Science and technology progress so fast that something created only a decade ago will most likely feel like an antique to its present-day observers. This, however, is not the case with the ball-shaped houses in the Dutch city of Den Bosch: they resembled the set of a sci-fi movie when they were conceived in 1984 and remain as futuristic-looking to this very day.

Known locally as Bolwoningen, these bulbous homes were created as part of a Dutch experimental housing program launched in 1968. They were designed by artist and sculptor Dries Kreijkamp in the 1970s and the project was completed in 1984 along with another subsidy winner: the famed Kubuswoningen (cube homes) in Rotterdam, designed by Piet Blom. While the program was shut down the same year the Bolwoningen became a reality, this experimental housing complex continues to stand and remains as wow-worthy as the day it took shape.

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It seems that these days people will go to any lengths for some attention on social media. Take YouTube, for example: it abounds in clips that will certainly make you go “Wow!” but also question the sanity of the uploaders. One guy enjoying his 15 minutes of fame right now is 22-year-old Jay Swingler from the UK, who made headlines for cementing his head inside a microwave oven for some YouTube views.

In hindsight, it looks funny and Jay certainly got the attention he craves. However, it may have gone horribly wrong: his friends couldn’t free him for an hour and a half, and emergency services had to be called. As relieved as Jay was to be rescued, he is absolutely unrepentant, saying the whole thing is hilarious and he is thrilled with the attention his video has garnered.

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If you still have any doubts that mobile devices have taken over our lives, this should make you a firm believer: smartphones and QR codes have become tools of the trade for Chinese beggars. If you’re feeling generous, you can simply whip out your phone, scan a a printed QR code and transfer some money to the beggar’s account.

Local media have spread news of mobile-savvy beggars in the city of Jinan, in China’s Shandong province. They gather in areas popular with tourists, holding begging bowls that contain a QR code printout. Anyone with Alipay, WeChat Wallet, or some other mobile payment app can scan the code and make a donation. Wait, beggars in China have mobile phones? Well, according to state media outlets, that’s not actually a rare thing.

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Sometimes, when you tuck into your favorite meal, you may go, “Wow, I could eat nothing else for the rest of my days!” Could you really? What if you never, ever get to taste anything else? This might be the case with Micah Gabriel Masson Lopez – a two-year-old boy from Montreal, Canada who lives only on peaches.He suffers from a serious condition called food-protein induced enterocolitis syndrome (FPIES), which causes a severe allergy to virtually any food other than peaches.

Little Micah has hardly ever had a pain-free day. In addition to FPIES, he suffers from an immunodeficiency called DiGeorge syndrome and a rare genetic condition known as 15Q13.3 micro-duplication. Every month, his parents have to take him to nine different specialists, and the medical costs are taking a heavy toll. So is the cost of ensuring a steady supply of peaches, which can be a problem to find off-season in Quebec. His parents are so desperate that they have launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise money that will help them with all the expenses.

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The city of San Diego, California is set to pay its former Mayor Roger Hedgecock’s wife almost $85,000 for a fall on a damaged sidewalk in Pacific Beach that allegedly caused one of her breast implants to rupture.

Cynthia Hedgecock, 70, claims that she tripped and fell onto her chest while walking on Morrell Street toward Grand Avenue, on July 31, 2015. She testified that she was carrying folders in one hand, and her phone in the other, which prevented her from adequately breaking her fall, after tripping. She landed on her chest, which caused severe damage to her breast implants. Now, a judge has ordered the city to pay her $85,000 as compensation.

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A 29-year-old man from Guangzhou, China experienced sudden paralysis of all four limbs after spending two consecutive days playing on his mobile phone. The man reportedly spent a lot of his time looking down at his handheld, but this latest gaming marathon was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Late last month, the yet unidentified gamer spent two consecutive days trying to advance as much as possible in the mobile video game he was so passionate about. In the early hours of the third day, he felt a sudden pain and stiffness in his neck. Within moments all four of his limbs went numb, and he found himself paralyzed. His family rushed him to the emergency department of Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, where, after an MRI and other tests, Shen Huiyong, the orthopedic specialist, diagnosed him with cervical spondylosis hematoma. That meant that his paralysis was caused by blood clots in his cervical spinal tube pressing against his spinal cord.

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Humans have been riding horses for thousands of years, but one Ukrainian strongman proves that horses can sometimes ride us too. Champion powerlifter Dmytro Khaladzhi has been making quite a name for himself by carrying live, fully conscious horses on his back to prove his incredible strength.

Like most strongmen, Dmytro Khaladzhi does a lot of crazy stuff, like letting trucks drive over him, bending steel rods with his teeth, or driving nails through wood with the palm of his hand, but his horse carrying routines are by far the most impressive. Several videos doing the rounds online show him grabbing full-grown horses, lifting them on his back and taking a few steps with the incredible load, all while the confused animals enjoy the ride.

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UK pharmacies will be selling Viagra over the counter as of spring 2018, but the men of Ringaskiddy in Ireland’s Cork County don’t need to pay for the erectile dysfunction drug. In fact, they don’t even have to pop the little blue pill: the fumes from a nearby Viagra manufacturing plant reportedly have an arousing effect on the male population. The villagers claim that even their dogs roam about in a state of arousal. Basically, it’s a case of “love is in the air,” but it may not be all fun and games.

Viagra is a cash cow for US-based pharma giant Pfizer, which has had this particular factory going for about two decades. According to a company statement, the stories are just an “amusing” myth. “Our manufacturing processes have always been highly sophisticated as well as highly regulated,” Pfizer said. Still, the stories have been circulating for years, and there are too many accounts to just brush aside the issue.

