One of the most controversial forms of entertainment in US history, dance marathons saw participants dancing continuously for days, weeks, and sometimes months for a chance to win food and money.

Too much of a good thing can be bad for you, and apparently, that also includes a seemingly benign activity like dancing. During the 1920s, the revival of the Olympic Games sparked a massive interest in impressive feats of strength and endurance, which led to the rise in popularity of dance contests that lasted for extended periods of time. In 1923 the dance marathon craze saw world records for dancing without stopping being broken virtually on a daily basis, but things really got out of hand when the prosperous 1920s faded into the Great Depression of the 1930s. The harmless dance contest transformed into twisted spectacles where people literally died of exhaustion on the dancefloor for the chance to win much-needed cash prizes.

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A video doing the rounds on Chinese social media these days has gone viral for showing how easy it is to use AI-powered deepfake technology to transform into virtually anyone online.

App filters and deepfake technology have been around for years now, but the advent of artificial intelligence has elevated them to a whole new level, one which makes it almost impossible to tell what is real on the internet. Take this recent video shared by a Chinese engineer where he demonstrates how easy it is for him to pass as an attractive young girl. All he has to do is put on a wig, enable a piece of software and the AI takes care of the rest. It is able to replace the man’s face with that of an attractive girl but otherwise mimics all of his actions, including eating with chopsticks, pinching his own face, and speaking with the appropriate mouth movement.

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You can find a great many things in Mexico’s Mercado República de San Luis Potosí market, but perhaps the most exotic of all is an old food stall known for selling rat meat.

For many of us, rat meat ranks pretty highly on the list of things we wouldn’t be caught dead eating, but in the region of San Luis Potosí, it has long been valued for its exotic flavor and alleged medicinal properties. However, in recent years, stalls selling rat meat and dishes containing it have all but disappeared from local markets. All except one in Mercado República de San Luis Potosí, which still sells both raw rats and rodent broth cooked with an assortment of vegetables and spices. Each bowl of rat broth contains a whole field rat and sells for 100 pesos ($5.80).

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A dragster-style custom car designed as a casket on wheels was recently auctioned off for $28,750 and went viral because of its unconventional look.

Inspired by the Drag-U-La coffin car featured in a 1965 episode of the television series The Munsters, this unusual vehicle features a custom box-frame chassis and an 8’ fiberglass casket as bodywork. It’s not actually a functional casket, as it was modified to house a driver’s seat behind the rear axle, but it certainly looks like one. Complete with wide rear wheels wrapped in racing slicks, organ-style vertical exhaust pipes, and lantern-style lighting, this coffin car looks more like a movie prop than an actual road-worthy vehicle, but it is in fact registered in New York as a 1928 Ford and has a valid license plate.

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Alejandra Marisa Rodríguez, a 60-year-old lawyer and journalist from Buenos Aires, recently won the title of Miss Buenos Aires and qualified for the Miss Argentina beauty pageant.

At the end of last year, the Miss Universe beauty contest became more inclusive by eliminating an age limit that had been enforced since 1958. Starting this year, the competition is no longer limited to women between the ages of 18 and 28. Instead, the rules only mention that contestants must be of legal age to participate, which opened the door for many more mature hopefuls, including a stunningly youthful-looking 60-year-old woman from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Alejandra Marisa Rodríguez recently went viral on Latino social media after winning the Miss Buenos Aires title despite competing against dozens of much younger women.

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Wang Deshun is an 88-year-old actol and fashion model who rose to fame in 2015 when he walked the runway topless at the China Fashion Week in Beijing during his first modeling gig ever.

In 2017, when we first featured Wang Deshun on Oddity Central, he was just two years into his modeling career, even though he was already 81 years old. His iconic walkout at the China Fashion Week was still in everyone’s minds, and he was getting all sorts of deals from some of the largest fashion houses in the world. People loved his story, and for good reason. Born in 1936 into a modest family, he was the second-oldest of ten children. His parents encouraged him to follow his dreams and he did just that, becoming an actor, then pivoting to pantomime and performance art before trying his luck at fashion modeling with incredible success. But that wasn’t enough for China’s hottest gandpa, as Wang has come to be known. He has since obtained a plane pilot license and learned how to ride a motorcycle and a horse.

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Dutch researchers recently reported the longest-ever known case of SARS-CoV-2 infection, a whopping 613 days, in an immunocompromised man who eventually died due to an underlying condition.

The unnamed 72-year-old man had severe immunity deficiencies when he became infected with the Omicron variant of the coronavirus in 2022, after receiving multiple Covid shots. Since then, he was continuously positive for the coronavirus for a total of 613 days until his death in October of last year. Although extremely long cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the past, this is the longest one ever by quite a stretch. Over the course of the 20 months of infection, doctors tried everything to help the elderly man, but nothing worked. His body could not mount a strong enough immune response to fight the virus, even with the help of antibody medication, and he died last year due to a flare-up of an underlying medical condition.

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A Japanese boy allegedly spent three weeks piecing back together a 10,000 yen bill like a jigsaw puzzle after it had been accidentally put through a paper shredder.

Japanese Twitter user ‘Tomo’ recently completed one of the hardest puzzles he’s ever done – putting back together a 10,000 yen ($65) bill that had been shredded into thousands of pieces. Apparently, his father accidentally shredded an old envelope at work after forgetting that he had put a 10,000 yen bill in it months ago. Realizing his mistake, the man decided to use his mistake as a challenging project for his son. He took home the entire shredder waste basket and told his son that if he could piece together the shredded bill and exchange it for a new one at the back, he could keep it. It was a daunting project for even the most avid jigsaw puzzle enthusiast, but one the boy gladly accepted.

