Scientists and fire crews in California recently discovered a giant sequoia tree that is still smoldering and smoking, almost a year after the surrounding area was devastated by massive wildfires.

The 2020 Castle Fire, which broke out in August of last year and scorched more than 150,000 acres of land, including at least 10 sequoia groves in the region. No one knows how many of these ancient giants were destroyed by the blaze, but one thing is for sure, at least one of them is still smoldering and smoking, almost a year after. National Park Service staff made the shocking discovery earlier this month, while conducting surveys in the area to assess the damage caused by last year’s wildfire. One of them noticed plumes of smoke rising in the distance, and, using a long camera lens, tracked it down to a single sequoia.

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Police in China have recently been issuing warnings about “fake women” using realistic-looking silicone breasts prosthesis to trick men into removing their clothes during online chats and then blackmailing them with the footage.

If the last couple of years have taught us anything, it’s that you should definitely not trust anything you see online. From commercially available apps like FaceApp, to advanced deepfake and artificial intelligence, technology has gotten so good at tricking the human eye that you just can’t trust your vision anymore. But it’s not just technology, either. According to recent reports, gangs of Chinese men have been using rudimentary tools like silicone breasts and makeup to pose as women online and blackmail gullible people.

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A Spanish teenager who started digging a hole in his backyard after an argument with his parents, six years ago, is now the proud owner of an underground cave in his own backyard.

Andres Canto was 14 when he first headed into his backyard in Alicante, Spain, with a pickaxe, following an argument with his parents. They wouldn’t let him go put into town wearing a track suit, so he decided to stay home and let off some steam by digging a hole. The thing he hadn’t planned one was enjoying digging as much as he did. Andres found that he loved coming back to his growing hole every evening, after classes, and just expanding it little by little. He eventually brought a friend to help him with the digging, and together they turned the hole into an impressive cave.

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A deeply religious man who became convinced that God would grant him a Lamborghini sports car if he fasted for 40 consecutive days and nights almost died after shunning food for a whopping 33 days.

Mark Muradzira,  a Youth Leader of the Risen Saints Church in Bindura, Zimbabwe, recently decided to put God’s generosity to the test by asking for a Lamborghini sports car. Somehow, the 27-year-old man became convinced that the Almighty would grant his wish if he fasted for 40 days and 40 nights, so he isolated himself in a remote mountain area to prevent being tempted by food. The unemployed man had opted for the extreme and bizarre way of obtaining a Lamborghini because he was unemployed and was unable to spend upwards of $200,000 on a new one. However, he was determined to offer his girlfriend her dream car, and fasting was the only affordable way to do it.

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The Tail Company recently unveiled its newest creation, the miTail, an animatronic tail for humans, which can move all by itself or via smartphone commands.

You probably never knew that there was a market for naturally moving tails for humans before, but the Tail Company has been in the business of creating the most realistic human tails for over 15 years. Its latest creation, the miTail, launched on Kickstarter 2 weeks ago and was funded in under two hours. Apparently, the tail-wearing community is bigger than any of us ever imagined. Whether you need a tail for cosplaying projects or just enjoy being able to wag your tail, I think you’ll find the miTail pretty cool.

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A 73-storey skyscraper in Shenzen, China, was recently evacuated after it reportedly started shaking for no apparent reason, sending inhabitants into a panic.

On Tuesday afternoon, SEG Plaza, a 20-year-old skyscraper in Shenzen, started wobbling visibly, prompting both people inside and those on the streets below to flee for their lives. Videos shared on social media by people in the vicinity at the time of the freak occurrence, show the giant edifice leaning from one side to the other,  and furniture on the inside shaking. By the time the Shenzhen Emergency Management Bureau evacuated the building, it had stopped shaking, but the plaza remained sealed off until the investigation into the cause of the wobbling was concluded.

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Most of us heard the word ‘covid’ last year, in reference to the coronavirus that caused the ongoing pandemic, but it’s actually the name of an Arizona company that has been operating for about four decades.

Covid.inc is a company based in Tempe, Arizona. It specializes in high-quality audiovisual wall plates and cables, and sells its products all over the world. It has been in business for decades, but it as only last year that it  started making news headlines, for obvious reasons. Covid.inc CEO, Norm Carson, recalls the first time he learned that they shared the name of the disease that caused the latest pandemic in human history. He and his team were at a big audiovisual show in Amsterdam in February 2020, on the day that the name Covid-19 was uttered for the first time, and Carson remembers posing for countless pictures in front of his company’s sign at their booth.

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Most bridges in North Carolina have a 15-foot clearance, but the one at the intersection of Gregson and Peabody streets in Durham is over 100 years old, so it has a clearance of 11 feet 8 inches. That’s pretty rare, so many drivers don’t really pay attentions to the warning signs and they become a victim of the famous can opener bridge.

