The Wind Wall of Rozenburg is a unique installation designed to block strong winds from hitting the large ships passing through a narrow canal on their way to the port.

After World War 2, the Dutch port city of Rozenburg grew both in size and prosperity, and in order to cope with the ever-growing maritime traffic a new canal parallel to the already existing Nieuwe Vaterveg canal was built in the 1960s. The Qalandia Canal, named after the civil engineer who built Nieuwe Vaterveg was a massive success, but it wasn’t long before it too became overwhelmed by the ships using it, primarily because of their size. These giant cargo ships were so big that the strong wind blowing from the sea threatened to alter their course as they passed through the narrow canal and leave them stuck. So local authorities started looking for solutions.

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A Chinese man was recently arrested after it was discovered that he had posed as a senior colonel in the Chinese army in order to impress women.

A couple of days ago, police in Ji’an County, China’s Jianxi Province, put out a statement regarding the apprehension of a man who had been posing as a senior colonel in the army’s rocket division for over four years. The man, identified only as ‘Zhu’, had apparently turned up for Covid-19 testing at a medical facility in Ao Township dressed in an official uniform that featured all the insignia of a high-ranking officer. He even had genuine-looking identification documents on him, but when the staff ran his name through a database, they found no one with his title in the Chinese army, so they called the police.

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A South African pastor recently sparked controversy online after it was revealed that he was charging people serious money for real-life miracles, like seeing God in heaven.

If you’ve always wanted to see your maker without actually ending your mortal life, MS Budeli, one of the many shady pastors in Africa, claims he can help, if you can pay his fee, of course. According to a promotional poster that has been doing the rounds on social media, Pastor MS Budeli has the power to help people see their future in their smartphones, cancel all their financial debt and even see God. All people have to do is show up for his “Worship Conference” and pay the special prayer fees.

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A Spanish woman recently lost a court battle against the company that fired her for allegedly posting twerking videos on TikTok while on paid leave of absence due to severe back pain.

The Superior Tribunal of Justice in Spain Castilla y Leon region recently upheld a supermarket’s decision to fire a cashier over a series of TikTok videos that were deemed “incompatible with her ailments”. The woman, referred to only as ‘Mrs. Piedad’ in the court papers, was reportedly an employee of Semark AC Group SA, the company behind the Lupa chain of supermarkets in Spain. She had been with the company since 2006, but at the end of January 2021 she went on an extended paid leave of absence, claiming that she was dealing with serious back problems. Her TikTok account said otherwise, though…

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Lithuanian artist Toma Skabeikyte uses body paint and makeup to turn her own body into various optical illusions.

Toma Skabeikyte, a 32-year-old makeup artist and body painter extraordinaire, has been getting a lot of attention on social media for her intriguing optical illusions. Using her own body as a canvas, Skabeikyte, who hails from Akmene, in Lithuania, spends hours creating all sorts of surreal designs inspired by anything from films to videogames and other artworks.

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HuggieBot 3.0 is the third iteration of a robot designed by a team at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems to deliver the perfect hug.

Hugging probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about things that robots could help humankind with, but a team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems disagrees. Alexis E. Block and her colleagues have been involved in the HuggieBot project for years, trying to create a robot that could deliver human-like hugs and thus replace actual people in various scenarios like providing comfort to the lonely, or replacing someone who just can’t deliver a hug in person for some reason. Their third iteration, the HuggieBot 3.0, is apparently quite the hugger…

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The internet is struggling to come to terms with the fact that Jeremiah Johnson, a running back from Fort Worth, Texas is only 12 years old despite his mature appearance.

Jeremiah Johnson started making news headlines around the country last week, after photos of him holding the trophy for ’12U Division 1 Most Valuable Player’ went viral on social media. Johnson’s team, the Dallas Dragons Elite Academy (DEA), had just won the 2022 Youth National Championships in Miami, and he was crowned MVP. But while his photos got thousands of likes and congratulatory comments, what most people seemed to be focused on was Jeremiah’s age. They just couldn’t believe that he was only 12 years old, and to be fair, the boy did look incredibly mature for his age.

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A Chinese woman has been arrested for allegedly pretending to be a man on social media and tricking her own friend into falling in love with her and sending her money.

