No one ever said that ending a romantic relationship was easy, but planning your own kidnapping and subsequent murder just to avoid telling someone “it’s over” sounds ridiculous. And yet, one Chinese woman did just that rather than tell her boyfriend she didn’t want to be with him anymore.

A 37-year-old woman from Wuhan, in central China’s Hubei Province, was recently arrested after it was revealed that she had faked her own kidnapping and murder at the hands of her ex-husband in order to avoid having to break up with her current boyfriend, whose financial situation she considered lacking. The woman, surnamed Yu, had been dating her boyfriend, Lin, for a while, but she only learned that he was poor after visiting his home during the Chinese New Year. It was something she apparently just couldn’t get over, so she decided to leave him, but fearing that he would get clingy and refuse rejection if she simply told him she wanted to end the relationship, Yu devised a plan to make herself disappear.

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A 59-year-old man from Taiwan has become an internet meme thanks to his ridiculously square hairdo that makes him look like a real-life Minecraft character.

Wu Goren first made news headlines back in 2014, when photos of his bizarre square hairdo went viral on social media. Taiwanese news channels quickly tracked down the middle-aged man and questioned him about his unique hairdo. As it turns out, Wu, who works as a medical scientist at National Taiwan University Hospital, adopted the look after being rejected by a woman, as a way of making himself look like a man in his 20s or 30s. It’s unclear how he came to the conclusion that square hair makes someone look younger, but there’s no denying that it is eye-catching.

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A New Jersey man will never forget 62nd birthday after his sons posted his phone number on a large roadside billboard inviting people to call and wish him well. So far, he has gotten over 15,000 calls and texts from people all over the world.

Chris Ferry’s sons used to prank him when going to restaurants by telling waiters that it was his birthday just so they could watch him squirm uncomfortably as they brought him cake. This year, they took things to a whole new level by renting a billboard outside Linwood and posting their dad’s phone number on it, inviting people to send him their best wishes. They thought it would be something of a local joke, with their dad getting a few calls from random strangers, but after the photo went viral on social media, things got a bit out of hand.

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Members of the Aetherius Society, a fringe religious movement founded in the 1950s, believe that spiritual power is a tangible type of energy, like electricity, so they store it in special “spiritual power batteries” for release in case of global catastrophes. The Aetherius Society claims to have prevented several international crises by releasing the concentrated spiritual energy stored in these special batteries.

Founded in 1954 by a former taxi driver called David King the Aetherius Society is one of the earliest UFO-based religious movements in the world. Its members believe that some of the most famous religious figures in human history come from different planets. The Hindu god Krishna, for example, apparently comes from Saturn, which also happens to be home to a “Cosmic Hierarchy” or “Interplanetary Council”, while Jesus and Buddha are from Venus. The main goal of the Aetherius Society is to work with these “Cosmic Masters” to help humanity solve and prevent its problems so it can advance into the New Age. One of the ways it does this is with the help of spiritual power, which can be stored in special batteries indefinitely.

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Ed Stafford, a former British Army captain and renowned adventurer recently embarked on a 60-day challenge that saw him sleeping on the streets of various cities in Britain. His experiment was meant to highlight the plight of homeless people, but he was shocked to find that begging can be more lucrative than he had ever imagined.

Stafford, who is known as the first person to walk the entire length of the Amazon river, spent 60 days sleeping on the streets of cities like London, Manchester and Glasgow, and observing the lifestyle of real homeless people for a TV documentary soon to air on Channel 4. Although the adventurer admits that he did observe drug addiction problems among the homeless and heard some truly heartbreaking stories from them, what really shocked him was  how much money some of these beggars made – up to £200 ($260) a night – and the amounts of free food they received from passers-by and volunteers.

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A series of photos showing students casually lighting up cigarettes in what looks like a college classroom have been doing the rounds online for several months, leaving everyone puzzled as to what is going on. As it turns out, it’s just a display of hands-on learning in a course on tobacco.

The controversial photos originally went viral on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, back in November of last year, but they’ve been resurfacing on various other social networks and news sites ever since. Young students can be seen lighting cigarettes and casually smoking them, while others take their photos with smartphones and the teacher casually observes the spectacle. Teen smoking is frowned upon in China, as it is pretty much everywhere else, so the photos caused quite a stir online even after the dean of the university where the smoking took place offered an explanation.

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Money counting machines have been a staple of banks all around the world for decades now, and China is no exception, but here bank tellers still practice their banknote counting skills every day, and some of them can really give those automated counters a run for their money.

Videos of Chinese bank tellers showing off their amazing money counting skills have been doing the rounds online for a long time, and for good reason. There’s something oddly satisfying about watching someone breeze through a wad of cash in mere seconds, but if you go deeper down this rabbit hole, you’ll find that there’s a whole lot more to Chinese banknote counting, including several techniques, one more impressive than the other, and even a popular TV contest in which money counting champions of different banks compete for the title of fastest and most accurate “human banknote counting machine” and the bragging rights that come with it.

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If the idea of getting paid a decent monthly wage to do nothing, or whatever you want, for the rest of your life sounds appealing, you may be interested in this Swedish experimental art project that plans to hire a very lucky person for a responsibility-free job with just one very simple requirement.

