than adequate looks. The fact that he was ugly, by her standards, didn’t bother who too much until they decided to try for a baby. She loved everything else about him, but she couldn’t risk giving birth to ugly children, so she always made sure to take birth control pills after sleeping with him. At one point, they went to a fertility clinic and they both turned out to be healthy, which the woman already knew, so in order not to raise her husband’s suspicion, she came out with a twisted yet ingenious plan…

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A 23-year-old student in Germany can reportedly shrink and enlarge his pupils on command, a feat previously thought to be physically impossible.

The dilation and constriction of the pupil were believed to be completely automated processes triggered by various factors, like entering a bright or dark environment, but a recent case study suggests that isn’t always the case. A young student in Germany is believed to be able to voluntarily control the tiny muscles that adjust the size of the pupil, a feat once thought to be impossible. The authors point out that while some people can alter their pupil size via “indirect methods”, this person is instead able to directly control the sphincter muscle in his eyes to adjust the size of his pupils.

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Described as “the world’s first premium ultra,” the Highland Kings marathon requires participants to pay a £15,499 ($21,500) entrance fee. That makes it the most expensive ultramarathon on Earth.’

Ultramarathons aren’t usually associated with luxury, but Primal Adventure, an outdoor adventure business based in Scotland, is hoping to change that by organizing what many are calling the most expensive ultra marathon in history. The Highland Kings, a four-day camping race covering a distance of 120 miles on the west coast of Scotland, is limited to only 40 participants, each of whom will be required to pay an entrance fee of £15,499. The premium cost will give them access to luxury amenities like butlers, Michelin-star chefs, and hydrotherapy pools, among others.

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The Techa River flowing down the eastern flank of the Ural Mountains in Russia is considered the world’s most radioactive river, as a result of having been used as a dumping ground for nearly 80 million tons of radioactive wastewater over several years.

At first glance, the Techa River looks pristine, inviting even, and you’d never guess that it once was – and by some accounts, still is – the dumping ground of a secret nuclear compound responsible for exposing tens of thousands of people to as much as 20 times the radiation suffered by the victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. 23 or the 24 rural communities that the Techa flowed by have been evacuated in the last 13 years, but not before thousands of people developed cancers, or suffered chromosomal abnormalities and birth defects. Even today, when authorities claim the levels of radiation in the Techa River are “acceptable”, Geiger counters still beep ominously when placed near the waterline…

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Chinese media recently reported the bizarre case of a woman who claimed that she hadn’t slept in about four decades but never felt tired or sleepy either.

Most people can’t go 24 hours without a little shut-eye, but Li Zhanying, a woman from Henan, China claimed to have gone 40 years without any sleep, a feat confirmed by her husband and their neighbors, some of whom actually put her to the test, only to fall asleep themselves. Li last remembered getting some sleep when she was five or six, but now in her mid-40s, sleep is nothing but an old memory.

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Although there are plenty of flightless bird species on Earth, the Parlor Roller pigeon is believed to be the only one selectively bred by humans until it lost its capacity to take to the skies and developed a completely new and bizarre means of getting around – backflips.

Seeing a parlor roller pigeon roll on the ground, you would think it was having some sort of seizure, but in reality, the birds are rolling on the ground because it comes naturally to them. No one knows exactly how or when the breed was created, but experts and enthusiasts speculate that its origins can be traced back to mid-19th century Scotland when someone probably encountered a specimen with a slight tendency to roll on the ground and decided it was worth emphasizing via selective breeding. It is believed that over years of selective breeding, pigeons that rolled over long distances were obtained.

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A French pensioner has appealed to authorities to help him finally remain in charge of his own taxes and not those of his namesake, whose yearly taxes he has been paying for the last 15 years.

Having a popular name does have some advantages. It’s easy to remember and people never look at you funny when you say it. However, it’s not all good, as the protagonist of today’s story will tell you. Francis Lopez, an 83-year-old man from Montpellier, France shares the same name, the same birth date, the same city, and even most of the digits in his social security number with another man, and for some reason, authorities always send him his namesake’s taxes as well. Lopez has been paying someone else’s taxes for 15 years, but because of a new tax withholding law, he is afraid that it will really start to cost him.

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They say women are from Venus and men are from Mars, and nowhere is that more evident than in Ubang, a unique Nigerian rural community where men and women have their own separate languages.

It’s hard to believe that men and women who grow up together in the same community can end up speaking different languages, but in the case of Ubang’s residents, it’s totally true. It’s not exactly clear what proportion of the words in the men’s and women’s languages are different, but there are enough examples to make sentences sound different when spoken by the opposite sex. For example, for ‘clothing’ men use the word ‘nki’, while women say ‘ariga’; ‘kitchi’ means tree for men, while women say ‘okweng’. These are not just some subtle pronunciation differences, but totally different words and it’s been like this for as long as anyone can remember.

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Do-Dodonpa, the world’s fastest-accelerating roller coaster, has been temporarily closed after a number of people broke their backs or necks after riding it in the last nine months.

Located in the Fuji-Q Highland Park, in Fujiyoshida, Japan, the Do-Dodonpa roller coaster has been operating since 2001, offering riders an adrenaline-fueled experience. It is famous for being able to accelerate from 0 to 180km (112 miles) per hour in just 1.56 seconds, which makes it the world’s fastest-accelerating roller coaster. Despite its  “super death” speed, Do-Dodonpa had never been associated with rider injuries until December of last year, when people started suffering bone injuries after going on the roller-coaster. Six cases have been reported since, four of which involved broken back or necks.

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Authorities in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro are currently investigating how a local man was able to receive at least five doses of three different Covid-19 vaccines in just 10 days.

According to official records, the unnamed man started getting Covid-19 vaccines in May, and continued getting new jabs into June, until his vaccination marathon was finally discovered by staff at a vaccination station earlier this month while attempting to get yet another Covid shot. Records obtained by Brazilian media show that the man got his first Pfizer shot on May 12, the second dose of AstraZeneca on June 5, the second dose of Coronavac on June 17, another second dose of Pfizer, on July 9th, and the “first dose” of Coronavac on 21 July. It’s not clear what his sixth dose was supposed to be.

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In what scientists are calling a world-first for the species, a”miracle” baby shark was born in a tank full of female smooth-hound sharks in Sardinia, Italy.

Parthenogenesis, or “virgin births,” have previously been observed in nature, from various species of plants, insects, reptiles, birds and fish, but never in smooth-hound sharks, which explains why the staff at Acquario Cala Gonone were shocked to see the young baby among all the females. The asexual birth of the miracle baby shark is yet to be officially confirmed, but the team at the Italian aquarium says no other explanation makes sense.

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