There’s no denying that parenting can get really tiring sometimes, but you have to suck it up and push on. Well, not this Ukrainian couple who decided to take a break from their kids by abandoning them on the side of a road, near a homeless people camp.

Andrey, 3, and his younger brother Maksim, 2, lived for a week with homeless people and drunkards in Zaporozhye, southern Ukraine, after their young parents abandoned them on the side of a road under pretext of going to buy some food. The boys were placed in the care of total strangers allegedly for a few minutes, but their parents didn’t return for a week, and would have probably taken even longer to retrieve their kids if someone didn’t call the police. When asked why they had abandoned their two children, the young couple said that they felt tired and needed a break.

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Doctors in Providence, Rhode Island, recently reported the case of a 25-year-old woman whose blood had turned dark blue after using medication containing a common numbing agent.

The unnamed woman reportedly walked into a Rhode Island emergency room complaining of general weakness and fatigue, shortness of breath and a symptom that made even seasoned medical staff do a double take – she was visibly turning blue. Doctors described the patient as “cyanotic,” the clinical term for blue and grey discolouration of the skin, which was attributed to the use of benzocaine, an active ingredient in over-the-counter toothache and cold sore medication.

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A Texas man is wanted on a third-degree felony aggravated forgery charge after police discovered that he was trying to get a divorce from his wife without her even knowing he was divorcing her.

Paul Nixon, 51, of Harris County, in Texas, allegedly forged his wife’s signature as well as that of a public notary to make it look as if his spouse had consented to the divorce. According to court records, Nixon filed for divorce on February 15 – ironically, the day after Valentine’s Day – and a judge signed an order that made the divorce official in April. A Harris County constable told reporters that his ex-wife only learned that Nixon had divorced her in may, when she confronted him about his unusual money spending.

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In what could be described as a very expensive social experiment, a young IT professional has created a website that allows people to upload a picture if they pay at least $1,000 for the privilege. Think of it as a status symbol, a way to show the world you have money to burn.

The “Golden Price Tag” brand has been doing the rounds online for the last couple of weeks, and for good reason. The controversial website and its corresponding Instagram page are proposing something that most people would consider outrageous – paying obscene amounts of money for the opportunity to upload a photo just so anyone could see that you did and exactly how much you paid for it. So basically, if you pay a minimum of $1,000 the site will upload your photo and display how much you paid for the feature. It’s a concept so extreme that it puts even social networks like Rich Kids to shame.

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A California woman who dreamed about swallowing her engagement ring during an apparent robbery woke up to find that the said ring was missing from her finger in real life as well.

Last Tuesday night, Jenna Evans dreamed that she was on a high-speed train with her fiancé, when some “bad guys” appeared. In her dream, the fiancé told her that the only one way to make sure she didn’t lose the 2.4 carat diamond engagement ring she had waited so long for – swallow it. She quickly popped it in her mouth and washed it down with a sip of water. Then she woke up, relieved that it had only been a vivid dream. But then she looked at her left hand and noticed that her ring was gone in real life too…

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We’re no strangers to weird stories here on OC, but this one’s a bit too weird even for us. A French burglar intentionally left traces of DNA all over the crime scene just so he would end up in prison and watch encrypted TV channel Canal+ for free.

A monthly subscription to French premium television channel Canal+ costs around 10 euros ($11), but inmates in French prisons can apparently watch it for free, which was apparently a good enough reason for an ex-con to commit a crime and get himself caught. Over the course of the summer, the unnamed 25-year-old man committed a series of burglaries in the Toulouse suburb of Colomiers, but there was something about his modus operandi that left investigators scratching their heads. He left traces of saliva over the crime scenes, as if he wanted his DNA to be identified.

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Having armed men wearing combat masks manhandling you and simulating a drug bust hardly sounds like the scenario of a perfect marriage proposals, but it’s apparently all the rage in Russia.

Imagine driving a car, minding your own business, when all of a sudden a black van cuts you off and slams the breaks forcing you to do the same in a split second. That would be scary enough, but it gets worse. The van door slides open and masked men carrying assault rifles jump out and violently pull you out of the vehicle, while they go through your personal belongings seemingly searching for something. And then they find it – a small plastic bag full of white powder that they claim is illegal drugs. You’ve never seen it before, but they claim otherwise and you feel your legs shaking under you as you try to grasp the implications of the situation. Then, all of a sudden, one of the threatening men drops down to one knee, pops open a small case and says “Marry me!”

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A 71-year-old man in the UK reportedly spent almost 30,000 pounds ($37,000) fighting a 100-pound speeding fine over several years, but in the end sill lost the case.

Retired engineer Richard Keedwell’s troubles began in November of 2016, when during a day trip to Worcester, he was clocked by police doing 35mph in a 30mph zone. Only he didn’t agree, and recalls having his day ruined by the notice of intended prosecution (NIP) he got in the mail a few days later. He was convinced he couldn’t have been speeding, so he put down “no case to answer” on the document where he was supposed to write how he pleaded to the charges. Furthermore, he hired a video and electronics expert to prove that there must have been something wrong with the police speed camera. Little did he know this was the beginning of a long and expensive legal battle.

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In a story that seems taken out of a Hollywood movie, an American family stranded at the top of a hidden waterfall in California, with no way to safely descend, managed to call for help by throwing a message in a bottle down into the waterfall.

