For hundreds of years, fishermen in Taiwan have been catching sardines with the help of fiery stick held over the edge of a boat. The fish are so attracted to the light that they jump out of the water and into the nets of the fishermen.

Fire fishing is as simple as it is mesmerizing. Fishing boats head out to sea during the night, and light up a bamboo stick covered with sulfuric soil at one end to create a bright flame. The sulfur dissolves in the water and the gas produced then flashes with fire. Drawn to the light spectacle, sardines jump out of the water by the hundreds at a time and end up in the fishermen’s nets. Sulfuric fire fishing was developed during the period of Japanese Rule and is now practiced only in the Jinshan sulfur harbor.

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All astronauts have perfect eyesight before traveling to outer space, but some years ago medical tests revealed that their vision is severely impaired when they return. The exact cause of this problem is yet to be determined.

In 2005, about halfway through his mission working on the International Space Station, astronaut John Phillips looked out the window at Earth and noticed something strange. Although his vision had always been perfect, our planet seemed blurry and he had problem focusing on it. He didn’t report his problem to ground control thinking it was just temporary and would go away after a while, only it didn’t. When he returned to Earth, rigorous tests revealed that his eyesight had gone from 20/20 to 20/100.

To shed some light on this issue, NASA put Phillips through a series of procedures, including MRIs, retinal scans, neurological tests and a spinal tap. They found that not only had his vision deteriorated, but his eyes had changed as well – his optic nerves were inflamed, the back of his eyes had become flatter and his eyeballs had choroidal folds, which are like stretch marks. After six months, Phillips’ eyesight improved to 20/50, but remained there for the last 11 years. He went from being the guy with the best vision, the first one in the car to read a street sign to not being able to pass a DMV exam without glasses.

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Inspired by a vision to create a sustainable and healthy home and way of life for their family, Benjamin and Ingrid Marie Hertefølger have built a unique all-natural house completely covered by a glass dome, on a plot of land on Norway’s Sandhorney island, in the Arctic Circle.

The Hertefølgers knew they wanted to live in an eco-home made of only natural materials – cob (a mixture of sand, clay and straw), wood and glass – but also that it had to withstand the harsh weather conditions of the Arctic Circle. Aware of the robust properties of geodesic domes, they contacted Solardome Industries about a bespoke dome to cover their new house. It had to withstand the heavy snowfalls common to Northern Norway, maintain a uniform temperature throughout the year, reduce ultraviolet radiation, minimise maintenance and act as a greenhouse for the family’s organic vegetable and fruit garden.

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A 28-year-old man from New Delhi was recently arrested for selling a rented car online and then stealing it back from the new owner on the same day. His scheme actually worked the first time, but he was apprehended when he got greedy and tried to pull it off a second time.

Mintoo Kumar, son of a retired Army captain and struggling entrepreneur, was looking for a way to make some money after his businesses failed, when inspiration struck. He rented a used Mahindra XUV 500 and soon also started looking for an identical one in New Delhi. Once he found it, the conman spent the next couple of months trying to get the registration details of the car and used them to forge a registration certificate for the rented vehicle. Once the paperwork was ready, he posted an ad for the car on an eCommerce website and waited for gullible buyers. He actually managed to sell the car pretty fast, but in order to complete his grand scheme he needed to steal it back again, fast. Using a GPS device, he managed to track down the rented vehicle to its new location, and since the owner hadn’t had time to change the locks, stole it using a duplicate key.

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Dog owners feeling guilty for leaving their pets alone at home for too long will son be able to take comfort in the fact that at least the animals won’t be bored. They’ll be too busy changing TV channels and enjoying their favorite shows thanks to the world’s first dog-friendly remote control.

UK-based pet food brand Wagg apparently surveyed a number of pet owners and found that 91% of respondents said their canine friends regularly watch TV with them. Inspired by this interesting finding, the company teamed up with Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas, an expert in animal computer interaction design at the University of Central Lancashire, to create the world’s first remote control for dogs. They came up with a prototype for the ingenious device which is currently in a trial and analysis period.

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It’s quite natural for lizards and snakes to lie on hot rocks in the scorching sun, because they have to thermoregulate, but when middle-aged and elderly women in the Chinese city of Xi’an started doing it, people started raising their eyebrows in surprise.

