Of the more than 1,200 varieties of watermelon grown around the world, none is more expensive or more sought-after than the famous Densuke black watermelon.

Grown only on the northern island of Hokkaido, in small quantities that rarely exceed 100 units per year, Densuke is regarded as one of the rarest watermelons in the world. It’s not the type of fruit you expect to find at a market or a grocer. Instead, the few fruits available every year are auctioned off to the highest bidder in highly anticipated events, for hundreds, and even thousands of dollars. The most expensive Densuke watermelon in history was auctioned off in 2019, for a whopping 750,000 Japanese yen ($6,000). Prices have dropped in the last two years, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but the black watermelon remains the most expensive variety in the world, by far.

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Taylor A. Humphrey, a 33-year-old woman from New York, works as a professional baby name, charging people thousands of dollars for helping them pick out the perfect names for their offspring.

It’s hard to believe that someone could make a living helping expecting parents select a suitable name for their child, but Taylor A. Humphrey is living proof that it can be done. She has been a full-time baby name for years, charging clients between $1,500 and $10,000 for providing suitable baby names based on a variety of factors. Her services range from a simple phone call and a list of bespoke names based on the answers to a questionnaire, to a $10,000 option that involves genealogical investigations and selecting a name on-brand with the family business.

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Celebrity lookalikes are nothing new, but it’s rare to find one that resembles the original as closely as Brazilian Priscilla Beatrice resembles pop icon Rihanna.

Priscilla Beatrice may not be Rihanna’s only lookalike, but she’s definitely the most famous one. With over 450,000 followers on Instagram and 2.4 million followers on TikTok, you could say she is a social media sensation in her own right. She has made a name for herself impersonating the Barbadian superstar both online and in various cities around the world, with fans of Rihanna flocking to get an autograph or have their picture taken with her. And who could blame them? The resemblance is so uncanny, you’d be tempted to think she was Rihanna’s identical twin sister.

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A Buffalo couple is suing a fertility clinic that had allegedly promised to determine the sex of the embryo before it was implanted into the client’s womb, only to deliver the wrong sex.

Heather and Robin Wilhelm-Routenberg had decided to only have a baby if they could guarantee it was a girl, because of emotional trauma Heather had experienced earlier in her life. To that end, the two women approached the CNY fertility clinic in Latham, New York, which, they claim, guaranteed them that it could determine the sex of an embryo created using an egg from Robbie and donor sperm. However, 15 weeks into Heather’s pregnancy, the couple was shocked to learn that they were having a boy, despite specifically asking for a girl. The two women are now suing the clinic for malpractice and breach of contract, among other things.

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An English millionaire who notoriously built the “UK’s biggest man cave” in his backyard without planning permission, is now trying to prevent it from being torn down by buying up properties around it.

After an eight-year battle, millionaire businessman Graham Wildin was ordered to tear down the enormous man-cave complex on his property in Gloucestershire, but he has failed to do that. The 10,000sq/ft facility, which included a cinema, squash court, small casino and bowling alley, has now become the center of a fortress created by acquiring the properties around it, in an alleged attempt to stop the council from forcefully tearing it down. Although the deadline to level the luxurious man cave passed a month ago, the entire complex still stands.

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A Vietnamese man has become famous on social media for his drastic physical transformation with the help of plastic surgery which left him looking like a male K-Pop star.

The story of Tran Dang Phuoc Cuong’s transformation began in 2009, when, following a tragic car accident, which resulted in his father passing away and his mother fighting for her life in the hospital, the Da Nang native left to study in China. There, the 17-year-old student enrolled in a Chinese language course, so he could learn Chinese and increase his chances of finding a job to support himself. Then, he tried to find a part-time job and learned that his appearance was a hindrance as well, and that prompted him to go under the knife and drastically change his look.

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Douglas Smith, a gardener from Hertfordshire, UK recently set a new Guinness Record for most tomatoes grown on a single stem, 1,269.

Up until last summer, the record for most tomatoes grown on a single stem had stood unchallenged for over a decade. Then English farmer Douglas Smith set his sights on breaking it, thinking that he could grow more than 488 fruits on a single stem. And he proved that last year, when he managed to obliterate the old record by growing 839 tomatoes on a greenhouse-grown plant. It was quite the achievement, but he was only getting started, as only a few weeks later the Hertfordshire broke his own record by growing no less than 1,269 tomatoes on a single stem.

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A Japanese startup is trying to blur the line between reality and virtual reality with technology that allows the wearer to feel the pain experienced inside the metaverse in real life.

