Centuripe, a small town tucked in the hills of Sicily, is known as “the balcony of Sicily” for the stunning views it offers across to Mount Etna, but few know that, from the air, the town itself is quite the sight.

Pio Andrea Peri, a 32-year-old local photographer, recently used his drone to capture the unique shape of Centuripe from high up in the sky. After first discovering the unusual shape of his town while looking at it on Google Earth, Peri decided to take his drone and check it out for himself. He was so surprised by what he saw on his monitor that he snapped a few photos and shared them on social media, where they went viral almost instantly. From the right angle, Centuripe looks like the silhouette of a person with their arms and legs stretched out.

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Karne Garibaldi, a popular restaurant in Guadalajara, holds the Guinness record for the world’s fastest food service: 13.5 seconds from order time until the food hits the table.

Usually, when visiting a popular award-winning restaurant, you expect waiting times to be on the long side, but that’s definitely not the case at Karne Garibaldi, a restaurant best known for its carne en su jugo dish and for having the world’s fastest order time. After patrons finish giving their orders to the waiters, it takes just over a dozen seconds before the plates hit their tables, which, as those who have eaten there at least once will tell you, is downright impressive. Karne Garibaldi has held the world record for the world’s fastest food service (13.5 seconds) since 1996.

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A Gujarat man who ran for a decision-making position in his village during last month’s local elections made international headlines for receiving just one vote despite having at least two dozen family members eligible to cast a ballot.

Santosh Halpati ran for the position of Sarpanch in the Chharwala village of Vapi district, and even though he wasn’t really expecting to win, he certainly didn’t expect to receive just one vote, his. The middle-aged man broke down near the counting center when he heard the news, telling reporters that he had 12 close family members who were eligible to vote but either didn’t bother to cast a ballot or chose to vote for someone else.

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Albert Zakirov, an artist from the Russian Federation’s Tatarstan Autonomous Republic has an original, albeit controversial painting technique – he uses women’s naked bodies as his paintbrushes.

Albert Zakirov started drawing and painting at an early age and spent much of his childhood preparing for art school. After studying with an excellent teacher for a couple of months in tenth grade, he picked up the necessary knowledge to get admitted into art school, where he quietly studied the basics while experimenting with all sorts of unusual techniques and mediums. He never graduated from art school, but it was there that he first used a woman’s body to paint on canvas, and it was this experience that inspired him to make the technique his own.

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Known as ‘the poor man’s fireworks’, Dashuhua is a 500-year-old pyrotechnic ritual used in Nuanquan, China, to celebrate the Lunar New Year.

The small town of Nuanquan, in northwestern China’s Hebei province, is home to one of the world’s most dangerous yet mesmerizing fireworks displays. Although fireworks have been a part of Chinese celebrations since around the year 800 A.D., they haven’t always been as widely available and affordable as they are today. So about half of a millennia ago, local blacksmiths came up with a viable alternative that was cheaper, but just as impressive as conventional pyrotechnics – throwing molten iron at cold walls to produce a waterfall of bright sparks that are at the same time beautiful and dangerous.

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Russia is home to a number of unique and wonderful things, and apparently, the list also includes bioluminescent snow that glows blue.

Last month, Russian biologist Vera Emelianenko went for a walk to the White Sea coast, high in the Russian Arctic, and noticed something very unusual in the snow – a blue glow that looked like Christmas lights. With Emelianenko were Mikhail Neretin, the son of a molecular biologist working at the same remote field station, and two dogs. It was Neretin wh first noticed the strange blue glow, and as they walked to investigate, they noticed that their footsteps created streaks of ethereal blue “like blue Christmas lights in the snow”. Even the dogs left a glowing trail as they raced ahead, and squeezing the glowing snow in the hand only made it glow stronger.

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An ambitious mother who wanted to set a unique Guinness World Record gave her daughter a 1,019-letter name which resulted in her getting a two-foot-long birth certificate.

Over the years, we’ve featured some pretty unconventional baby names here on OC, but most of them at least made some kind of sense. The world’s longest name recorded on a birth certificate, on the other hand, is just that, long, and pretty much impossible to pronounce, but then again, that was basically the point. The mother who gave her daughter this incredibly long name told Oprah Winfrey that she just wanted to set a Guinness record and at the same time make sure that her girl had a unique name.

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An Australian man who has given up on finding a human partner claims to have found the next best thing – a humanoid robot named Emma.

Ever since his mother died a decade ago, Geoff Gallagher from Queensland, Australia, had only his dog, Penny, to soothe his loneliness. But then, a couple of years ago, he read an article about robots powered by artificial intelligence and decided to look into them. He found some intriguing commercially-available models, but at $AUD 6,000 ($4,350) each, they weren’t exactly cheap. Still, they looked so lifelike, could move their head and neck, smile, and even talk, so he decided they were worth the shot. He was not disappointed…

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Lola, a 3-year-old cocker spaniel from Leeds, in the UK, has a head full of stunning blonde hair that often stops people in their tracks asking themselves if she’s wearing a wig.

