A Chinese mother recently walked into a police station asking for help to remove a bicycle from around her neck after her 4-year-old boy put it on her and forgot the unlock code.

On October 7th, a young mother walked into a police station in Huai’an, China’s Jiangsu Province, with a bizarre “choker” around her neck – a grey and yellow bicycle locking device similar to a U-lock. She told the staff there that her son was playing with the lock next to her as she was cleaning the bathroom when he suddenly put it around her neck and locked it. She thought it funny at first, as it was her lock and she knew the unlock code, but it turned out that the boy had somehow changed it and now neither of them knew the combination to unlock it.

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A woman who had exhausted all other options of treating her depression claims her life has become infinitely better since having a matchbox-sized implanted into her skull.

Having holes drilled into your skull and electrical wires connected directly to your brain sounds like a daunting proposition for most people, but for Sarah, a 36-year-old woman who had been battling depression for years, it was a desperate attempt to get back to a normal life. For years, she had been battling severe depression, and all other treatments, including anti-depressants and electroconvulsive therapy, had failed. Anything was better than the darkness she had been experiencing, and getting a brain implant proved a winning bet, as she has now been depression-free for over a year.

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Taiwanese food is very popular all over the world, but some of the dishes it proposes are hard to swallow even for natives. Take for example milkfish intestines, a delicacy that’s difficult to look at, let alone swallow.

Milkfish is farmed on a large scale in Taiwan, not only for its meat but also its intestines, which are apparently the base of several dishes, including black fried intestines and milkfish intestine soup. Both are reportedly delicious, but you first have to get over the fact that they look like cooked worms, and even then, the idea of eating fish guts doesn’t appeal to everyone. Southern Taiwan, which hosts the most milkfish farms, is reportedly more familiar with milkfish intestine dishes which have become somewhat of a local challenge for visitors.

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Flexibility is not a trait usually associated with rocks, but there is one notable exception to the rule – itacolumite, a porous sandstone that becomes flexible when cut into thin strips.

Itacolumite is named after the place where it was originally discovered, the Pico do Itacolomi rock formation in Minas Gerais, Brazil, but it can also be found in other places around the world, such as Georgia and North Carolina in the US, and Kaliana village in India. This rock is commonly used as a construction stone; because of its good partition, it can be shaped into plates about 1 cm thick and up to 20 cm long that are then used mostly as a floor or wall revetment. However, when cut into thin strips of only a few centimeters, it displays extreme flexibility that has fascinated geologists for decades.

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‘Ridiculous No.55 Lobster and Crab Butter’ is a decadent handmade butter made by a family company in the UK. It has been voted one of the world’s finest foods by a panel of 355 judges.

If you love food as much as I do, you probably know that there is nothing better than butter. But not all butter is created equal. For example, the ‘Ridiculous No.55 Lobster and Crab Butter’ made by UK-based family company Sublime Butter tastes nothing like the classic dairy product most of us pick up at the supermarket. Not only is it whisked to perfection out of the finest milk fats, but it is mixed in with bits of shellfish (lobster and Devon Crab), as well as caviar, fennel, and lemon to create a truly decadent spread.

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Despite losing both arms in a tragic accident, a motorsports enthusiast has managed to pursue his passion by using his feet to drive cars and even competing against able-bodied drivers in drifting competitions.

Bartek Ostalowski lost both his arms in a motorcycle accident in 2006, but that wasn’t enough to kill his dream of one day becoming a professional racecar driver. Finding himself armless at just 20-years-old and faced with the daunting task of learning to drive a car on a race circuit must have been quite the shock for Bartek, but he mustered the courage and the drive to push on, and in three years time he became a master of maneuvering a racecar with his feet. Today, Bartek Ostalowski is the world’s only professional sport driver who drives using his feet.

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A 28-year-old nurse from the Russian city of Irkutsk has been dubbed the “Russian Rapunzel” after it was revealed that her ankle-long hair hasn’t been cut for 23 years.

Anzhelika Baranova was only five when her hair was last trimmed. Neither she nor her parents planned to let her hair grow for over two decades, it just sort of happened, as if it was meant to be. She was always very proud of her hair, and taking care of it was never much of a chore. She claims she doesn’t do anything special to maintain her locks, she just washes it twice a week with regular shampoo and conditioner and gently brushes it with a comb to ensure she doesn’t break knotted strands.

