After wearing masks in public for three long years, many Japanese are signing up for smiling classes to learn how to smile again without looking awkward.

Smiling used to be a natural response, but apparently, three years of hiding behind a mask have left many Japanese unable to smile naturally. Some of them are now paying so-called smiling educators to teach them how to display their pearly whites again without looking awkward. They participate in specialized classes where they are taught how to stretch and flex various parts of their faces and even their neck muscles to smile properly and actually convey happiness without looking weird.

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A businessman from southern Thailand recently went viral for claiming that the secret to his good health is to drink crocodile blood mixed with alcohol twice a day.

Rojakorn Nanon, a 52-year-old man from Thailand’s Trang province, starts his day with a glass of crocodile mixed with a Thai spirit called lao khao, and has another such cocktail before bedtime. The businessman claims that he used to be physically weak and exhausted all the time, but ever since he started drinking crocodile blood, things took a massive turn for the better, and now he swears by the stuff. He believes the blood does wonders for several organs, for the blood, and for the nervous system.

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A 16-year-old teenager from South Korea has been accused of forcefully practicing his tattooing skills on two younger schoolmates that he had allegedly been bullying for years.

A disturbing school bullying case has been making news headlines in South Korea and sparking outrage among parents. The Incheon Nonhyeon Police Department has confirmed that it is currently investigating a bullying case in which the assailant is accused of forcefully tattooing at least two younger teenagers, both as a way of branding them and practicing his tattooing skills. The parents of the first victim filed a complaint in March, after accidentally discovering a large and amateurishly-inked tattoo on their son’s leg. After confronting the boy, they learned that he had been forcefully tattooed by a schoolmate who had been terrorizing him for at least two years.

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A 72-year-old man in China melted the hearts of millions after it was reported that he spends most of his time promoting makeup and other beauty products online in order to treat his sick grandson.

People will do all sorts of crazy things for their loved ones, and 72-year-old Zhu Yunchang is a perfect example. The Chinese pensioner has been dedicating a lot of his time to his unusual job, that of makeup-wearing beauty blogger, for which he applies all sorts of beauty products, from creams to lipstick and mascara for fans all over the country. It’s not exactly typical behavior for a man Zhu’s age, but then again, his is not a typical story.

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With just $3 million in assets, two employees, no ATM, no website, and no transaction fees, Kentland Federal Savings and Loan is the smallest bank in America, and it’s been around for over 100 years.

You’ve most likely heard of America’s banking giants – JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and the Bank of America – but what about the smallest fish in the pond, so to speak? Well, at the opposite end, we have Kentland Federal Savings and Loan, officially the smallest bank in the United States of America. Founded back in 1920, by the great-grandfather of its current CEO, this tiny financial institution has only ever had one branch in Kentland, Indiana, and has only offered three services – obtaining a home mortgage, opening a savings account, and opening a certificate of deposit.

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A young security guard who suffered multiple injuries while trying to catch a girl who had jumped from a building ended up losing his job and getting criticized by the woman’s family.

28-year-old Qu Yan was working as a security guard at a hospital in China’s Jilin Province in 2022 when his life took a tragic turn. He was on duty when he received reports that a young girl had climbed onto a fourth-floor balcony and was threatening to jump to her death. He quickly ran outside and saw the young woman preparing to take her own life. Firefighters had not yet arrived, and a number of hospital employees were scrambling to improvise a net to catch the woman when she jumped. They never got the chance to do so, as the woman leaped from the balcony before they were ready, so Qu Yan reacted instinctively, rushing forward and trying to catch the woman in his arms.

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Los Algodones, a small Mexican town of about 7,000 people, has the highest concentration of dentists per square mile in the world and is famously known as Molar City.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans visit Los Algodones every year, but they don’t come in search of sandy beaches, they come for veneers, root canals, and dental implants. Of the roughly 7,000 inhabitants of Los Algodones, about 600 are dentists and the four main streets of the town are full of dental clinics offering a variety of services at a fraction of the cost in the United States. Between November and April, the population of Los Algodones almost doubles, as the tiny town is overrun by US tourists, but also some from Canada and even as far as the UK. Despite the stiff competition between dental clinics in the small Mexican town, demand often exceeds supply when it comes to dental services.

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A Minnesota man who lost his iPhone 14 while kayaking in Hawaii got the shock of his life when a complete stranger got in touch and told him that they had found his handheld and that it was working perfectly.

27-year-old Zach Siggelkow of St. Anthony Village, Minnesota, was on vacation at Waikiki Beach, Hawaii, with his mother and sister last December. On the last day, Siggelkow decided to go kayaking, despite his mother’s warning, and that’s when tragedy struck. He had taken his iPhone 14 out to film some Air Force planes flying over, when a big wave hit the side of the kayak, causing it to overturn. As he struggled to find his paddle and get back into the kayak, Zach realized he had lost both his smartphone and his sunglasses. At first, he was pretty bummed out about it, but then he realized there wasn’t much he could do about it, so he just moved on with his life. Until 33 days later, when he got an email from someone claiming to have found his iPhone on the bottom of the ocean…

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After meeting as adults, two step-brothers who shared the same father hid their romance from the world for nine years. Now they’re making their relationship public so they can get legally married.