H2L Technologies, a Sony-backed technology company based in Tokyo, recently unveiled a wristband that dishes out small electric shocks whenever the wearer suffers pain-inducing damage in the much-hyped metaverse. The device is supposed to do a lot more than that, including mimicking a range of sensations from catching a ball to a bird pinching the wearer’s skin, as well as conveying weight and resistance. It’s all meant to make the metaverse this immersive experience that the people and companies involved in its creation have been pushing over the last year or so.

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Korean Bamboo Salt is a luxury product that can cost over $100 per 8.5-ounce (240g) jar. The price is mostly dictated by the laborious process of making it, which involves roasting it 9 times in bamboo cylinders.

If you thought pink Himalayan salt was expensive, you probably haven’t heard of actual luxury salt varieties. There are actually a bunch of them, including soy salt and pitch-black Kilauea Onyx salt, but at the very top of the list is Amethyst Bamboo, a Korean variety made by filling bamboo cylinders with sea salt, capping them with Loess clay and roasting it nine times in a traditional kiln. It’s a complex process that takes an entire month to complete. Every step is done by hand, so it’s no wonder that the salt can sell for over $100 per jar.

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The Budapest Short Faced Tumbler is a rare pigeon breed famous for its odd, almost alien-like appearance, with bulging eyes, a minuscule beak, and a triangular head.

When the Poltl brothers, a family of pigeon racing enthusiasts from Budapest, set out to create a new pigeon breed in the early 1900s, they used selective breeding to obtain a high-flying bird with unmatched endurance. They managed to achieve their goal, as the Budapest Short Faced Tumbler could fly for up to 5 hours without breaks, and cover a distance of around 800 kilometers. Endurance was its middle name, but those who saw it for the first time cared less about its flying capabilities and more about its unique look. The small face and beak, in contrast with bulging, frog-like eyes, intrigued or freaked people out, but it also made them pay attention.

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A man in Oxfordshire, England is currently being investigated about a pile of over 500 bicycles in his backyard, a stash so big it literally shows up on Google Earth.

A 54-year-old man was arrested earlier this month after people in his Oxfordshire neighborhood started complaining that his bicycle-filled backyard had become a breeding ground for rats. However, when authorities stopped by the man’s home, they expected to find a few bicycles, but nowhere near as many as 500 of them piled on top of each other. The heap of old bikes has apparently been growing at a steady pace for over 5 years, and it has now gotten so big that it can be seen on Google Earth satellite imagery.

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K Praveen, a 21-year-old man from Thiruthangal in Virudhunagar, Tamil Nadu, has a 10.8-centimeter-long tongue, according to the India Book of Records.

According to the University of Edinburgh, the average human male tongue is around 8.5-cm-long, which makes K Praveen’s tongue over 2.5cm longer, and probably the longest in the world. The young robotics student has known that his tongue was longer than usual ever since he started showing friends and family what he could do with it… And by that we mean touching the tip of his nose and his elbow with it, and almost touching his eyes. Due to a lack of funds, he has not been able to get his tongue officially measured by Guinness Records, but he did get his name in India’s own Limca Book of Records, for having the longest tongue in the country.

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An attractive woman who reportedly dated and scammed as many as six men at the same time was recently praised on social media for her time management skills.

The female scammer, a 42-year-old woman surnamed Mao, recently made news headlines in China, after being arrested by the police. Apparently, between the months of July and December of 2021, she had been dating six middle-aged men and tricking them into buying her things like smartphones, computers and clothes, as well as demanding various sums of money. Unfortunately for her, one of the victims became suspicious of her behavior, did some research and eventually discovered her scam.

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Named after the Argentinian family who developed the breed in the middle of the 19th Century, Falabella is widely regarded as the world’s smallest horse breed, with an average height of just 70cm.

The origins of the Falabella breed are shouted in the mists of legend. Some say that their bloodline can be traced back to the Andalusian and Iberian breeds that the Spanish conquistadores brought with them to South America. When the Spanish were driven off, the horses were left to fend for themselves in a harsh, resource-poor environment. As a result, by the mid-19th century, smaller, inbred animals were being observed in the herds of Mapuche, in southern Buenos Aires province. It was these specimens that were specifically bred to create even smaller animals, which eventually led to the creation of the modern Falabella breed we know today.

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A unique house in London’s Richmond neighborhood has been dubbed “the invisible house” as the giant mirror walls reflect everything around it, making it very hard to notice.

Located on the busy A316 road by the Richmond Circus roundabout, near Richmond Underground station, London’s Invisible House isn’t some fancy art installation, but an actual home. Redesigned by architect and artist Alex Haw in 2015, the property has been inhabited since 2019, and the family said that living there has been interesting, to say the least. Even though passers-by can’t see inside, the owners can see outside perfectly fine, and they sometimes spot people fixing their hair or clothes in their mirrored walls and windows.

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