A staple of Huaiyang cuisine, hydrangea tofu soup is a testament to the impressive knife-cutting skills of chefs specializing in this type of Chinese cuisine.

Looking at a bowl of hydrangea tofu soup for the first time, you’d be forgiven for mistaking the slender tendrils swaying in chicken broth for anything but tofu. It looks like a white hydrangea, hence the name of the dish, but it could also be some sort of edible sea anemone. In reality, it’s a block of soft tofu carefully cut 60 times in one direction, then turned around and cut another 60 times in order to create 3,600 delicate tendrils. It’s challenging to make, as the tofu needs to be sliced just three-fifths in, otherwise, it will break apart and the flower illusion will be ruined.

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The Richard Mille RM UP-01 Ferrari is the new world’s thinnest mechanical wristwatch, at just 1.75 millimeters thick. But whilst its frame may be diminutive, its price tag is anything but, at a whopping $1.88 million.

Unless you’re a wristwatch enthusiast, you’re probably not aware that there’s an exciting competition between watchmakers to create the world’s thinnest mechanical wristwatch.  In 2018, the world record was set by the Piaget Altiplano Ultimate Concept, with a thickness of 2 millimeters. Earlier this year, Bulgari unveiled the Octo Finissimo Ultra, a mechanical wonder with a thickness of just 1.8 mm. But its reign was shortlived as well, because Swiss watchmaker Richard Mille decided to celebrate its partnership with Ferrari by creating an even thinner mechanical wristwatch, the RM UP-01 Ferrari, at only 1.75 millimeters.

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A Chinese woman reportedly spent the last decade of her life writing hundreds of bogus Wikipedia entries on Russian history and contributing to hundreds of others.

Wikipedia is nothing less of an online treasure! Whether you’re looking up general information out of pure curiosity, or you’re writing an important paper, Wikipedia almost always delivers the best results. But it’s not a perfect system, and this recent story from China is a perfect example of that. According to online reports from several established news sources in China, a mysterious woman is allegedly responsible for one of the biggest hoaxes in Wikipedia’s history – over 200 made-up articles on Russian medieval history, complete with fake locations, events and characters created over a period of 10 years.

This bizarre story began a while back, when Yifan, a Chinese fantasy novelist, started browsing Chinese Wikipedia as a source of inspiration for his new book. Focusing on Russian medieval history, the writer stumbled over the great Kashin silver mine, originally owned by the Tver, an independent state from the 13th to 15th centuries, and then by the Grand Duchy of Moscow, until it closed down in the 18th century, due to its resources becoming exhausted.

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Scientists at the University of Chicago have developed a new algorithm that forecasts crime with up to 90% accuracy by analyzing data and learning patterns.

Minority Report is a very popular sci-fi film about a special police unit that can arrest murderers before they commit their crimes with the help of three clairvoyant humans called Precogs, which can visualize impending homicides. It’s a brilliant film, if you like sci-fi murder mysteries, or you’re simply a fan of Tom Cruise, but the reason we bring it up in this story is that a team of researchers claims to have come up with a real-world, AI-powered system that is also able to predict crimes with an accuracy of 90%. And their systems doesn’t require Precogs, just past data so it can predict the future.

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Police in Nigeria recently released 77 people, including young children, from the basement of a church where they had been waiting for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ for several months.

The raid on the Whole Bible Believers Church in the Valentino area of Ondo Town came after a local mother approached police about the disappearance of her kids and told them that she suspected they had gone to the church. When they entered the place of worship, policemen found 77 people being kept in the basement by the Pastor and his deputy, who had told them that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Authorities claim that the church encouraged people to “stay behind” and wait for the Rapture, and some of them are believed to have lived in the church for several months.

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Tiger Tomato, a father-son team from Melbourne, Australia, has been making waves online for their incredibly detailed and colorful pancake art.

We’ve featured some cool edible art in general and pancake art in particular here on Oddity Central, but the creations of Tiger Tomato are definitely a welcome addition to our growing collection. The father-son duo, who prefer not to be named, started posting videos of themselves making elaborate pancakes back in 2015, and in the seven years since, they’ve built quite a following on social media. Their vids regularly go viral, and once you watch some of them, you’ll understand why.

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A so-called ‘career exam taker’ in China was investigated by authorities for allegedly acing the world’s toughest university admittance exam three years in a row and reportedly earning $300,000.

The Gaokao is a notoriously difficult university entrance exam that many Chinese spend years, sometimes decades to pass. The King of Gaokao, for example, has been trying to get into his dream college for 25 years now, but China’s top schools are just too tough to get into for the vast majority of Gaokao takers. Then there are the lucky few that manage to get into these elite learning institutions, like Peking University or Tsinghua University, and finally, there are the ‘career exam takers,’ who earn high sums of money by acing the world’s toughest university exam year after year.

Because the Gaokao is so ridiculously hard to ace, many reputed schools in China offer their students considerable monetary prizes for getting into the country’s top-rated universities. And because there is no limit on how many times a student can take the Gaokao, some exceptionally-gifted individuals get to earn a nice living by simply acing the exam years in a row.

