Pope Michael – The Kansas Man Who Considers Himself the Real Pope of the Catholic Church

Pope Francis is generally considered the supreme leader of the worldwide Catholic Church, but to David Bawden, a conservative Catholic from Topeka, in Kansas, Francis and the five other popes who cam e before him are nothing more than frauds or ‘antipopes’. Interestingly, Bowen considers himself the one true pope of the Catholic Church.

David Bawden was elected pope on July 16, 1990, in Belvue, Kansas, by a conclave of six people that included himself and his parents. He became Pope Michael, the self-proclaimed one and true pope of the Catholic Church, and he has spent the last 28 years attracting followers and performing his duties as the religious leader of billions of Catholics around the world, which includes holding prayer meetings and the performing the Stations of the Cross. To make himself known to the world, Pope Michael maintains his own website, is active on social media and has even appeared in a feature-length documentary.

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Please Don’t Step on the Fish! Vietnam’s Unique Flooded Cafe

Animal cafes where you can enjoy a hot cup of coffee and pet cute animals like cats, dogs or even sheep have been springing up all over the world, but Amix Coffee is the only cafe in the world where you can relax as dozens of decorative fish swim at your feet.

Located in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City, Amix Coffee features two flooded floors filled with hundreds of fish both small and large. They are both insulated with two layers of plastic tarp and furniture legs are wrapped in cotton to minimize friction and prevent damage to the tarp. Each floor covers an area of 20 square meters and the water level is up to 25 centimeters deep. In order to gain access to these man-made ponds full of colorful fish, visitors are required to take off their shoes and clean their feet. They can then enjoy a wide range of refreshments and snacks as Japanese carp and other small fish swim at their feet.

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Chinese City to Launch “Artificial Moon” Bright Enough to Replace Streetlights

The chairman of a private space contractor in Chengdu, China, recently revealed plans to launch an “artificial moon” satellite up to eight times as bright as the real moon and capable of replacing traditional streetlights.

The ambitious project was announced at a national mass innovation and entrepreneurship event held in Chengdu, a city of 14 million people in China’s southwestern province of Sichuan. Wu Chunfeng, the chairman of the private space contractor Chengdu Aerospace Science and Technology Microelectronics System Research Institute Co (Casc) revealed plans to launch an illumination satellite referred to as an “artificial moon” that would be eight times as bright as Earth’s natural satellite and capable of an area with a diameter of 10-80km.

The innovative satellite “designed to complement the moon at night” has apparently been in the works since for years, but thanks to the rapid advancement of technology it should be ready for launch in 2020. While the exact details of the satellite have yet to be revealed, some media outlets report that it will have a coating that can reflect light from the sun with solar panel-like wings which can be adjusted to allow the light to focus on precise locations.

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Man Rescued After Burying Himself Alive So He Could Become a God

An Indian man was recently rescued from a pit that he had voluntarily been buried in for 8 hours in order to attain salvation and be reborn as a God.

Deeraj Kharol, a tantrik who had been living in a temple in Karocho ka Kheda village, Rajasthan, for a few years, last week announced that he planned to bury himself alive as part of a bizarre ritual to attain ‘samadhi’ (salvation) and be resurrected as a God three days later. Instead of talking some sense into him, enthusiastic villagers celebrated his decision and offered to aid him in any way, even digging a pit for him near the temple where he stayed. Last Wednesday, on the first day of Navratra, they buried him in the pit, as per his instructions.

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Uganda’s Most Fertile Woman Has Given Birth to 44 Children by Age 40

Mariam Nabatanzi, a 40-year-old woman from Uganda’s Mukono District has been dubbed the African country’s most fertile woman after it was reported that she has given birth to 44 children.

In her home village of Kabimbiri, central Uganda, Mariam Nabatanzi is known as Nalongo Muzaala Bana (the twin mother that produces quadruplets) and that nickname is well-earned. In the 18 years that she spent being pregnant throughout her 40 year life, the woman has given birth to six sets of twins, four sets of triplets, three sets of quadruples, as well as a few single births. Out of the 44 children that she brought into this world, 38 are still alive today, most of them still living at the family home. Mariam is a single mother, and although providing for such a large family, she somehow manages to put enough food on the table for everyone.

