A Venezuelan artist and social media influencer recently generated controversy online by letting himself be permanently tattooed by a small monkey.

Funky Matas is no stranger to tattoos. In fact, he holds a Guinness Record for the most signatures tattooed on his back, over 220 of them, but his latest stunt can be described as unusual, even for him. News outlets across South America have been reporting that the Venezuelan-born influencer trained a small monkey to handle a tattoo gun and then let himself be tattooed by the animal in what is considered a first-of-its-kind experiment.

Read More »

A California pest control company recently reported one of the most unusual cases it has ever worked on – a woodpecker filling the walls of a house with over 700 lbs (317 kg) of acorns.

Nick Castro of Nick’s Extreme Pest Control, a pest control company in California, thought he had seen it all in his 20+ years in the business, but even he was shocked by one of his most recent finds. Last month, Castro was commissioned by a California family to fix the “work” of a persistent woodpecker that kept pecking holes in the outer walls of their house and filling them with acorns. The woodpecker didn’t account for the empty space between the wall layers, so the acorns he kept bringing in didn’t stay put; instead, they fell to the bottom of the walls and eventually started coming out of various orifices inside. Nick knew he would find a few acorns if he searched well enough, but nowhere near the massive pile he ended up with…

Read More »

A 22-year-old assistant basketball coach lost her job with a Virginia high school after she reportedly impersonated a 13-year-old girl during an official game.

Arlisha Boykins, an assistant for the Churchland H.S. Truckers in Virginia, recently made international news headlines after it was reported that she impersonated a 13-year-old player who was out of time for another tournament in a league game. Footage that went viral last week shows 22-year-old Boykins driving the lane for a layup, blocking the other team’s players, and shooting free throws against Nansemond River in a Virginia High School League (VHSL) game. Both Boykins and the head coach, who allegedly “encouraged such behavior” have been fired.

Read More »

Begging is reportedly going digital in Indonesia, with street beggars posting clips on TikTok asking for virtual gifts instead of actually going out on the street.

TikTok begging has reportedly become such a widespread phenomenon in Indonesia that the Government has been forced to step in to reign it in. The Asian country’s social minister has asked her staff to increase efforts of preventing begging, both online and offline, and Muslim groups have appealed to the general public in an attempt to stop “begging and asking for free goods and money,” which they claim “demean human honor” and are forbidden in Islam. However, there is little they can do against the wave of beggars enticed by TikTok’s gift-offering features, which allow them to exchange virtual gifts for real money.

Read More »

A young German woman stands accused of premeditated murder after allegedly seeking out a doppelganger on social media and then brutally killing her in order to stage her own death.

When police in Ingolstadt, Germany’s Bavaria region, received calls about a dead woman in the car abandoned on the banks of the Danube river, they had no idea they were about to get involved in one of the most shocking murder cases in the country’s history. The body of a disfigured young woman was discovered on 16 August 2022 by an Iraqi-born couple who immediately believed it was their 23-year-old daughter, Sharaban. The body was found in their daughter’s Mercedes and despite the severe injuries to her face, she had the same general features and the same hair. However, a thorough autopsy soon proved that the body belonged to an Algerian beauty blogger, also 23, from the neighboring state of Baden-Württemberg…

Read More »

Nigerian artist Alex Peter Idoko uses fire, razorblades and sandpaper to create stunningly-realistic portraits that look more like sepia-toned photos.

Pyrography, or painting with fire, is an intriguing art form that involves the decoration of a wooden canvas with burn marks resulting from a controlled flame or heated instrument, like a poker. It’s a less forgiving art than traditional painting, as mistakes are much harder to fix or hide due to the destructive nature of fire. However, some artists control the unusual medium so well that they can create photo-quality artworks that are almost indistinguishable to the naked eye.

Read More »

A Taiwanese man was sentenced to two months in jail and fined 3.04 million New Taiwan dollars ($91,350) after his large parrot allegedly caused a jogger to fall and hurt himself.

The bizarre incident reportedly took place in Tainan, when a man surnamed Huang took his two pet macaws for a flight in a local park where people often go to exercise. One of the large birds allegedly landed on the back of a jogger and started flapping its wings vigorously, frightening the man and causing him to fall. The nasty fall caused the man to dislocate his hip joint and fracture his pelvis, both of which required hospitalization and a long recovery period. He ended up suing the parrot owner for damages.

Read More »

A Singapore man ended up suing the woman he hoped to become romantically involved with after learning that she only viewed him as a friend.

