Newspaper Seller Develops Algorithm to Figure Out Credit Card Security Codes

A middle-aged newspaper salesman in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was recently arrested for “hacking” dozens of credit cards and using them to make small purchases.

When crime-fighting authorities in Argentina received a complaint about hundreds of unauthorized purchases, they were sure they were dealing with an organized hacking group. However, all leads pointed to the house of a 56-year-old newspaper salesman in the Buenos Aires town of Villa Madero. Judging by the scale of the security breach, it seemed unlikely that one person, let alone one that operated a newspaper stand, could have pulled it off. And yet, upon searching the man’s house, they found a small notebook containing a hand-written algorithm that had apparently allowed him to figure out the CVC (Card Verification Code) of his victims.

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Couple Can’t Sell Their Home Because of 130-Year-Old Deed Blunder

An Australian couple is seeing their retirement plans threatened by a 130-year-old deed error that makes it impossible to sell their property.

Peter and Cheryl Plowman have been living in the same house on Bega Street, in Candelo, on the New South Wales South Coast for 20 years. A few years back, they purchased the house next to them from their neighbor with the intention of fixing it up and selling it for a profit to fund their retirement. Now, after investing their savings in it, the Plowman’s were shocked to learn that they won’t be able to sell their property to anyone, because the paperwork drafted over a century ago, when the lots were first registered, states that their new house is built on a different lot.

Mr. and Mrs. Plowman live in the fourth house along their street, which would logically make it Lot Four, only in the original deed it is marked Lot Three. When the lot deeds were originally drafted, sometime in the 1800s, the five lots on Bega Street were numbered ‘one, two, four, three, five,’ but the Plowmans had never bothered to check.

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17-Year-Old Creates Fake COVID Test Center, Receives $6 Millions in State Payouts

A young German has recently been found guilty of creating a fake COVID screening center and illegally pocketing 5.7 million euros ($6 million) in state payouts for tests that were never performed.

At the height of the Coronavirus pandemic in Germany, the demand for tests was so great that the state reimbursed centers for conducting COVID tests based solely on an invoice. Most private healthcare providers benefited greatly, but some managed to rake in small fortunes without actually providing any kind of service. Such was the case of a young German student who figured out that all he had to do was create a COVID test center on paper, and then invoice thousands of tests every day to collect sizeable payouts from the Government. The young man, who was only 17-year-old when he came up with the idea in 2020, managed to pocket a whopping $6 million without actually doing any work.

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Great Grandfather – 5,484-Year-Old Patagonian Cypress Could Be World’s Oldest Tree

Scientists in Chile believe that an ancient Patagonian cypress known as ‘Gran Abuelo’ (Great Grandfather) could be over 5,000 years old, which would make it the world’s oldest living tree.

The Patagonian cypress (Fitzroya cupressoides), known in South America as ‘alerce’, is a conifer native to Chile and Argentina. They belong to the same family as giant sequoias and redwoods, and can reach heights of up to 45 meters (150ft). They grow at a very slow rate and are known to live for hundreds, even thousands of years, but one particular specimen may be the oldest tree ever discovered. If the findings of a Chilean team of researchers are to be believed, Great Grandfather, an ancient Patagonian cypress in the Alerce Costero national park, is 5,484-years-old, a whopping 600 years older than Methuselah, the current world’s oldest tree.

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Ram Allegedly Sentenced to Three Years Behind Bars for Hitting and Killing a Person

Authorities in the African country of Sudan have allegedly sentenced a ram to three years in prison for hitting and killing an old woman.

If humans had to go to prison every time they killed a goat, we would have to build so many more prisons, but when the roles are reversed for a change the poor animal has to answer for its actions. That’s exactly what allegedly happened in Sudan earlier this month – at least according to multiple national news outlets – after a ram in Rumbek East County charged at an elderly woman hitting her in the ribs and causing serious injuries that later proved fatal. It’s unclear what possessed the animal to attack, but once it was identified as the culprit, the ram was taken into custody and sentenced to hard time.

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King of Gaokao – 55-Year-Old Man Fails to Get Into Dream College 25 Times, Is Still Trying

Despite failing the dreaded gaokao university entrance exam 25 times in a row, a 55-year-old man in China is still not giving up on his dream of attending college.

At age 55, Liang Shi is the owner of a successful building materials company in Chengdu, the capital of southwestern China’s Sichuan province. He has enough money to do whatever he wants, but he doesn’t fell completely fulfilled. That’s because he has been dreaming of getting into Sichuan University ever since he was a teenager, and he has yet to achieve his goal. At an age when most people are starting to think about retirement, Liang Shi is only focused on studying hard for this year’s gaokao university entrance exam. It will be his 26th attempt to pass it, and hopefully the last.

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Indian Woman Lived Disguised as a Man for 36 Years to Raise Child Alone

After losing her husband to a heart attack, an Indian woman spent 39 years pretending to be a man so she could raise her daughter alone in a patriarchal society.

S Petchiammal had only been married for 15 days when her husband succumbed to a massive heart attack. She was 20 years old at the time and pregnant with her daughter. Soon after giving birth, she started working various jobs to make ends meet, but raising a child as a single mother in Tamil Nadu’s Katunayakkanpatti village, a dominant patriarchal society, was tough. The young woman worked jobs at construction sites, hotels, and tea shops, but she faced harassment and sexual taunts every day, so one day she decided that she needed to make a big change.

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Mom Draws Criticism for Giving One-Year-Old Son Realistic Temporary Tattoos

A young Florida fashion designer and tattoo-loving mother-of-one has been getting a lot of the online for covering her one-year-old son in hyperrealistic temporary tattoos.

