For thousands of years, the eggs of a species of water insect have been consumed as a ‘food of the Gods’ which has come to be known as Mexican caviar.

Lake Texcoco, a shallow body of water on the outskirts of Mexico City, is home to an aquatic insect of the corixidae family, which is technically a water fly that most locals refer to as a mosquito. That confusion is less important, though, as it’s the insect’s eggs that people are interested in. Known as ahuautle – loosely translated as ‘seeds of joy’ – the tiny delicacies are about the size of quinoa seeds and have a pale golden color. They have been consumed since the days of the Aztec Empire, but today only a handful of fishermen are known to still be harvesting the eggs, and few young people even know about the existence of this unusual ‘caviar’.

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A unique “gadget funeral” service allows people to preserve outdated and broken devices that they have become attached to.

They say you shouldn’t get attached to material things, but most of us can’t really help it. Whether it’s our first car, the house we grew up in, or even an old phone, we tend to get attached to our worldly possessions. And since mobile phones and tablets have become almost an extension of ourselves, it makes sense that some of us have trouble upgrading even when it is obvious that our old gadgets are struggling. That’s where China’s gadget funeral service businesses come in, allowing users to preserve their obsolete devices as framed, deconstructed works of art that can be hung around and admired forever.

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Thousands of people in China are taking up “crocodile crawling” classes, a weird type of back relief exercise inspired by the movement of a crocodile.

Multiple news outlets in China have been reporting on a new health trend with dozens of people joining large groups and moving around on all fours. Viral videos shot in large cities like Xiangshan and Changsha show long lines of people all dressed the same and wearing industrial gloves to protect their hands as they slowly move around on their hands and feet. The movement is supposed to strengthen back muscles and relieve back pain if practiced regularly, for a long enough period of time.

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A 40-year-old man has been dubbed ‘South Africa’s dumbest criminal’ after walking into a police station to get a job there despite being on a wanted criminal list.

Thomas Ngcobo had been on the run for the last seven years, after stealing hardware products worth more than $1,200 while working as a delivery man in 2015. He reportedly diverted deliveries to other addresses without the owner’s consent or knowledge, and went on the run as soon as his manager realized that some invoices were missing and several products had been delivered to the wrong addresses. Ngcobo’s name was added to the police’s wanted criminal list as soon as his employer filed a complaint against him, but he managed to avoid capture for seven years. And then he walked right into a police station like he didn’t even have a criminal record…

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After seeing its pork production decimated by African swine flu outbreaks, China has been investing heavily into so-called ‘pig hotels’, controversial multi-storey pig raising facilities.

Talk about elevating pig farming to new heights! For the last three years, farmers across China have been investing billions of dollars into massive high-rise hog-raising facilities popularly known as pig hotels. The trend started with two and three-storey facilities, but it quickly escalated into monolithic structures of over 10 levels, with tens of thousand of animals raised on each. At the end of this month, Zhongxin Kaiwei Modern Farming, a privately-owned company in Hubei, is set to complete a 26-storey pig hotel touted as the largest such structure in the world.

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Kubota Glass, an allegedly revolutionary pair of glasses capable of curing people of myopia, aka nearsightedness, has recently gone on sale in Japan for a whopping $5,700.

We originally wrote about Kubota Glass in January of 2021, when Kubota Pharmaceutical first announced that it had come up with a non-invasive way of reversing the effects of an ophthalmological condition expected to affect half of the world’s population by 2050. Myopia, or nearsightedness, is an eye disorder where light focuses in front of, instead of on, the retina, making objects in the distance appear blurry, while close ones appear normal. Apart from genetic factors, myopia has been associated with environmental causes, such as the lack of exposure to normal visual stimuli normally found outdoors, in daylight conditions. With so many of us spending more and more time indoors in front of our TVs, monitors and computer screens, it’s no wonder that myopia cases are increasing at an alarming rate.

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An Indian politician who drank a glass of water straight out of a polluted ‘holy river’ to show locals that it was safe to drink was reportedly airlifted to a hospital a couple of days later.

On Sunday, July 17, while visiting Sultanpurlodhi, Bhagwant Mann, Chief Minister of Punjab, pulled off a rather daring publicity stunt, one that reportedly cost him an emergency hospital visit. Accompanied by reporters, local officials and Sikh elders, Mann at one point bent down, scooped water right out of the Kali Bein rivulet and downed it to show everyone that it was safe to drink. That got cheers and applause from those around the politician, but they probably had no idea how dirty and polluted the river actually was.

