If you ever find yourself having to convince someone that anything is possible, just tell them about a Pigcasso, a 450 pound (204 kg) pig who, after being rescued from a South African slaughterhouse at four weeks old, went on to become an acclaimed painter.

South African animal-rights activist Joanne Lefson adopted Pigcasso after rescuing her from a grim fate at the slaughterhouse, a couple of years ago. She took the animal back to her farm and offered her a variety of toys to keep her entertained. Among those toys were some paintbrushes, and the pig became so fascinated with them that she ignored all her other toys. Lefson decided to leave out some paint and canvas as well to see what the animal would do. Believe it or not, she started painting.

Read More »

Two years ago, Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin didn’t even know how to bake, but today she is widely regarded as the world’s most talented pie maker. And, believe it or not, she’s entirely self taught.

Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin’s amazing journey into the world of elaborate pies began a couple of years ago, as a New Year’s resolution to cut down on sugar. Pies just seemed like the safest way to satisfy her dessert cravings, but there was just one problem – she didn’t know anything about baking, or cooking in general for that matter. So she dedicated six months to developing her baking skills, and it paid off big-time. These days, Clark-Bojin’s fabulous pies are all the rage on social media and she’s able to make a living by selling how-to guides to like-minded pie enthusiasts who want to bake their own edible works of art.

Read More »

Here’s something you don’t see every day, a cow in Poland apparently got so bored of its life as a domestic animal on a farm that it escaped and joined a herd of wild bison on the edge of the primeval Bialowieza Forest, on the Belarusian border The copper-colored cow has been living with its new bison family in eastern Poland  for the past three months, and seems to have adjusted just fine.

The first person to spot the cow in the bison herd was ornithologist Adam Zbyryt. At first glance, he thought the small reddish brown specimen was a bison exhibiting a mutation. However, after focusing his binocluars on it, he realized it was actually a Limousin cow, a French breed that is popular in Poland. The young bovine appeared healthy and at ease with the bigger animals.

Read More »

British beekeeper and musician Bioni (pronounced BEE-own-ee) Samp has found an incredible way to combine his two greatest passions. He records the frequencies of his bees and uses them to create original electronic musical compositions.

Bioni – a pseudonym, as his real name is a closely guarded secret – produces abstract music that is rhythmic and dancey, but the 50-something Londoner has a higher goal than making people get jiggy with it on the dance floor. He uses his unusual music to raise awareness about colony collapse disorder (CDC), a plague that has wiped out millions of honeybee hives globally since 2006. Billions of bees are killed by CDC every year, and that’s not counting the ones that dies as result of climate change and pesticide poisoning. he feels that by using bees as a musical instrument he can get through to people easier than by preaching to them about the plight of bees and the dangers their extinction poses to humanity.

Read More »

Arthur Wagner, a leading member of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a far-right German political party whose slogan is “Islam doesn’t belong in Germany”, recently resigned after converting to Islam.

Originally created as an anti-euro party, the AfD has recently campaigned on an anti-Muslim, anti immigration platform, strongly criticizing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow over a million refugees into Germany, since 2015. Just last summer, Arthur Wagner, who sat on the party’s executive committee in the state of Brandenburg, accused Merkel of “making a big mistake” by allowing so many Muslim refugees into the country, and warned that “Germany is mutating into a different country”. On January 11th, he left the party citing personal reasons, but it was later revealed that he had converted to Islam.

Read More »

Hair is not the easiest art medium to work with, especially when you’re trying to create detailed portraits of people and animals, but young Indian artist Midhun R.R. had developed a technique that allows him to manipulate thousands of short hair strands into impressive artworks.

All Midhun needs to create his art is some hair, obviously, a white sheet of paper for canvas and a long needle to manipulate the tiny hairs. He makes the whole thing look easy in the time lapse videos he posts on YouTube, but admits that arranging the hairs the way he wants is actually harder than it seems. To make it easier for himself he has the hair chemically treated before using it. The hair strands are then cut at various lengths, depending on the image he is trying to create, and carefully arranged on the paper canvas using the needle. Once Midhun is satisfied with the result, the artwork is sandwiched between two glass panes for long-term preservation.

Read More »

Save for a few symbolic sections in the center of the German capital, the Berlin wall was completely demolished in 1989 . However, a local hobby historian claims to have discovered an 80-meter-long section of which authorities apparently knew nothing about.

37-year-old Christian Bormann found the forgotten section of the Berlin Wall between two train stations in the Pankow district in the northeast of the city, back in 1999. The local government office responsible for monuments was unaware of the surviving segment, and records showed the section registered as demolished. Bormann kept his discovery to himself until recently, when he noticed that it had been damage by storms. Concerned about the slowly deteriorating monument, he finally revealed his secret in a blog post and contacted Pankow district authorities, calling on them to protect it as a historical monument.

Read More »

When Sophy Ijeoma, a makeup artist from Nigeria, decided to comment on an acquaintance’s Facebook marriage advert as a joke, she never imagined she would marry the man just seven days later, but I guess she underestimated the power of social media.

The day before New Year’s Eve, Nigerian furniture maker Chidimma Amedu decided it was to find a wife. Instead of probing his friends or going on a dating site, he just posted an advert on Facebook, asking all women interested in becoming his wife to reply to his post. It read “Am of age to and I am ready to say I do and I am wasting no time. Send in your applications. The most qualified will be married on January 6, 2018. Application closes 12 midnight, December 31, 2017. I am serious about this… and don’t say you did not see it on time. Goodluck.”