It turns out lying on large stone boulders in the hot sun is this year’s summer health trend among the women of Xi’an. Elderly and middle-aged women can be seen hugging rocks or simply lying on them with towels on their faces all around the city, from parks to squares and pretty much wherever else large, sun-heated rocks can be found.

At first, people thought the women were engaging in some mysterious artistic performance, but local reporters approached them, they said it was a traditional medical treatment to help them cure various illnesses. One woman, identified only by her surname, Lo, said that she started lying on hot rocks to treat her synovitis and stiff muscles, after a relative suffering from similar ailments did it for an extended period of time and got cured. Apparently, the best time to practice laying on rocks is between 3 and 4 p.m., when the sun burns the hottest.

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If you’re looking of ways to make vacuuming the house less of a chore, this ingenious combination between a harmonica and a vacuum cleaner may be the coolest thing you’ll see today.

Vacuuming a harmonica may just become the house-cleaning trend of 2016, but it all started just a few days ago, completely by accident. Japanese Twitter user @CelloMetalGirl was the first to upload one a video of the unusual activity, with the caption “I laughed to death”. As it urns out, the girl’s father was vacuuming the house when he accidentally hit an old run-of-the-mill harmonica with the vacuum brush and… Magic happened.

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Last month, artist Aaron Chervenak drove from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, Nevada to finally take the love for his smartphone to the next level by marrying it at a small wedding chapel. And yeah, in case you’re wondering, he even put a ring on it.

A study conducted by internet security giant Kaspersky found that a quarter of people ranked their smartphone as more or equally important to them as their parents. For a lot of us, it’s the last thing we interact with before going to sleep and the first thing we check when we wake up. It’s with us pretty much 24/7, and we connect with it on so many levels. “We look to it for solace, to calm us down, to put us to sleep, to ease our mind, and to me that’s also what a relationship is about,” Aaron Chervenak said. So in a sense, my smartphone has been my longest relationship. That’s why I decided to see what it was like to actually marry a phone.”

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For the past few years, a man from Green Bay, has been threatening to sue big companies who perform background checks on him during the hiring process if they don’t pay him hefty settlements. Believe it or not, his plan is actually working.

Although he’s apparently been at it for years, Cory Groshek’s strategy was recently revealed by Time Warner Cable lawyers filed a motion to dismiss a case filed against the company by Groshek. It claims that within a recent 18-month stretch, Groshek applied to 562 jobs with high-profile companies, without any intention to secure long-term employment. Instead, he merely tried to  to catch companies violating the law during the hiring process, so he could threaten a class-action lawsuit against them and demand settlements.

Documents submitted by the lawyers show that Groshek has used this scare tactic to extract at least $232,000 in settlements from various businesses across the United States. The man himself has allegedly admitted to threatening over 40 companies with class-action lawsuits for technical violations of the federal law, specifically running a background check on him without properly informing him about it.

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San Francisco-based startup Impossible Foods might have just achieved the impossible – making plants tastes like meat. Their Impossible Burger is made entirely of plants, but sizzles on the grill, oozes fat and reportedly tastes like a delicious cooked beef patty.

Red meat consumption around the world is at an all time high, but producing high quantities of meat to satisfy demand is not sustainable and it’s already taking a heavy toll on the environment. In recent years, experts have been busy coming up with alternatives to animal meat, like switching to a protein-rich insect-based diet, growing meat in the lab and even artificial meat made from sewage mud. But one San-Francisco company may have discovered a much more viable solution – a mashup of plant-based ingredients that tastes just like real meat. Impossible Foods has been working on an alternative to meat for the last five years, and its soon-to-be-launched Impossible Burger is already receiving high praise for its likeness to beef patties in taste, texture and appearance.

When former Stanford biochemist Patrick Brown founded Impossible Foods, he set his goal on creating a product that would change the world, and the Impossible Burger might do just that. He and his research team have spent years analyzing meat molecules to find out what makes a burger taste, smell and cook the way it does, in the belief that everything animal can be replicated using plant-based compounds. And judging by the testimonies of the few people who have actually sampled this revolutionary burger, Brown was right.

