Chiyomi Sawa, a 72-year-old woman from Japan has been the undisputed World Masters Women’s Bench Press Champion for the last 19 years, and she doesn’t plan to stop dominating anytime soon.

Walking past Chiyomi Sawa on the street, you’d be forgiven for mistaking her for just a petite, slightly overweight pensioner, but in reality, she is a natural-born athlete with her sights set on her 20th consecutive world bench press champion title. Ever since she started competing at the highest level, in 2006, Sawa has dominated the world championship, winning first place at every edition, in different weight classes. The 72-year-old is now eyeing champion title number 20, and judging by her track record, she’ll most likely claim it.

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What should have been one of the happiest experiences of her life turned into a nightmare for a Nigerian soldier, after being arrested for accepting a marriage proposal while on duty.

The female soldier’s trouble began when a video of her accepting the marriage proposal of a kneeling young man went viral on social media. Footage shows other members of the Nigerian military witnessing the proposal and then cheering and congratulating the two lovers. However, for the Nigerian Army, things weren’t quite so simple. This wasn’t a simple romantic gesture that had gone viral online, but video proof of a female soldier accepting to marry a trainee in the government’s youth training scheme, which is apparently a big no-no.

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An Indian plastic surgeon is being praised as a hero without a cape after spending much of his life performing over 37,000 free procedures to correct children’s cleft palates and cleft lips.

According to the CDC, cleft lip and cleft palate are birth defects that occur when a baby’s lip or mouth do not form properly during pregnancy. These defects cause a variety of problems, which range from the inability to access milk as babies, to bullying and discrimination later on in life. Both birth defects can be corrected with the help of plastic surgery, but these procedures are, unfortunately, not available to the poor families who need them most. In India, one plastic surgeon has emerged as the benefactor of tens of thousands of babies and children, correcting their cleft lips or cleft palate for free, and thus giving them the chance at a much better life.

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For the last 11 years, “Turkey’s first and only stress coach” has been making a living by letting people punch him, without ever punching back.

Hasan Riza Gunay started working as a human punching bag in 2010, after finding inspiration in Turkish director Kemal Sunal’s classic movie “Sark Bulbulu” (Eastern Nightingale), in which the protagonist voluntarily allows himself to be beaten. He realized that while some people relieve stress by exercising, meditating or sleeping, other need to let off some steam by screaming, or better yet, hitting someone. So he turned his realization into an unusual business, allowing himself to be punched by strangers, for money. He has been working as a “stress coach” for a decade now and hopes to train others to pick up his role before he becomes too old to take a punch.

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If you’ve ever wanted to see a dolphin up-close in its natural habitat, and, if you’re lucky, even hand feed it a tasty treat, there’s no place to do it at than Monkey Mia, the only beach in Australia that dolphins visit every day.

The wild dolphins of Monkey Mia, on the coast of Western Australia, started getting used to people in the early 1960s, when local fishermen started throwing them fish. It didn’t take long for rumors of friendly bottlenose dolphins hanging around Monkey Mia to spread, and before long the popularity of the resort reached new all-time highs. However, by the 1980s, marine researchers noticed a disturbing trend – as adult dolphins became more dependent on humans for food, their calves’ mortality rate grew. Things got so bad that, according to some experts, 90 percent of the calves failed to reach adulthood. Luckily, conservation authorities started regulating dolphin feeding.

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An Indian pensioner recently set a bizarre new national record after allegedly spending an entire hour staring directly at the sun without sunglasses and without blinking once.

The 70-year-old retired Government officer from India’s Uttar Pradesh state was identified as Mr. MS Verma. He apparently trained for this incredible feat for 25 years, after being inspired by an Indian guru. His attempt to beat the previous record of staring into the sun without blinking was overseen by a representative of India’s Book of Records, as well as a group of politicians and physicians. After an hour of staring directly at the sun without sunglasses and without even blinking, Mr. Verma’s eyesight was deemed normal, as was his overall eye health.

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A 25-year-old man wound up in the emergency room with a collapsed lung after straining himself while singing karaoke at a friend’s birthday party.

Chinese media recently reported the bizarre case of a young man from Changsha, in China’s Hunan Province, who suffered a serious lung injury by trying to reach the high-pitch tones during a karaoke session. The man, known as Wang Zhe, reportedly attended a friend’s birthday party and decided to show off his voice by singing “New Drunken Concubine”, a song famous for the high-pitched tones it demands. When he reached the high-pitched part for the song, the 25-year-old man really gave it his all, only to feel a sharp pain in his chest which made him cut his act short. The pain was bearable, though, so he didn’t pay too much attention to it until the next day, when he found that he could barely breathe.

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Julie Rhodes is a UK-based artist who specializes in photo-like hyperrealistic paintings of wildlife, particularly big cats like lions and tigers.

