An Indian man is currently under investigation for fraud, after allegedly spending a total of 603 nights at a New Delhi 5-star hotel despite only paying for one night.

On May 30th, Ankush Dutta booked a room at the renowned Roseate House Hotel in Delhi. He was supposed to check out the next day, but according to investigators, he ended up living at the hotel continuously until January 22, 2021, without paying a dime for his stay, food, beverages, or any other services he used at the hotel during that period of time. It’s unclear how exactly the Indian man managed this feat, but the hotel has already filed a complaint against one of its employees, whom management suspects of conspiring with the clandestine guest. The exact nature of their relationship is unclear, but investigators believe that the employee may have received some kind of financial incentive for their assistance.

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A Shanghai woman has become famous in her home country for promoting the physical and psychological benefits of hugging trees.

Qishishiqi hugged her first tree back in April, while out on the tow with her husband. Feeling a little tipsy, the woman hugged a random tree on an empty street in Shanghai and immediately felt positive effects. A constant ringing in the ears that she claimed was caused by work-related stress ‘magically disappear’ while hugging the thick tree trunk, and this ‘superb’ first experience motivated her to not only look for other trees to hug but also share her story with others so that they may also benefit from it.

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An inmate in Bangladesh sparked controversy in his own country after being released four years and four months earlier for hanging 26 people during his time in prison.

in 1991, Shahjahan Bhuiyan was sentenced to 42 years in prison for murder, but he served four years and four months less by carrying out executions of 26 fellow inmates during his time in prison. The 74-year-old man received two months’ commutation for each execution, which, coupled with his good behavior and other aspects, shortened his sentence by almost a decade. Shahjahan became a hangman at Dhaka Central Prison in 2001, after informing prison officials that he knew how to handle a rope. Bangladesh is one of the few countries in the world that carries out death sentences by hanging, so Shahjahan Bhuiyan’s skills were valued highly.

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A family of poppy farmers in Slovakia has been having trouble getting rid of hundreds of swans that have become addicted to poppy seeds and sometimes even overdose on them.

Poppy farmers near the Slovakian town of Komarno first reported the presence of swans in their fields back in February. It is believed that they were originally attracted by the large puddles of water that formed in the area, but after pecking at the flowers all day, many of them became addicted to the opium-containing seeds and refused to leave. Back in May, Slovakian media reported that around 200 swans had made a poppy field near Komarno their home, causing around €10,000 in damages to the flowers and getting so high on the natural narcotic that many of them couldn’t even fly anymore.

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The StockCam is an unusual camera cage for photography enthusiasts who need multiple mounting points for various accessories, as well as stability and better camera handling. It’s also shaped like an assault rifle…

If you’re a photographer who’s also into guns, you’ll probably love the design of the StockCam. It combines the functionality and convenience of a high-quality camera cage, with the aesthetics of a modern assault rifle. It even features a trigger to activate the shutter or lock the cage to ensure that the shutter doesn’t accidentally get pressed. You actually use it by pressing the stock against your shoulder and looking into the camera display as you would in a gun scope, and then press the trigger to shoot, as in take a picture. But can you imagine using one of these things around police?

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Four siblings, aged 13, 9, 5, and 1, miraculously survived a plane crash in one of the most remote areas of Colombia, and then 40 days alone in the Amazon jungle.

On May 1st, 2023, a small Cessna 206 airplane en route to San Jose de Guaviare suffered an engine failure and crashed deep in one of Colombia’s most remote and dangerous regions. Three adults, including the pilot, died in the crash, but the four children on board miraculously survived. However, they were stranded with little to no supplies, in a jungle filled with dangerous snakes, spiders, and mosquitoes, where members of the ex-Farc military group are still active. For 40 days, thousands of volunteers searched for the siblings, and the hope of them being found alive kept millions of Colombians on the tip of their feet. Last week, the miracle everyone was waiting for materialized – the children were found alive and well in a jungle clearing.

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A Chinese mountain climber recently sparked controversy after reportedly refusing to pay the $10,000 resue fee of the sherpa who found her unconscious on Mount Everest.

On May 18, while making the climb up Mount Everest, Chinese mountain climber Fan Jiangtao stumbled upon an unconscious woman in her 50s. An experienced mountain climber herself, the woman had reportedly reached the summit and was on her way back to base camp when she started experiencing health problems. Fan and the sherpa decided to abandon their goal of conquering Everest in order to take Luo back to the base camp safely. During their descent, they met Xie Ruxiang, a Hunan Provincial Mountain Climbing Association member, who also abandoned his climb in order to help. His sherpa, however, was reluctant to join them, but they needed the extra hands so Xie promised him a fee of $10,000, to which the man agreed. No one asked the person being rescued, though…

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Japanese gadget manufacturer Thanko recently unveiled a portable wash basin that can be assembled anywhere in less than a minute to ensure your hands are squeaky clean at all times.

