A self-proclaimed veterinarian in Chengdu, China, is currently under investigation for operating an unlicensed “clinic” on the street, and charging around 50 – 100 yuan to remove the vocal chords of noisy dogs.

Why would any dog owner want to remove their pet’s vocal chords, you ask? In this particular case, most of the shady vet’s customers told police officers that they had received complaints from their neighbors that the animals barked too loudly, so they decided to have them devocalized. That’s a gruesome thing in itself, but to have the procedure done by some random guy on the side of the street, with unclean surgical instruments is simply appalling.

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Polygamy is illegal in Thailand, but that didn’t stop a modern-day Casanova from taking a whopping 120 wives and having 28 children with them. What’s even more unusual is that the women all know about each other and are fine with the arrangement.

Tambon Prasert, the head of Phromnee district, in Thailand’s Nakorn Nayok province, some 90 km  from Bangkok, was recently forced to admit that he had illegally taken over 100 wives, after reporters were tipped off about it by anonymous sources. The 58-year-old local politician and owner of a successful construction business, recently welcomed members of the media into his home to shed some light on his family life, after they traveled to Phromnee to confirm their leads. Asked if it was true that he had more than 100 wives all across the country, Prasert matter-of-factly said “I have 120 wives and 28 sons and daughters”.

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Lauren and Will Powers, of Ferndale, Michigan, don’t need to dust their home like the rest of us. Their cat, Cygnus, does it for them just by walking around the place and wagging his incredibly long and fluffy tail.

Cygnus Regulus Powers was recently featured in the 2018 Guinness Book of Records for having the “longest tail on a domestic cat”. The official measurement put his tail at a whopping 44.66 cm (17.58 inches) from the base of his butt to the end of the “meat” of his tail, but it must have been done a while ago, because in June of last year, his owner Will Powers told Love Meow that Cygnus’ tail already measured 18.4 inches (24 inches, if you count the fluff). And considering that the cute Main Coon was only about a year old at the time, his tail must be considerably longer now.

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It’s hard to believe that anyone could survive on just 45 cents a day, especially if they don’t even have a place to sleep, but Japanese comedian Kotani Makoto has been doing it for a while now, and claims that he’s happier and more successful than ever before.

But it’s not just that Kotani Makoto is doing better than ever on ¥50 (¢45) a day that’s intriguing, but also how he gets that money. Four years ago, soon after moving to Tokyo to make it as a solo comedian, Makoto found himself unable to afford his own place, so he moved in with a more established comedian called King Kong Nishino, for a reasonable ¥40,000 (~$400 USD) monthly rent. However, Nishino could only put up with his new roommate’s sloppy and messy lifestyle for a couple of months, after which he just shook his head and told him “”Starting today, you should become homeless. Your life will definitely be better that way.” Nishino took the advice to heart and claims it changed his life for the better.

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To say You Jianxia has long eyelashes would be a gross understatement. The average person’s lashes are between 0.8 and 1.2 cm-long, but the hairs growing on the edges of this woman’s eyelids reach a whopping 12.4 cm. That’s nearly 5-inches!

The 2018 Guinness World Records category for “world’s longest eyelashes” was one of the most popular, with over 500 entries from all around the world, but no one even came close to You Jianxia, a former investment fund director from Shanghai, China. With eyelashes reaching all the way down from her eyelids past her mouth, the 49-year-old easily bagged the world record. When her lashes were officially measured, on 28 June 2016, the longest of them was 12.4 cm, and considering that was a year ago, it’s probably even longer now. If not for the photos of You doing the rounds online, I would never have believed such long natural eyelashes were even possible.

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Ask anyone if they would pay anything to own another’s person’s poop, and they will most likely say “hell, no”. But everything changes when the said poop becomes a work of art. Case in point, “Artist’s Shit”, a collection of 30g tin cans allegedly containing the poop of Italian artist Piero Manzoni. Art collectors are buying them for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

When Piero Manzoni came up with the idea to can his own poop, in 1961, he probably had no idea that his 30g metal containers would one day sell for astronomical prices. In 2007, the Tate art gallery in London, bought one of Manzoni’s 90 cans for £22,350 ($30,000), and while that may seem like a lot for what is literally just canned crap, they actually got a great deal. In 2007, another can of “Merda d’Artista” was auctioned off in Milan, for a whopping £81,000 ($108,000). Crazy, right? Not really, just another good deal, because Manzoni’s cans of poop are currently worth around $300,000 apiece. Last year, someone bought can no. 54 for £182,500 ($242,000). At this rate, they’ll soon be worth millions.

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For the past 13 years, Natalie Adler, of Melbourne Australia, has been battling a strange medical condition that causes her eyelids to close for up to three days at a time, rendering her completely blind. After countless tests and procedures, doctors still don’t have a proper diagnosis.

Natalie’s life changed dramatically one seemingly normal Sunday, when she was 17-years-old. She just woke up with extremely swollen eyelids and her eyes soon started closing intermittently for various periods of time. In a few weeks time, they were closing for three days, followed by three normal days, and she found herself having to get used to the unusual routine, because doctors could not figure out what was wrong.

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New York-based startup Entrupy has invented a small, portable scanner that rich people can use to check the authenticity of designer bags in mere seconds.