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Amazing Human Being Travels Around China Reuniting Homeless People with Their Families

33-year-old Cai Yanqiu has spent the last three years of his life traveling through his home country in China with the sole purpose of helping homeless people in any way he can.

Cai Yanqiu’s decided to dedicate his life to helping homeless people three years ago. He had set up a small stall in Zhanjiang, China’s Guangdong, and he was waiting for customers when he saw a barefooted homeless man pass him by. That man reminded him of the devastation caused by the loss of his brother, over two decades ago. In 1994, Cai’s brother who suffered from epilepsy, disappeared from the family home, and when he was finally found, 3 days later, he was in such a bad condition that he passed away in his family’s arms. Cai remembered his mother lying in bed for days morning the loss of his brother, and after doing some crying of his own after seeing the homeless man, he decided that he couldn’t just stand by and allow other families to go through what his did.

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Real-Life “The Joker” Terrorises English Town

A wannabe ‘killer clown’ who dressed like popular Batman villain The Joker was recently jailed for terrorizing the people of Nottinghamshire, in England, for three months.

29-year-old Damien Hammond, a homeless and jobless man who styled himself like Heath Ledger’s character in the hit movie The Dark Knight Rises, has been jailed for 22 weeks and banned from Nottingham for three years, after going on a three-month crime spree just a few miles from the real-life Gotham village. Hammond, who is well known around Nottingham for his obsession with The Joker, reportedly pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct towards staff in various retail stores, waving a gun-shaped cigarette lighter while standing in traffic, and striking a police officer, among other charges. After hearing his sentence, the accused, who showed up to court with bright green hair, said “Send me to prison, I don’t care”. Typical Joker…

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This Chinese Interchange Looks Like a Giant Rollercoaster

China is famous for its bewildering and oftentimes confusing highway interchanges, but the Qianchun interchange in the mountainous province of Guizhou is the only one that actually looks like a giant rollercoaster for cars and trucks.

Construction on the Qianchun Interchange began in 2009, but the massive road knot was only completed last year . It consists of 18 different ramps, in 8 directions, on five different layers, with the highest one standing 37 meters above ground. Like the nearby Huangjuewan Overpass, in Chongqing, this incredibly complex infrastructure project has been labelled a nightmare for motorists trying to find their way around.

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Spain’s Most-Wanted Drug Lord Taunts Police in Reggaeton Music Video

Spanish police have been hunting Francisco “Isco” Tejon, the head of Los Castanitas, since 2016, but the last place they expected to see him was in a risqué music video, driving luxury cars partying with scantly clad women.

A music video posted on YouTube last week has been getting a lot of attention online for featuring one of Spain’s most wanted criminals. Francisco “Isco” Tejon, who escaped from custody in Morocco  two years ago and has been on the run ever since, can be seen stepping out of a Bentley Continental limousine with Classe-A, a Cuban reggaeton singer living in Spain, and then entering a pleasure palace to party with half-naked girls. Tejon’s unexpected cameo surprised authorities who now hope to use his arrogance against him and finally put him behind bars.

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‘Robin Hood Banker’ Steals From Rich Clients to Help the Poor

Gilberto Baschiera, the former manager of a bank in Forni di Sopra, a small town in Italy’s Dolomite Alps, has been nicknamed the “Robin Hood Banker” for taking around €1 million ($1.15 million) from rich savers’ accounts, over several years, to help poor people qualify for loans.

It all started in 2009, at the the height of the global financial crisis, when banks’ criteria for credit approval assessments changed. It was no longer about an overall assessment of the customer, but about the reliability of the client, which was established at the bank desk, on a computer. So when a local man came to Gilberto Baschiera’s office asking for a small loan, and the bank manager saw that he didn’t qualify according to the new criteria, he felt sorry for him. Instead of turning him away like most bank managers would have done, Baschiera took some money out of the account of a wealthy client, and added it to the poor man’s account, so that he would qualify. But this was only the beginning of Gilberto Baschiera’s career as a modern-day Robin Hood of the banking world.

