Gongbang is the name of a growing live-streaming trend in South Korea, where people broadcast themselves studying in almost total silence for hours on end to dozens, sometimes hundreds of viewers who love nothing more than to watch them do it.

Ask most popular streamers and they’ll tell you that the keys to a successful live-streaming career are providing entertaining and exciting content, and viewer engagement. That’s what makes the Gongbang live-streaming trend, which has been growing in the Asian country over the last decade, so fascinating. Gongbang streamers almost never connect with their audience, and as for providing exciting content, the most excitement they offer is turning a page every once in a while. They simply broadcast themselves studying for many hours at a time, and, for some reason, people love watching them do it.

Read More »

Despite the amazing scientific advances we have made in the last century, there are still many medical cases that can’t be fully explained. Vanishing Bones Syndrome sounds like something straight out of an episode of House MD, but doctors at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh in Scotland encountered a case of this bizarre condition in a 44-year-old woman.

Also known as Gorham-Stout disease, this extremely rare condition causes the sufferer to experience progressive bone loss. The disease is so uncommon that there has only ever been 64 recorded cases in medical literature since it was first described in 1838. In a healthy person, bones are constantly rebuilding themselves to help maintain their strength, and Gorham-Stout disease is believed to be a malfunction of this process; the bone breaks itself down faster than it can repair itself.

Read More »

Men often go to great lengths to fulfill their loved ones’ wishes, but this story is a bout a guy who went to extremes to ensure that he wouldn’t have to fulfill a promise he had made to his girlfriend, while at the same time making sure that she didn’t blame him for it.

Earlier this month, a man surnamed Tang, from Chengdu, China, promised his girlfriend that he would buy her a brand new luxury car, and she made sure to constantly remind him of his promise ever since. The problem was that Tang didn’t have the money, and with time running out, he had to come up with a way out of this mess that he had put himself in. His solution, though undoubtedly original, was pretty extreme.

Read More »

In Sweden, hundreds of refugee children are reportedly suffering from a strange condition known as “resignation syndrome”. These children fall into a coma-like state; they don’t eat, speak, or even open their eyes. Sufferers of resignation syndrome are often left bedbound for years at a time.

Their appearances suggest they have been involved in some sort of accident or suffer from some sort of neurological illness, but sufferers of resignation syndrome have nothing physically wrong with them—they have simply lost the will to live. The condition is known as “uppgivenhetssyndrom” in Sweden, and it is thought to only affect young members of the refugee population.

Research has linked resignation syndrome with the stress and disappointment of having asylum claims rejected. In recent years, regulations surrounding asylum cases have tightened, and those refugees who were not fleeing from an active war zone were likely to have their applications rejected. These rejections could often take years to be decided upon, leaving refugee families in a state of limbo. For many children, the weight of rejection proved too much to bear and they would shut down completely, entering a coma-like state, seemingly on the edge between life and death.

Read More »

This is the story of Werner Jaisli, a Swiss man who in 2008 started building a giant, star-shaped ‘ovniport’ – a UFO landing spot – in an Argentinian desert, because aliens telepathically ordered him to.

It’s not clear exactly when Werner Jaisli arrived in Cachi, a small town in the Argentinian province of Salta, but it’s not hard to figure out what drew him to this place. The deserts of Salta have become famous among UFO enthusiasts around the globe, after several sightings of unidentified flying objects and other unexplained phenomena were reported in the area over the last few decades. On the night of November 24, 2008, Jaisli himself was allegedly contacted by aliens who gave him specific instructions on how to build a UFO landing port, aka ‘ovniport’.

Read More »

After waiting for local authorities to fix a massive pothole for several months, residents of  Poplar Plain Crescent, in Toronto, decided to make the best of it by transforming the hole into a community tomato garden.

It’s unclear who came up with the idea of plating tomato seeds into the neglected pothole earlier this summer, but as the plants sprouted and flourished, neighborhood residents started caring for them, even installing stakes to keep them from falling over. Photos of the fully grown tomato plants featuring dozens of juicy green tomatoes are a testament to both the locals care and sense of humour, but also of the indifference of local authorities.

Read More »

Many smokers pick up the habit at an early age, but there are probably not many who started as early as Rapi Pamungkas. This Indonesian 2-year-old apparently started smoking by picking up discarded cigarette butts nearby his mother’s market stall, which older boys would then light for him, and now reportedly goes through 40 cigarettes a day.

Soon after starting smoking, Rapi became hooked and soon became famous in his native city of Sukabumi for harassing passers-by and pestering them for cigarettes. Many locals found his antics amusing and would give him cigarettes, laughing as he lit them up. Videos of the extremely young child started doing the round online, and his story recently went viral worldwide. In some of these videos, people can be seen trying to take the cigarette from Rapi; he responds by scowling and pulling the cigarette back.

