Farmer Spends Over $2 Million Constructing One of the Strangest Buildings in China

A small town in Guangxi is home to one of the strangest-looking buildings in all of China, a 10-storey behemoth combining an assortment of architectural styles from all over the world.

In recent years, Xinxu Town, a small settlement close to Beiliu City, has become known for a strange edifice towering over the dozens of predominantly commercial buildings in the area. Not only is it much taller than most other structures in the area, but it also doesn’t adhere to any particular architectural style. Most of its several spire-like towers feature Russian-inspired domes, the central spire is a Western-style bell tower, and there’s even a teapot-shaped fountain that doesn’t make any kind of sense. Still, the building’s creator, a local farmer, is willing to spend a fortune to see it completed.

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Japanese Company Creates Full-Face UV Sunglasses

Oversized sunglasses have been around for a while, but Japanese company ZGHYBD has taken this fashion trend to the extreme with a pair of shades that cover the wearer’s entire face.

To be honest, it’s hard to tell whether the eyewear designed by ZGHYBD is a visor or a pair of sunglasses; on one hand, it covers the whole face, like a face shield, but then it features one giant polarized lens and features a frame that slides behind the ears, like traditional eyeglasses. Plus, it’s obviously designed as more of a fashion accessory than for practical use. Still, as far as eyeglasses go, this is one of the weirdest ones we’ve seen yet, concealing not just the eyes, but most of the wearer’s face, including the nose and mouth.

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Doctors Remove Over 1 Kilogram of Metal Nails And Screws From Man’s Stomach

Surgeons at a hospital in Lithuania spent over three hours saving the life of a man who, for some reason, had swallowed more than a kilogram of metallic objects over the last month.

Lithuanian media recently reported the shocking case of a man who arrived at the Klaipėda University Hospital in the Baltic port of Klaipeda complaining of severe abdominal pain but conveniently failed to mention that he had swallows over a kilogram of metal objects over the last 30 days. An X-ray examination revealed that the man’s stomach was full of metal objects of all shapes and sizes, including nails, screws, and blades. They prepped the man, whose identity has not been revealed, for emergency surgery and spent over 3 hours removing the metal objects.

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Hard-Working Squirrel Fills Every Nook and Cranny of Man’s Pickup with Walnuts

A North Dakota man had to take his Chevy Avalanche pickup apart in order to reach the hundreds of walnuts that a busy squirrel had filled it with after he left the vehicle parked under a walnut tree.

After coming home from a four-day work trip earlier this month, Bill Fischer, an insurance salesman from Fargo, North Dakota, found his Chevy Avalanche pickup full to the brim with walnuts. Apparently, a red squirrel that hangs out in Bill’s neighborhood finds the walnuts of a beautiful black walnut tree irresistible, and every autumn it goes about picking up and storing them for the winter. The problem is that, for some reason, it always seems to prefer Bill’s truck as storage, and this year was no different. In fact, it was worse than usual, with about 42 gallons-worth of walnuts crammed all throughout the car.

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Would-Be Teachers Use Bluetooth-Connected Flip-Flops to Cheat on Exam

Over two dozen people taking a national exam that could lead to a career in teaching were caught cheating Bluetooth-enabled flip flops to get an edge over the stiff competition.

Cheating has always been a big problem in India, especially during potentially life-changing exams. I remember watching surreal scenes of people climbing the walls of a school building in Bihar to hand cheat sheets to the students taking their year-end exams inside a few years ago, or army applicants forced to take exams in their underwear to prevent cheating. This year, authorities in Rajasthan went as far as cutting the internet connection in the state during the exam to prevent cheating, but they still couldn’t prevent savvy cheaters from trying to get a leg up through nefarious ways. The latest method of cheating reportedly involves Bluetooth-connected flip-flops sold by criminal gangs for up to 600,000 rupees ($8,000) per pair.

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Meet Mr. Methane – The Man Who Gets Paid to Fart

Mr. Methane is a world-renowned entertainer who, as the name suggests, has a very special talent when it comes to passing wind.

Of all superpowers one could have, farting at will probably sits near the bottom of everyone’s list, and yet one of the few people known to be able to control their flatulence has managed to build a career around this ability. Paul Oldfield, aka ‘Mr. Methane’, discovered his unusual talent for farting in his teenage years, and eventually managed to use it as a way to make living, traveling the world and showcasing his somewhat repulsive ability to the world. The Macclesfield-born Englishman currently holds the record for most farts released in one minute, but is also known for performing popular songs by farting, and various other revolting tricks.

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This Slender, Pointy Fish Can Literally Stab People

You couldn’t tell by looking at its slender, rather frail frame, but the needlefish is one of the world’s most dangerous fish to humans, with multiple cases of injuries and even fatalities reported throughout the years.

A member of the family Belonidae, the needlefish is a piscivorous species whose most distinctive feature is the long, narrow beak filled full of sharp, saw-like teeth. But it’s not the teeth that should worry you – they’re only used to catch smaller fish – but the combination of an extremely pointy beak and incredible speed. Needlefish swim close to the surface of the water and like to jump over obstacles like shallow boats rather than go around them. The problem is that they jump at speeds of up to 60km/h (37mph), and since their obstacles sometimes happen to be humans out at sea, they literally impale them with their long beak, causing serious, sometimes fatal injuries.

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Teen Girl Has Allegedly Been Crying Stone Tears for Over Two Months

A 15-yer-old girl in rural India has reportedly been pumping out small stones out of her eyes every day for the past two months, and doctors don’t have any medical explanation for it.

