The Bass River Valley of South Gippsland, in the southeastern Australian state of Victoria is home to the world’s largest earthworms, which can grow up to 6.6 feet in length.

The giant Gippsland earthworm (Megascolides australis) is one of the world’s most elusive and fascinating creatures, able to survive in an environment completely changed by its human inhabitants and rarely showing up above ground. These enormous earthworms can only be found in a 150 square mile area, a habitat once blanketed by dense forests but that has now been completely converted to farmland. Apart from its size, this ability to survive in a landscape in which the native vegetation has been entirely removed is another fascinating trait of the giant Gippsland earthworm.

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A contractor who didn’t receive the payment he was promised rented an excavator and destroyed the façade of an apartment building he himself built.

Tenants were supposed to move into a newly completed apartment building in Blumberg, a small town in Germany’s Baden-Wurttemberg, in the next couple of weeks, but a bizarre incident has delayed their plans by at least three months. Late last month, a man operating an excavator showed up at the building and began meticulously tearing down the façade, breaking glass windows and destroying balconies, ultimately leaving the place looking like it had been in a war. Stranger still was that the man responsible for the devastation was allegedly the contractor who had been responsible for building the edifice in the first place.

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A talented makeup artist has been getting a lot of attention online thanks to her short TikTok clips where she apparently uses her skills to turn into stars like Taylor Swift or Billie Eilish.

We’ve seen makeup artists use tricks of the trade to transform into doppelgangers of celebrities and iconic characters before, but not in the way the artist posting under the @gilianisme TikTok handle does it. The end result, in most of the clips I’ve seen, is suspiciously realistic, which make me wonder if she is using some sort of digital manipulation to achieve this impressive result. No way to no for sure, really, but if she can pull this sort of transformations only with makeup, she is more of a sorceress than a makeup artist.

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A young  Vietnamese nail art expert who had to close down his business during the pandemic, used the time off to develop a stunning new kind of artificial fingernail art.

Le Dai Phat is recognized as one of the most talented nail artists in Ho Chi Minh City, and looking at his stunning hand-painted designs it’s easy to see why. From celebrity portraits to religion and Vietnamese culture-inspired designs, the 28-year-old artisan can create some truly impressive wearable artworks. But it was a new style he developed while quarantined at home because of Covid that really got people talking about him. Using up to 10 lined-up artificial fingernails, Phat is able to paint entire stories in the greatest of detail.

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A video of a high-tech sink that comes with a special slot for cleaning your smartphone as you wash your hands has been getting a lot of attention on social media.

Sadly there isn’t much context to go with this viral TikTok clip originally posted by @kensei_prochari_, but then again, the video itself is pretty self explanatory. Here we have what looks like a fancy sink that features a thin slot where users can place their smartphones while they wash their hands. But that slot is more than just a holder; it “sucks” the phone inside where it proceeds to purge any and all viruses and bacteria by exposing the handheld to UV rays. When you’re done washing your hands, the cleaned smartphone is pushed out through the same slot.

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Canadian tattoo artist Luke Cormier has a very distinct art style – he creates colorful tattoos that look like stickers you can peel off of your skin.

Featuring all sorts of popular cartoon and video game characters, from Super Mario to the Powerpuff Girls or Rick and Morty, Luke Cormier’s tattoos are some of the most adorable we’ve ever seen. But what really makes his designs stand out is the sticker treatment. Complete with a white line, clever shading and realistic-looking creases, they look like actual stickers ready to peel off, even though they are inked with a tattoo gun.

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A Ukrainian tiktoker who filmed himself giving a young girl on the street a new smartphone to get views on the popular video app, only to ask for it back once the “touching” scene was filmed, has sparked outrage on social media.

From pulling cruel pranks on unsuspecting bystanders, to renting studios to make themselves look richer, there’s not a lot modern online influencers won’t do for clicks and views. But one young influencer in Russia crossed the line when he decided to heartlessly deceive a young girl by making her think she was getting a new smartphone for free, only to then ask for it back, claiming it was just props for a TikTok video. Things got really bad when the child understandably refused to hand over her gift.

