We all feel like taking a day off from our jobs from time to time, but one Arizona youth landed in hot water after faking his own kidnapping to avoid going to work.

On the afternoon of February 10, police in Coolidge, Arizona, received an emergency call about a man lying on the side of the road with his hands tied behind his back. A police car was dispatched and soon reported in that they had indeed found a young man who appeared to have been bound and abandoned on the side of the road. The “victim”, identified as Brandon Soules, 19, told police that he had been kidnapped by two masked men who first hit him on the head, knocking him unconscious, and then drove him around and dumped him where police found him. That wasn’t entirely true, though…

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If you’re in the market for the most sumptuous motorhome money can buy, how about a villa on wheels which comes with a second storey and even a built-in elevator?

The Maxus V90 Life Home Villa Edition may look like your everyday modern van camper on the road, but when parked it can transform into a futuristic two-storey villa at the press of a button. That’s right, with a single finger press you can become the envy of your friends and everyone on the campground. Not only do the walls of the motorhome expand outwards to offer more room in the living area and kitchen, but a cool sunroom extends out of the roof as well. It’s truly a sight to behold.

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Made out of a single, very expensive, crystal of silicon-28 atoms, and extensively analyzed for imperfections by both humans and computers, this “nearly perfect” sphere is the world’s roundest object.

The surface of the world’s roundest object is so smooth that if you were to blow it up to the size of our planet, the difference between the highest peak and the lowest valley would be between 3m and 4.5m (10 and 15 feet). It used to be around 15m back when scientists started making these amazing spheres, but technology has gotten better at smoothing out even the tiniest wrinkles. However, creating such a wonder isn’t cheap. The silicone crystal alone costs around $1 million, while the sphere itself, although often described as priceless, costs around $3.5 million.

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Two Florida women were recently caught trying to get their second doses of the Covid-19 vaccine by disguising themselves as old ladies, to pass as eligible for the sought-after jab.

Florida Department of Health in Orange County recently reported the bizarre case of two women, aged 34 and 44, who went to a coronavirus vaccination site “dressed up as grannies,” in order to appear over 65, and thus eligible for a vaccine. Speaking at a conference, last Thursday, Dr. Raul Pino, the health administrator for Orange County said that the women were wearing bonnets, gloves, and glasses in an attempt to make themselves look older. Staff at the center noticed that they “looked funny”, and police were called.

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A Minnesota company has created what it calls “the world’s cleanest underwear”, an innovative self-cleaning undergarment that can be worn daily for weeks, even months, without becoming smelly.

HercLéon, a material innovation group known for creating the world’s first self-cleaning socks, t-shirts and bedsheets, is now taking on the underwear industry with Kribi, a line of undergarments made from a bacteria-fighting fabric. This revolutionary material, called HercFiber continuously destroys all bacteria and stays clean without needing a wash. All you have to do is let the underwear “air out” for a bit after wearing them, and you can safely put them on again the next day.

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In winter, Siberia’s Lake Baikal becomes the scene of a rare natural phenomenon known as “Baikal Zen”. Large stones balance on thin ice “legs” above the surface of the lake, making it seem like they are floating in the air.

Lake Baikal is a fascinating body of water. It’s so large it can easily be mistaken for a sea, it is also the deepest and oldest lake on Earth, as well as the largest freshwater lake by volume. But these are only the most well-known facts about Lake Baikal. There are other more mysterious things going on there, some of which give the place a mystical, almost magical aura. Take the phenomenon known as Baikal Zen, for example – large, Zen-like pebbles balancing precariously on a thin ice pillar, above the frozen surface of the lake. Scientists have been studying this rare phenomenon for years, and we still don’t have a unanimously accepted explanation for it.

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An Ecuadorian TV reporter and his camera crew got the scares of their lives after being held at gunpoint by a masked robber, while doing a live piece.

On February 12, Diego Ordinola, a journalist for Ecuador’s DirecTV Sports, was reporting from outside the Isidro Romero Carbo Monumental Stadium, the home of the Barcelona SC soccer club, when a man wearing a baseball cap and face mask approached him and pulled out a gun. The masked assailant can be heard asking for the crew’s telephones, and as soon as one of them hands over their smartphone, he runs off, leaving the team in shock.

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A Scottish woman suffering from a rare condition called misophonia is so annoyed by the sound of other people’s breathing that she once asked doctors to surgically make her deaf.

