Millionaire Sets Fire to His Own Home Just to Spite His Wife

British millionaire and pro golfer Francis McGuirk narrowly avoided jail time for reportedly setting fire to his family home just so his wife couldn’t have it following their breakup.

In a trial that recently ended and saw Francis McGuirk barely avoiding prison time, the 50-year-old golf pro was accused of setting fire to the £900,000 ($1.4 million) house in Sandwich, Kent last year, just to spite his life partner. On June 25 last year, knowing that there was no one home, the father-of-three entered the house he owned with his soon-to-be-ex-wife Sarah, locked himself inside, and snapped the keys inside the locks before texting his partner to let her know that he was about to set the place on fire. He proceeded to do just that, and it was only thanks to the neighbors calling emergency services that the house suffered only minor damage.

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World’s Longest Rideable Bicycle Is Over 55 Meters Long

Designed and built by eight Dutch engineers, the world’s longest rideable bicycle is 180 feet long (55.16 meters), roughly the same length as four double-decker buses.

39-year-old Ivan Schalk had been thinking about building the world’s longest bicycle since reading about it in a Guinness Book of Records when he was a child, but he only embarked upon this project in 2018, as a way to fill up his free time. He knew it wasn’t the kind of thing he could build himself, so he sought the help of like-minded people in his home village of Prinsenbeek, which is apparently well-known in the Netherlands for its tech-savvy residents. Together, they spent about four years –  not counting the two years of interruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic – working on the world’s longest bicycle, a metal behemoth that needs at least two riders.

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Is Glow-in-the-Dark ‘Cosmic Baseball’ the Future of the Sport?

A Southern collegiate baseball team has been getting a lot of attention for hosting “cosmic baseball” games played at night, under black lights, with players using UV-reactive uniforms, balls, and bats.

With balls flying toward players at breakneck speeds, baseball isn’t the kind of game that can be played in less-than-perfect lighting conditions, but one Southern collegiate baseball team has found a way to make it playable in the dark. Using massive black light installations and UV-reactive uniforms, balls, bats, and bases, the Tri-City Chili Peppers have been putting together ‘cosmic baseball’ games that look like something out of a Tron movie. Despite the seemingly pitch-black atmosphere, players claim that after a bit of practice, playing under UV lights becomes second nature, as does seeing the ball, no matter how hard it’s hit or thrown.

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World’s Luckiest Man Grows 63-Leaf Clover

45-year-old Yoshiharu Watanabe can rightfully consider himself the world’s luckiest man after setting a new Guinness Record by growing a clover with 63 individual leaves.

What is luckier than a four-leaf clover? Well, a five-leaf clover, of course. By that logic, the more leaves a clover has, the more luck it brings, so Yoshiharu Watanabe may just be the luckiest man alive because he is the first to ever grow a clover with 63 leaves. His amazing story began in 2009 when he started picking up clovers with more than three leaves and planting them in his home garden. The little plant is pretty resilient, so all he had to do was cross-pollinate to obtain exceptional specimens with up to 20 leaves. It was at this moment that he started dreaming about setting a new world record, but he never dreamed of doing so with a 63-leaf clover.

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Woman Tries to Sue Boyfriend for Not Driving Her to the Airport

A New Zealand woman attempted to take her former boyfriend to court for failing to take her to the airport as he had promised, which resulted in her losing her flight and incurring additional costs.

According to legal documents released by New Zealand’s Disputes Tribunal, which deals with small claims up to NZ$30,000 ($18,384), the woman had asked her boyfriend of six and a half years to drive her to the airport ahead of a concert she was to attend with some friends. The man had also agreed to stay at her place while she was gone and look after her dogs, but he ultimately failed to do all the things he had verbally agreed to, which caused her to miss her plane, and incur unplanned financial costs, such as taking a shuttle to the airport and paying a dog kennel to keep her pets. She filed a complaint with the Tribunal hoping to be reimbursed by her now-former partner.