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An Argentinian man became an overnight sensation in South America after reportedly barricading himself inside a car dealership and refusing to leave without the truck he had made an advance payment for.

Abelardo Usandivaras, aka the “gaucho of Salta’, has been making international news headlines for over two weeks and has become somewhat of a living symbol of the common man’s struggle against the shady practices of car dealerships. The middle-aged man from Metán, in Salta, arrived in Buenos Aires with his family at the beginning of April, and went straight to the dealership that was supposed to deliver his new much-needed truck. After failing to get the answers he needed and finding himself unable to get in touch with the owner, Usandivaras barricaded himself inside the dealership, refusing to leave without the truck he was promised, or at least the downpayment he had made for it. His story quickly went viral, and Abelardo’s struggle became a hot topic in all of Latin America.

Usandivaras, a horse breeder and advisor from Metán, decided to buy a new truck last year, and after getting in touch with a dealership in Buenos Aires, he decided to sell his old truck and make a downpayment for a new one. Everything went smoothly up to that point, but after paying the advance, he never heard back from the dealership. They had a 120-day delivery deadline, but he never got so much as an update, and whenever he got in touch, they just referred him to another department.

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In what has been described as a world first, Chinese scientists have created a 3-carat diamond exclusively out of carbon elements derived from red peonies.

The world’s first diamond made from peony-derived carbon elements was unveiled today in Luoyang, China’s Henan Province. It was donated to the Luoyang National Peony Garden by Luoyang Time Promise Co., a company that specializes in artificial diamonds. At the end of last month, the city’s peony garden agreed to supply the diamond company with the peonies necessary to create the unique diamond, including a nearly 50-year-old peony.

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A wealthy couple from Gujarat, India, have decided to donate their entire Rs 200 crore fortune to charity and become Jain monks, relying solely on the generosity of others for survival.

Bhavesh Bhandari and his wife have built their wealth in the lucrative construction business, amassing an enviable fortune of over Rs 200 crore ($24 million). Like most other millionaires, they have enjoyed a life of luxury complete with opulent houses, expensive cars, and pretty much anything else their hearts desired. But the two recently decided to give it all up in order to become Jain ascetic monks, inspired by their two children – a 16-year-old son and a 19-year-old daughter – who adopted the same path in 2022. On April 22, the Gujarat power couple will renounce all worldly possessions, sever ties with their families, and embark on a barefoot journey across India, surviving only on alms.

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A 42-year-old Brazilian woman was recently arrested for allegedly bringing a dead man to a bank and trying to obtain a bank loan in his name.

On April 16, Erika de Souza Vieira Nunes arrived at an Itau Unibanco branch in Bangu, Rio de Janeiro to assist 68-year-old Paulo Roberto Braga in obtaining a bank loan of R$17,000 ($3,200). The elderly man was in a wheelchair and she claimed to be his niece and primary caretaker. Bank employees soon noticed that there was something seriously wrong with Braga, as his alleged niece had to support his head with her hand. He literally showed no signs of life, but Vieira Nunes allegedly kept telling the staff that he was just quiet by nature. She even tried speaking to him although it was obvious he wasn’t capable of answering.

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Roughly the size of a studio apartment, the world’s largest passenger elevator weighs a whopping 16 tons, is supported by 9 steel cables, and can accommodate up to 235 people at a time.

In 2022, Finnish elevator company KONE installed the world’s largest passenger elevator inside the Jio World Center building in Mumbai, India. Designed to cater to large groups of people attending weddings or exhibitions at the state-of-the-art convention center, this marvel of design and engineering measures 25.78 square meters and offers all-round scenic views of the complex and its beautiful gardens. Due to its enormous size, the world’s largest passenger elevator relies on an innovative pulley beam system that consists of 18 large pulleys, 9 steel cables, and rails fixed over steel columns.

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Arshia Goswami, a 9-year-old girl from India’s Haryana state, has been dubbed the female version of Hercules after deadlifting a whopping 165 pounds (75 kg).

Arshia first started attracting attention a couple of years ago when she set a national record as India’s youngest deadlifter, with a personal best of 45 kilograms. She has been training ever since, though, and she recently went viral once again by deadlifting 75 kilograms, more than two times her own body weight. The impressive feat was captured on video and shared on the young weightlifter’s Instagram page, where it went viral. But although most of the feedback was positive, with people praising her strength and form, some comments also expressed concern for her wellbeing, claiming that lifting such heavy weights at her age could have serious health consequences.

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Chinese runner He Jie’s victory at last week’s Beijing Half-Marathon has been overshadowed by a scandal involving three Kenyan runners who appear to let the Chinese competitor win the race.

Sunday’s Beijing Half-Marathon saw 25-year-old He Jie crossed the finish line first, in 1:03:44, under a second ahead of an African trio of runners who collectively claimed second place. It was an impressive achievement for the Chinese runner, especially since one of the runners-up was former 5km world record-holder Robert Keter of Kenya, but his win was quickly called into question on social media after suspicious videos recorded during the race made their way online. The fact that He seemed to be the only one sprinting as he approached the finish line was bizarre enough, but one clip shows Kenya’s Willy Mnangat signaling his countryman Keter and Ethiopian runner Dejene Hailu Bikila to hang back and waving He Jie to overtake them.

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