Mr Kawshigan and Ms Tan met in 2016 and gradually became friends. Friction between them first appeared around the year 2020, when it became clear that they viewed their relationship very differently. While Tan regarded Mr Kawshigan only as a friend, he considered her to be his “closest friend” and confessed to wanting to be more than friends. At this point, the woman asked that her friend acknowledge the need for boundaries and expressed her desire to reduce the frequency of interactions between them. In response, Mr Kawshigan sent her a letter threatening to sue her for emotional trauma and “possible defamation”.

Read More »

A team of scientists has created a tiny robot that can melt itself and then resolidify on command in order to pass through tight spaces.

Remember Terminator 2’s terrifying antagonist, the advanced T-1000 shapeshifting android? It was made out of this liquid metal that allowed it to melt and then resolidify and cause all kinds of havoc. Well, guess what? Scientists claim to have created a real-life version of the T-1000, a small robot that can melt and resolidify itself on command, enabling it to easily escape from confined spaces. There’s even a video of it performing this neat trick, and while it may not be as impressive as the T-1000 Terminator, it’s definitely an impressive, if somewhat scary, look into the future.

Read More »

Wild Drawing is a talented street artist who specializes in stunning 3D murals that turn transform bland structures into works of art.

Born in Bali, Wild Drawing, or WD for short, first got into street art in the year 2000 during his studies at the School of Fine Arts. He and his colleagues were often protesting school policies with large, intricate banners, and that made him realize that large images visible in the public space can have a big impact on society. A few years back, WD moved to Greece and he has been unleashing his artistic talent on the streets of Athens ever since. Drawing inspiration from nature, art, social phenomena, and even politics, Wild Drawings creates colorful compositions that always catch the eyes of passers-by.

Read More »

A young Canadian woman needed to be hospitalized after a car key got lodged in her face when a friend casually tossed it to her.

Renée Lariviere, a 24-year-old woman from Sudbury, Canada was leaving her apartment to visit a local McDonald’s when she asked a friend to toss her the car keys she had forgotten. What was supposed to be an easy catch turned out to be a fumble and the car key somehow ricocheted from her hand into her face. It must have been a hell of a toss too, as when the metal part of the key hit Renée’s face it actually punctured her cheek and became lodged in her face.

Read More »

AI Suitcase is a smart suitcase developed by a blind computer scientist to aid the visually impaired in navigating their surrounding more efficiently without the aid of white canes or guide dogs.

65-year-old Chieko Asakawa has been completely blind since she was only 14, following a tragic accident. A computer scientist and also the director of the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, also known as Miraikan, in Tokyo she is living proof that the visually impaired can overcome their disability to achieve great things. But as someone who has long struggled with navigating unfamiliar and crowded places, Asakawa came up with an idea to help the visually impaired get around easier. In 2017, her own experiences inspired her to come up with the idea of a smart suitcase that could guide its user with the help of built-in sensors and cameras. Six years later, the AI Suitcase is almost ready for its commercial debut.

Read More »

A 45-year-old American tech-mogul claims that he spends around $2 million a year bio-hacking his body into regaining its youth.

First of all, if you’re younger than 35, you should know 45 isn’t that old, especially by modern standards, but Bryan Johnson, a tech entrepreneur who once sold his payment processing company Braintree Payment Solutions to eBay for $800 million, claims that his age doesn’t really reflect his health and his look. Johnson says that he has the heart of a 37-year-old man, the skin of a 28-year-old, and the lung capacity and fitness level of an 18-year-old, all thanks to a daily routine that he pays around $2 million a year to maintain and refine.

Read More »

A Russian man who didn’t want to answer Putin’s call to arms and join his country’s war against Ukraine has been living alone deep in the middle of the woods for almost four months.

Adam Kalinin (alias) was against the war in Ukraine from the very beginning. He was actually arrested for two weeks and fined for displaying a banner that read “No to war” on the outside of his apartment building. But when Vladimir Putin signed a mobilization order calling roughly 300,000 Russian men to war against Ukraine, Kalinin knew he needed to find a way to avoid being sent to the front line. Financial issues, his friends, and the general idea of leaving his homeland prevented the young IT specialist from running to another country, so he did the next best thing he could think of – kissed his wife goodbye and hid in the middle of a freezing forest. He’s been living there for almost four months.

Read More »

A Colombian man had the misfortune of being thrown in jail three times in the last 13 years because he has the same name as a wanted drug cartel leader.

46-year-old René Martínez Gutiérrez is a peaceful family man with no criminal record to his name. The problem is he shares the same name with a Peruvian drug dealer with several national and international arrest warrants, and for this reason he has been arrested three times in the last 13 years. The last time occurred earlier this month when the man returned to his native country of Colombia to see his sick father. He was arrested as soon as his plane touched ground in Bogota and he has been in jail ever since…

Read More »