British comedian John Finnemore put his time in quarantine to good use, becoming only the third person to solve “Cain’s Jawbone”, a super-tough literary puzzle, in its near 90-year history.

Created in 1934, by Edward Powys Mathers, a pioneer of advanced cryptic crosswords, Cain’s Jawbone is one of the most difficult puzzles ever created. It consists of 100 cards, each containing the page of a murder mystery novel, and challenges you to put the cards in the right order and figure out who kills who in the book. It might not sound so hard, but only two people have been able to solve it in the last 86 years. Well, until recently, when British comedian John Finnemore managed to do it, after working on it, on and off, for about four months.

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Around 20 Spanish children ended up growing hair all over their bodies after being administered hair restoring medicine, instead of syrup for upset stomachs.

In a shocking incident first in the summer of 2019, almost two dozen children reportedly started exhibiting symptoms of hypertrichosis, aka “werewolf syndrome”. They started growing hair excessively all over their bodies, after being administered minoxidil, a drug that stimulates hair growth, instead of omeprazole, usually prescribed for gastric problems. The mix-up allegedly happened after mislabeled syrups were delivered to pharmacies in Granada and Valencia, which chemsist prescribed to treat the upset stomachs of little ones. Over a year since hypertrichosis symptoms were first reported, the families of affected children claim their hair is still growing excessively, but justice has not been served.

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An Italian man who went for a walk to cool off after getting into an argument with his wife was found 420 kilometers from his home, after walking for a whole week.

The 48-year-old man from Como, a city north of Milan, in Italy, reportedly got into a heated argument with his wife one day, late last month, and stormed out of the house to go for a walk and clear his head. Nothing out of the ordinary about that, only the protagonist of our story never actually stopped walking. He was only stopped a week later, by a police patrol car in Gimarra, on the Adriatic coast, 418 kilometers away from his home town.

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UK-based Anno Distillers recently launched what it calls the “world’s strongest gin”, a spirit so string that it comes with a small beaker for precise dosing, as well as clear mixing instructions.

With a 95% ABV, the Anno Extreme 95 gin is definitely not meant to be enjoyed straight up, not unless you want to feel what it’s like to set your mouth on fire. Instead, its creators recommend it served as a “light G&T,” using only 5ml of spirit, tonic water and a slice of grapefruit as garnish. To help you with those measurements, the new world’s strongest gin comes with a small measuring beaker.

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A 59-year-old man in Zelenograd, Russia, lived with serious nose breathing difficulties for over half a century, because of a coin he had shoved up his nose as a child and forgot about over the years.

Doctors at the Konchalovsky City Clinical Hospital in Zelenograd recently reported the strange case of a patient who said he had been completely unable to breathe through his right nostril for several months. A CT scan showed that the right nasal passage was completely blocked by a foreign body of stony density stuck in the posterior, close to the nasopharynx. A more common curvature of the septum was also observed, but it would not have obstructed the nasal passage completely all by itself. The foreign object was the problem, but the deviated septum had emphasized the breathing difficulties to the point where the patient had no choice but to seek help.

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Fritillaria delavayi, a plant used in traditional Chinese medicine, has apparently evolved to match its background and become more difficult to spot as a direct consequence of heavy harvesting.

Scientists had known that many plants evolved to use camouflage as a way of hiding from herbivores that may eat them, but a recent study suggests that one particular plant species has developed the same mechanism to hide from human harvesters. Researchers found that fritillaria delavayi plants, which grow on the rocky slopes of China’s Hengduan mountains, match their backgrounds most closely in areas where they are intensely harvested by humans.

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Nigerian socialite Mike Eze-Nwalie Nwogu, aka “Pretty Mike”, sparked controversy after attending a high-profile wedding accompanied by six heavily pregnant women, all allegedly carrying his babies.

Describing the women as his “six baby mothers to be”, Pretty Mike was filmed rubbing and kissing each of their bellies at the wedding of Nigerian actor Williams Uchemba to his girlfriend Brunella Oscar. The socialite, who owns a nightclub in Lagos, wore a pink suit, while his six dates put on matching long silver dresses or two-piece outfits that emphasized their baby bumps.

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Would you ever sell your face? If the answer is yes, there is a Japanese company that wants to hear from you. It’s in the business of buying the rights to people’s faces so it can sell them in the form of hyper-realistic 3D-printed masks.

Ever since Kamenya Omoto, a Tokyo-based specialty mask maker and store, announced its intention to buy the rights to people’s faces for 40,000 yen ($380) a pop, it’s been overwhelmed with offers. The company wants to reproduce people’s faces in the form of hyper-realistic masks and sell them for an estimated ($940). If a mask proves popular with clients, the person whose appearance inspired it stands to earn a percentage of the profits as well. The controversial project, named “That Face”, reportedly aims to give a sci-fi twist to the idea of buying and selling faces.

