Steph Morris is an insanely talented UK artist who specializes in hyper-realistic drawings of sneakers. Her work is so detailed that even closeups of the drawings are hard to distinguish from the real thing.

When it comes to sneaker drawings, Manchester-born Steph Morris is renowned for her unrivaled realism. She has always had a thing for sneakers, so pairing up this passion with her artistic talent just made sense. She didn’t originally plan to make a living out of drawing sneakers; At first, she was more interested in wearing them, as she pursued a career in sports, but a number of injuries forced her to reevaluate her options and come up with a plan B. She took up the pencil, started drawing the things she loved most, and never looked back.

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Remember those funny banana hammers we featured a few days ago? Well, they recently went viral in Taiwan and the Japanese manufacturer is struggling to keep up with demand.

Iron Factory Ikeda, a typical precision metal manufacturing plant in Hiroshima, Japan, started making banana-shaped mallets in 2019 and followed it up with steel banana hammers a year later. Over the years, the company developed different variations of the wacky product, including smaller versions modeled after baby bananas. They were popular enough to remain in production, but last month, banana hammers went viral online and sparked newfound interest among consumers not only in Japan but around the world. For example, people in Taiwan are apparently ordering them like crazy…

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Colton Pifer currently holds the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest nasal septum flesh tunnel – a giant hole with a diameter of 2.6 centimeters.

Colton was 18 years old when he first decided to get his nasal septum pierced. It was a routine procedure that involved the use of a 16-gauge needle and forceps. It took about a week for the soreness to go away, and the Monroe, Michigan native pretty much left it alone for about five years. Then, at one point, he started stretching it to the point where he started noticing that no other piercing enthusiast had a septum flesh tunnel quite like his and that only encouraged him to stretch it even more. After researching the world’s largest nasal septum flesh tunnel, Colton Pifer realized he could beat it, especially since he was trying to stretch his nose hole even more anyway.

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In what has been described as a first-of-its-kind medical case, a man in his 30s ended up with a hole in his throat after pinching his nose and pressing his lips shut in order to surpress a sneeze.

The unnamed man was taken to Ninewells Hospital, in Dundee, Scotland, in severe pain, after trying to stifle a sneeze by pinching his nose and closing his mouth shut while driving. Apparently, when you do something like that, the pressure in the upper airways can increase by about 20 times, which can lead to serious injuries including ruptured eardrums, aneurysms, and even broken ribs. However, in this particular case, the unnamed patient ended up with a 2mm tear in their windpipe, which caused excruciating pain. A throat tear, known medically as a “spontaneous tracheal perforation” is a rare and potentially life-threatening injury that had not been associated with sneeze stifling before.

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A 20-year-old woman from Taiwan recently underwent surgery to have no less than 300 small stones removed from her right kidney.

The young woman, identified as Xiao Yu by Taiwanese media, was admitted to a hospital in the city of Tainan earlier this month, after complaining of severe pain in her lower back. She also had a fever and a blood test showed an unusually high white blood cell count. Doctors ordered a CT scan which showed that Yu’s right kidney was full of fluid and virtually full of kidney stones. The first order of business was to put the young woman on antibiotics, then drain the fluid from her kidney, and finally perform minimally invasive surgery to remove the hundreds of stones.

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A Kenyan man has been arrested in Connecticut for trying to have his estranged wife killed by asking a random Uber driver to help him find a hitman willing to do the dirty deed.

Leonard Thuo Mwithiga, 52, a former high-flying executive at Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) is facing a lengthy prison sentence for attempting to hire a hitman to kill the woman he had been married to for 22 years. According to a report by the Connecticut State Police, Mwithiga had followed his estranged spouse, who had run away in September of last year because of his abusive behavior, to the United States in an attempt to convince her to return home. Having failed to do that, the man decided that the woman had to die. After getting into an Uber, he reportedly started talking to the driver, telling him that he was “very, very mad” and that he needed a hitman.

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Russian hydrologist Alexander Tsvetkov was detained in February 2023, after an AI system determined that his face was a 55% match to the sketch of a murderer drawn 20 years ago by a witness.

Alexander Tsvetkov, a scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Inland Water Biology, has been living a nightmare for the past 10 months. He was removed from an airplane in February, following a work trip to Krasnoyarsk, and informed that he had been identified as the author of a series of murders over 20 years ago. Investigators claimed that he and his alleged accomplice killed at least two people in Moscow and the Moscow region in August 2002, ignoring the testimonies of multiple scientists that Tsvetkov had been with them at the time of the murders. The state’s smoking gun? An AI-powered system that found a 55% match between Tsvetkov and a sketch drawn by a witness over two decades ago…

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The Willtex ‘Willcook’ microwave bag looks like a stylish laptop bag but is actually made out of conductive fabric that allows the user to heat the inside all the way up to 250 degrees Celsius.