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An interesting vacancy has just opened up in the Philippines: the country no longer has a “Cobra King” after the person holding that title has died. The irony is that Elies ‘Peter’ Lenturio, also known as the Philippine snake whisperer, met his end through an act of revenge on his pet cobra: he was bitten by the snake and retaliated by cutting its head off and drinking its blood.

It seems that Elies’s mistake was ingesting the blood. Cobras are extremely poisonous snakes and people in general would be terror-struck if bitten, not to mention dead without immediate treatment. However, the Cobra King had gotten numerous snake bites over the years and knew how to treat himself. He would not go to the hospital that day, choosing to have a few drinks instead and then head home to sleep it off. It turned out to be his last night on earth: he started foaming at the mouth and going rigid, much to the surprise of his family. Elies was rushed to hospital, but he was pronounced dead on arrival.

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What was supposed to be a bit of fun turned into a crying game for Arran Maye, a 28-year-old plumber from Leicester. While vacationing with 20 friends in the Spanish city of Benidorm, the Briton invested 9 pounds ($12) in a henna tattoo that left him sporting a handlebar mustache and a chin beard. The idea was to get into the spirit of Benidorm Fiesta, a local fancy dress festival, but things went from bad to worse when Arran experienced an intense allergic reaction to the henna ink, which may leave him with permanent scars.

Adam Lewis, another member of the British partying bunch, got the same tattoos as Arran, but while his tattoos faded within a few days, Arran’s were much more problematic. On top of the excruciating pain he experienced, his face ballooned and started oozing puss. It tuned out that the henna used on Arran was an illegal variety called black henna, which contains the chemical PPD. It caused a severe allergic reaction and ultimately landed him in intensive care, with one of the consequences being potentially permanent scars in the shape of a handlebar mustache and a small beard.

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Hotel owners, beware: sometimes respectable-looking, well-behaved guests are after your room fixtures! An Indian man actually made a career of it, taking off with more than 120 TV sets from hotels over a period of four months.

Vasudev Nanaiah, 37, was arrested last month and charged with 21 counts of theft after wreaking havoc among budget hotels in southern India by stealing an impressive number of TV sets from the rooms he booked. The TV pilferer would reserve the rooms by telephone and always make a small advance payment, informing the staff that he would be staying there for several days, in order to avoid suspicion. Nanaiah always arrived with bulky suitcases in tow, and in case they proved too small for the targeted TVs, he would simply go out and buy new ones.

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Ever heard of Russia’s healing pyramids? They are the work of Dr. Alexander Golod, a Ukrainian scientist who claims that they have the power to prevent diseases, enhance the potency of medicines, cure impotence and even control the weather.

Dr. Golod, a Moscow-based scientist and defense engineer, began building his mysterious pyramids in 1990. By 2001 he had completed 17 of them in various parts of Russia and the Ukraine. By 2010 that number had increased to over 50 pyramids worldwide, with the majority in Russia and the Ukraine. Each pyramid has an internal framework of PVC pipes that are then covered with sheets of fiberglass to form smooth faces. They were designed to fit the Golden Section phi ratio of 1 to 1.618, a standard ratio found in nature that can be used to create beautiful, natural looking compositions. This proportion makes the structures steeper than the Egyptian pyramids, with a slope of about 70 degrees. The top is nearly twice as high, relative to the perimeter of its base, making Golod’s pyramids look more like church steeples or obelisks.

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Sahar Tabar, a 19-year-old woman from Iran, has been the talk of the internet over the last couple of days due to her zombie-like appearance, which is a apparently the result of dozens of cosmetic procedures meant to make her look like Angelina Jolie.

We live in a world where super fans often go under the knife to make themselves look like their idols, but whereas most end up with doll-like features, Teheran-based Sahar Tabar looks like a real-life character out of a Tim Burton animation. She has in fact been compared to the “Corpse Bride”, and looking at some of her Instagram photos, you can see that the comparison actually makes sense. It’s obvious that the 19-year-old uses makeup and creepy contact lenses to enhance her undead look, but those prominent cheekbones, inflated lips and plastic-like nose seem to be her real features.

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If alien conspiracy theories are your thing or you simply believe in extraterrestrial life and eagerly await the first contact, you’ll feel right at home at Akdeniz University in Turkey. This educational establishment, based in the province of Antalya, has made a course called “Ufology and Exopolitics” part of its latest curriculum. Its aim is to get students ready to give a proper welcome to visitors from space, which tutor Erhan Kolbaşi believes to have already touched down multiple times.

Practical preparations and interstellar diplomacy are only part of the course focus. As Kolbaşi told the Dogan News Agency, students will also learn about alleged government cover-ups of alien activity on Earth. Kolbaşi, who serves as deputy chair of Istanbul-based Sirius UFO Space Sciences Research Center, claims that fiber optic cable, microchips and night vision devices are technologies we have because of information collected at UFO crash sites.

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Mysterious boom sounds have baffled people all over the planet throughout the past year. There have been 64 recorded incidents within the last 12 months, with the majority heard on the east coast of the USA, but also reported everywhere from the Middle East to Australia. Experts have no clear answer as to the cause of these sounds, but theories range from Leonid shower meteorites exploding in the atmosphere to supersonic aircrafts.

The most recent bang resounded over the US state of Alabama on November 14. Dubbed “Bama boom,” the noise shook houses and terrified locals. Residents notified authorities of a suspicious sound that rattled windows and seemed to originate on the northwest side of Lochbuie, Alabama. They could not figure out the source of the noise, however, and have ruled out an explosion as they could not find flames or an odor indicating one.

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