Over the years, Durham’s 11’8″ bridge in damaged well over 100 trucks. It has become such a problem that state authorities went out of their way to mark it as an unusually low clearance bridge, in the hope that most overheight truck drivers would turn back. But the thing is a lot o them don’t pay attention to the signs, and by the time they realize they may not fit, it’s too late. In the end, the state had no choice but to break the piggy bank and lift the old train bridge by 20 centimeters, to avoid accidents, but that doesn’t seem to have done much good, as the can opener recently claimed its 167th victim.

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Johnny Dawes, one of the influential rock climbers in history, and a true living legend in certain circles, has been getting a lot of attention in recent years for his no-handed climbing feats.

Dawes, aka the Stone Monkey, the Leaping Boy, the Dawes, has always been famous for his dynamic rock climbing style and bold ascents, but his most recent endeavors are probably the most impressive, at least to the untrained eye. Now in his late 50s, the English rock climber has dedicated himself to the esoteric discipline known as no-handed climbing, which as the name suggests, is all about climbing steep rock faces without using your hands. It sounds crazy, but it looks even more so.

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John Sevier Austin, a video editor from North Carolina, has a very unusual superpower – his brain allows him to speak and sing backwards, and is fluent in the unique “language”.

Ever since he was a young boy, Austin knew that he was a bit different than most children his age. Try as he might, he never fit in with the other kids, he could never be on the same page with them, and that really messed with his head growing up. It wasn’t until a few years ago that he found out he had Asperger’s syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder on the autism spectrum, which explained both his social awkwardness and his strange superpower – the ability to speak and sing backwards.

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Almost every morning for the past two decades, Juliet the macaw has been visiting the local zoo in Rio de Janeiro to interact with others of her kind through the metal enclosure. She is the only wild macaw in the Brazilian metropolis, and this is her only opportunity to socialize.

Macaws are social birds, so loneliness is a tough burden to bare for Juliet, a beautiful blue-and-yellow macaw who calls Rio home. She is the only wild specimen seen in city since 1818, and no one really knows much about her. Zoo staff named the bird Juliet, but they don’t even know if she is actually female. It’s really hard to tell with macaws, and to establish her true gender they would need to capture the bird, and either examine her gonads or take blood or feather samples. And there’s really no need to put Juliet through all that stress just to satisfy human curiosity.

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Scientists the world over have been struggling to contain the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus for almost two years, but one Indian numerologist believes we can cure the world of this pandemic just with the help of bad spelling.

SV Annandd Rao, a stenographer and numerology hobbyist from Ananthapuram, in India’s Andrash Pradesh state, believes that simply spelling “covid” and “corona” the wrong way can cure not only his home district, but the entire world of coronavirus. Apparently the numbers corresponding to the letters in the current spelling of these words add up to a very dangerous number, which will bring the world to its knees. But if we could change that terrible number to something beneficial, by simply adding some letters, than all will be well…

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A 47-year-old woman who went missing almost half a year ago in a canyon in Utah was recently found living in a small tent, surviving mostly on a diet of grass and moss.

The woman, whose name has not been released, was declared missing last November after her car and camping equipment were found in a parking lot near Spanish Fork Canyon, about 40 miles south of Salt Lake City. Utah County Sheriff’s Office searched the area, but could not locate her, and attempts to contact her relatives proved unsuccessful. In the end, authorities impounded the car and held her equipment, assuming that she had crossed into Colorado. Still, search and rescue teams continues to scour the area both on foot and from the air, and last weekend they finally found her.

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Patrons at a restaurant in Taipei, were recently shocked to see cockroaches crawling all over the place after thousands of them were released on the premises by two masked men.

On May 4th, two masked men entered the G House Taipei restaurant holding large bags filled with over 1,000 cockroaches, which they simply released at the reception desk on the second floor of the establishment, before fleeing the scene. Roaches started crawling on the floor, walls and furniture, and it wasn’t long before patrons enjoying their meals there started noticing them as well. Among the diners were policemen Taipei Police Department who were attending a banquet there, and they immediately created a task force to catch the perpetrators.

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The Bulgarian St. Stephen Church in Istanbul, Turkey, has the detailed ornaments of an Orthodox stone church, but it’s actually made of prefabricated cast iron elements.

Sometimes referred to as ‘The Iron Church’, St. Stephen Church is considered the largest prefabricated cast iron building in the world. It consists of thousands of prefabricated pieces of cast iron, from large walls, to small, intricate decorations, all of which weigh over 500 tons. As almost the entire structure and its exquisite décor are cast out of iron, a close inspection reveals the heads of the large screws holding it together everywhere you look.

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