According to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the global counterfeit industry is worth around 460 billion dollars, a big chunk of which involves counterfeit luxury goods from brands like Louis Vuitton or Channel. The thing about such fakes is that they are often so well-made that the human eye simply cannot tell them apart from originals. That’s where technology come in. Using a high-quality scanner and deep-learning technology, the brilliant minds behind Entrupy, have come up with a device that allows anyone to check the authenticity of luxury products, anytime, anywhere.

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A Japanese company has created an adorable robot dog that can tell you how bad your feet smell, by using a powerful sensor embedded in its nose. If your feet don’t have bad odor, “Hana-chan” will happily wag its tale, if it detects moderately smelly feet, it will start to bark, and if they really stink, it will just fall over like the smell caused it to faint.

Foot odor is a big deal in Japan, where it is customary for people to take off their shoes whenever they enter someone’s home. In fact, subjecting others to foul bodily odors can even be considered harassment in Japan, so it’s no wonder that some of the most brilliant minds in the country’s tech industry have been dedicating their talent to tackling this issue. Panasonic recently unveiled a high-tech deodorizing coat hanger, Konika Minolta developed a pocket-size device that monitors body odors and alerts the user when they start to smell, and, last year, gadget maker Thanko started selling clip-on armpit fans designed to keep people’s armpits nice and dry. Now, we have Hana-chan, a robot dog capable of telling people if their feet stink.

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Having trouble deciding between white wine and beer? Thanks to artisan wine maker in Belgium, you can now have both in the same bottle.

49-year-old Filip Decroix, an experienced winemaker from Ypres, has spent the last year trying to perfect the formula for his “Steenstraetse Hoppewijn”, a sparkling white wine with a beer-like bitterness created by combining Chardonnay with Belgian hops. Decroix claims that he set out to create a wine that Belgians, known mostly for their beer, would appreciate and after having it tested by expert sommeliers, he is sure it will be a big hit.

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Ever since Nestlé introduced white chocolate, 80 years ago, chocolate has been available in only three main varieties – dark, milk and white. Well, it’s apparently time to add a fourth type to the list – Ruby pink chocolate.

Zurich-based Barry Callebaut, the world’s largest based cocoa processor, has apparently spent the last 13 years trying to produce naturally pink chocolate out of ruby cocoa beans. This cocoa variety grows in different parts of the world, including Ecuador, Brazil, and the Ivory Coast, but the Swiss company is the first to actually convert it into pink chocolate, through a sophisticated process.

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65-year-old Zhang Kehua, a retired mason from Qianjiang, China, has a very unique skill – he can assemble realistic Chinese vases out of thousands of folded plastic playing cards.

We’ve seen people create all kinds of impressive structures by expertly stacking playing cards, but what Zhang Kehua does is on a whole other level. The Chinese retiree has taught himself several methods of folding plastic playing cards so that they can be assembled into life-size vases that even feature traditional decorative patterns. His creations are so flawless that seen from a far, you could swear that they are made of porcelain.

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Alejandro Ramos Martínez, a seafood diver from Pisco, Peru, recently made international headlines after a terrible accident left him looking like a human balloon. He apparently rose from a depth of 30 meters too fast, which caused the nitrogen in his blood to form giant bubbles that adhered to his muscles, leaving him looking deformed.

Martínez’s unusual case was featured on Peruvian TV show “Cuarto Poder”, where doctors were left stunned by the horrifying effect of the nitrogen pods on the man’s physical appearance. Decompression sickness, also known as ‘the bends’, causes nitrogen to come out of solution and form bubbles in the blood and tissues. In mild cases, symptoms include unusual fatigue, dizziness, nausea and joint pain, but in rare cases it can also cause paralysis or even death. The deforming effects it has had on this Peruvian diver are believed to be unique

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Police in Thailand are looking for a serial scammer who has apparently married at least eight men in the last two years, disappearing from their lives completely right after collecting the dowry money from their families.

The real-life “runaway bride”, 32-year-old Jariyaporn “Nammon” Buayai, had apparently been called out as a scammer on social media a long time ago, but she only appeared on the radar of law enforcement a few days ago, after one of her victims filed a formal complaint against her. Prasarn Tiamyam, 32, claims that he recently saw a Facebook post warning Thai men to stay away from Nammon, and recognized her as the woman he married two years ago, after she told him she had gotten pregnant. She had disappeared days after the wedding, with a dowry of THB 200,000 ($6,000) and never came back.

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Melanie Barboni, an assistant researcher at UCLA’s Earth, Planetary and Space Science department, is known as an expert in geology and volcanic activity among her colleagues, but those who haven’t worked with her before know her only as the “hummingbird whisperer”. She has always been fascinated by the tiny birds, and after moving to Los Angeles, she has nurtured a colony of over 200 hummingbirds right outside her office window.

Growing up in Switzerland, a country with an almost non-existent population of hummingbirds, Melanie Barboni admired the colorful birds in books, but dreamed of one day seeing them up close, so when she learned that her next job assignment would lead her to Los Angeles, California, where hummingbirds live all year round, she was overjoyed. She has spent the two years since developing a colony of 200-plus hummingbirds right outside her office window, by hanging four nectar-filled feeders for them. Melanie has gotten so close to her hummingbirds that she “cannot go to a place where they are not there”.

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