Husum Red Pied is a rare domestic pig breed popularly known as the Danish Protest Pig because its whole reason for being was to imitate the Danish country flag at a time when an actual flag could not be raised.

The story of the Danish Protest Pig can be traced back to the mid 19th century when Denmark and Prussia went to war over control of the southern Jutland Peninsula. The two countries couldn’t decide where the border between their lands was, so they eventually went to war. In 1848, Denmark won the war and the claim to the contested land, but only a decade later the Second Schleswig War erupted, and this time Prussia emerged victorious. In the years that followed, Prussian authorities launched a campaign against anything Danish, especially the Danish flag, which didn’t sit too well with farmers in the disputed Jutland territory. So they devised a cunning plan to bypass the ban…

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Luxury fashion brand Balenciaga has been raising eyebrows with a new line of extremely distressed sweaters that look like they’ve been munched on by rats, but cost a small fortune.

Balenciaga designers have always tried to push the boundaries of what is considered luxury fashion, but sometimes they tend to go overboard. Remember that $2,300 luxury skirt inspired by rubber car mats? Well, they found a way to one-up themselves with an entire line of distressed, high-quality wool sweaters designed to make the wearer look either extremely poor or like they narrowly escaped an encounter with an aggressive wild animal. The only thing that screams luxury fashion is the price tag, which stands at a whopping $1,450 on the Balenciaga online store.

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An Englishman dubbed “Silent Man” has caused numerous traffic jams in his home city of Swansea over the last seven years by simply standing in the middle of traffic. Because he never says a word, no one has any idea why he does it.

Ever since 2014, David Hampson has repeatedly hindered traffic by standing in the middle of the road, in the exact same spot. The 51-year-old is subject to a criminal behavior order which forbids him from obstructing any public highway in England and Wales, but judging by his past action, he doesn’t care much about such accusations. In 2018, Hampson was sentenced to three years in prison for blocking the road in exactly the same spot as always, just outside the Swansea Central Police Station. And just as always, he refused to offer any explanation, or say anything else for that matter. The same thing happened the last time he decided to block the road, in December of 2020. Now he faces criminal charges.

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Residents of Nordelta, Argentina’s most famous and arguably most beautiful gated community, have been battling hordes of capybaras, giant, adorable rodents that act like they own the place because technically they do…

A 1,500ha suburban development built on the wetlands of the Paraná, the second most important river in South America after the Amazon, Nordelta is home to some 40,000 people, many of whom paid a premium to own a home in what is a stunning location. Positioned just north of Buenos Aires, among picturesque lakes and streams. Nordelta is one of the most coveted places to own a home, but also one of the most contested by environmentalists, who contest its reason for existing. That’s because the wetlands it was built on were the home of various species of plants and animals, including capybaras, who have now returned to reclaim their rightful place.

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A Belgian woman has been issued a ban by the Antwerp Zoo, because of her close “relationship” with a male chimp that she had been visiting frequently for years.

Adie Timmermans has been visiting Chita, a 38-year-old male chimpanzee, for at least four years, and claims that they’ve developed a very powerful bond that can be described as a “relationship”. However, the animal caretakers at Antwerp Zoo believe this relationship has been causing social problems for Chita within her group of chimps. Because he is so close to Adie, Chita is ignored by the other primates and is not considered part of the pack. To improve his relationship with his own kind, the zoo recently issued a contact ban, forbidding Timmermans from getting too close to Chita’s enclosure, and instructing her to avoid making eye contact with the animal. 

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Japanese artist 慧人 (Keito) has been drawing a lot of attention on social media with his incredibly realistic colored pencil drawings which are almost impossible to tell apart from actual objects.

Trompe l’oeil (literally “cheat the eye” in French) is a centuries-old painting and drawing technique design to do just what its name implies. Obviously, the degree to which the viewer is deceived depends mostly on the talent of the artist, and in the case of Keito, an 18-year-old youth from Japan, the deceit is almost always guaranteed. The young artist’s 3D rendering skills are so off-the-chart that some of his artworks don’t even look like drawings.

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Wang Tianchang and his family moved into the Gobi Desert 22 years ago, at a time when most people were running away from the encroaching wasteland. The Wangs have been fighting the desert ever since, becoming a symbol of China’s anti-desertification campaign.

Desertification is one of China’s most serious environmental problems. The great Gobi Desert at stretching along the border with Mongolia has so far eaten away about 650 million acres of the country’s land and is showing no signs of slowing down. As it moves ever deeper into the heart of China, massive sandstorms blow sand into the capital Beijing and other major cities, putting millions of lives at risk. The Great Green Wall, a reforestation program designed to create a 2,800-mile tree barrier at the edge of the advancing desert has had limited success so far, but the Chinese media machine focuses less on the shortcomings and more on the successes, using everyday heroes like Wang Tianchang and his family.

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You’ve probably heard of crocodile-infested golf course ponds before, but one unique golf course in Australia is home to an even greater threat that makes water hazards truly dangerous – sharks.

