After suffering from pain on the right side of her nose for most of her life, a New Zealand woman was shocked to discover a plastic board game piece that had apparently been stuck in her nostril for 37 years.

Mary McCarthy, from Christchurch in New Zealand, had always struggled with pain and breathing difficulties on the right side of her nose, but having put up with it since childhood, she never bothered seeing a doctor about it. But last October, following ab excruciatingly painful nasal swab test for Covid-19, her nasal issue got even worse. Her nose would be leaking constantly and she was in a lot of pain, so she finally decided to get medical help.

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DentalSlim Diet Control is a controversial weight loss device designed to allow wearers to open their mouths only about 2mm, thus making them unable to chew while making breathing and speaking possible.

Developed by scientists at University of Otago, in New Zealand, the DentalSlim Diet Control is an intra-oral device that can be attached to the wearer’s upper and lower back teeth by a dental professional. It features unique custom-manufactured locking bolts powered by magnets, which, when activated, only allow a mouth opening of about 2 mm, restricting the wearer to a liquid diet, while allowing them to breathe and speak normally. Apparently, the developers of the DentalSlim Diet Control believe that it can play a role in the fight against the global obesity epidemic.

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An Indian man has filed a complaint against his wife, her family and their marriage mediator for allegedly tricking him into marrying a transgender person.

A resident of Kanpur City, in India’s Uttar Pradesh state, recently visited a local police station to file a First Information report (FIR) against his wife of nearly two months, her family and the marriage mediator, for failing to mention that the woman was transgender. He accused accused his in-laws of deceiving both him and his family by not revealing his wife’s original gender at the time of the marriage, on April 28. The unnamed man claims that he only found out that his wife was transgender after taking her to a gynecologist for a checkup.

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Xavier Bouget, an 80-year-old pensioner from France’s Brittany region, and Blanchon, a majestic white pigeon, have been best friends for two years, ever since the Frenchman rescued the bird from becoming a cat’s lunch.

Xavier first met his unlikely companion two years ago, while walking to his house in the town of Gommenec’h. He noticed this small, almost featherless pigeon chick fall out of its nest, in a desperate attempt to escape a hungry cat. He didn’t think to help it at first, but when he got home and mentioned it to his wife, Marie-Françoise, she asked him why he didn’t pick it up. So he went back to get the small pigeon chick, which had miraculously managed to escape the purring predator until his return. Xavier came home with the frail bird in his bird, not knowing that it would soon become his best and closest friend.

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On Valentine’s Day, a young Ukrainian couple made international news headlines after chaining their hands together for three months, as a last ditch effort to save their relationship. They lasted the three months, but split up as soon as the chain came off.

In February, Alexander Kudlay, a 33-year-old car salesman, and 29-year-old beautician Viktoria Pustovitova shocked the world when they filmed themselves getting chained together with an actual chain. The chain was welded shut under the supervision of a representative of the country’s national register of records, who also added a seal to the chain to make sure they don’t cheat. The plan was to go three months with their hands chained together, which meant sharing bathroom breaks and showers, not to mention planning their day so that both could get stuff done. Few thought they could last three months, but they proved everyone wrong. Well, sort of…

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In the arid wastes of eastern Yemen lies a fascinating natural wonder called the Well of Barhout. Shrouded in mystery and folklore, this large hole in the ground said to be the most hated spot on Earth to God.

Located in the eponymous valley, Barhout Well is 30 meters wide and thought to be anywhere between 100 and 250 meters deep. The depth is just pure estimation, as no one has been down to the bottom of it, and considering the chilling legends and stories surrounding it, I doubt any of the locals would attempt a decent. Not even Yemeni scientists and explorers have been able to reach the bottom, as the low oxygen and strange odors emanating from the well forced them back to the surface.

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‘Uglier and Uglier’, a controversial artwork that ranked photos and videos of 5,000 different real-life women from ugly to ugliest, was removed by a Shanghai-based gallery following public outcry.

Created by male Chinese artist Song Ta, ‘Uglier and Uglier’ featured photos and clips of thousands of women on a university campus ranked by how unattractive he found them. Song reportedly created the controversial exhibit in 2013 and showcased it in several art galleries since, but its latest outing at the OCAT Shanghai gallery was met with so much criticism from the public that it was eventually taken down. The fact that Song Ta once said that he and his assistants ranked the women depicted in his artwork from “forgivably ugly” to “unforgivably ugly” might have had something to do with people’s reaction to the exhibit…

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The Aruka Shrine in Japan’s Ebina City is the oldest shrine in all of Sagami Province, but to the general public it’s known for a unique ceremony that involves a priest wearing a 2-meter-long headgear in the shape of a green onion.