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Men in Thai Village Paint Their Fingernails to Avoid Being Attacked by Ghost Widow

Young men in Pu Hong, a small village in Thailand’s Kalasin province, have started painting their fingernails as a way to fend off an evil ghost who they hold responsible for the recent deaths of several locals.

The bizarre trend became popular after the deaths of five residents of Pu Hong over the last three weeks. The first two men, who reportedly came from the same family, simply collapsed and died on the spot, another victim, a teenage girl died in a motorcycle accident, while the details of the other two fatalities have not been disclosed to the media so far. Instead of taking the high number of fatalities in their village as a tragic coincidence, locals believe that supernatural forces are responsible, and have started taking precautions to avoid becoming victims themselves.

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How One Woman’s Constipation Made Her Whole Family Millionaires

You’ll have a tough time finding someone who talks positively about their constipation problems, but one Utah woman is one of those rare exceptions, and for good reason. It was her constipation that inspired her to create a simple stool that now helps millions of people improve their bowel movements.

Judy Edwards has been struggling with constipation her whole life, but the problem only got worse with age. A few years ago, a medical professional advised her to use a foot stool while sitting on the toilet, and that worked surprisingly well for her, so she passed on the same advice to her husband Bill. They were both amazed both about the difference that a little foot stool made and that they had only learned about this trick in their 60s. But it wasn’t until their son Bobby, a self-described gypsy always looking to make a “big splash”, learned about the benefits of the foot stool that the idea of a profitable business started to materialize.

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Teacher Turns Classroom into Pink Hello Kitty Paradise at Her Own Expense

Samelyn Lafuente, a young primary school teacher from Masbate City, in the Philippines, spent the last three years turning a bland classroom into a little girl’s real-life fantasy, decked in pink and full of Hello Kitty-themed decorations.

Walking into Samelyn Lafuente’s classroom, you would be tempted to think that it’s an obsessed Hello Kitty fan’s shrine to the popular Japanese character. The floor is covered with a Hello Kitty-themed carpet, the walls are all pink, as are the school desks, and there are Hello Kitty decorations everywhere, hanging from the ceiling, plastered on the walls and even in the windows. It would be fair to assume that parents of little girls in Ms. Lafuente’s class must be struggling to pull them away from this real-life fantasy in pink every day, which is just what the teacher planned all along – to create a place where her students would be happy and enjoy their time at school.

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Lenin Tries to Stop Hitler from Becoming Mayor of Peruvian Town

Yungar, a remote town in the Peruvian Andes, has been receiving worldwide attention in the past couple of weeks, because of the efforts of a man named Lenin to stop one of the candidates, named Hitler, from running in the upcoming municipal elections.

Hitler Alba Sánchez, also known as ‘Hitler of the Andes’ or ‘The Good Hitler’, has already served as mayor of Yungar between 2011 and 2014, and he is now trying out for a second term. However, his candidacy was challenged by a local man called Lenin Vladimir Rodríguez Valverde, who claimed that Hitler wasn’t eligible because of his previous term as mayor. The attempt to sabotage The Good Hitler’s election ultimately failed, but the bizarre coincidence of these two men’s names has become an international news topic.

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IT Professional Single-Handedly Builds Two-Storey House Using YouTube Tutorials

A young system analyst from Brazil managed to save about half the cost of building a two storey brick house, by doing all the work himself, instead of hiring a professional construction crew. With absolutely no construction experience behind him, he turned to YouTube tutorials and advice from family and friends.

33-year-old Evandro Klimpel Balmant and his wife Ane Caroline de Jesus Balmant, 34, live in a beautiful 200 square-meter house that they built themselves, in Almirante Tamandare municipality, a metropolitan area of Curitiba, in Brazil. It took three long years to raise the house from the ground up, and they still have the upstairs to plaster, but they say it was worth the wait, especially since they manage to save around 50% what a house this size would have cost to build with a construction company.

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