The Salar de Arizaro, Argentina’s second largest salt flat, is home to one of the world’s most mysterious natural formations – Cono de Arita, a 200-meter-tall conical pyramid that’s so perfectly shaped that it appears man-made.

In fact, all through the early twentieth century, everyone was convinced that Cono de Arita, like the actual pyramids of Egypt, had been built my man. However, scientific research has since showed that this imposing formation is actually the tip of a small volcano that lacked the power to burst through the Earth’s curst and spew lava or develop a crater. Today it is considered the most perfect natural cone in the world.

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The Below Zero ice cream machine uses a unique technique to freeze alcohol, which allows you to turn beers, cocktails and even spirits into delicious soft-serve ice cream.

Getting drunk on ice cream used to be the stuff of dreams, but thanks to Will Rogers, inventor and owner of WDS Dessert Stations in Hinkley, Illinois, it has become a delicious reality. Rogers, who runs his own ice cream shop, was trying to create a highly-caffeinated espresso ice cream flavor when he realized he could use the same technique with alcoholic beverages. He started experimenting with various gums and stabilizers commonly used in the ice cream industry and eventually patented something called the NEA gel. It’s this magical concoction that allows the alcohol to freeze to a near solid inside the Below Zero ice cream machine.

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Kadaknath is an Indian chicken breed popular for the quality of its meat and eggs, but primarily because of the black color of the skin and its dark-colored meat.

Chicken meat is the world’s most consumed form of protein, with over 98.5 million tons consumed every year. But one has to wonder if it would be as popular if the color of the meat was black. Naturally-raised, free-range chicken tends to have a darker color than the intensely-reared broilers most of us consumed, and I’ve noticed that the color alone tends to put people off. But that’s not even the kind of black meat I’m talking about. Kadaknath, a breed of chicken raised in several Indian states, has jet black feathers and skin, and truly dark meat that is allegedly of much higher quality than broilers.

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A listing for a “newly-renovated micro studio” in Vancouver that turned out to be a tiny bathroom with a bed crammed in it was recently slammed online.

Described as “ideal” for a single person looking to live in downtown Vancouver at an affordable rate, and who “does not need much space”, the 160-square-foot (15 sq. meters) suite was actually a bathroom in which the bed was literally just a couple of steps from the toilet bowl. That sort of makes its advertised features, like the brand-new porcelain flooring, granite finishing, and a large window seem somewhat unimpressive. Not to mention that the rent of this unusual “living space” was set at a whopping C$680 ($550).

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Burj Al Babas is an abandoned housing development in Turkey, which consists of hundreds of miniature Disney-like chateaus stretching out almost as far as the eye can see.

It was supposed to be a bustling holiday retreat for the world’s super-rich, a neighborhood of castle-inspired villas spread around in a picturesque valley, near the the historic village of Mudurnu, in northwestern Turkey. Instead, today Burj Al Babas is one of the world’s largest ghost towns, featuring hundreds of unfinished villas, some of which have already started to deteriorate. It’s a story of big ambitions, sky-high property prices and economic woes that ultimately spelled the end of the dream that was Burj Al Babas.

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Having been running for the last 15 years, TV Asahi’s Zenryokuzaka is one of Japan’s most longstanding television shows, which is a bit strange considering its simple premise.

Every night at 1:20 a.m., Monday to Thursday, thousands of people tune in to TV Asahi to watch the latest episode of Zenryokuzaka, a bizarre show featuring women running up steep streets. Each episode lasts no more than six minute, including the opening and closing credits, and focuses solely on following the protagonist as she runs up the street. It’s an extremely simplistic concept, even for late-night TV, but one that has somehow remained popular in Japan for the last 15 years.

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Tsumaki Shachihoko is a rare Japanese moth that features impressive natural camouflage which allows it to perfectly mimic small twigs in order to avoid predators.

We’ve always found natural camouflage fascinating here at Oddity Central, and simply searching the term in our search box will yield over a dozen amazing examples of natural mimics. Today we are adding yet another master of camouflage to our ever-growing collection – Tsumaki Shachihoko, a moth found in various forested areas of Japan, where it manages to keep itself safe by mimicking a small twig fragment. Seen from afar, the moth is virtually impossible to tell apart from an actual twig, complete with imperfections such as chipped bark and brownish “broken” ends.

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Minami-daitojima, a small Japanese island surrounded by raised coral reef, has no beaches or docks, so the only way for people or boats to make it on the island is to be flung through the air by large industrial cranes.

A round uplifted coral island in the Okinawa archipelago, Minami-daitojima, aka Daito Island, has been using cranes to get people and small boats on and off for the last 50 years. Because of the coral reefs surrounding it, ships can only moor up to 4 to 6 meters away, so this method is the safest and fastest to reach or leave the island. Boats are secures with straps and chains, while people have to get in an elevator-like cage, fasten the door and then get flung through the air by an industrial crane on the island. The experience has been described both as “terrifying” and as “fun” as an amusement park ride.

