Every year, more than a million pigeons die while competing in Taiwan’s controversial pigeon sea races, a series of grueling events in which young birds are shipped far out to sea, released in the middle of nowhere and forced to fly home. According to several reports from animal rights organizations, less than 1% of them make it back to land.

The small island of Taiwan hosts more pigeon racing events than any other country in the world. A reported 500,000 Taiwanese race pigeons every year, competing for billions of New Taiwan dollars in prize money. Pigeon racing is such a big business that the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology once introduced an optional course on it, which proved very popular with both young and old pigeon racers. However, important notions taught during this course, like injury prevention and the use of performance enhancing drugs fly out the window during Taiwan’s seasonal sea races.

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New Jersey-based masseuse Dorothy Stein is known as the back-biting masseuse because one of her controversial technique involves sinking her teeth into her clients to “tenderise” their muscle and promote blood circulation.

Dr. Dot, as rock legend Frank Zappa nicknamed Stein in the 80’s, when she used to massage bands just to get into shows, was encouraged to use her teeth as a massage tool by her mother, at a very young age. She was only five when her mom asked her to give her a massage for the first time. However, her hands weren’t strong enough at the time, so her mother asked her to bite her instead. It apparently worked, because over four decades later, Dorothy Stein is still using her chompers to tenderise her clients’ muscles and promote blood circulation.

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Shaved Ice is a really popular dessert in Japan, so you can find it pretty much everywhere, but if you’re looking for the craziest, most outrageous shaved ice treat in the country, you have to go to Hyakusho Udon, in Miyazaki Prefecture. The only catch is that you’ll probably have to eat it standing up.

No, Hyakusho Udon doesn’t have a standing up policy, it’s just that their famous shaved ice desserts are so incredibly tall that it’s almost impossible to eat them with a spoon while sitting down. Just reaching the top of the colorful, syrup-soaked dessert with the spoon is a huge challenge for most people, and then there’s the risk of causing the tower of refreshing goodness to come tumbling down by mistake. Standing up is definitely the safe way to go, and considering you’re getting a lot more than your money’s worth, it’s a decent compromise.

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An Indian woman and her four daughters have confessed to hiring contract killers to have their husband/father murdered because he refused to let them wear jeans.

The lifeless body of Meharbaan Ali, a police sub-inspector, was found in a sewage canal in Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh, just 250 meters from his home, on Sunday. An investigation began and it didn’t take long for local police to figure out that the man’s family may have been involved in his murder. Circuit cameras installed in the area and a thorough verification of each family member’s call history helped inspectors crack the case and ultimately get a confession out of the wife and her four daughters.

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Ren Keyu, an elementary school student from Leshan, in China’s Sichuan province, is only 11-years-old but already measures 2.06 meters and thinks he may just be the tallest 6th grader on the planet.

The average 11-year-old Chinese boy measures 1.453 meters, according to data released last year, but Ren Keyu was that height when he finished kindergarten. At 2.06 meters tall, he just towers over his classmates and requires a special chair just to be able to sit at his desk comfortably. Teachers mistake Ren for a much older student and ask him to return to his own classroom, the first time they see him, some students make fun of him for his unusual height and people often stare at him in the streets, but the 11-year-old hopes that his stature will be an advantage for once, as he tries to get his name into the Guinness Book of Records. He wants to apply for the record of world’s tallest 6th-grader.

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A Chinese man recently made national news headlines for his years-long struggle to find a suitable wife. He claims to have asked around 80,000 women if they wanted to date him over the last eight years, but got rejected no less than 80,000 times. Ouch!

31-year-old Niu Xiangfeng has been described as a “dating madman” for his aggressive approach to finding a life-partner. He first made the news in 2013, when photos of him walking through the streets of Beijing while holding a sign that advertised his desire to find a wife along with his links to his social media profiles went viral online. His father died of cancer a couple of years prior and he felt like he needed to get married and start a family. Things didn’t turn out the way he had hoped, and five years on, he is still looking for Mrs. Right.

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It’s no secret that Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters idolize him, but we have yet to hear about any of them worshipping him as a god. Interestingly, that’s exactly what an Indian man has been doing for the last three years, and he’s not even a Trump supporter.

Bussa Krishna, a 31-year-old farmer from the remote village of Konne, in India’s Telangana state, prays to a photo of US President Donald Trump several times a day. He makes offerings of vermilion, turmeric and flowers to the photo and carries it with him wherever he goes, openly declaring his devotion to his unusual deity. Krishna claims that being called mad by family and friends for worshipping Trump the same way as Hindu gods ha only strengthened his resolve, and he now hopes to build a temple dedicated to the US President.

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A 23-year-old woman from Khalapur, India, is risking the death penalty for poisoning the food at a relative’s housewarming party in an attempt to kill attendees who made fun of her dark completion and cooking skills.