According to the girl’s family, small stones started falling from her eyes on July 17, and she has been crying between 10 and 15 stone tears every day since. More than 70 so-called stone tears have been collected in the over two months since the bizarre phenomenon was reported. Apparently, 15-year-old Chandni starts eliminating small stones from her eyes from around 6 in the morning and continues to do so until evening. For some reason, the stones don’t form n her eyes during the night…

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This Carpet-Covered Lada Is the Most Soviet-Era Car Ever Made

There are many Soviet-era remnants scattered all over the Russian Federation, but few as blatant as this old Zighuli car covered in Persian-style rugs that recently went viral on social media.

The Zhiguli VAZ was a popular car model produced in Soviet Russia and exported all over the world. Outside of the Soviet Union, it was sold under the LADA brand, so it might look familiar even if you’re not from Russia. It was always considered a reliable vehicle that could take some punishment and still run, but overall it was one of the many symbols associated with the Soviet Union. Still, no model was ever as Soviet-ized as “Carpets”, a unique VAZ 27011 that captures viewers’ imagination with its unusual exterior – a layer of old Persian-style rugs that were once all the rage in communist countries.

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Danish Artist Takes Museum’s Money and Runs, Calls It Art

A Danish museum loaned artist Jens Haaning tens of thousands of dollars and asked him to recreate two of his most popular artworks, which involved the use of real banknotes, only he took the money and ran, an act he describes as an original work of art.

The Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg asked Jens Haaning to recreate two of his most popular artworks, one he had produced in 2011 called An Average Danish Annual Income, which featured krone banknotes in a frame, and an earlier version, An Average Austrian Annual Income. For the original works, Haaning had borrowed the money from banks, but this time the museum agreed to loan him the cash from its limited reserves. He required 328,000 kroner for the Danish annual salary and €25,000 for the Austrian salary. Only instead of recreating the artworks, he just sent the museum two empty canvases, and the message that him keeping the money they had lent him was the actual artwork.

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Groom Suffers Fractured Spine After Being Dropped By Friends at His Own Wedding

What was supposed to be the best night of his life turned into a nightmare for a young Romanian man, after being thrown into the air and dropped by his friends during his own wedding, and suffering spine fractures.

31-year-old Liviu Filimon was enjoying his wedding party in Baile Felix, north-western Romania when some of his friends decided that it was time to celebrate Liviu’s union with his new bride by throwing him into the air. It’s a common celebratory custom all over the world, but in order to avoid tragedy, it’s key that the person being tossed into the air also be caught on their way down. Sadly, that second part didn’t go according to plan in this case, and the young groom wound up in the hospital with multiple spine fractures.

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Indian Man Seeks Divorce From Wife Because She Doesn’t Bathe Daily

A Muslim man from India’s Uttar Pradesh reportedly tried to divorce his wife of two years because she doesn’t bathe daily, and they fight every time he asks her to.

Personal hygiene is an important part of a relationship, and in some cases, it can become a serious enough issue to warrant the end of said relationship. Case in point, a Muslim man in India who decided to divorce his wife because she refused to bathe every day. He claimed to have repeatedly asked his wife to bathe more often, but every time the issue came up, their discussion ended in a verbal spat. Ultimately, he turned to the controversial “triple talaq” to break off the marriage, even though the two had a one-year-old child together.

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Japan Starts Selling World’s First Genome-Edited Tomato

Sicilian Rouge High GABA is a special type of tomato designed to contain high levels of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), an amino acid believed to aid relaxation and help lower blood pressure.

Tokyo-based startup Sanatech Seed Co. teamed up with scientists at the University of Tsukuba to develop a new variety of tomatoes using CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology. Named Sicilian Rouge High GABA, this new type of tomato contains five to six times the normal level of a type of amino acid called gamma-aminobutyric acid, or GABA. According to Japanese media, the company removed an inhibitory domain within the tomato’s genome to enable it to produce these high levels of GABA.

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The Jumping Mailmen of Lake Geneva

Every year, athletic youths in Wisconsin’s Woworth County try out for a unique summer job – mail jumping. They need to prove that they can jump off of a moving boat onto a private dock, deliver the mail and then jump back on the boat before it has passed by.

The residents of Lake Geneva have been getting mail delivered by boat since before roads were built in the area, so the practice has become somewhat of a local tradition, one that attracts loads of tourists to the area. In fact, during the summer months, the mail boat can take approximately 160 tourists along on mail delivery runs and operates at full capacity almost every day. Watching and recording the jumping mailmen deliver the mail to the around 60 homes on Lake Geneva is something that many will gladly pay to be able to do.

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Man Turns Himself In 30 Years After Escaping From Prison

An Australian man who had been on the run for nearly three decades turned himself in recently, after being rendered homeless by the pandemic and struggling to find work.

On the night of August 1, 1992, 13 months into his three-and-a-half-year sentence for growing marijuana, Darko “Dougie” Desic escaped from the Grafton Correctional Centre in New South Wales, using tools, including a hacksaw blade and bolt cutters. Despite an extensive search, authorities were never able to locate Desic, and he remained a fugitive for the next 29 years. So imagine everyone’s surprise when he just turned up at a police station one day to turn himself in after all this time. As it turns out, it was all because of the Covid-19 pandemic, as the lockdown in NSW had left Desic homeless and with no way to support himself.

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