Read More »

This month, Kyle Messier, a 31-year-old bike mechanic, won the Big Red Gravel Run, a 100 kilometer bike race that takes place in Harrington, Quebec. While this is an impressive achievement on its own, what makes Kyle’s win truly exceptional is that he had already pedaled more than 650 kilometers to the race site, and a few hours after winning he got back on his bike and pedealed back home to Waterloo.

Messier’s journey from Waterloo to Harrington took him 3.5 days to complete. After winning first place in the rural cycling race,he celebrated with some pizza, slept for a few hours in his tent, and then got started on the 3.5-day journey back home. And it gets even more remarkable still; Kyle was not only completely new to bicycle racing, but he also managed to win the 100-kilometer Big Red Gravel Run while suffering from an abscessed tooth.

Read More »

Zhong Congrong, a successful businessman from Chongqing, China, has become known as the “the millionaire trash collector,” for his longtime habit of scouring the streets of his city armed with a trash-picking claw and picking up any garbage he finds.

The 52-year-old entrepreneur began cleaning up the streets of Chingqing three years ago, after a family trip to southern China’s Hainan province, for the Chinese New Year. There, he met a retired university professor who had reportedly been picking up trash from one of the local beaches every day, for the last four years. He was so impressed with the woman’s dedication and commitment to trash collecting that he decided to replicate her daily habit in his home city, as soon as he got back from his vacation.

Read More »

A 42-year old woman who thought her contact lens had fallen off when she was hit in the eye with a shuttlecock 28 years ago recently discovered that it had actually been lodged in her eyelid all this time.

Those of us who no longer have perfect vision understand just how amazing and convenient contact lenses can be, especially when it comes to an active lifestyle. But in some cases, instead of making our lives easier, they can cause annoyances. In very rare cases, those annoyances go beyond dry eyes or eye infections—they can actually become embedded in your eyelid, all without you knowing it.

Read More »

In urban areas like New York, Denver, and Los Angeles, it’s become a trend for the elite to shy away from traditional pets such as dogs and cats, and to raise chickens instead. Although raising chickens used to be predominantly for rural farmers, it’s now not only chic to own these birds , but a status symbol as well. And Julie Baker, an enterprising woman from New Hampshire, is cashing in on the trend by making fashionable chicken diapers. That’s right, chicken diapers. In fact, she’s drawing in $50,000 a year from this business, which isn’t exactly small change.

10 years ago, on her small Claremont farm, Julie was raising a whole flock of chickens with her daughter. They they happened upon a YouTube video of a chicken wearing a diaper so it wouldn’t leave droppings everywhere. Julie recalls thinking something like ‘Oh my goodness, I so need to do that,’ especially since her daughter often brought her favorite chicken Abigail into the home.

Read More »

Vending machines are very popular in Asia, with businesses using them to sell just about anything, even live crabs. However, one Honk Kong entrepreneur has found a way to take vending machines to a whole new level, by designing one that sells dates to singles looking for a low-tech alternative to online dating services like Tinder.

The “Fate Capsule” vending machine outside BT Reptile, a small pet store in Kowloon’s Shek Kip Mei neighborhood, received worldwide attention earlier this year, when word of the original concept went viral online. It’s basically a multi-tiered vending machine with separate compartments for men and women which dispenses colored plastic capsules containing the contact details of singles looking for love. All you have to do is insert HK$20 ($2.5) in coins, and it will spit out a fate capsule with the description and contact information of a prospective date.

Read More »

What was once an ordinary 3-bedroom home in the suburbs of western Sydney has now gained a reputation as a “miracle house”. Ash and oil leak from its walls in such a way that is reportedly “beyond science”. The homeowners, George and Lina Tannous, believe that the allegedly unexplainable phenomena are a sign from God and that they have also granted the house miraculous healing properties.

According to the pair, their house has the amazing ability to help other couples become pregnant, even in cases where they have received medical confirmation that pregnancy would be impossible. There is even one instance of the house reportedly curing a woman’s cancer.

Read More »

Doctors from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, India, recently documented the strange case of a 4-year-old boy with a mysterious “squeaky cough”.

Writing in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, Doctor Suresh C. Sharma reported that the boy’s parents had brought him to the otorhinolaryngology outpatient clinic after noticing something strange about his cough. For the past couple of days, their 4-year-old son made a squeaky, whistling-like sound whenever he coughed. He had had no history or symptoms of viral infection of the upper respiratory tract, and was in good health, but during the physical examination, doctors did notice an expiratory wheeze in the middle and lower left lung.

Read More »

A Utah man recently flew a small Cessna airplane into his own house, with his wife and her son still inside, after being arrested on charges of domestic violence.

The bizarre incident took place on Monday, but police sources said that the cause was most likely a domestic dispute between Duane Youd, a professional airplane pilot, and his wife, near American Fork Canyon, about 35 miles south of Salt Lake City. On Sunday evening, the Utah County Sheriff’s Office received calls from several witnesses about a man hitting a woman, and a police patrol took Youd into custody. He and his wife had apparently been drinking and an argument broke out and he started hitting her.

Read More »