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North Korea may be one of the world’s least tourist-friendly countries on Earth, but its strategic location along the avian East Asian Australasian Flyway and complete lack of development is preventing the extinction of several once plentiful species of migratory birds.

Around fifty million birds, from tiny song birds to cranes, journey across the East Asian Australasian Flyway every year, and eight million of them are shorebirds or waders. For many of these, North Korea’s west coast is the only stop for tens of thousands of miles, which means that without it, they would probably couldn’t finish their epic trip. But what makes this otherwise inhospitable place so important to birds?

A group of New Zealand bird watchers asked permission from the North Korean government to enter the country and observe the migratory birds. Armed with binoculars, powerful telescopes and cameras they counted the birds making their stop from the southern hemisphere all the way to the top of the northern one. “As we lose habitat elsewhere, the birds are going to get more and more pushed into remaining habitat, which by default means North Korea,” birder David Melville told the BBC. Because the shorelines of neighboring countries China and South Korea have witnessed rapid developments, with most of the mudflats having been converted to dry land for agriculture and industrial projects, the birds have virtually no place to stop and refuel.

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In 1976, Roger Bennatti, a chemistry teacher at George Stevens Academy, in Maine, unwrapped a fresh Twinkie and placed it atop a classroom chalkboard so he and his students could see how long it took for it to decompose. 40 years later, that question remains unanswered, because mould simply refuses to grow on the world’s oldest Twinkie.

The official shelf-life of a Twinkie – as stated by the company making them nowadays – is only 25 days, but as the famous Twinkie of George Stevens Academy clearly shows, it’s really a lot longer than that. It has been sitting in a glass case for four decades now, and even though it might not be safe to eat, it is looking fantastic for its age. Its shape hasn’t change a bit, and if mould hasn’t grown on it so far, chances are it never will.

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Animal leather alternatives like Polyurethane and PVC leather may have solved the fashion industry’s animal cruelty problem, but they are not the most environmentally friendly solutions. Piñatex – a new leather-like material made from pineapple leaves – on the other hand, may just be the all-around eco-leather we’ve all been waiting for.

Piñatex or “vegan leather” is the invention of Dr. Carmen Hijosa and her innovative materials company, Ananas Anam. While working in the Philippines as a consultant to the Product Development and Design Center of the Philippines in the ‘90s, she discovered the properties of pineapple leaf fibers and dedicated her life to creating sustainable alternatives to leather and petroleum-based textiles. After years of research, Ananas Anam has finally come up with what it believes is a viable alternative to animal leather. It recently showcased the versatility of Piñatex during a presentation held at the Royal College of Art in London, where designers displayed various clothing items and accessories made exclusively from the revolutionary material.

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Classical ballet and hip hop don’t exactly seem like a match made in heaven, but a new dance form aptly called “hiplet” is proving otherwise.

A video of a group of young ballerinas performing hiplet to Jason Derulo’s “If It Ain’t Love” went viral at the end of last month and has since then gotten tens of millions of views on various social media platforms. Looking at how these young ladies are able to put a modern twist on classical ballet, it’s no wonder the world can’t seem to get enough of them. Frankly, neither can we!

Hiplet is the creation of Homer Hans Bryant, a famous dance teacher who has previously worked with celebrities like Lady Gaga and first daughters first daughters Sasha and Malia Obama. The talented dancers in that viral hiplet video are his young students at the Chicago Multicultural dance Center. Bryant said he came up with this strange yet intriguing combination in an attempt to keep up with the times and stay relevant with young people.

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54-year-old Michael Vaudreuil is used to picking up things at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. He has been working as custodian there for the last eight years, vacuuming the carpets, cleaning the floors, wiping the blackboards and picking up the trash. But last month, Vaudreuil picked up something he’ll actually want to hang on to – a degree in mechanical engineering.

In 2008, Vaudreuil, a self-employed plastering contractor, with two decades of successful entrepreneurship under his belt, felt his world crashing down on him. As recession hit, less phone calls were coming in, but he tried not to panic. Soon, clients stopped calling completely and he had no choice but to file for bankruptcy. Soon, his home was foreclosed, his car repossessed and without his income to support his wife’s vending machine business, that eventually went under as well. He and his family moved into a tiny apartment and Michael started looking for jobs with construction companies, but no one was hiring.

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