Curtis Whitson, his girlfriend, Krystal Ramirez, and their 13-year-old son, Hunter, were nearing the end of a four-day floating and camping trip when they realized they had become stranded on an isolated patch of land, atop a waterfall on the Arroyo Seco seasonal river, in California. Whitson had embarked on the same trip seven years prior, but recalled a thick rope attached to the slippery wall that had allowed him to safely rappel down and continue his journey. That rope was gone now and the rope he had with him was too flimsy to guarantee a safe descent. They were stuck there, and he needed to come up with a plan to call in a rescue party.

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When it comes to buying a fashionable handbag, there’s one figure most young Chinese women turn to for advice – Mr. Bags. With millions on followers on China’s most popular social networks and many of the world’s biggest bag brands fighting to gain his favor, this 27-year-old really has the Chinese bag game on lock.

As a student of the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, Tao Liang (Mr. Bags’ real name) spent most of his free time shopping on Rodeo Drive. While most of his fellow Asian colleagues developed hobbies like playing basketball or video games, he couldn’t get enough of luxury bags. He went on shopping sprees with friends, educated himself on bag culture, followed the biggest trends in fashion and posted his opinions on the hottest bags on various social media. The son of financiers, Mr’ Bags never imagined his passion for bags would one day catapult him to the top of China’s fashion influencers, but that’s exactly what happened.

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Not everyone chooses to use their superpowers for good; case in point, this Japanese store clerk who used his amazing photographic memory to memorize the credit card info of over a thousand clients in mere seconds of interacting with them.

34-year-old Yusuke Taniguchi was recently arrested for having stolen the credit card information of over 1,300 people and then using it to by things for himself on the internet. Apparently, Taniguchi worked as a part-time clerk at a shopping mall in Koto City, Tokyo, where he would use his trained photographic memory to steal people’s private information whenever they used their credit cards to buy something. In the few seconds it took to process a payment, the clerk would memorize the card’s 16-digit-number, the holder’s name, expiry date, and security code, all the elements needed to later use the card for online shopping.

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Gemma Cairns, a 32-year-old woman from Scotland, can’t remember the last time she experienced total silence. Even in the absence of outside noises, she can hear everything going on inside her body, from blood pumping through her veins, to the movements of her eyes.

Cairns has been able to hear noises coming from inside her body for as long as she can remember, but she only realized it was unusual after mentioning it to her mother as a teenager. She’s been looking for explanations ever since, but until three years ago, doctors couldn’t properly diagnose her condition and only prescribed her medication for blocked ears and nasal problems. Nothing worked, and the young woman had to get used to the idea that she would never learn what was wrong with her. Luckily, she moved to Glasgow in 2016, and was able to see a specialist who finally diagnosed her with bilateral superior semicircular canal dehiscence.

The rare condition means that Gemma is missing part of a tiny temporal bone in both her ear canals, which impacts both her hearing and her balance when moving around. Doctors recommended that she undergo surgery as soon as possible in order to fix the problem, but after getting her right ear fixed last September, she will have to wait until next month to hopefully experience silence for the first time.

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With gun crime so frequent in the United States these days, even making a gun gesture with your hand can put some people on edge. A Pennsylvania man found that out the hard way after being charged with disorderly conduct for pointing a “finger gun” at another man during an argument.

The bizarre incident took place in June 2018, when, according to surveillance footage, 64-year-old Stephen Kirchner was walking with his girlfriend on a street in Manor Township, Pennsylvania. The woman reportedly had a no contact order against one of her neighbors, and when the couple walked by the neighbor’s residence, Kirchner stopped, turned around, formed a finger gun with his thumb and forefinger, pointed it at the neighbor and pulled the imaginary trigger. Little did he know that the gesture would lead to a year-long litigation.

The 64-year-old’s finger gun was apparently so disturbing to bystanders in the area that some of them actually called the police about it. To make matters worse, the neighbor he pointed he finger gun at later told police that he had felt “extremely threatened” by the gesture. Kirchner himself admitted that he knew his gesture would only inflame tensions, but he later learned that it was actually a crime.

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Cilla Carden, a vegan woman from Perth, in Australia, took her neighbors to court for “deliberately” allowing the smell of barbecued meat and fish to cross onto her property.

The frustrated vegan has been in a dispute with both her neighbors since 2017, and has taken one of them court several times, unsuccessfully. After having her case thrown out by a tribunal earlier this year, Carden recently applied to the Supreme Court of Western Australia for right of appeal, which was also rejected back in June. It doesn’t take a legal expert to figure out why, though, as the woman basically argued that one of her neighbors deliberately barbecued meat and fish in their backyard, because they knew she couldn’t stand it.

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Did you grow up wishing the school you went to every day looked more like a fairy-tale palace? No? Well this Russian billionaire sure did and when he became rich enough to afford it, he actually turned his old school into a flamboyant palace, complete with gilded walls, marble floors and even a water fountain.

Walking into the 106 Secondary School in Yekaterinburg after its recent renovation you couldn’t be blamed for thinking you had been magically transported to a French Baroque palace like Versailles. With golden chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, gilded decorations covering the walls and luxurious marble floors, it certainly looks nothing like a Soviet-era school dating back to the 1940s. That’s thanks to the generous donation of a former student named Andrei Simanovsky who grew up to become a successful businessman and decided to fulfill his childhood dream of turning his school into a palace.

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