The 14th tee at the Carbrook Golf Club in Brisbane is a tricky one, as it’s close to a 21 hectare, 14-meter deep lagoon that happens to be the home of a dozen full-grown bull sharks. They’ve been around since the late 1990s, and even though the species is notorious for its aggressiveness, especially against humans, the bull sharks of Carbrook have become somewhat of a tourist attraction. The club even has a monthly tournament named after its unusual inhabitants, Shark Lake Challenge.

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James Sakara, the pastor of a Zambian Christian church, was found dead after asking to be buried alive in the ground so he could come back to life in three days’ time, like Jesus…

To say that 22-year-old James Sakara was overconfident in his ability to emulate the resurrection of Jesus Christ would be an understatement. Be that as it may, the pastor of the Zion Church in the Zambian town of Chidiza managed to convince his congregation that he could in fact come back to life after three days, just like the Son of God. He somehow got three members of his Church to assist him by digging a shallow grave, tying up his hands, and burying him alive, only instead of coming back to life after three days, Sakara was found dead by members of the Zion Church curious to see why their leader hadn’t fulfilled his promise.

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Georgian media recently released disturbing footage of over 500 sheep killed by a single lightning strike while grazing on a mountain pasture in Ninotsminda, southern Georgia.

According to news reports, on August 9th, Nikolay Levanov, a sheep owner from the village of Tambovka, received a distressing phone call from his sheepherder telling him that over a hundred of his sheep had been killed in a thunderstorm. What Levanov didn’t know was that along with his own flock, nearly 400 other sheep had been killed by the same lightning strike. Luckily, the sheepherder himself had only been knocked unconscious by the lightning and eventually recovered.

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Ashton Fisher, a 12-year-old boy from the UK spent over a decade living only on a specific brand of white bread and fruit yogurt before being diagnosed with food phobia.

Growing children require a healthy, balanced diet, but to say Ashton Fisher has had anything but that would be a gross understatement. Ever since he was two, the 12-year-old boy from Norfolk would get scared and begin to cry if his parents tried to feed him anything but Warburtons sliced white bread and strawberry and banana Munch Bunch yogurts. Although no one knows the exact reason why Ashton developed this bizarre food phobia, his mother, Cara, believes it might have been triggered by having reflux as a baby.

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A near-vertical cliff wall in the mountains of Shennongjia Nature Reserve, China’s Hubei Province, is home to over 700 wooden boxes which make up one of the country’s last sanctuaries for native wild bees.

Beekeeping has been carried out in China since at least the 2nd century AD, and roughly half of the world’s supply of honey comes from the Asian country, but few know that over 80% of the native bee population is now extinct. The introduction of the European honey bee (Apis Mellifera) is considered the main cause of the drastic decline of native Chinese bees. It has brought viral diseases, has been known to attack Chinese honeybee hives, and interfere with its mating rituals. Today, the Chinese honey bee (Apis Cerana Cerana) is listed as an endangered species, and the cliff-hanging hives of the Shennongjia Nature Reserve make up one of the few protected sanctuaries in the country.

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Los Angeles-based tattoo artist Jesse Garcia has built a reputation on his ability to ink realistic-looking black widow spiders on virtually any body part.

Working out of his own private tattoo studio in Los Angeles, Garcia has been getting a lot of attention for his eerily realistic black widows, which look ready to jump off of his clients’ skin. While he is more than capable of tackling other designs, looking at the artist’s Instagram portfolio, it’s easy to see that the black widow is his signature element. Whether seemingly crawling out of someone’s ear, or on their legs and arms, it looks just as disturbing to an arachnophobe like myself.

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A Texas man who sustained injuries after being involved in a bar fight two years ago sued the bar owner for overselling him alcohol and was awarded $5.5 million in a default judgment.

Daniel Rawls claims that after drinking at the La Fogata restaurant, in Andrews, on May 21, 2019, he and another patron, Robert Henrickson, got into an altercation in the parking lot of the restaurant. As a result, Rawls suffered head injuries that his lawyer claimed could have been avoided if the restaurant hadn’t continued serving alcohol to both men, who were visibly inebriated. In the complaint, La Fogata’s owner and bartender were accused of allowing the two men to drink excessively and leave the restaurant together, as well as not calling an ambulance after Rawls was injured.

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Just east of Afton town, at the foot of a rocky mountain in Wyoming, lies one of the world’s most mysterious natural wonders – a rhythmic spring that intermittently stops and starts flowing around every 15 minutes.

Only a few rhythmic springs exist in the world, and Intermittent Spring in Wyoming’s Swift Creek canyon is the largest of them all. As its name suggests, this peculiar spring flows intermittently. You will see a large quantity of water using out of a hole in the mountain and then flowing down forming a large creek for about 15 minutes, and then dry up for another 15 before the cycle starts all over again. The reasons for this intermittent flow are not entirely understood, but scientists have a pretty sound theory.

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