Say what you will, but there’s nothing more comforting than a nice hot meal on a cold winter day, especially when you’re out and about. But what if you have no way of heating your lunch or ordering a hot meal? That’s where the world’s first microwave bag comes into place. Made out of an innovative fabric developed by Japanese company Sanki Consys Co. Ltd., the Willtex ‘Willcook’ bag looks like your average laptop bag, but it can heat up whatever you have stored inside to a temperature of 80 degrees Celsius in just 5 minutes. The bag itself weighs just 160 grams, while the rechargeable battery pack powering it weighs an extra 120 grams.

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6-year-old Cao Qixian set the new women’s world record for solving a 3x3x3 Rubik’s cube in 5.97 seconds (average) at the World Cube Association Rubik’s Cube International Open in Singapore.

Qixian, who hails from China’s Jiangsu Province, started playing with a Rubik’s cube when she was only three, inspired by a cousin who taught her the art of ‘speed-cubing’, solving the world-famous puzzle as quickly as possible. However, after about a year, the girl got so good at it that her cousin had nothing to teach her anymore and her parents got her a speed-cubing coach. She enjoyed speed-solving the Rubik’s cube so much that she practiced for two to three hours every day, and her time was getting better and better. However, there was a point where she hit a wall and needed all of her family’s help to overcome it.

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A team of scientists studying freshwater ponds on an Australian island observed a rather peculiar mosquito behavior – when feeding on frogs, mosquitoes would always go for the nostrils.

John Gould and Jose Valdez – the first with the University of Newcastle, in Australia, the other the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research – spent three years surveying approximately 60 freshwater wetland ponds on Kooragang Island, in New South Wales, Australia. During their research, they observed and photographed a total of 3977 amphibians, but upon returning to their laboratory and laying out all of their photos, they noticed something intriguing. Out of their thousands of photos, 12 of them showed mosquitoes feeding on various species of frogs, but in all of them, the mosquitoes were sucking blood from the animals’ nostrils.

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Located 2,400 meters under the Earth’s surface, the Deep Underground and Ultra-low Radiation Background Facility for Frontier Physics Experiments (DURF) is the world’s deepest underground laboratory.

In December 2020, Tsinghua University and Yalong River Hydropower Development Company, Ltd. began work on a daring project under Jinping Mountain in Sichuan’s Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture. Designed to facilitate China’s research in relevant frontier fields, such as particle physics, nuclear astrophysics, and life sciences, the DURF reportedly provides the cleanest space on Earth to study the invisible substance known as dark matter, as the extreme depth it is located at (2,400 meters underground) helps block most of the cosmic rays that usually interfere with the observation of dark matter.

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The people of Vastogirardi, a town of 600 souls in the south of Italy, have finally solved the mystery of a series of flat tires over the last few months – a local dog with a bad case of gingivitis.

It all started in July of this year when the quiet town of Vastogirardi was faced with its first intentional tire puncture case in many years. The owner of a car left parked in Piazza Giusto Girardi found it with a punctured tire and called the carabinieri, but after an inspection of the surrounding area and a brief investigation, no suspects were identified. By the end of October, a handful of similar tire puncture complaints had been registered, all of which occurred in the town square. Rumors of rows between neighbors and even intimidation attempts by the Mafia started going around, but in the end, the true cause of the punctures proved even more surprising.

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A former Chinese whizkid who entered university at the age of 10 and was already a PhD candidate in Applied Mathematics at 16, spends his days doing nothing and relies on his parents for money.

Zhang Xinyang had always been destined for greatness. At just two and a half years old, he learned over a thousand Chinese characters within three months, and by age four, he was already in primary school. Born into a modest family, Zhang benefitted from his father’s tutelage and managed to skip several grades. At age six, he was already in fifth grade, and by age nine, he was enrolled in the third grade of high school. When he was ten years old, Zhang Xinyang became China’s youngest university student, getting accepted at the Tianjin University of Technology and Education. His genius surprised everyone, but as he grew, his attitude started to change…

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A Japanese izakaya bar has come under fire for offering patrons the rather controversial service of being slapped on their faces before having their meals served.

The Shachihoko-ya izakaya in Nagoya served its snacks with a hearty side of slaps delivered by its female staff. The bizarre service is said to have revitalized the establishment’s business, attracting an increasing number of patrons willing to try the painful experience. In the beginning, the face slapping was done by just one member of the izakaya staff, upon request, but as demand grew, management hired several girls willing to dish out some slaps and even started charging a fee of 100 yen (90 cents) per slap.

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Every year, Germany hosts the Stapler Cup, a competitive event that sees hundreds of forklift drivers from around the world going head to head in a series of difficult challenges for the title of world’s best forklift operator.

Competitive forklift driving probably doesn’t sound like the most exciting competitive event in the world, but that’s probably because you’ve never heard of the Stapler Cup. This yearly event organized by Linde Materials and Handling (Linde MH) is not only regarded as the ultimate test for certified forklift operators but also as an entertaining event that draws tens of thousands of spectators. Thousands of forklift drivers attempt to qualify for the Stapler Cup in national events, so only the very best get to showcase their skills on the big stage in a series of tests aimed at pushing their talent, coordination, and reflexes to the limit.

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