After seeing his business affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, a Michigan jeweler decided to close shop and make money by using about $1 million in precious metals as treasure for would-be treasure hunters willing to pay for clues.

Johnny Perri has been a jeweler his whole life, after learning the business from his father, but the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus proved too hard for his shop in Macomb County, Michigan. He had to options: either sell everything and retire, or find a new way to make money using the jewelry. Perri and his wife chose option two, allegedly burying or otherwise hiding around $1 million-worth of jewelry in dozens of spots, from the Detroit metropolitan area through the Upper Peninsula. Now the jeweler is challenging people to go hunting for his treasures and claim them for themselves, if they can find it.

Read More »

Spanish glassblower Miguel Arribas spent around 500 hours making the world’s largest glass-blown sculpture, a whimsical castle fashioned after Cinderella’s castle, but it took a couple of children just a fraction of a second to ruin it.

Last weekend, the Shanghai Museum of Glass announced that Arribas’ Fantasy Castle exhibit had been broken into pieces after two children accidentally knocked it down while playing inside the museum. Presented as a gift to the museum in 2016 to mark its fifth anniversary, Miguel Arribas’ record-setting masterpiece was created using around 500,000 glass loops, weighed 60 kilograms and featured spires made with 24-karat gold. It was made up of approximately 30,000 individual parts and weighed over 60 kilograms. Its worth was estimated at around 450,000 yuan ($65,000).

Read More »

A bizarre love triangle between a 75-year-old woman, her 52-year-old ex-son-in-law and her 56-year-old daughter has sparked controversy in Russia after their story went viral this month.

Galina Zhukovskaya, 75, from St. Petersburg, Russia, married Vyacheslav Zhukovsky, a man 23 years her junior back in 2010, but it wasn’t the age difference between them that made their union controversial in the eyes of the world. The problem was that Vyacheslav had been Galina’s son-in-law after being married to her daughter, Elena, for three years. The couple broke up shortly after his realese from prison, allegedly due to Elena’s infidelity. Vyacheslav, found refuge with his mother-in-law, and the two tied the knot in 2010. They’ve been together ever since, but Galina claims that her daughter has always been envious of their relationship and has been trying to break them up.

Read More »

After using her face for stunning make-up illusions that left people scratching their heads, Instagram superstar Mimi Choi is focusing on other body parts, primarily her arms and legs, with similar results.

A former schoolteacher turned makeup artist, Vancouver-based Mimi Choi took social media by storm three years ago with her incredible optical illusions. Using makeup, body paint, mountains of patience and innate talent, Choi managed to turn her face into a canvas for all sorts of trompe l’oeil artworks that fascinated millions of people around the world. It’s no wonder that she boasts over 1 million followers on Instagram alone, as her account is definitely one of the most attention-worthy on the popular social network.

Read More »

A homesick camel recently managed to melt the hearts of millions of Chinese people after it was reported that it traveled 100 kilometres through the desert to return to its former owners, eight months after being sold.

Chinese media recently featured the heartwarming story of a loyal camel who allegedly spent days crossing the barren desert of North China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to reach its former home after being sold to another farmer eight months prior. The injured animal was spotted walking through the desert earlier this month by another herdsman who took it in and tended to its needs while trying to find its owner. News of the camel’s discovery reached its owner who rushed to retrieve it, but after hearing about the animal’s arduous journey, its former masters wanted it back.

Read More »

Tuba Geckil is a talented cake artist who specializes in making delicious desserts that double as optical illusions.

From ultra-realistic cakes shaped as Crocs shoes and salami-topped pizza, to detailed busts of real-lief and fictional characters, there’s nothing that Turkish food artist Tuba Geckil can’t shape her cakes as. In fact, some of her best works were included in a video compilation that went viral on Twitter last weekend inspiring the hashtag #EveythingIsCake and lots of memes. People just couldn’t get over how realistic some of Geckil’s creations looked and soon, everyone started sharing whatever realistic cakes they could find online.

Read More »

According to a fascinating new study, the Andean condor spend almost all of their flying time in soaring mode, flapping their wings only 1.3 percent of the time.

Weighing up to about 16 kilograms and with a wingspan of roughly 3.3 meters, the condor is the largest flying bird in the world by combined measurement of weight and wingspan. With that in mind, it’s almost impossible to believe that it can stay airborne for at least five hours and cover a distance of over 100 miles without flapping its enormous wings once. But that was the most interesting finding of a study published by researchers at the University of Swansea after monitoring a group of condors for five years.

Read More »

Photos of what many religious people are describing as a detailed representation of Jesus Christ discovered inside the branch of a recently-pruned willow tree have gone viral in Brazil.