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In case the name ‘car-jitsu’ wasn’t clear enough, this new contact sport that’s getting a lot of attention on Russian social media is basically jiu-jitsu in a car.

If you were to make a list of the most awkward places to grapple and wrestle in, the car would probably rank pretty high, and that’s precisely what makes car-jitsu so intriguing. Invented a couple of years ago by Vikentiy Mikheev, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu and Judo black belt and a professional mixed martial arts fighter, car-jitsu challenges practitioners to subdue their opponent in the small confines of a car. Everything inside the car – including the seat belts, steering wheel, mirrors and chairs – can be used to gain an upper hand in the match, but, just like in regular jiu-jitsu, hittinh is not allowed.

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Tired of seeing his family’s money being donated to the local church, an exasperated Russian man set the place of worship a blaze in a feat of rage.

On the morning of June 26, a fire broke out at the Church of St. Basil the Great in the village of Pargolovo, Russia’s Saint Petersburg district. The fire quickly engulfed the wooden roof and walls of the building, and the entire place would have probably burned to a crisp until the firefighters arrived, if the parishioners didn’t put the fire out themselves. Still, the damage was considerable, and local news outlets reported that many of the locals had tears in their eyes as they looked at their local place of worship. But that sadness quickly turned to anger directed at the man responsible for the devastation.

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Derek Turcotte is a talented tattoo artist from Canada who specializes in intricate tattoo designs inspired by popular video games and comics.

Owner of the Electric Grizzly Tattoo studio in Canmore, Canada, Derek Turcotte has also made a name for himself internationally thanks to his popular Instagram account where he shares his amazing designs with over 300,000 followers. The 36-year-old has been drawing since he was just a kid and he’s been doing tattoos for 18 years now, specializing in all sorts of intricate, colorful designs. But it’s Turcotte’s comic book and video game-inspired works that have attracted the most attention of late, and for good reason – they’re stunning!

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Imagine waking up one day and finding out that your face is associated with the phrase “worst person you know” on the internet. It sounds like a nightmare, but for one Spanish man, it’s real life.

Josep Maria García, a 42-year-old man from Catalonia, Spain, had no idea he had become a global internet meme until he received a call from his brother-in-law telling him not to panic but to search the phrase “worst person you know” on Google. As soon as he hit the search button, paranoia washed over him. His face was everywhere! Trying to figure out why he had become the face associated with the negative phrase, García eventually realized that it was all connected to a being event in 2014 when his brother-in-law took a test photo of him to check the lighting, which he then uploaded to Getty Images as a stock photo.

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A man who lost his iPhone 10 months ago while canoeing on a river in England was shocked to have it returned in working order by someone who spotted it on the bottom of that same river.

Earlier this month, Miguel Pacheco was canoeing with his family on the River Wye, in Cinderford, Gloucestershire, when he spotted something blue in the water. It turned out to be an iPhone covered with mud and full of water, but instead of throwing it back in, Pacheco decided to take it with him and see if it still worked. Chances were low, considering where the phone had been found, but after using an air compressor to dry it out and placing it in the airing cupboard overnight, Miguel Pacheco was shocked to see the charging icon pop up on the screen when he plugged it in.

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Vietnam is reportedly dealing with an increasing number of serious medical issues caused by fat-dissolving injections sold by shady beauticians and cosmetic treatment clinics.

Targeted weight loss and fat loss, in particular, are incredibly difficult, as most reputable fitness experts will tell you. They require a lot of physical exercise and a calorie-restricted diet, and not even those may not be enough without the right genes. But that’s something that many people just aren’t ready to accept, which is why their turn to ‘snake oil’ solutions that promise to deliver the results they desire. Such is apparently the case with many Vietnamese women who spend small fortunes on injectable fat-dissolving serums that end up putting their lives at risk and leaving them with permanent scars.

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Japanese housing developer Ichijo Komuten recently unveiled a “flood-resistant house” that can not only remain waterproof during floods, but also float off the ground.

Whether you believe in climate change or not, the loss of housing due to floods is an undeniable issue all over the world, and while engineers and architects have been trying to find solutions, few have actually proven effective. Now, a record-setting Japanese housing developer claims to have come up with an answer to keep people’s homes from getting flooded as well as swept away by floods. Their new “flood-resistant house” was recently featured on a popular Japanese TV show and it has been getting a lot of attention online ever since.

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A young Australian woman is allegedly being denied access to a $12 million inheritance because she refuses to fulfill her late father’s condition – getting a steady job.

Clare Brown is entitled to a $12 million fortune, but is famously being denied access to her inheritance because she has yet to fulfill the requirements laid down by her late father in his will. Apparently, she has to get a permanent job and “contribute something to society” in order to gain access to get access to the millions, but she refuses to do so, calling the conditions unrealistic because of her health condition. Meanwhile, she is living on welfare and is “constantly broke”.

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