Cocker spaniels are known for their beautiful curly locks, but Lola’s hair is special, even for this breed. Her lucky owner, 22-year-old Rebecca Dobson, says that because the hair on the dog’s head is so long and such a different color to the hair on her body, people assume it’s either fake or that it’s dyed. But it’s actually all-natural, which many are shocked to hear. Not only does Lola’s hair get a lot of attention from dog lovers every time Rebecca takes her out on walks, but some people apparently ask to take photos of her just so they can show their hairdresser how they’d like their own hair done.

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Harold Lloyd is known as both one of Hollywood’s legendary stars of early 1900s silent comedy, and as the owner of a year-long Christmas tree adorned with over 5,000 colorful decorations.

If you think yourself the kind of person that goes over the top when decorating the family Christmas tree, don’t beat yourself up too hard, as you’ll probably never be as obsessed with Christmas decorations as Harold Lloyd. The Hollywood legend, who starred in such films as Safety Last! (1923) and High and Dizzy (1920), is said to have had a collection of over 8,000 decorations collected from all over the world. But what he is most famous for is using most of these eye-catching baubles to decorate an impressive Christmas tree that is now regarded by many as the most adorned Christmas tree that ever was.

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For most people, Christmas is a time of joy and love, but to the members of Japan’s Revolutionary Alliance of Unpopular Men, the winter holidays represent everything they stand against.

For the past 15 years, the Revolutionary Alliance of Unpopular Men has been protesting all celebrations associated with romance, and this year’s Christmas was no exception. Dozens of members went out into the streets of Tokyo armed with banners and loudspeakers to make their disdain for everything romantic, including Christmas, known to the world. The alliance, which allegedly fights for the unpopular men of the world who can’t find a romantic date and are disappointed by romantic holidays, is on a mission to “crush” Christmas, Valentine’s Day and all other similar celebrations.

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The Man That Rescues Dogs, an animal shelter in Chonburi, Thailand, cares for over a thousand stray dogs, including a few paralyzed animals that get to run with the pack again, thanks to the care and attention of the staff.

Michael J. Baines is the man behind The Man That Rescues Dogs. The Swedish national moved to Chonburi in 2002 to open his own restaurant, but quickly noticed the large number of stray dogs roaming through the city, many of which could barely survive on the scraps they found every day. In 2011, Baines became attached to one special stray that started coming to his restaurant every day, and soon noticed that his “patron” wasn’t the only one in need of help. Michael started caring for a handful of strays, then for a few dozen, and before he knew it, he was providing food for almost a hundred canines. In 2017, The Man That Rescues Dogs animal shelter was founded, and in the four years since, the staff there not only rescued over 1,000 dogs, but gave a few paralyzed ones their mobility back.

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Red-winged parrots in Western Australia’s Kimberley region are reportedly “flying under the influence” and acting bizarrely after feasting on fermented mangoes.

We may be putting on another layer of clothes in the northern hemisphere, but Down Under it’s the end of the mango season, and red-winged parrots are reportedly taking full advantage of the last available orange fruits, even if they’re a little overripe. The problem is that mangoes are particularly sugar-rich, and can produce relatively high levels of alcohol as they ferment. Humans are unlikely to consume fruits that have reached a certain fermentation point because they have a mushy texture and a taste that is no longer considered pleasant. But to red-winged parrots, a mango is a mango, even if the ethanol level in it is likely to get them drunk.

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Nguyen Phat Tri, a young hairstylist from Vietnam, has been getting a lot of attention for his eye-catching floral hair designs.

28-year-old Nguyen Phat Tri graduated from An Giang University, with a degree in Biotechnology,  in 2015, but as he always had an inclination for the arts, he decided to go to Ho Chi Minh City to study makeup and hairdressing. That may have seemed like a controversial career choice, but time proved that it was the right one, as young Phat Tri quickly made a name for himself on the Vietnamese hairstyling scene, thanks to some truly innovating techniques and designs.

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The Desert of Maine, a 40-something-acre patch of sand and silt near the town of Freeport, is a geological oddity, natural wonder, and a warning of what irresponsible land use can create.

The “most famous natural phenomenon in Maine” is actually the result of poor land management over several generations. Although not technically a desert in its own right – the state of Maine gets way too much rain for it to qualify as such – the rolling dunes of sand covering the over 40 acres of land certainly look the part. The sand and silt have been there for at least tens of thousands of years, ever since the glaciers covering Maine, ground rocks into pebbles and pebbles into sand as they receded during the last ice age. But it was human activity that brought it back to the surface over 100 years ago.

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