You’d be forgiven for mistaking Julie Rhodes’ paintings for photographs, as the differences are very hard to spot for the untrained eye. From her subjects’ intricate fur patterns, to the perfect coloring of the cats’ thick coats and the reflections in their eyes, these paintings are almost perfect. A professional artist with over 20 years of experience, Rhodes specializes mainly in paintings of big cats (lions, tigers, and leopards) but doesn’t shy away from portraying other animals as well, like elephants and zebras.

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When it comes to telling when someone is lying, we currently have very few options, but a team of Israeli researchers claims to have come up with something better than anything we’ve seen before.

Using stickers printed on soft surfaces containing electrodes that monitor and measure the activity of muscles and nerves, a team of researchers led by Prof. Dino Levy from Tel Aviv University, discovered that some people involuntarily activate muscles in their cheeks and eyebrows when they lie. No sensors had been able to measure these subtle muscle contractions before, but the innovative ones invented by Prof. Yael Hanein and sold by Israeli company X-trodes proved sensitive enough. Tests revealed a 73% success rate of lie identification, better than any existing technology.

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Unable to find the medicine his two-year-old son desperately needs in China or even import it from abroad, a loving father set up his own laboratory and synthesized the drug himself.

Two-year-old Haoyang suffers from Menkes Syndrome, an ultra-rare genetic disorder that affects how copper is processed and absorbed in the body. The boy cannot move or speak and experts claim he only has months left to live but his father refuses to give up on him. As long as he draws breath, he is determined to do everything he can for his son, even if it means teaching himself chemistry and producing the medicine Chinese authorities have been unable to provide. Xu Wei, a desperate father from southwestern Kunming, has touched millions with his determination and unwavering devotion to his ailing son.

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Dr Manoj Mittal, a child specialist from Haryana, in India, sparked controversy online after appearing on camera to praise the benefits of eating cow dung, while feasting on it himself.

Traditional Indian medicine has long been promoting cow dung as a cure-all that can even stave off conditions like cancer and Covid, but this didn’t include trained doctors who generally believe in things like science and clinical trials. Well, as in virtually any field, there are exceptions, and Manoj Mittal, an MD from the Karnal district of Haryana, is definitely one such exception. In a recently-posted video that has since gone viral, Mottal can be seen taking bites from a piece of cow dung and praising its benefits on the human body, mind, and soul.

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Dexter, a 6-year-old Brittany Spaniel dog, has become famous for his ability to adapt by learning to walk only on his hind legs, after losing one of his front legs in a car accident.

Dexter hadn’t even turned 1-year-old when he broke out of his owners’ yard in Ouray, Colorado to follow a scent. Focused on his goal, the pup accidentally ran out in front of a moving van and got hit pretty badly. Luckily, he was found moments later by his owner’s husband, Tim Pasek, who immediately took him to a vet. One of his front legs had to be removed, and the other turned out to be more badly damaged than originally thought. But the important thing is that after a 45-minute procedure, Dexter’s life was saved, and he has since adapted perfectly, relying only on his hind legs to get around, just like a human.

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It’s hard to believe, but there was once a time when the rich and powerful spent small fortunes on radium-infused distilled water advertised as a cure for a variety of illnesses.

Knowing what we know now about radioactive elements and their effects on the human body, most of us wouldn’t dare touch, let alone drink, a bottle of radium-containing water, but at the beginning of the twentieth century, the so-called “remedy” was all the rage among wealthy socialites. Radithor and other radioactive elixirs were sold as harmless remedies that could combat fatigue, and cure all sorts of conditions, from cancers to impotence. Unfortunately, in reality, they slowly killed the very people they were supposed to heal.

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Tsovkra-1, a small village in the mountains of Russia’s Dagestan autonomous republic, is famous for being the only place in the world where the entire able-bodied population knows how to walk a tightrope.

No one knows exactly how the tightrope-walking tradition of Tsovkra-1 (named ‘1’ because of another Tsvokra village nearby) began, but one thing is for sure – for the last 100 years, every able-bodied man, woman, and child in the village has learned the walk a tightrope, and many have gone on to become circus performers. Although Tsovkra-1’s population has dropped from around 3,000 in the 1980s to under 400 today, all those who remain are trained in the art of tightrope walking.

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An Indian man was found guilty of murdering his wife by renting a cobra to bite her and make it look like an accident, so he could take her jewelry and marry another woman.

In what has been described as a modern murder mystery, a young man from the Kollam District of the Indian state of Kerala was convicted of arranging and carrying out his wife’s murder with the help of a venomous snake. The heinous crime took place in May of 2020, but investigators needed over a year to collect the necessary evidence to charge the husband. In fact, the 32-year-old man might have gotten away with murder if not for the wife’s parents, who suspected foul play and filed a complaint against him.

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