A 24-year-old woman from Moscow, Russia, met her husband, Gideon, five years ago, at a hardware store, while shopping for photoshoot props. Gideon just looked irresistible, so she ended up buying “him”, and the rest is history. Gideon is a metallic briefcase…

Rain Gordon, who works as a nursery school teacher, claims that her fascination with inanimate objects began at a very young age. She has always believed that everything around her had a soul, and as time went by, her belief in animism only got stronger. In her early teenage years, she fell in love with a new shopping center that opened in her home city, but she knew people thought that was wrong, so she didn’t tell anyone. Rain is now opening up about her love story with Gideon the briefcase in order to break down the misconceptions and stigma surrounding romantic relationships with inanimate objects.

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If you’re an avid gamer who would rather freeze than risk overheating their PC while playing on Ultra graphics settings, you may want to check out this weird-looking electrically-heated gaming onesie.

Japanese company Bauhütte specializes in gaming accessories, from comfortable and ergonomic gaming chairs, to innovative gaming desks and cable management tools. But their most intriguing creation to date has to be the DAMEGI4GW “gaming blanket”, a wearable velour fleece onesie designed to keep video game fanatics warm and comfortable even in the most extreme conditions. It features built-in electrical heaters that can be powered by portable battery packs via USB, multiple heating levels, and even an emergency toilet system…

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Photos of a mysterious solitary white house on the side of a green hill, on a small, deserted island surrounded by ocean as far as the eye can see have been doing the rounds on the internet for years, earning the place the unofficial title of “loneliest house in the world”.

The Vestmannaeyjar  archipelago consists of a cluster of small islands off the southern coast of Iceland. Elliðaey (or Ellirey) is the most northeastern of these islands, and home to the iconic single house siting alone on a grassy, sloping pasture. It’s an idyllic place that has remained uninhabited since the 1930s, which only makes the existence of this seemingly well-maintained man-made building even more mind-boggling.

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Waterbuurt (Dutch for “water quarter”) is a state of the art residential development in Amsterdam, which consists of nearly 100 individual floating homes moored on Lake Eimer.

The floating homes Ijburg district are no ordinary houseboats, but real floating houses. They float adjacent to jetties and are moored to steel pilons, so they only move vertically with the changing tide. Designed by Dutch architect Marlies Rohmer, the houses have a “no-nonsense, basic design” but are comfortable at the same time. They were built at a shipyard about 65 km north of Lake Eimer and then transported through a network of canals. Although the Waterbuurt is still a work in progress, some of the houses are already inhabited.

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Simone Williams, a young woman from Brooklyn, New York, recently broke the Guinness record for world’s largest natural afro, with her impressive 4 ft. 10 in (1.48 m) hairdo.

Simone started growing her hair naturally 9 years ago, as a way to save money on hair salon visits, ut never imagined that she would one day break the record for the world’s largest female afro. She had been wearing her hair straight until then, and admits that the transition was pretty tough at first, as she didn’t know how to properly manage her natural hair texture. She eventually got used to it though, and actually started comments and compliments on her “voluminous natural afro”. After reading about the previous record holder, Aevin Dugas, Simone was inspired to attempt breaking the record, but she still couldn’t believe it when she got the news.

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Wen Junhong, a 68-year-old woman from China, has been adopting stray animals for over two decades, and now shares her home with 1,300 canines, 100 cats and four horses.

When Wen Junhong adopted her first stray dog, twenty years ago, she had no idea that she would one day be taking care of over 1,000 dogs, but today she has over 1,300 canines in her care, and plans to take in even more of them. The dedicated animal lover gets up at 4 am every morning, cleans up the pens of about 20 to 30 barrels of waste, cooks over 500 kg or rice, vegetables and meat for the animals, and makes sure her “pets” are in good health and not fighting among each other.

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The Broomway, a 600-year-old footpath connecting the coast of Essex to Foulness Island, in the UK, is rumored to have claimed over 100 lives over the centuries, which has earned it the reputation of Britain’s deadliest path and the eerie nickname “The Doomway”.

For centuries, the Broomway was the only way to access Foulness Island on foot. Recorded as early as 1419, the footpath runs for about 6 miles through vast sand flats and mud flats that look deceptively easy to navigate in good weather, but that can prove deadly in less than ideal conditions. Named after the hundreds of “brooms” – bundles of twigs attached to short poles – which once marked the path, the Broomway is now outlined by wooden poles that are easy to miss in fog and heavy rain. And getting lost in the treacherous sand flats can be deadly, for a number of reasons.

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Spanish artist Manel de Aguas doesn’t consider himself human, but something else. A founding member of the Trans-Species society, he uses technological implants to experience the world differently than the rest of humanity.

24-year-old Manel de Aguas first made international news headlines in August of 2017, when he built the first prototype of a device that allowed him to feel atmospheric vibrations. At the time, it was nothing more than an exposed circuit board that hung on a headband at the back of his head. The following year, he started attaching a pair of fins to the sides of his head, and announced his intention to have them implanted into his skull. Earlier this year, de Aguas did just that, turning those decorative fins into functional organs that perceive the temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure and send sounds to Manel’s brain via bone conduction.