29-year-old Shamekia Morris, a fashion designer from West Palm Beach, started putting temporary tattoos on her son Treylin when he was only six months old, and it has since become a habit that she shares with thousands of fans on social media. Although the effect is admittedly quite striking, not everyone is a fan of Shamekia’s idea, with some going as far as calling her irresponsible or a bad mother. Still, the mother-of-one, who herself is covered in tattoos, said that she won’t let the criticism stop her from living a lifestyle that both she and her son enjoy.

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Rare Condition Causes 19-Year-Old Girl to Look Like a Much Younger Child

Looking at Aboli Jarit, a young woman from Najapur, India, you would be forgiven for thinking her a child no older than six, even though she is really 19 years of age.

Aboli, who stands only 3ft 4in-tall, recently became a viral internet sensation after sharing her story. As a baby, Aboli was diagnosed with renal rickets, a very rare condition that combines chronic renal disease with bone deformity. To make matters worse, she was born without a bladder, so she has to wear diapers all the time, as urine simply flows continually, as it has nowhere to accumulate. The girl’s bones got progressively weaker as time went by, and she eventually became unable to walk, which was brutal, as she had always loved to sing and dance. Every day is a struggle for the 19-year-old, but somehow she finds the courage to be optimistic and see the glass half full.

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Watch Inspirational 70-Year-Old Man Run 100-Meter race in Just 13.47 Seconds

Michael Kish, a 70-year-old American runner, stunned the audience at the Penn Relays athletic event last Thursday, by finishing the 100-meter dash in under 14 seconds.

Imagine being a pensioner and turning up at an important sporting event meant primarily for athletes in prime physical shape and stealing the show. That’s exactly what Michael Kish did last week with his awe-inspiring performance in the 100-meter dash, blowing past his competitors and finishing with an impressive time of just 13.47 seconds. That’s a time most 20-year-olds can only dream of beating, yet this 70-year-old grandfather ran it like it was no big deal.

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Thrifty Woman Spends Just $7 per Month on Food, Saves Up $80,000 in 4 Years

A 24-year-old woman became the talk of South Korean social media this month after it was revealed that she managed to save up 100 million won ($79,400) in 4 years by being extremely thrifty.

Ji-hyeon Kwak started working when she was 19-year-old and quickly realized that she needed to save money if she was ever going to get her own place to live. Despite earning an average of 2 million won per month (after tax), the young woman managed to put enough aside every month to save over 100 million won in the last four years. That was enough for her to win an apartment subscription, which means she will soon get her own place to live. But, as you can imagine, saving that much money on such a small salary wasn’t easy. She had to take her thriftiness to an extreme level, which included spending just 8,400 won ($6.7) on food per month.

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9-year-Old Boy’s Immunity to Pain Is a Curse, Not a Blessing

Zach Skitmore, a 9-year-old boy from Norwich, in Norfolk, UK suffers from a rare genetic condition that makes him immune to pain. That may sound like a real-life superpower, but in reality, it only makes him more vulnerable.

Zach’s parents started noticing something strange about his reactions to pain very early on. When he was just an infant getting his first shots, he didn’t so much as squeak when the nurse poked him with the needle. At age one, he bit through his tongue without even realizing, then, when he was four, he dislocated his hip on a bouncy castle and had it popped back in without any kind of pain relief. When he was six, he broke his leg and walked on it for three days before anyone noticed it was broken. Unfortunately, not being able to feel pain isn’t the same as not getting hurt, and all this physical abuse has already taken a heavy toll on Zach’s body.

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World’s Most Loyal Employee Has Been Working for the Same Company for 84 Years

Walter Orthmann, a 100-year-old man from Brazil has been working for the same company since 1938, which officially makes his career worthy of the Guinness Book of Records.

Orthman began working for Industrias Renaux S.A., a textile company in Brusque, on January 17, 1938, when he was only 15-years-old. He began as an assistant in the shipping department, but over the years, he was promoted to administrative assistant and, eventually, sales manager. During his 84-year-long career, Walter went on sales trips all over the world, received his paycheck in nine different currency denominations, and used nearly every commercial airline in the history of Brazilian aviation.

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Airport Receives Over 12,000 Noise Complaints in a Year From a Single Person

An anonymous person is responsible for over 90 percent of the noise complaints received by Dublin International Airport last year, a whopping 12,272, or an average of 34 complaints per day.

2021 wasn’t the best year on record for airports, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and Dublin Airport is no exception, but that didn’t stop one unidentified individual from lodging noise complaints regarding the flights that did land or take off from the airport. In fact, this person managed to double the number of noise complaints they made in 2020, a respectable 6,227 of them, even though plane traffic was only up around 10 percent from the previous year, because of pandemic restrictions.

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Lluvia de Peces – Honduras’ Yearly Rain of Fish

Every year, Yoro, a small town in northern Honduras, allegedly experiences a mysterious phenomenon known as “Lluvia de Peces”, a literal rain of fish.

The rain of fish phenomenon has been reported in many places around the world, but Honduras’ Yoro department is the only place where the bizarre rain reportedly occurs every year, sometimes several times per year. The now-famous Lluvia de Peces takes place sometime between May and June, usually after a very powerful storm. The weirdest thing about this unusual occurrence is that, despite it being a yearly event, no one has ever actually seen the fish fall from the sky. There is however photographic and video evidence of hundreds of fish covering entire areas following powerful storms, so it definitely can’t be dismissed as just a simple legend, and scientists have actually investigated the phenomenon in order to provide a plausible explanation.

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