Negi-san, the head priest at Aruka Shrine has been performing the green onion ceremony for about four years , but it only went viral last year, when photos of the priest wearing the bizarre headgear went viral on Japanese social media. It was a pretty weird thing to see, even by Japanese standards, but that only made it more interesting. Here was this masked priest wearing a green skirt and white shirt matching the green-and-white green onion on their head bending over to pass through a small circle wrapped in rope. It made no sense, and yet, everyone was intrigued.

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Described as a “forced inspiratory suction and swallow tool”, HiccAway is essentially a special type of plastic straw scientifically designed to almost instantly cure hiccups. According to a new study, the L-shaped tool works in 92% of cases.

From holding your breath and drinking water, to jump scares and anti-hiccup lollypops, there is no shortage of hiccup cures in the world, which only emphasizes how pesky of a problem it can be. Unfortunately, few, if any have a proven track record when it comes to efficiency, but, luckily, we now have a scientific solution that promises to end those annoying hiccups in over 90% percent of cases. It’s called HiccAway and it looks like a simple L-shaped piece of plastic, but there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye.

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China’s Broad Group recently showcased its innovative Living Building, a new type of modular building system, by erecting a 10-storey apartment building in Changsha City in only 28 hours and 45 minutes.

The Living Building concept developed by Broad Group sounds like it could truly revolutionize the construction industry, and the Chinese company’s recent feat of erecting a 10-floor building in just over a day was meant to emphasize just how disruptive its new system can be. Technically, the building was just assembled on a site in Changsha, by three cranes and a large workforce, as all the components were built in a local Broad Group factory and transported by truck. But that’s one of the features of the Living Building system, it consists of pre-made container-size modules that only need to be bolted together at the “build” site and have their electricity and plumbing connected.

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North Carolina-based start-up BIOMILQ recently announced that it has successfully created cell-cultured human milk from mammary cells, in a laboratory.

In the age of Impossible Burgers and 3D-printed meatless steaks, human breast milk made in the lab instead of inside a woman’s breast really doesn’t seem that strange, honestly. The breakthrough announced by BIOMILK earlier this month really has the potential to disrupt the infant and baby industry as well as impact the environment, as over 10 percent of dairy today goes towards making baby formula. How the world reacts to lab-make breastmilk, on the other hand, is another matter.

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At the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains in northwest Azerbaijan, lies Parigala, one of the world’s most impressive archeological mysteries. Carved into the nearly vertical face of a rock cliff, the centuries-old structure remains a mystery that hardly anyone knows anything about.

The idea that an amazing site like Parigala (literally ‘Fairy Castle’ in Azerbaijani) is one of Azerbaijan’s lesser-known archeological treasures baffles the mind. That has to do both with the country’s still underdeveloped tourism industry, and the fact that you need to go off the beaten path to reach Parigala. That fits the general theme of the place, which is inaccessibility, but still, hopping into a four-wheel drive vehicle to navigate the narrow tracks leading up to it,  then climbing up a very slippery slope to a steep, leaf-covered and forested hillside just to reach the cliff it’s carved into, is definitely not for everyone.

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Located in the Russian Far East, the island of Sakhalin is allegedly home to giant versions of common plants like buckwheat, burdock and butterbur that can grow up to 5 meters tall.

Sakhalin is known for being the largest island in the Russian Federation, as well as a point of contention between Japan and Russia over the centuries. However, according to obscure reports going back over a decade, the northernmost island of the Japanese archipelago, as well as the nearby Kuril Islands are home to versions of ordinary herbaceous plants of truly gigantic proportions. Plants that normally reach the knee of an average adult, on these islands allegedly grow several times the height of a human.

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After losing his balance and falling off his bicycle, a bright Chinese engineer dedicated his spare time to designing and building a bike that not only self-balances, but also detects and avoids obstacles.

I never learned how to ride a bicycle, and I always wondered how people managed to keep their balance on those two thin wheels, but thanks to the efforts of Zhi Hui Jun, I may never have to. The talented engineer was fascinated by the self-driving bicycle built by scientists at Beijing Tsinghua University back in 2019, and after suffering a bicycle accident that left him with minor injuries to his face, the young engineer decided to build his own self-balancing bicycle.

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Gosiame Thamara Sithole, a 37-year-old woman from South Africa , reportedly gave birth to the world’s first decuples – 10 babies from a single pregnancy.

The first recorded case of decuplets is currently shrouded in mystery, as  ten days since the woman allegedly brought the 10 babies into the world, no one has seen either the mother or the newborns. All we have to go on at this point are media reports and statements made by the babies’ father and other relatives, all of which claim that Gosiame Thamara Sithole did in fact give birth to 10 babies – seven boys and three girls – at the end of a 29-week pregnancy. Apart from the suspicious absence of the mother, there are a few things that don’t really add up, though…

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