This government-funded conceptual art project/ideal employment opportunity in Gothenburg, Sweden will select one very lucky applicant to show up at a train station currently under construction in the city every day and punch a time clock. This will turn on a set of fluorescent lights over the boarding platform to let everyone know that the useless employee showed up at work that day. After that, the person is free to do anything they want, or nothing at all, just as long as they return to the station to clock out and turn off the lights when their shift is over. They don’t have to hang around the train station during working hours, and they can quit or be replaced by someone else anytime they want. As long as they don’t get another job, the position is guaranteed for the rest of their lives.

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A Japanese tech startup claims to have developed an artificial intelligence software that analyzes surveillance camera footage in order to detect suspicious behavior and prevent shoplifting before it actually happens.

In 2002, when the movie Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise, came out, the concept of preventing a future crime before the perpetrator did anything remotely suspicious was nothing more than a cool sci-fi idea, but thanks to the rapid advancement of artifical intelligence, we already have an early version of the technology displayed in that movie. VaakEye, an AI software developed by Japanese startup Vaak, can allegedly detect shoplifting before it occurs by analyzing surveillance camera footage for discrete suspicious movements and behaviors of people caught in the camera’s field of view. If the algorithm decides that there is a high-enough probability of a person shoplifting, it sends an alert via a smartphone app so the crime can be prevented.

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Mansur Çalar, a 33-year-old soccer player from Turkey, has been accused of using a concealed sharp object to repeatedly slash players of the opposing team during a third-division game last weekend.

Allegations against the footballer started pouring in on Monday after several players from Turkish club Sakaryaspor, the club Çalar’s team, Amedspor, had played against a day before, started posting photos of sustained slash wounds online. Some had scratch-like marks on their arms, others on their backs and necks, but they all accused Mansur Çalar, asking that he be reprimanded. Both the accused and his club dismissed the allegations, but then a video collage showing Çalar’s behavior in several tense moments during the Sunday match went viral online and authorities opened an official investigation.

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The Department of Otorhinolaryngology at Taiwan’s Asia University Hospital recently reported the case of a student who fell asleep while listening to music with earbuds on and woke up completely deaf in one year.

The popularity of headphones and earbuds has skyrocketed right alongside that of smartphones, with people using them pretty much everywhere, either to listen to music, take phone calls or even study. Some people reportedly use them while sleeping to learn foreign languages subconsciously. Even though “hypnopedia”, or the ability to learn during sleep, isn’t supported by any scientific evidence, many people still believe that because the brain is able to perceive sound during sleep, by exposing it to new information will cause it to retain at least some of it. But apparently, testing this concept, or even listening to music with earbuds or headphones on while sleeping isn’t a very good idea.

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Authorities in the German town of Ahlen have come under fire for seizing a family’s dog over unpaid taxes and then selling it on eBay to recover the money owed.

This bizarre story started back in November, 2018, when a court bailiff and two city officials showed up at an Ahlen family’s home to seize valuables as compensation for financial debts owed to the municipality. The family, who preferred to remain anonymous, told local newspaper Ahlener Tageblatt that the officials first tried to seize her disabled husband’s wheelchair, but couldn’t because it wasn’t their property. Instead, they settled on the family’s pet dog, a pedigree pug named Edda.

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There are lots of popular animals on Instagram, but while most of them rely solely on their looks to gain followers, a few actually use their talents to do it. Take Ghost the Samoyed, a fluffy canine who just loves to sing.

It isn’t like Ghost isn’t cute enough to get attention on Instagram just by posing for photos, she just has other special talents. You see, Ghost has a lovely singing voice and she likes to show it off whenever she hears a sound that inspires her. Whether it’s Beyonce singing on TV, her master’s voice on Facetime, or a simple squeaky toy, Ghost just lets loose. Her singing is more like howling, but in many of the performances that her owners upload on Instagram it’s obvious that her howls are not random at all. Especially when listening to a song, Ghost tries to follow along as best she can.

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Poppy farmers in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh are forced to guard their fields day and night in a desperate attempt to fend off large groups of opium-addicted parrots who get high off the narcotic effects of poppy seeds.

Scattered rains have already affected poppy production in Neemuch district, but farmers here say that the increasing number of opium-addicted parrots that pillage their crops on a daily basis are making things even worse. Using loudspeakers and firecrackers to keep the birds at bay has failed and the farmers’ appeals to local authorities have fallen of deaf ears, so people have no choice but to guard the poppy fields day and night. But even so, the birds still come to get their fix dozens of time a day.

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Romanie-Jade Tulloch, a 20-year-old self-taught makeup artist from Nottingham, in the UK, combines her love of makeup and art to create mind-blowing optical illusions on her face.

Romanie has always been into makeup, but she only started focusing on it two years ago, in the hopes of becoming a freelance makeup artist. She never studied professional makeup, preferring instead to hone her skills by watching online tutorials and experimenting with various cosmetics. Having studied fine arts for two years in college, she naturally drifted from conventional makeup to painting artistic optical illusions on her face and posting her best work on Instagram. Before she knew it, she had hundreds of thousands of followers on the popular social network.

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