Police in Khalapur claim that 23-year-old Pradnya Survase confessed to mixing snake poison into the dal served to some of the guests at a feast hosted by one of her relatives. She was trying to kill her husband and some of her in-laws, who she says had been mocking her dark skin and cooking skills for years. Unfortunately, poison doesn’t discriminate, and her assassination attempt put 88 people in the hospital, five of whom eventually lost their lives.

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Doctors in Russia recently reported the unusual case of a woman who noticed that a number blemishes appeared to move around her face every few days. Those blemishes turned out to be a live parasitic worm crawling under her skin.

The unnamed woman first noticed a small bump under her left eye, but didn’t pay too much attention to it until, five days later, when it disappeared only to be replaced by three larger blemishes above the eye. Then, 10 days later, those disappeared as well, but her upper lip became swollen. Disturbed by these symptoms, the Moscow-based woman sought medical help and ultimately learned that those strange bumps were actually a live parasitic worm called Dirofilaria repens slithering under her skin.

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A 19-year-old French woman visiting her mother in British Columbia, Canada, learned the hard way that going for a jog near the Canadian-US border is not a very good idea.

Cedella Roman, who lives in France, was visiting her mother in North Delta, British Columbia, last month, when she decided to go for an evening run on the coast of White Rock, in Western Canada. Cedella was admiring the breathtaking scenery, so even though she knew she was close to the border with the United States, she claims she didn’t realize that she accidentally crossed into the neighboring country. The young jogger only realized her mistake when she was stopped by a couple of U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers, shortly after unknowingly  crossing the border.

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In most countries, people are buried within a few days of their death, but in the African country of Ghana, burials are complicated affairs that can take months or even years to prepare. In some communities, speedy burials are considered downright sacrilegious, so despite the wishes of the deceased and their immediate family, bodies spend months frozen at the morgue before finally being laid to rest.

Ghana’s lengthy funerals are closely related to the notion of family in the African country. During one’s life, their children, spouse and parents are considered immediate family, but once they are dead, their body belongs to the extended family in which they were born. In many cases this includes distant relatives that the deceased hand’t even spoken to in decades, but that makes no difference. They get a say in how, where and when the deceased is buried, and whatever instructions they left regarding this aspect, or whatever they asked their close family to do, is meaningless unless the extended family agrees to the terms.

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Jason Stieva has been doing Gothic assemblage art for roughly two decades, but his most intricate and impressive creation has to be the Leviathan – Ark of Apocalypse, an 8 feet high, 7.5 feet long ghost ship populated by hundreds of strange creatures.

Most of the artworks in Jason Stieva’s ongoing “Gothic Times” series are incredibly detailed, but he himself admits that the Leviathan – Ark of the Apocalypse was his most daunting project ever, and that he will most likely will never make anything like it again. And just looking at pictures of this incredible artwork, you can understand why. Although measuring over 7 meters in length, 2.5 meters in width and standing at a whopping 8 feet tall, this ghostly ship is brimming with detail. From the steampunk-inspired gears at the bottom of the ship and the dozens of cannons dominating its sides, to the hundreds of skeletons and other ghastly creatures populating its deck and multiple crow’s nests, it’s just so much to take in.

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A 64-year-old employee of the waterworks bureau in the Japanese city of Kobe was recently fined and reprimanded by his superiors for going on his lunch break three minutes early, on more than one occasion.

The lunch break at the Kobe waterworks bureau starts at 12 pm sharp and lasts until 1 pm. However, an employee looking for “a change of pace” decided to leave his desk a few minutes early to go get himself a bento box from a nearby restaurant. Unfortunately for him, a senior colleague looking out the window from his office, saw the unnamed offender heading to the restaurant on one of his unsanctioned escapades, and reported him to management. An investigation revealed that the man had started his lunch break three minutes early a total of 26 times in the last 7 months, which they apparently decided was a huge deal.

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A 20-year-old man in Paraguay recently gave his family and friends the shock of their lives when he returned home after three days to find them all grieving over what was supposed to be his dead body.

Juan Ramón Alfonso Penayo, from the village of Santa Teresa, close to Paraguay’s border with Brazil, had last been seen leaving his house last Thursday. He had told no one where he was going, and after failing to get in touch with him, Juan’s family reported his disappearance. As fate would have it, soon after contacting the authorities, the man’s family received news that a charred body had been found in the vicinity of Santa Teresa, and they were asked to come to the morgue and identify it.

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Visitors at this past weekend’s Car Free Day Festival in Vancouver, British Columbia, had the chance to buy one of the most unusual health food products ever created – unfiltered hot dog water.

Gluten-free, keto-compatible, rich in sodium and electrolytes, and bottled in a sleek glass bottle, unfiltered hot dog water has all the making of a health food craze. And with a hefty cost of $38 per bottle, it even has the price tag to match. Like similar “raw” or “smart” waters available on the market these days, hot dog water comes with a series of supposed health benefits: it’s rich in sodium, which helps your body increase its water intake, helps the drinker lose weight, increase brain function, look younger and increase vitality, and triggers anti-inflammatory processes, making it the perfect post-workout drink. And the cherry on the cake – every bottle contains an actual hot-dog.

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