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Kaketsugi – literally ‘invisible mending’ in Japanese – is an amazing cloth mending technique from Japan that involves repairing damaged cloth to the point where you can’t even tell it was ever damaged.

With fast fashion being more popular than ever, cloth mending isn’t nearly as necessary as it once was. Got a tear in one of your socks? Just throw it in the trash and get a new pair, they’re cheap and readily available. The same goes for virtually any other garment, so needle and thread mending is a slowly disappearing craft. But what about special garments, what happens when something truly special and dear to our hearts becomes damaged? You can’t just go out and replace something of sentimental value, but you can’t wear it with a hole in it either. That’s where the magical art of kaketsugi comes in.

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Scientists at the University of Chicago have developed a new algorithm that forecasts crime with up to 90% accuracy by analyzing data and learning patterns.

Minority Report is a very popular sci-fi film about a special police unit that can arrest murderers before they commit their crimes with the help of three clairvoyant humans called Precogs, which can visualize impending homicides. It’s a brilliant film, if you like sci-fi murder mysteries, or you’re simply a fan of Tom Cruise, but the reason we bring it up in this story is that a team of researchers claims to have come up with a real-world, AI-powered system that is also able to predict crimes with an accuracy of 90%. And their systems doesn’t require Precogs, just past data so it can predict the future.

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Intimate wellness brand INTIMINA recently released Period Crunch, a unique uterus-shaped breakfast cereal that also colors milk red.

Did you know that 82% of people are unable to correctly identify where the uterus is? That probably has a lot to do with the fact that we rarely talk about the female uterus, at least when compared to other, more well-known organs, like the heart or the liver. Well, Intima, a company that specializes in menstrual products, such as environmentally-friendly period cups and Kegel muscle training devices, would like to change that, and they’re going about it in an interesting way. Last month, the company announced its latest product, Period Crunch, a breakfast cereal that’s supposed to act as a conversation starter about menstruation in the average home.

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Photos of a male lion at a Chinese zoo sporting baby bangs went viral online, leaving many wondering how the staff managed to pull off the haircut. They claim they didn’t…

The lion’s mane is the most recognizable feature of the species, and even though its size and color vary by a variety of factors, both genetic and environmental, we can say that it almost never has that tidy “salon” look. But there are exceptions, like this specimen at a zoo in Guangzhou, China, which recently went viral for sporting an impeccable mane that seemed styled after the baby bangs we see female celebrities sporting on the red carpet at various events. The unique look has sparked some controversy online, with many accusing the zoo staff of cutting the animal’s hair, a claim that the zoo has repeatedly denied.

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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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A few miles north of the Panama Canal Zone lies the Valley of Square Trees, a unique tourist attraction where trees of the cottonwood family have rectangular trunks.

Unique in the entire world, this group of square-shaped cottonwood trees grows in a valley created from the ashes of a giant volcano – El Valle de Anton. Featuring hard-right angles, the trunks of the square trees have baffled tourists and scientists alike for several years. Experts from the University of Florida took saplings of the mysterious trees to see if they retain the same characteristics in a different environment, and concluded that their square shape must have something to do with conditions unique to the valley in which they grow. Evidence that the cause of this bizarre phenomenon is deep-seated is indicated by the fact that their tree rings, which represent its growth, are also square.

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The gumboot chiton, a marine mollusk also known as the Wondering Meatloaf, has teeth made of the hardest biological material known to man.

Magnetite is a geologic mineral commonly found in the earth’s crust, but it’s also somehow produced by the gumboot chiton and synthesized into rows of small teeth hard enough to scrape algae off of rocks. The top of these teeth is layered with magnetite, which makes them literally as strong as steel, but the root is also incredibly tough, thanks to another iron-like material that has never been observed in living creatures before – santabarbaraite. This unique combination makes the chiton’s teeth the hardest biological material in the world.

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The sand dunes behind Barril Beach on Portugal’s southern Algarve Coast are home to over 200 rusty anchors abandoned there almost 60 years ago by the local tuna fishing community.

O Cemitério das Âncoras (The Anchor Cemetery) is one of the most iconic Sights of the Algarve Coast, yet not many people know its history and meaning. This isn’t just a random place where old ships abandoned their anchors many years ago, but a memorial to a now-defunct trade going back hundreds of years. In 1964, the local community decided to commemorate the death of traditional Bluefin Tuna fishing by burying the anchors that once formed the backbone of the complex tuna traps known as armações. They’ve remained there ever since as a reminder of the effect of industrialization and over-fishing on the locals.

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