When a friend and “crow expert” told Katsufumi Sato to hang some “do not enter signs” on the outside of a building to keep pesky crows a way, the Japanese professor thought he was only kidding, but after three years of employing the bizarre strategy, he says it works perfectly.

Sato, a professor of ethology, hanged his first “crows do not enter” signs at a university research center in Otsuchi, Japan’s Iwate Prefecture, in 2015, at the the advice of his friend, Tsutomu Takeda, who he regards as an expert on crows. The birds had been targeting the insulation material covering the building’s pipes, ripping it with their beaks and flying away with bits of it to use for their nests. He was desperate to keep them away, so even though he though the idea of hanging written signs for crows funny, he was willing to give it a try.

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Two years ago, a winemakers’ association in France dropped 120 bottles of red, white and rosé wine at an undisclosed location in the Mediterranean Sea, as part of an experiment to see if sea bed aging yields better results than traditional cellar aging.

Members of “Les vins de Bandol” winemakers association said that they were inspired to stage this sea aging experiment by the discovery of amphorae that had sunk to the bottom of the sea hundreds, even thousands of years ago. But what really intrigued them was the discovery of intact decades-old wine bottles that had been lost at sea during World War 2, the contents of which had an exquisite taste, according to wine experts. In theory, the sea bed, 40 meters underwater, seemed like a great place to age wine, but they needed proof that this unique environment made the wine taste better, so in the summer of 2015, they dropped 120 bottles of their finest wines into the Mediterranean Sea with plans to retrieve them a year later for a taste test.

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Up until four years ago, Rio Celeste, a 14-kilometer river in Costa Rica’s Alajuela province, was a complete mystery to scientists, who could not understand why its waters had an unusual turquoise color. And then they realized that it wasn’t turquoise at all.

Theories regarding the turquoise color of Rio Celeste had been circulating in the scientific community for years, but nobody had ever managed to provide enough evidence to solve this natural enigma. Some claimed that the unusual coloring was caused by high levels of copper, but tests revealed that there was no copper in the water, others said that it was due to chemicals like calcium carbonate and sulfur, and some even connected it to the river’s proximity to the Tenorio Volcano. Everyone was so convinced that a mysterious chemical reaction was turning the water turquoise that they never even entertained the possibility of an optical illusion.

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Most people have never even seen, let alone tasted, white strawberries, but they’ve been a staple of the Japanese luxury fruit market for years. The Asian country actually has several varieties of white strawberries, among which the White Jewel, or Shiroi Houseki stands out as the rarest and most expensive.

White Jewel strawberries were created four years ago, by Yasuhito Teshima, and his farm in Japan’s Saga Prefecture remains the only one in the world that produces this unique fruit. Teshima-san claims he spent years cross-breeding different types of strawberries and perfecting his growing technique in order to come up with a large strawberry that was white both on the inside and the outside.

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Thai women looking to date a walking ATM machine, but with no clue on how to catch one, can now rely on the services of “Madam Raya”, a seduction expert who claims to have dated 5,000 wealthy men. She is offering online course to help like-minded women bag the rich foreigner of their dreams.

24-year-old Praiya Suriya has been advising other Thai women in the art of seduction for four years now, via her popular Facebook page. She specializes in rich foreigners, and claims to have dated 5,000 of them, which, at her age is definitely an impressive achievement. Suriya recently made news headlines in Thailand after announcing a series of paid online courses that are 100% guaranteed to help takers find the perfect sugar daddy and teach them how to deal with them in order to get their hands on huge sums of money and expensive presents.

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Dr. Sri Ganapathy Sachchidananda Swamiji has recently been recognized by Guinness Book of Records for housing the most bird species under a single roof, 468. He is not a collector who takes pleasure in depriving exotic birds of their freedom, but simply a compassionate man who rescues endangered, injured and abandoned birds from around the world and offers sanctuary in his aviary.

Swamiji, the founder of Avadhoota Datta Peetham ashram, in Mysuru, India, has been passionate about birds for as long as he can remember. Growing up in Mekedattu woods, on the shores of the Cauvery river, he remembers spending much of his time watching many species of birds as they took shelter in the trees outside his house. But it was an accident in 2011 that made him understand his purpose in life – to save as many endangered and abandoned birds as possible – and build his 21-acre aviary in the forests of Mysuru.

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Aílton Manuel da Silva is not your usual waiter. He dresses as one, carries himself as one and even sports a tray full of cold drinks and snacks, but instead of a restaurant or a cafe, he works in the streets, braving the hot sun and incoming traffic to provide for his family. He is the “traffic waiter” of Recife, and probably the world’s most elegant street vendor.

Every morning at 5 a.m., 43-year-old Aílton Manuel da Silva wakes up, puts on his creased pants, white shirt, bow tie and lacquered shoes and leaves for work. He arrives at the busy intersection of Avenida Almirante Dias Fernandes and Rua Emiliano Ribeiro at around 5:30 and gets ready for a long day of waiting through traffic. He prepares his bottles of cold water, cans of soda and snacks like popcorn and chips, sets them neatly on his metal tray, and at 7 in the morning he steps into traffic to offer motorists his assortment of refreshments.

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When they hear the phrase “ice cream sandwich”, most people think about creamy ice-cream squeezed between two waffers or cookies, but in Mexico, it can mean a regular bun stuffed with scoops of ice-cream.