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Motorist Caught Speeding Repaints Car to Avoid Hefty Fine

A French man is being accused of painting his Porsche sports car another color to avoid hefty penalties after being caught speeding and failing to stop despite being signaled to do so by police.

On June 2nd, French police used a speed radar to catch a motorist driving at a speed of 188 km/h on a road limited to 80 km/h near Cournonsec, southwest of Montpellier. They notified a gendarmerie unit near the Poussan motorway to stop the offender, but when they signaled the car to pull over, it just flew past them with no intention of stopping. Surprised by the car’s vehicle, the gendarmes were unable to chase down the offender or even get its license plate. However, they wrote down in their report that the car was a bright green Porsche 911 sports car, which made it relatively easy to identify. However, when the only person in the area known to drive a green Porsche turned up at the police station, officers were shocked to find that his sports car was now grey.

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Man Proposes to Girlfriend after Losing Cage Fight, Gets Rejected in Front of 20,000 People

Amateur MMA fighter Lukasz Bukovac recently went 0-2 in one night despite having fought just one opponent after getting his marriage proposal brutally rejected by his girlfriend in front of 20,000 people.

They say you should never kick someone while they’re down, but some would say Lukasz Bukovac brought it upon himself when he decided to propose to his girlfriend inside the octagon, after losing an MMA fight. Even if he had won, there was no guarantee the girl would say yes, but getting rejected in front of 20,000 spectators is so much more painful after a loss. Unfortunately, Bukovac had to just stand there on one knee and hear his visibly embarrassed girlfriend shoot down his marriage proposal for alleged infidelity, in front of tens of thousands of people. To make it worse, the whole thing was filmed and the video is now going viral around the world.

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Man Claims He Was Tricked into a Gender Change by Another Man Who Wanted to Marry Him for Money

A 20-year-old Indian man claims to have been subjected to a sex change operation without his consent by another man who planned to marry him for his family’s land.

Mujahid, a 20-year-old man from Sanjak Village in Uttar Pradesh, has become the talk of an entire country after claiming that a male rival tricked him into going to the Begrajpur Medical College in Mansoorpur where a team of doctors sedated him and performed a gender change operation on him without his consent. The victim told authorities that a man named Omprakash deceived him into believing that he was suffering from a serious medical condition and then offered to take him to Mansoorpur to be treated. Mujahid claims that shortly after arriving at the hospital, he was sedated and then operated on by a team of doctors who had colluded with Omprakash. When he woke up the next day, he was told he was no longer a man, but a woman.

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Gaoqi Ling – China’s ‘Knife Edge Mountain’

Gaoqi Ling is a natural wonder in China’s Hunan Province, a mountain of perfectly smooth rock with an extremely narrow ridge that people love to traverse despite the apparent danger.

China’s Danxia Park is famous for its unique landforms, particularly the multicolored “Rainbow Mountain,” but it is home to other less-known but just as intriguing natural formations. Gaoqi Ling is one such natural wonder. Originally a watershed, this natural wonder had its steep ridges shaped by the water washing over them and then smoothed out by rain and wind. Today, the sharp ridges are often compared to a giant knife edge or the spine of a sleeping dragon with its ribs extending outwards.

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The World’s Shortest Commercial Flight Is Over in Less Than 2 Minutes

The airplane flight between the Scottish islands of Westray and Papa Westray holds the world record for the shortest commercial flight, as the plane is usually in the air for just under 2 minutes.

Most of us can just hop into a car, bus, or train for short trips, but things are different in the islands of northern Scotland. The few people who call the Orkney Islands their home have only two options, a ferry ride over rough waters, or an incredibly short flight in a small plane. The second option is the most popular – because the ferry can often face disruption due to rough waters – and the most famous because of how short the flights can be. In fact, the flight between the islands of Westray and Papa Westray is officially recognized as the world’s shortest commercial flight. It usually lasts about 90 seconds, but with favorable winds, it can be over in less than a minute.