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Known as the Whitelock Tinker Toy, this insane 48-cylinder motorcycle holds the record for the functional vehicle with the most number of cylinders.

English motorcycle enthusiast Simon Whitelock is the “madman” responsible for the existence of this outrageous contraption. It is based on the Kawasaki 250 S1, a relatively small bike equipped with a 3-cylinder 250 cc engine capable of putting out 31 hp, but you couldn’t really tell by looking at it. That’s because this souped-up Kawasaki features six rows of eight original S1 cylinders, stripped off of 16 S1 motorcycle engines. All cylinders are connected to a common transmission, borrowed from a BMW motorcycle, and require more than the regular electric starter motor to start…

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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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Seven years after being busted for allegedly stealing over 200 pairs of women’s shoes, a Japanese man was once again arrested and deprived of his collection of 139 pairs of women’s footwear.

On June 10, following the raid of a local man’s home, police in Murakami, Japan displayed a rather unusual haul – 139 pairs of worn nurse shoes, high-heel pumps and sandals, neatly arranged on a large blue tarp. They had been found in the possession of Tsunehito Isobe, a 47-year-old office worker known to have a strange fetish for used women’s shoes. Interestingly, the same man had been arrested for the exact same crime seven years earlier, when his 200-pair collection was confiscated by police.

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A Chinese woman was forced to lie to her grandmother, and even recruit someone to do the same, for 13 years, just to avoid breaking the old woman’s heart.

Chinese media recently featured the heartbreaking story of a young woman who decided to deceive her own grandmother for over a decade, knowing that the truth would be to much for her to bear. Cheng Jing, a 46-year-old woman from Xi’an, recently lost her grandmother, who died at the ripe old age of 100, but for the last 13 years of her life, she did everything in her power to make the old woman believe that her daughter was still alive. Jing’s mother had died in 2003, but knowing that the news would devastate her grandmother, she resorted to recruiting someone to imitate her mother’s voice over the phone to spare her granny the heartache.

Jing’s mother, Cheng Congrong, and her grandmother had always been very close, and even after Cheng developed lung cancer in 2003, she still called her mother as often as she could to let her know she was alright. Knowing that she didn’t have much to live, Congrong even recorded dozens of voice messages and asked her children to play them to their grandmother so she wouldn’t worry.

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After suffering from pain on the right side of her nose for most of her life, a New Zealand woman was shocked to discover a plastic board game piece that had apparently been stuck in her nostril for 37 years.

Mary McCarthy, from Christchurch in New Zealand, had always struggled with pain and breathing difficulties on the right side of her nose, but having put up with it since childhood, she never bothered seeing a doctor about it. But last October, following ab excruciatingly painful nasal swab test for Covid-19, her nasal issue got even worse. Her nose would be leaking constantly and she was in a lot of pain, so she finally decided to get medical help.

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DentalSlim Diet Control is a controversial weight loss device designed to allow wearers to open their mouths only about 2mm, thus making them unable to chew while making breathing and speaking possible.

Developed by scientists at University of Otago, in New Zealand, the DentalSlim Diet Control is an intra-oral device that can be attached to the wearer’s upper and lower back teeth by a dental professional. It features unique custom-manufactured locking bolts powered by magnets, which, when activated, only allow a mouth opening of about 2 mm, restricting the wearer to a liquid diet, while allowing them to breathe and speak normally. Apparently, the developers of the DentalSlim Diet Control believe that it can play a role in the fight against the global obesity epidemic.

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A Buddhist monk in Shanghai, China, has dedicated more than half of his life to caring for stray dogs, rescuing and taking care of tens of thousands of them since 1994.

53-year-old Zhixiang is the head monk of the Bao’en Temple in Shanghai, but nowadays his disciples take care of most of the day-to-day business, as he spends all his time taking care of the rescued animals. There are currently around 8,000 dogs, not to mention hundreds of cats, as well as chickens, geese and peacocks in Zhixiang’s care, but he’s been rescuing abandoned and stray animals since 1994, so he is used to it. Over the years, he has learned to administer medicine and give the animals shots, as taking them all to a vet would be too costly, and only recently started taking donations from other animal lovers, as a ways to make ends meet.

Zhixiang’s mission as a rescuer of stray animals began in 1994. He was riding in a car on the highway when he witnessed a cat being hit by another vehicle. It wasn’t dead, but it was left severely injured, struggling to crawl to the side of the road with only two paws. It’s an image that the Buddhist monk hates to remember and the one that pushed him to start rescuing strays.

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