The Covid-19 pandemic may be on its last legs, but that’s no reason to neglect your body hygiene. Alcohol-based gel products do a good job at disinfecting your hands on the go, but they don’t work against all viruses and bacteria and are no match for good old soap and water. Unfortunately, finding somewhere to use this tried and true combination can be an issue, as one sometimes doesn’t have access to running water. That’s where the new Thanko portable wash basin comes in. Made of lightweight materials that can easily be carried around and featuring a simple modular design that makes it easy to assemble and take apart, it’s any germophobe’s wet dream.

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Japanese company Suidobashi Heavy Industries recently unveiled a miniature version of the Phalanx CIWS automatic gun system which fires thousands of plastic BB pellets instead of metal bullets.

Featuring a radar-guided 20 mm Vulcan cannon mounted on a swiveling base, the Phalanx CIWS is one of the U.S. Navy’s most reliable weapon systems, finding itself in use on almost every class of surface combat ship. It’s also the inspiration for what many are calling the coolest BB gun ever made. Kogoro Kurata, the creative genius behind Suidobashi Heavy Industries, the Japanese company that brought us the awesome KURATAS mecha (boardable robot) over a decade ago, recently unveiled the Phalanx BB gun on his Twitter page.

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A Brazilian woman tragically lost her life after eating poisoned chocolates she believed were a birthday present from her ex, but had in fact been sent by his jealous lover.

On May 20th, Lindaci Viegas Batista de Carvalho, celebrated her 54th birthday. It was also the day she died. The woman received a box of chocolates and a bouquet of flowers from an anonymous source, and after calling a number of friends and relatives to find out who had sent her the gift, she contacted her ex-boyfriend Mário Sérgio Gratital, who confirmed that he had indeed sent her flowers and chocolates. Reassured, the woman ate some chocolates and then went to a salon to get her hair done. According to eyewitnesses, soon after leaving the salon, Lindaci fell on the sidewalk and started having seizures. Military police arrived on the scene and rushed her to Rio de Janeiro’s Hospital do Andaraí, but she was pronounced dead on arrival.

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A Brazilian doctor recently lost his job after allegedly prescribing chocolate ice cream and video games to a 9-year-old with a sore throat and flu-like symptoms.

On May 18th, Priscila da Silva Ramos, a 37-year-old mother from Osasco, in Greater São Paulo, took her 9-year-old child for a checkup at a state-owned clinic, after he started feeling sick and started vomiting. She claims that the doctor there was very unprofessional, asking her if she had looked at her child’s throat, but not bothering to do it himself. Instead of actually examining the minor, the unnamed doctor allegedly started writing a prescription for drugs like amoxicillin, ibuprofen, dipyrone, prednisolone, and N-acetylcysteine, as well as ice cream and daily sessions of gaming.

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A Japanese YouTuber recently sparked controversy by posting a video of himself cooking and eating a broth made with dozens of man-o-war jellyfish for his over one million subscribers.

Popular Japanese YouTuber ‘homosapi’ (ホモサピ) has been criticized as irresponsible for trivializing the cooking and consumption of one of the most dangerous marine organisms in the world, the Portuguese man-o-war. Commonly referred to as a jellyfish, the man-o-war is actually a marine hydrozoan, an organism made up of smaller units called ‘zooids’ which are genetically identical but perform different functions. It has been known to deliver a painful sting powerful enough to kill many animals, and occasionally even humans. It’s one of the last things you’d want to come close to, let alone eat, but hey, anything for views, right?

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A Government official in India has been suspended after reportedly ordering an entire water reservoir to be drained just so he could recover the smartphone he had accidentally dropped into it.

Rajesh Vishwas, a 32-year-old food inspector in Chhattisgarh’s Kanker district, has become the talk of Indian social media because of his involvement in an incident that highlighted the ignorance of government officials in the face of serious environmental issues, like water shortage. Vishwas allegedly abused his power to have roughly two million liters of water from a reservoir in the city of Pakhanjur just so he could recover the brand-new Samsung Galaxy S23 smartphone he had accidentally dropped into the water. The water drained into a nearby canal was reportedly enough to irrigate 6 square kilometers (600 hectares) of farmland.

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Hatenyan, a Japanese makeup expert and online influencer, has the power to completely transform his appearance to the point where he becomes completely unrecognizable.

22-year-old Hatenyan is very popular in his home country of Japan, with almost 700,000 followers on Twitter, and millions of fans on platforms like Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, but his popularity recently transcended national borders after one of his tweets went viral. In it, the self-taught makeup wizard posted to photos of himself with and without makeup, and to say they are night and day would be a serious understatement. Apart from a piercing under his lower lip, there is literally no way to tell that it is the same person in both photos.

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Measuring about 1 millimeter in size, the oribatid mite or armored mite is recognized as the strongest creature on Earth. It can lift over 1,000 times its own body weight.

For us humans, being able to lift even double our own body weight is an impressive athletic achievement, but that pales in comparison to the strength displayed by creatures hundreds of times smaller. The Asian weaver ant, for example, can lift 100 times its own body weight, while the dung beetle can lift up to 400 times its body weight. That’s like a human being able to lift tens of tonnes, you know, Superman stuff. But even these impressive insects don’t come close to the strongest creature on the face of the planet, the tiny oribatid mite, which, thanks to an extremely strong exoskeleton, can lift a whopping 1,180 times its own body weight.

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