Shanghai police recently announced that it had cracked one of the most bizarre online romance scams ever. The victim, a middle-aged woman, had been scammed for 12 years by someone posing as a well-known TV news anchor on social media and defrauded around 2 million yuan ($290,000) over that period of time. The craziest part of the story is that the scammer turned out to be a good female friend of the victim who had come up with the plan as payback for something the victim’s mother had said when they were very young.

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Hansel Enmanuel lost his left arm when he was only a child, but that didn’t stop him from pursuing his dream of becoming a professional basketball player.

19-year-old Hansel became an online sensation last year when a highlight video of his high-school basketball exploits went viral. People love underdog success stories, and Hansel Enmanuel’s is particularly special. He was only six when a pile of cinder blocks fell on him, crushing his left arm so badly that doctors had no choice but to amputate it below the shoulder. It was a devastating blow to Hansel and his family, but it only made him work harder in order to fulfill his dream of playing basketball at a professional level.

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An Argentinian football fan was recently arrested after allegedly hijacking a bus full of people to make sure he gets home in time to watch his country’s game against Croatia at the World Cup.

Argentina is one of the few countries on this planet where football is as close to a religion as you can possibly imagine. People live and breathe the beautiful game and stars like  Diego Armando Maradona are worshipped, so when Argentina played Croatia in the semifinals of the 2022 Football World Cup in Qatar the whole country was buzzing. Missing the game was an unimaginable travesty, so when one man found himself on a bus at rush hour, just minutes before the start of the historic football match, he basically felt forced to take desperate measures.

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A 20-year-old woman in Turkey has been arrested after it was revealed that she worked as a doctor in a public hospital, despite having never studied medicine.

Ayşe Özkiraz’s family had always wanted her to become a doctor, so after graduating high school she took the medical school exam but failed. But she didn’t want to let her folks down, so instead of admitting her failure and moving on, she told them that she had gotten into the prestigious Capa Medical University and hat she was studying to become a doctor. She even faked her exam score and her enrollment papers so that her parents wouldn’t suspect anything, but this was only the beginning of her farse…

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The world’s biggest electric vehicle is a giant dump truck that relies almost exclusively on energy produced by its own breaking system, requiring only minimal recharging.

Called the ‘eDumper’, the world’s largest electric vehicle is actually a converted Komatsu 605-7 HD dump truck the diesel engine of which was replaced with an electric motor and a giant battery. It was a joint venture between Swiss company E-Mining, Empa, the University of Bern and NTB Interstaatlicke Hochschule fur Technik Buchs. Creating the largest and most powerful electric vehicle in the world took approximately 18 months and was unveiled in 2018 when it performed its “maiden voyage” at a quarry of Vigier Ciment in the Swiss Canton of Berne.

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Helmut Strebl is an Austrian bodybuilder and fitness model who is widely regarded as the most shredded man in the world because of his incredibly well-defined muscles.

If you’re unfamiliar with fitness and bodybuilding, the name Helmut Strebl probably doesn’t ring a bell, but among fitness enthusiasts, he is famous as “the most shredded man in the world”. It’s an unofficial title, but looking at photos of his amazing human specimen, it’s hard to imagine anyone successfully challenging him for it. The guy is a walking anatomy model, with muscles so well-defined that you can practically see every fiber contracting under his skin.

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A Chinese gamer recently went viral after claiming that he has been paid by the parents of at least two kids to beat them at online video games and crush their confidence.

Video games are generally pretty harmless if played in moderation, but in many cases nowadays children become so obsessed with these made-up virtual worlds that they start to ignore their real lives, school, and even their families. Getting them back on track can be a real challenge, and many parents turn to desperate measures. In China, for example, some parents sign their kids up for military-style camps, while others use sneakier techniques like hiring skilled gamers to beat their kids at their favorite video games and convince them to quit.

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Eternity is an A.I.-generated virtual K-pop idol group consisting of 11 members created using advanced deep-fake technology.

K-pop has really taken the world by storm in recent years, with groups like BTS and Black Pink conquering market after market with their catchy songs and energetic dance routines. The genre has become one of South Korea’s main exports, generating tens of billions in revenue, but despite its massive international success, the massive corporations behind the K-pop wave aren’t resting on their laurels. Instead, they are constantly looking for ways to stay relevant in this constantly changing industry, and artificial intelligence is apparently the next big thing. So it’s not that big of a surprise that A.I.-generated virtual K-pop groups are already a thing.

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