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In the last decade and a half, the Bosnian town of Visoko has become a popular tourist attraction thanks to several “energy pyramids”, tree covered hills that some claim are actually part of the largest pyramid complex ever built.

The 350-foot-high Pljesevica Hill, aka the Pyramid of the Moon and the 720-foot-high Visocica Hill, or the Pyramid of the Sun, which border Visoko, are two very controversial landmarks in central Bosnia and Herzegovina. Along with a third so-called “pyramid” in the nearby hills, they allegedly make up an ancient man-made complex that gives off massive levels of “energy force” that have a positive influence on people’s lives. Although scientists have been trying to debunk these new-age claims for many years, believers include a number of high-profile names, including Bosnian officials and even tennis world no.1, Novak Djokovic.

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British comedian John Finnemore put his time in quarantine to good use, becoming only the third person to solve “Cain’s Jawbone”, a super-tough literary puzzle, in its near 90-year history.

Created in 1934, by Edward Powys Mathers, a pioneer of advanced cryptic crosswords, Cain’s Jawbone is one of the most difficult puzzles ever created. It consists of 100 cards, each containing the page of a murder mystery novel, and challenges you to put the cards in the right order and figure out who kills who in the book. It might not sound so hard, but only two people have been able to solve it in the last 86 years. Well, until recently, when British comedian John Finnemore managed to do it, after working on it, on and off, for about four months.

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Around 20 Spanish children ended up growing hair all over their bodies after being administered hair restoring medicine, instead of syrup for upset stomachs.

In a shocking incident first in the summer of 2019, almost two dozen children reportedly started exhibiting symptoms of hypertrichosis, aka “werewolf syndrome”. They started growing hair excessively all over their bodies, after being administered minoxidil, a drug that stimulates hair growth, instead of omeprazole, usually prescribed for gastric problems. The mix-up allegedly happened after mislabeled syrups were delivered to pharmacies in Granada and Valencia, which chemsist prescribed to treat the upset stomachs of little ones. Over a year since hypertrichosis symptoms were first reported, the families of affected children claim their hair is still growing excessively, but justice has not been served.

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Bosco Vericale is a unique residential complex in the center of Milan, Italy. It consists of two towers that stand 80 and 112 meters high and are covered in plants and trees giving them the look that inspired their name – vertical forest.

Designed by a team of architects at Boeri Studio, Bosco Verticale was designed as a “home for trees that also houses humans and birds”. It was inaugurated in October 2014, in Milan’s Porta Nuova Isola area, as part of a wider renovation project. The two towers are home to a total of 800 trees (480 first and second stage trees, 300 smaller ones), 15,000 perennials and/or ground covering plants and 5,000 shrubs. That amounts to 30,000 square meters of woodland and undergrowth, concentrated on 3,000 square meters of urban surface. And the vegetation is not just for show, it serves a purpose that the residents themselves acknowledge.

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Japanese field voles can seriously impact the profits of apple orchard owners, if left unchecked. For centuries, many farmers have relied on owls to keep vole numbers to manageable levels, and research has shown the night predators to be incredibly efficient.

Ural owls have been setting up their nests in orchards with high rodent populations for a very long time, but Japanese apple growers were the first to notice the beneficial effect the winged predators had on their orchards and actively try to use them as a means of natural pest controls. Apart from allowing the owls to set up nests in tree hollows, they also started installing man-made tree houses to encourage owls from settling on their properties. They soon noticed that the owls brought the vole population down significantly, which meant healthier trees and bigger profits.

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Maryam al-Balushi, an animal lover from Muscat, in Oman, shares her house with 480 cats, most of which were strays, and 12 dogs, spending almost $8,000 a month on food and vet bills for them.

The 51-year-old retired civil servant might seem like a life-long animal lover, but the truth is she hasn’t always been fond of them. It all started in 2008, when her son brought home a small Persian cat as a pet, which al-Balushi wasn’t at all thrilled about, especially since her son didn’t really take care of it. As time went by, Maryam started getting used to her feline pet, and eventually they became inseparable. In 2011, Maryam al-Balushi went through a severe depression, and she credits her first cat for helping her through that difficult period. In the years that followed, she dedicated herself to helping stray cats and taking them into her home.

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Cookies come in all shapes and sizes, but few look as exquisite as those of Costa Rican confectioner Lorena Rodriguez, founder of Lorena’s Sweets.

Looking at the edible works of art created by Lorena Rodriguez, once doesn’t know if to eat them or hang them up on a wall somewhere, for everyone to see. Some of the experienced confectioner’s cookies certainly don’t look like the variety you find in most cookie jars, that’s for sure. They range from realistic-looking paintings with elaborate, gilded frames, designs inspired by rococo architecture, and edible Christmas decorations. They consist of a Danish-style cookie expertly decorated with a high-quality fondant molded into shape using silicone molds.

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