Ana Parra was 20 years old when she met her step-brother Daniel (17) for the first time. Her mother had told her that her biological father had started a new family and had another child, which sparked her curiosity. She looked for her father on Facebook and that’s how she discovered Daniel’s profile. She started a false account and befriended him on the social network. They started messaging each other, discovered that they had very much in common, and Ana ultimately confessed that she was his step-sister. They decided to meet in person, gradually became good friends and then that friendship grew into something more…

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A Thai doctor recently shared photos of a patient’s hand and the magnetic plates he had embedded in his fingers to help him cheat at a popular dice game without raising suspicion.

Dr. Wat Lun of the Wiwat X-ray Clinic-Lab in Chon Buri, Thailand, regularly shares photos of his medical cases on social media, but it was one of his most recent patients that drew unusual levels of attention on Facebook. The Thai doctor posted a couple of photos, one showing two black plates and another of the patient’s sewn fingers following minor surgery. The photos aren’t that impressive, but it was the story behind them that caused the post to go viral. Apparently, one of his patients had magnetic plates embedded in his fingertips for 40 years to help him cheat at Hi Lo, also known as Sic Bo, a popular dice game.

“You probably won’t believe it but a patient inserted magnets into the fingertips of his left-hand middle and ring fingers for 40 years. He put them there to play Hi-Lo,” Wat Lun wrote in his Facebook post.

The Thai doctor explained that the man, whose name has not been disclosed, only came in to have the magnets removed because he needed to board an airplane and he was afraid that the agents would be detected by airport security devices. His days of Sic Bo gambling were probably behind him as well, so he decided to visit a clinic.

Photo: Edge2Edge Media/Unsplash

“He came and asked to have them taken out because he wants to take a flight and is scared the magnets will set off an alarm at airport security,” the doctor wrote. “When I cut open his fingers, I found two very tightly embedded magnets.”

Popular in East-Asian countries, Sic Bo is a dice game in which players bet on whether the combination of three dice will be a high or low score. If the sum of the dots is up to 11, it is considered a low score, and anything between 11 and 18 is high. Although the exact cheating method was not disclosed, some Thai news outlets claimed that the man used the magnetic plates in combination with a small magnet in one or multiple dice to manipulate the score.

Sułoszowa, a Polish village of around 6,000 people located in the Olkuska Upland, less than 30 km northwest of Kraków, has been dubbed ‘Little Tuscany’ because of its unusual layout.

The village of Sułoszowa has been around for many years, but it only recently started attracting international attention after bird’s eye photos and videos went viral on social media. Millions of people around the world were mesmerized by the unusual layout of the rural settlement – hundreds of houses on either side of a singular street, snaking through multi-colored agricultural fields as far as the eye can see. Every one of the 5.819 inhabitants – according to a 2017 census – lives on the same street, which stretches for over 9 kilometers.

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A new board game marketed as a ‘Christian’ version of the Ouija board has sparked quite a controversy among clerics, with one priest describing it as a ‘trap from the devil’.

It sounds like a clever April Fools prank for Christians, but it turns out that the Holy Spirit Board is an actual game that anyone can find on sites like Amazon. It’s basically a Ouija board, only instead of demons, ghosts and other unholy beings, ‘this is a one-way ticket straight to heaven’ that relies on the classic planchette system to allow users to communicate directly with “our lord and savior Jesus Christ!” The layout of the planchette is similar to that of a Ouija board, only it is decorated with Christian symbols like Jesus crucified on the cross, three angels, and a dove. Oh, and instead of the triangular pendant moved on the Ouija board, the Holy Spirit Board uses a golden cross.

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Every year, visitors of Peru’s Vilcanota mountain range are treated to a unique natural phenomenon, a river running blood red through the pristine rocky valleys of Cusco.

Located approximately 100 kilometers from the city of Cusco, near the well-known Palcoyo Rainbow Mountain, the red river is known as Palquella Pucamayu by the locals. It only runs red for about 5 kilometers before mixing with other streams and small rivers in the area, at which point the color becomes diluted, losing its unique hue. The best time to see the red river in person is during the rainy season (December – April), because the color of the water is directly influenced by the level of precipitation. For most of the year, Palquella Pucamayu is a muddy-brown color, but during the rainy season, large quantities of soil rich in iron oxide are carried down from mountains and color the water bright red.

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89-year-old Seiichi Sano holds the Guinness World Record for the oldest surfer on Earth, but what makes his feat even more impressive is that he only took up the sport at age 80!

They say surfing is a young man’s game, and it’s easy to see why. The water sport requires a combination of balance, coordination, and speed, all of which decrease considerably later in our lives. Add the fact that one has to pull themselves out of the water onto the board and then into a standing position and you’ve got a sport that doesn’t really appeal to the elderly. But there are exceptions, the most notable of which is Seiichi Sano, an 89-year-old Japanese man who was recently crowned the world’s oldest surfer by Guinness Records.

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Joasia Zakrzewski, an accomplished ultramarathon runner from Australia, was stripped of her bronze medal and trophy won in a recent 50-mile race after organizers learned that she had used a car for a portion of the course.

47-year-old Joasia Zakrzewski finished third in the 2023 GB Ultras 50-mile (80km) race from Manchester to Liverpool on April 7 and even posed with her medal and trophy after crossing the finish line despite knowing full well that she had broken the rules of the competition. After analyzing GPX data, race organizers concluded that Zakrzewski had reached a speed of 35mph (56km/h) during a short section of the race, which made her faster than Usain Bolt, the fastest human in history. Upon interrogating race staff, witnesses and the runner herself, Joasia Zakrzewski was disqualified and stripped of her medal for riding in a friend’s car during the race.

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