Street vendors in various parts of Mexico have been selling “tortas de nieve” for a few years now, but they’re once attracting attention on social media, after an older video of a man preparing the bizarre snack recently went viral. In it, you can see the ice-cream man slicing a bun usually filled with ingredients like meat,vegetables and sauces, and stuffing it with six scoops of ice cream.

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Eclipse, a black Labrador-bull mastiff mix from Seattle, really loves going to the park. So much so that when her owner is too busy to take, or when he’s taking too long, she just leaves the house by herself, gets on the bus and goes to the park by herself.

It all started one day, four years ago, when Eclipse and her master, Jeff Young, were waiting for the D-Line bus at the bus station. The dog knew they were going to the park and she was impatient, so when the public transportation vehicle pulled up and the doors opened, she just jumped right in. Jeff was smoking a cigarette and decided to just wait for the next bus, but Eclipse wouldn’t hear of it, so she ignored his commands to come down. So she just rode the bus by herself and Young caught up with her later, at the park. While impressed with his pet, Jeff Young had no idea that this would eventually become a habit, one that would turn Eclipse into a local celebrity.

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EverYoung, a technology company based in Seoul, South Korea, has an unusual yet strict condition when hiring new staff – candidates have to be at least 55-year-old. It’s been this way ever since EverYoung was founded, in 2013, and it now employs 420 seniors aged 55 to 83.

South Korea’s corporate culture is notorious for forcing workers into retirement before they reach the official retirement age of 60, but EverYoung founder, Chung Eunsung, hopes to change this practice by proving that seniors can be just as valuable to a company as young workers. In 2013, he set out with the clear goal of only hiring only individuals over the age of 55 and he has stuck with this rule for the last 4 years.

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Radomir Novakovic Cakan is a successful businessman from Montenegro, who has earned himself nicknames like “the best boss in the Balkans” and “Brother” by being incredibly generous to his employees.

Cakan, who owns “Cakan Sports”, the largest sporting goods store chain in Montenegro, and recently went into politics, has been making news headlines in Balkan countries for years, but not for his professional success. He is best known for the generosity he shows his loyal and hard-working employees, and the close relationship he has with them. The businessman firmly believes that his company can only thrive if he keeps his employees happy, and to that end, he has offered the best of them some pretty unbelievable presents.

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When they hear the word “Styrofoam”, most people think about disposable food containers or packaging material, but for one Japanese modular home manufacturer, it is the building material of the future. Its increasingly popular Styrofoam dome houses are highly earthquake-resistant, super cheap and quick to build, and have very high thermal insulating properties. What’s not to like?

Japan Dome House has been selling Styrofoam houses in Japan for the last 15 years, but it was last year that demand for the ultra light housing skyrocketed. In April 2016, Japan’s Kumamoto prefecture was hit by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake that killed 49 people and injured another 3,000. Over 44,000 people were evacuated from their homes, after they had collapsed or caught fire, with thousands of them still living in temporary housing. Structural damage to conventional buildings was reported both in Kumamoto and the neighboring Oita prefecture, but one place that didn’t suffer any damage was Kyushu’s Village Zone, a housing complex made up of 480 closely-packed dome-shaped houses built by Japan Dome House.

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Maycon Wesley Carvalho dos Reis, a tattoo artist from the Brazilian state of Sao Paolo, was recently arrested and charged with torture, after punishing a young man who tried to steal his bicycle by tattooing “I am a thief and a loser” on his forehead.

A disturbing video of an alleged would-be thief sporting a “sou ladrão e vacilão” tattoo on his forehead has been doing the rounds on Brazilian social media since Friday. In it, two men ask the 17-year-old terrified boy to tell them what he wants to have tattooed on his forehead, and then force the answer out of him – “thief”. After the humiliating tattoo is completed, they again force him to say why he had received the bizarre “artwork”, and he admits that he had tried to steal a bicycle.

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Eduardo Donato is one of the many pig farmers in Spain who specialize in “jamón”, a traditional cured ham recognized for its delicious taste and nutritional value. However, his jamón is special. It is widely recognized as the most delicious ham in the world, and, at €4,100 ($4,600) per leg, also the most expensive.

Up until 1989, Eduardo Donato owned a profitable construction company in the city of Tarragona, and specialized in the restoration of 15th and 16th century buildings. Everything was great, he had a good, comfortable life and business was booming. But then, one of his closest colleagues succumbed to cancer, and, soon after, another one died of a heart-attack. He realized that, with all the stress of life in the big city and managing his business, he could be next. To make matters worse, his beautiful city had been “disfigured” by petrochemical and nuclear plants built nearby. Donato realized he didn’t want to live there anymore, so he sold his business and his home, and went looking for paradise.

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Zhang Jian, the controversial owner of a multi-level marketing company and self-proclaimed “future richest man in the world” recently made headlines in Asia for throwing a lavish banquet in Malaysia. The entrance fee was 200 ringgit per person, but Jian offered to let those sporting “the right look” eat for free. Over 1,000 people showed up with their hair dyed gold.

On Sunday, June 4th, Chai Leng Park in Butterworth, Penang, looked like the scene of a blondies convention. Over 1,000 people, both men and women, dyed their hair gold just to be able to attend Zhang Jian’s epic banquet for free. The Chinese businessman had also announced that a lucky few who sported the right look for the event stood to win a 1,000 ringgit  cash prize. The temptation was apparently too hard to resist for a lot of people who didn’t let a thing like looking silly stand between them and a free meal. Some even sported tattoos of Zhang, to show their support.

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