Last Thursday, while pruning a willow tree in Itaquiraí, Brazil’s Mato Grosso do Sul, municipal maintenance workers noticed a strange pattern on the inside of a branch they had just cut with a chainsaw. After examining the pattern, some of them were convinced that it was a natural representation of Jesus Christ. Odimar Souza, a civil servant who was overseeing the pruning operation on Monte Castelo Avenue, in the Monte Castelo neighborhood, was intrigued by the discovery and took a piece of the branch home with him.

Read More »

A unique tourist attraction in southeastern China’s Fujian province lets wuxia fans fulfill their dream of experiencing the flying techniques of the kung-fu masters they used to watch on TV growing up.

If you’re a fan of popular wuxia films like “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” or “House of Flying Daggers”, you’ve probably fantasized or even tried reenacting scenes where protagonists soared through the air or battled their rivals while defying gravity. Not the easiest thing to do without the right props, but luckily there is now a place where you can reproduce all your favorite kung-fu movie techniques to a stunning backdrop of traditional Chinese architecture and waterfalls.

Read More »

A 15-year-old Chinese boy was rushed to a hospital back in March after passing out in his home in the city of Nannning. He reportedly suffered a stroke that left his left arm paralyzed, after spending the past month gaming and sleeping just two hours a night.

Like many other Year 9 students, the boy, identified only as Xiaobin in the media, had been confined to his home since February due to the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown in China. His parents told doctors that he had been spending most of his time in his room, under the pretext of taking online classes, but they later found out that he was in fact spending his days and most of his nights playing video games. According to medical experts at Jiangbin Hospital, that was the main cause of the boy’s unusual stroke, which left him with a paralyzed arm and hand.

Read More »

German automation company Festo recently unveiled its latest bio-inspired creation, the Bionic Swift, a lightweight robot capable of mimicking the flight of an actual swift.

Over the last decade Festo has unveiled an impressive number of robots inspired by the Earth’s fauna, from bionic ants and butterflies, to penguins, jellyfish and even kangaroos. Earlier this month, the robotics studio showcased their newest invention, a lightweight flying robot inspired by the swift and capable of mimicking its flight maneuvers with impressive accuracy. From steep turns and drops to nausea-inducing loops, the new Bionic Swift can pull of most, if not all, of a real swift’s movements.

Read More »

An Indian man is so obsessed with photography that he named his three sons after iconic camera brands – Canon, Nikon and Epson – and spent a small fortune on a three-story villa shaped like a giant camera.

You hear the phrase “passionate about photography” a lot among photography enthusiasts, but Ravi Hongal, a 49-year-old professional photographer from Belgaum, India, actually came up with some truly unique ways of showing off his passion for the art. After naming his three sons after some of the most iconic camera brands in the history of photography, Ravi recently spent around $95,000 on an impressive house shaped like a giant vintage camera, complete with a lens-shaped window, flash, and even a giant SD card.

Read More »

A 95-year-old man from India’s Karnataka state claims that he has never once cut his hair, which now measures an impressive 24-feet-long and has to be bundled into a huge, entangled mass on top of his head.

During this year’s lockdown, a lot of people were freaking out for not being able to visit the hairdresser for a few weeks, but one Indian man claims he has gone almost a century without getting his haircut even once. Doddapalliah, who is reportedly 95-years-old, is revered by many as a human deity in his home town of Molakalmuru, Chitradurga district, needs to have his hair wrapped into a giant ball on top of his head and secured with cloth just so he can move around. That’s because his entangled locks measure a whopping 24 feet (7.3 meters) in length.

Read More »

A Japanese former busker turned Zen Buddhist monk has been getting a lot of attention because of his unique music which combines beatboxing, sampling and a wide range of chants.

Before being ordained as a monk in 2015, 37-year-old Yogetsu Akasaka traveled the world as a full-time busker, making a living on his beatboxing skills. A friend had introduced him to the oral art of sound and instrument imitation in his early 20’s, and he was so impressed that he decided to give it a go himself. It turned out that he was pretty good at it, so good in fact that he was able to make a living as a busker in several countries, including the United States and Australia. After following his father’s example and becoming a monk, he realized he missed his music, so he came up with a way to blend his calling and his beatboxing talent in a unique way.

Read More »

If you’ve been dreaming of going electric, but can’t yet afford to buy a Tesla, you can start low, really low. Changli, the world’s cheapest electric car, will set you back just $930 ($1,200 with larger batteries), and can be ordered online and delivered to your door.

Designed and produced by Chinese manufacturer Changzhou Xili Car Industry, the Changli, or Changli Nemeca is a tiny electric vehicle that has been getting a lot of attention online after being promoted as the world’s most affordable electric car. Calling this thing a car is kind of stretching it a bit, as it’s electric motor can only produce the equivalent of 1.16 horse power, and it has a top speed of only 30 km/h. Still, it does come with some interesting features, like air-conditioning, independent suspension, heater, radio and even reverse-view camera. But the most impressive thing about the Changli, in my opinion, is that you can have it delivered to your doorstep.

Read More »