Misophonia is described as a strong dislike or hatred of specific sounds, which triggers strong  emotional or physiological responses that would be considered unreasonable by most people. Also known as “sound sensitivity syndrome”, this condition can trigger all kinds of reactions, from anger to panic, or the need to flee and escape the maddening sound. Think of a sound that drives you crazy, multiply it by a factor of 100 and you can get an idea of what experiencing misophonia feels like.

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A young Ukrainian couple decided to really put their relationship to the test by linking their hands together with a thick iron chain for a period of three months.

This year, Alexander and Viktoria, a young couple from the Ukraine, decided to celebrate Valentine’s Day a bit differently. On February 14, they traveled to Kiev to have their hands chained and sealed together by a representative of the country’s national register of records. Their goal is to literally be next to each every moment, for the next three months. That includes sleeping, bathing together and, obviously, even going to the toilet together.

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Indonesian police are investigating the strange case of a 25-year-old woman who claims that she gave birth just an hour after a gust of wind got her pregnant.

The young woman, identified as Siti Zainah, ahs become the subject of widespread ridicule in Indonesia after claiming to have been impregnated by a gust of wind, on February 10. Furthermore, Zainah added that she gave birth to a baby girl just an hour after the alleged impregnation. According to several Indonesian news outlets, the 25-year-old was relaxing at home in Cianjur, West Java, with her first child, when she felt the wind enter her body. A few minutes later, she went into labor.

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Police in the Indian state of Jharkhand were in the news recently for settling a marital dispute by ordering a man to spend three days a week with his wife, three days with his girlfriend, and take one day off from both.

It all started when Rajesh Mahato, a married man from Kokar Tiril Road, in Ranchi, decided to get himself a girlfriend as well. Because he was so infatuated with his new conquest and didn’t want to lose her, the man never told her he was married. Instead, he convinced her to elope with him, leaving his wife and child behind without so much as a goodbye. Only things didn’t end there. The man’s wife filed a complaint with police, as did the parents of Rajesh’s girlfriend, who accused him of kidnapping. And that’s just the start of this crazy tale…

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Gesine Marwedel is a talented body-painting artist who has the power to transform the naked bodies of her models into mind-bending optical illusions.

From swans, to owls, to dolphins, there doesn’t seem to be anything that German artist Gesine Marwedel can’t morph her models into, using body paint. But while most of her works are illusory in nature, obscuring parts of the human body, while transforming others into something new entirely, some are simply abstract works of art, with a deeper meaning.

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An Indian man who started planting trees in a barren, sand-filled field 15 years ago is now being praised for transforming the wasteland into a 10,000-tree orchard.

Satyendra Gautam Manjhi, a simple man from the small village of Imaliyachak, in the Indian state of Bihar, claims he was inspired to start planting trees after being visited by Dashrath Manjhi, known as “the man who moved a mountain“. The story of how he spent over 20 years chiseling away at a mountain to make a road to his village has inspired a generation, including the protagonist of this story. Satyendrav says that Dashrath himself told him to start planting an orchard, and that’s exactly what he did.

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Iran’s Dasht-e Lut desert is only the 25th largest desert in the world, but it holds the record for the highest ;and surface temperature ever recorded, over 70 degrees Celsius.

Dasht-e Lut (Persian for “Emptiness Plain”) is a large salt desert that, scientists believe, formed on the bottom of a sea. Millions of years ago, tectonic shifts caused the bottom of the sea to rise, with the water slowly evaporating due to the high temperatures. Today, it’s a barren land about 51,800 square kilometers in size, surrounded by mountains on all sides, which contributes to the record-setting temperatures recorded here, as they prevent humid air from the Mediterranean and Arabian Seas to reach it.

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A 23-year-old Russian woman has become a mother of 11 in just 10 months time, after turning to surrogates in order to have as many babies as possible, as quickly as possible.

Christina Ozturk only gave birth once, at the age of 17, when she had her first daughter Vika, but after marrying millionaire husband Galip Ozturk, 56, she was keen on building a big family with him, so she turned to surrogate mothers to have 10 babies in just 10 months. The couple’s first child together, Mustafa, was born in March of last year, while their most recent addition to the family and tenth child together, Olivia, was born last month. Christina and Galip don’t know how many children they’ll end up having together, but they definitely don’t plan on stopping at 10.

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