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Jala, a small town in the Mexican state of Nayarit, is famous as the home of the world’s largest ears of corn. The same species can be cultivated in other parts of the country, but it just doesn’t grow as big.

In 2019, the grower of the world’s largest ea of corn, a farmer named Jesús Nazario Elías Moctezuma, won the annual corn cob competition in Jala, Nayarit with a cob that measured 39.5 centimeters long. The runner-up lost by only half a centimeter, and most of the other participants weren’t far off either. They all compete with ears of corn from the Jala landrace, a “giant” species known for producing some truly humongous ears of corn. Unfortunately, as impressive as its cobs are in terms of size, the Jala landrace has been losing out against more mainstream species and is in danger of being lost forever.

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An Ohio man tried to sue his wife for leaving her shoes in an inappropriate place and causing him to trip and tumble down a flight of stairs, suffering multiple bone fractures.

An appeals court recently rejected John Walworth’s lawsuit against his wife, Judy Khoury, over an incident that occurred in February of 2018. Walworth was helping his then-fiancee by carrying some jugs of vinegar to her basement when he tripped over a pair of her shoes and fell down the basement stairs, breaking bones in his leg, arm, and hand. He later sued Judy, claiming that it was her carelessness that cost him $80,000 in medical bills and another $18,000 in lost income because his injuries caused him to miss work.

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Route 36 is an illegal pop-up bar in the Bolivian capital city of La Paz notorious for being the world’s first and only cocaine bar.

South America is home to many popular tourist attractions, like the ruins of Machu Pichu, the Salar de Uyuni salt desert, or Angel Falls, but when it comes to drug tourism, there’s one place that everyone puts on their must-visit list. Route 36 is probably the only place in the world where you can walk in and order cocaine from the bar without having to worry about the legal consequences. Aimed exclusively at foreign tourists looking to indulge in some high-purity cocaine – no Bolivians allowed – Route 36 has been around for at least 12 years, during which time it has become famous as the world’s only cocaine bar.

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Boji, a stray dog from Istanbul, Turkey has become so familiar with the local public transportation system that he casually uses several means of transportation (bus, subway, train, and even the ferry) every day.

Dogs using public transportation is not unheard of. Back in 2011, we wrote about Moscow’s impressive subway-riding dogs, and three years ago we featured Eclipse, Seattle’s famous bus-riding canine. But in both cases, the animals used a specific means of transportation that they had become familiarized with. Boji the stray, on the other hand, is comfortable using several types of public transportation every day, including the ferry, to get around the ancient Turkish city and even travel between continents…

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Raizel Calago is only 16-years-old, but you would never guess just by looking at her. She suffers from a rare condition called progeria which makes her look four times her age.

In only two years, Raizel Calago went from a beautiful young girl who attended beauty pageants, to an old-looking woman that many people mistake for a grandmother. The young Filipina says that she started noticing wrinkles in her skin just days after rashes erupted all over her body. Red, itchy patches that were painful to the touch appeared on her body, and when she went for a checkup, she was told that they had been caused by an insect. She was given medication, but that didn’t help, and soon she started noticing physical changes to her appearance. Now, it’s hard to believe she is just 16-years-old…

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Doctors recently reported the case of a 56-year-old patient who experienced chest pain and breathing difficulties because of a piece of cement that had pierced his heart and lung.

So how does one get cement stuck inside their heart? Well, in this particular case it was as a direct consequence of a procedure that the patient had undergone a week earlier. Doctors had treated what is known as a “vertebral compression fracture,” a painful condition in which part of a vertebra collapses into itself, most commonly as a result of osteoporosis. They had performed kyphoplasty, a procedure in which a special type of cement is injected into the vertebra to restore its normal height and keep it from collapsing further. Only in this case, the cement didn’t stay in the bone…

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Kiska, the last living killer whale at the Marineland marine park, has been dubbed the world’s loneliest orca after it was revealed that she has spent the last 10 years of her life alone in a concrete tank, with little to no stimulation.

Orcas, dolphins, and whales are among the world’s most intelligent animals; they are social creatures that require a lot of interaction and stimulation which those raised in captivity, unfortunately, don’t receive enough of. In one extreme case, a lonely orca that has spent most of her life in captivity and the last decade completely alone in a concrete tank, at a marine park in Ontario, Canada has been showing signs of extreme distress, like floating listlessly and banging her head against the sides of her enclosure.

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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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