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A helicopter crew from Utah’s Department of Public Safety recently discovered a large metal monolith in the rocky desert of southeastern Utah. So far, no one knows what the metal object actually is, or how it got there.

Last Wednesday, while helping the Division of Wildlife Resources count bighorn sheep in southeastern Utah, members of a helicopter crew from the Utah Department of Public Safety’s Aero Bureau spotted something unusual in the rocky, barren desert below. A smooth, shiny metallic block rising up from the earths isn’t something you usually stumble into around those parts, so the crew decided to land and take a closer look at it. While it failed to do anything worthy of a sci-fi movie, the mysterious structure did raise a lot of questions, most of which remain unanswered.

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35-year-old Rin Kambe has been dubbed the Japanese Rapunzel because of her nearly 6-feet-long mane, which she hasn’t cut in 15 years.

Rin, who hails from Tokyo, was never allowed to grow her hair as a child.  She was on the girl’s football team so had to keep it short, but when she became an adult, she decided to take control of her hair and use it as a “weapon of expression”. The last time she cut her hair was 15 years ago, and now her straight, black locks measure 5ft 10in, a good 4 inches more than Rin herself. Although her hair sometimes gets in the way when doing the simplest of tasks, like changing her clothes, the Japanese dancer and model said that she loves her long mane, adding that it encapsulates the “beauty of Asia”.

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A 21-year-old woman has lost mobility in her right arm following a botched blood donation in which a nurse allegedly drew blood from one of her arteries instead of a vein.

Gabriela Ekman, of Ontario, Canada, had just turned 17 when she decided to donate blood for the first time in her life. She hoped it would make a difference, maybe even save someone’s life, but she had no idea it would actually change her life for the worse. When she went to a blood drive hosted by Canadian Blood Services four years ago, she didn’t know what to expect, but when the the phlebotomist who drew her blood let out a “whoops” when she stung her arm with a needle, she knew something wasn’t right. But she didn’t say anything, not even when the staff commented on how oxygenated her blood seemed, an indication that it may have come from an artery, instead of a vein. By the time she realized something was definitely wrong, it was too late…

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Colombian police recently announced the dismantlement of a Cali-based drug cartel that specialized in coercing women to get breast implants that were actually filled with liquid cocaine.

Drug trafficking organizations ae known for coming up with all sorts of ingenious methods of sending their products all over the world to minimize getting discovered at security checkpoints. You’ve surely heard of underground tunnels several kilometers long under the Mexico-US border, or of drug smuggling submarines, but did you know about the Colombian trafficking ring using women to ship drugs all the way to Europe? Aptly named “The Surgeons”, the cartel would recruit women and force them to get breast and calf implants for which they used prosthesis filled with liquid cocaine.

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A small family-owned factory that has been making soap since the 15th century sells claims to sell the world’s most expensive bar of soap, at $2,800.

The Khan Al Saboun brand of handmade soap created by Bader Hassen & Sons, a soap factory in Tripoli, Lebanon, makes a variety of luxury soaps and skincare products containing essential oils and natural fragrances. They are sold in some of the most exclusive shops in Dubai and the UAE, but its most expensive product is only offered to special guests and important personalities. First made in 2013, as a unique gift to Qatar’s first lady, the world’s most expensive bar of soap contains gold and diamond powder and reportedly costs $2,800.

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Mila Povoroznyuk, a young girl from the Ukrainian city of Vinnitsa, has shunned jeans, and all other modern clothing for the long dresses and intricate ensembles of the 19th century.

Nowadays, fashion trends change faster than ever before, but instead of trying to keep up, Mila Povoroznyuk decided to go back to a time that will never go out of fashion – the style of the late 19th century. For the past few years, she has replaced her fairly mundane wardrobe with vintage attires, including long dresses, corsets, all sorts of elegant hats and footwear from the late Victorian Era. Even though getting dressed every morning is much more of a hassle than it used to be, Mila says it’s worth it, as the vintage style makes her feel much more comfortable.

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Hakken Ryou, a popular Malaysian cosplayer with over 1.5 million fans on Instagram alone, has been confusing fans with incredible transformations that constantly put her gender into question.

When it comes to recreating the look of popular male characters from such anime and video games as Naruto, Arknights, Demon Slayer, or Nobless, you’ll have a tough time finding someone better than Hakken. Showing a mastery of makeup and hairstyling, as well as elegant digital editing, the Malaysian cosplayer is able to pull of the look of her chose character almost to perfection. Some of her photos seem literally pulled from the source material that inspired them, so it’s no wonder that she has millions of fans around the world.

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