Read More »

From Whatsapp to WeChat or Skype,the world has plenty of choices when it comes to messaging apps that connect friends and strangers on the internet. The market is so crowded this days that for a new competitor to even get noticed, they’d have to come up with something completely new. Enter “Die With Me,” a fresh chat app that can only be used when your smartphone has 5% or less battery remaining.

Die With Me allows total strangers with low battery to log into an online chatroom and converse as they wait for their handhelds to shut off completely. Or, as the developers so poetically put it, to “die together in a chatroom on your way to offline peace.” Using Die With Me requires nothing more than choosing a username and allowing the app to read your battery status. The idea behind the strangely poignant app was to turn the frustrating experience of dealing with low phone battery into a positive one.

Read More »

Police in the Dutch city of Rotterdam is rolling out a new and highly controversial pilot program aimed at reducing crime. The program will target young men wearing designer clothing or expensive jewellery who supposedly look like they’re too poor to afford the items in question. If they’re unable to adequately prove to the police how they were able to purchase their clothes and/or accessories, the items will potentially be confiscated on the spot, with suspects expected to strip down in the street.

The controversial program will run for a limited time, to test its effectiveness, and the Rotterdam police department will be collaborating with the public prosecution department to help them determine what items they can legally confiscate. The main idea behind this endeavour  is to deter theft by sending a signal that perpetrators will not be able to keep their stolen goods.

Read More »

Most of us see used teabags as stained, soggy pieces of trash, but to visual artist and graphic designer Ruby Silvious they are miniature canvases just waiting to be turned into artworks.

Three years ago, Ruby Silvious came up with an ingenious way of combining two of her favorite pastimes – painting and drinking tea – by using the used teabags as small pieces of canvas. She started a project called 363 Days of Tea, creating a unique teabag painting every day for 363 days. To the New-York-based artist, it served as a sort of daily diary, allowing her to record her feelings and thoughts as whimsical miniature illustrations, but also compelled viewers to re-evaluate their views on found and recycled materials.

Read More »

200 schools in Germany have begun asking hyperactive children, typically those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), to wear heavy sand-filled vests to calm them down and keep them in their seats during classes. The controversial vests, which weigh between 1.2 and six kilograms (2.7 – 13Ib), have sparked misgivings among parents and psychiatrists.

There are plenty of advocates, however, who claim to have witnessed remarkable changes in behavior among the children who have worn them and insisted that they help curb restlessness. There has been a growing number of ADHD cases diagnosed in Germany each year, and schools that use the vest claim that they are a gentler and less complicated way to tackle the phenomenon than administering psychiatric drugs such as Ritalin.

Read More »

In a report released on Tuesday, the journal BMJ Case Reports detailed the bizarre and somewhat frightening case of a 34-year-old British man who ruptured his throat by suppressing a particularly powerful sneeze. The man, described as “previously fit and well” attempted to politely contain his sneeze by “pinching the nose and holding his mouth closed”, which you are apparently not supposed to do.

The force of the sneeze backfired into his throat and perforated his pharynx, the part of the throat right above the larynx and esophagus. He was unaware of the damage initially, but after realizing that his voice had changed and his throat hurt when he swallowed, he knew something was wrong. His neck began to swell up as well, and whenever he moved his head, he experienced an unsettling sensation of popping and crackling.

The man went to the emergency department at Britain’s Leicester Royal Infirmary where doctors were able to diagnose his condition. X-rays revealed that the sneeze had ruptured his throat allowing air bubbles to make their way into the tissue and muscles of his chest, a condition known as subcutaneous emphysema and pneumomediastinum, which caused the popping sensation from his neck to extend all the way to his rib cage. Doctors had to take action quickly as the rupture left the man at risk for complications such as deep neck infection.

Read More »

A young woman from the Russian Republic of Iacutia who was allegedly assaulted in a local disco went to the hospital to have her wounds registered so she could press charges, but was shocked to discover that the doctor on duty was the same man who had attacked her. Instead of checking her wounds, the doctor started hitting her again.

A short video that has been doing the rounds on Russian social media for the past couple of days shows doctor Vladimir Naumov threatening and physically assaulting 20-year-old Anastasia Dmitrieva, at the hospital in Neryungri, eastern Russia. The woman had allegedly come to the hospital to have the wounds she had sustained a few hours earlier, at the local disco, looked at, only to find that doctor Naumov was the same man who had inflicted them.

Read More »

If you’ve ever had to chop an onion, you probably know that it’s one of the most annoying cooking experiences. It just fills your eyes with tears and, apart from wearing goggles, there’s not too much you can do about it. Scientists and farmers have been working on a solution to this problem for decades, and they’ve apparently come up with a tearless onion.

Called the “Sunion”, this new vegetable is the result of a natural cross-breeding program that’s been going on farms in Nevada and Washington since the 1980s, which should put consumers worried about genetically-modified produce at ease. It’s supposedly a sweet, mild-tasting onion that doesn’t leave that strong, pungent aftertaste, but what really sets it apart from most other onion varieties is that it doesn’t cause teary eyes when it’s chopped.

Read More »