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Woman Sets Guinness Record with 18 Tattoos of Madonna

A Kansas woman set a new Guinness World Record for ‘most tattoos of the same musician on the body’ with 18 portraits of legendary singer Madonna.

Tara Berry has been a fan of Madonna since 1983 when the pop icon put out her hit single ‘Borderline’, but she only started getting tattoos of her in 2016, at a time when the artist was actively looking for fans who had her tattooed on her bodies to appear in one of her videos. Tara had been wanting to do it for a while, and this gave her an extra incentive to finally go under the tattoo gun, but little did she know that it was just the beginning of her tattooing journey. She ended up getting a whopping 18 tattoos of Madonna on her body, enough to claim the Guinness record for ‘most tattoos of the same musician on the body’.

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Company Creates AI Voice Filter That Turns Angry Screams into Calm Speech

A Japanese company has developed an artificial intelligence filter that can detect angry screams and translate them into calm speech in order to reduce the stress experienced by call center operators.

Large tech companies have long been aware of the stress their call center operators are exposed to every single day, with many customers taking out their anger and frustrations on them. Some of them have even introduced stress management programs that include relaxation techniques, meditation, yoga, or therapy meant to irritability and anxiety. However, one Japanese company may have come up with a much more efficient solution – using AI to completely take screaming and aggressive speech out of the equation. SofBank claims to have spent three years creating a voice filter that detects screaming and automatically translates it into calm speech.

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Cheating Husband Sues Apple for Accidentally Exposing Infidelity to His Wife

A UK man is trying to take tech giant Apple to court for £5 million ($6.3 million), accusing the company of revealing his private messages with other women to his wife by synchronizing his iPhone with the family iMac.

In the last few years of his marriage, Richard (not the man’s real name) had been soliciting the services of sex workers whom he had messaged using his personal iPhone. He had always been very careful to delete the messages from his phone but claimed not to have known that Apple makes it possible to share messages via its various platforms (iPhone, iPad, or iMac) when logging into the same account. One day, when his wife logged into the same family account on the iMac, she discovered years of spicy messages between Richard and multiple other women, who turned out to be sex workers. She ended up divorcing him and walking away with over $6.3 million. Richard blames Apple for everything and he wants the American company to compensate him.

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The World’s Tallest Rideable Bicycle Is Over 25 Feet Tall

Two French biking enthusiasts recently set a new Guinness World Record for the ‘tallest rideable bicycle’ by building a 7.77-meter (25 ft 5 in) behemoth that can (barely) be ridden.

Nicolas Barrioz and David Peyrou came up with the idea for the world’s tallest bicycle 5 years ago, while drinking at a pub, but they actually decided to go through with the project and spent months putting together a plan to make it work. Made from metal alloy, steel, and wood, the unique bike took hundreds of hours to complete in a way that made it rideable, even for a short distance. It may not seem like a challenge, but building a 25-foot rideable bicycle is definitely not as easy as riding a bike. For example, the pedals are connected to the wheels via a 16-meter (53-ft) chain, and because of its extreme height, the bicycle has to move at a speed of around 15-20 km/h (9-12 mph) for the rider to maintain balance.

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Floating Corpse in Rural Pond Turns Out to Be Napping Man

The residents of an Indian village recently called the police about a floating human body in their pond, but it turned out to be a man taking a nap and cooling off on a hot summer day.

To their credit, the people of Reddypuram Kovelakunta, a village in India’s Andhra Pradesh state, didn’t immediately panic and call the police when they noticed a motionless human body in their pond. They tried calling out to it when they first spotted it, around 7 AM, but they got no answer, and seeing as the body didn’t move until 12 PM, they finally decided to call the authorities. A police unit and emergency services rushed to the scene, where they indeed discovered a human body floating in the water. Only what looked like a corpse turned out to be an inebriated man napping in the water after a grueling 10-day work stint at a local quarry.

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