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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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Surrounded by lush forest on all sides and untouched by human civilization, the heart-shaped Lake Toyoni is a hidden gem among Japan’s many tourism attractions.

Up until a few years ago, Lake Toyoni was virtually unknown to most Japanese, but a popular television commercial featuring an aerial view of the heart-shaped natural wonder turned it into a popular tourist spot virtually overnight. The internet is full of digitally-altered heart-shaped lakes, but Toyoni is one of the few, if not the only one, in the world that actually has this shape, so when people learned that it was real, they flocked to the island of Hokkaido to see the natural wonder for themselves.

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A Brazilian young man recently got a rather humiliating birthday party thrown for him by police after being arrested for theft right on the day that he turned 18.

Celebrating your 18th birthday should be a joyous occasion, but for one Paulo Rodrigo das Neves, from Brazil’s Rio Grande do Norte region, the event was anything but. Arrested on his birthday after being caught on camera stealing sound equipment and other parts from people’s cars, the birthday boy got to enjoy a humiliating celebration at the police station, with staff there singing him “Happy Birthday” and even serving cake and soda in his honor. To make matters worse, the whole thing was filmed and posted online.

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‘Mojie Ringo’ is a Japanese technique of harnessing the power of the sun to create beautifully decorated apples without the use of any sort of chemicals.

For centuries, apple growers in Japan’s Aomori Prefecture have been creating stunning heirloom apples by using the mojie ringo technique. The process is fairly simple, as basically implies depriving the apples of sunlight for a period of time and then applying stencils to ensure that some portion of the apple peel remains discolored. Most often than not, mojie ringo apples are decorated with messages and symbols of good fortune and prosperity, and are offered as gifts.

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Who knew watching and listening to a bartender chop block of ice into translucent jewels with a santoku knife could be so satisfying?

A Tokyo bartender recently got his five minutes of online fame after a video of him carefully turning blocks of ice into beautiful jewels went viral on Twitter, getting over one million views. It doesn’t sound like anything remotely interesting, but I spent close to an hour today just watching him slice the ice into almost perfects cubes and then cut the corners and sharp edges to create these crystal-like cubes for his patrons.

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A talented Japanese artist uses airbrushes and classic brushes to transform generic plastic figurines of popular anime characters into custom works of art.

The mysterious artist, who goes by MA Man on social media, specializes in taking commercially available figurines of popular anime series from series like Dragon Ball or JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and giving them the custom treatment and turning them into awe-inspiring artworks. Ma Man uses both airbrushing and classic painting techniques to emphasize the figurine’s features, like their muscles or the creases of their clothes to make them look as cool and detailed as possible.

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A young Vietnamese couple got their five minutes of online fame last month after photos of their unique Doraemon-themed engagement party went viral on social media.

Khanh Lam and Xuan Khanh are both big fans of Doraemon, the blue robotic cat beloved by millions of people all over the world, so while brainstorming ideas on how to make their engagement an event to remember, they decided to go with a Doraemon-themed party. Although they expected their families to disagree with their “childish” idea, they were surprised to receive a lot of support from everybody. About six months ago, they started collecting all sorts of Doraemon memorabilia and last month they finally put together their dream engagement party.

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Anastasia, a talented artist from the Ukraine, creates ball-jointed dolls so realistic-looking that you’d be forgiven for mistaking them for real, live girls.

The artist, who goes by “Elsyn” on Instagram, spends a lot of time making sure that every little detail on her amazing dolls is perfect. From the color of their skin, to the nails on their delicate fingers or the contour of their eyes and lips, they look nothing like the dolls you usually see on toy store shelves. But then again, these are not toys. For collectors, they are almost like living beings, and most of the people who get them end up naming them and making customs clothes for them as well.

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