Spanish artist Manel de Aguas doesn’t consider himself human, but something else. A founding member of the Trans-Species society, he uses technological implants to experience the world differently than the rest of humanity.

24-year-old Manel de Aguas first made international news headlines in August of 2017, when he built the first prototype of a device that allowed him to feel atmospheric vibrations. At the time, it was nothing more than an exposed circuit board that hung on a headband at the back of his head. The following year, he started attaching a pair of fins to the sides of his head, and announced his intention to have them implanted into his skull. Earlier this year, de Aguas did just that, turning those decorative fins into functional organs that perceive the temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure and send sounds to Manel’s brain via bone conduction.

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German footwear brand Adidas teamed up with high-end porcelain manufacturer Meissen to create a unique pair of sneakers that’s expected to be sold for over $1 million at auction.

As part of its A-ZX program, Adidas Originals plans to team up with selected partners around the world in order to create unique sneakers that qualify more as works of art than footwear meant to be worn. This month, Adidas unveiled a very colorful pair of sneakers that it has been working on with German porcelain brand Meissen for more than a year. Based on the iconic Adidas ZX8000 sneaker, this one-of-a-kind pair features dozens of Meissens’ hand-painted colorful designs, as well as various porcelain elements. It is being auctioned this week, by Sotheby’s, and it’s expected to fetch over $1 million.

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Photos of a house near the Russian city of Irkutsk have gone viral on social media because of the contrast between its exterior and interior design.

Located in the village of Novaya Razvodnaya, near Irkutsk, this modern house was recently put on sale, as part of a 620-square-meter property. At first glance, the house has a pretty modern look, but the solitary Roman column decorating the yard hints at the fact that there is more to this place than meets the eye. The moment you set foot inside, it’s like going down the rabbit whole and waking up in a whole new dimension.

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In the last decade and a half, the Bosnian town of Visoko has become a popular tourist attraction thanks to several “energy pyramids”, tree covered hills that some claim are actually part of the largest pyramid complex ever built.

The 350-foot-high Pljesevica Hill, aka the Pyramid of the Moon and the 720-foot-high Visocica Hill, or the Pyramid of the Sun, which border Visoko, are two very controversial landmarks in central Bosnia and Herzegovina. Along with a third so-called “pyramid” in the nearby hills, they allegedly make up an ancient man-made complex that gives off massive levels of “energy force” that have a positive influence on people’s lives. Although scientists have been trying to debunk these new-age claims for many years, believers include a number of high-profile names, including Bosnian officials and even tennis world no.1, Novak Djokovic.

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British comedian John Finnemore put his time in quarantine to good use, becoming only the third person to solve “Cain’s Jawbone”, a super-tough literary puzzle, in its near 90-year history.

Created in 1934, by Edward Powys Mathers, a pioneer of advanced cryptic crosswords, Cain’s Jawbone is one of the most difficult puzzles ever created. It consists of 100 cards, each containing the page of a murder mystery novel, and challenges you to put the cards in the right order and figure out who kills who in the book. It might not sound so hard, but only two people have been able to solve it in the last 86 years. Well, until recently, when British comedian John Finnemore managed to do it, after working on it, on and off, for about four months.

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Around 20 Spanish children ended up growing hair all over their bodies after being administered hair restoring medicine, instead of syrup for upset stomachs.

In a shocking incident first in the summer of 2019, almost two dozen children reportedly started exhibiting symptoms of hypertrichosis, aka “werewolf syndrome”. They started growing hair excessively all over their bodies, after being administered minoxidil, a drug that stimulates hair growth, instead of omeprazole, usually prescribed for gastric problems. The mix-up allegedly happened after mislabeled syrups were delivered to pharmacies in Granada and Valencia, which chemsist prescribed to treat the upset stomachs of little ones. Over a year since hypertrichosis symptoms were first reported, the families of affected children claim their hair is still growing excessively, but justice has not been served.

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Buying a brand new car is supposed to be one of the happiest moments in a person’s life, but for one poor motorist the experience turned from a dream into a nightmare the moment he put his foot on the gas at the dealership.

A video that shows an Indian man getting ready to drive his brand new Kia Carnival minivan out of the dealership, only to drive it straight into a wall and deploying its airbags has been doing the rounds on social media. The footage shows the buyer getting behind the wheel of the brand new car, and an employee of the dealership giving them some last few pointers before letting them drive out. Things don’t exactly go according to plan though, and the video shows the man driving off and then slamming the new Kia straight into a concrete wall with enough force to deploy the airbags.

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Believe it or not, there was once a time when people exposed themselves to harmful levels of radiation to create uranium glass – detailed, fluorescent glassware that glowed a radioactive green under black light. Some antique collectors still live with them in their homes today.

As its name suggests, uranium glass is a special type of glass made with uranium oxide, which gives it a yellow or yellow-green tint, but also makes it radioactive and causes it to glow green under a UV black light. The proportion of uranium in this type of glass usually varies from trace levels to about 2 percent, although uranium glass made in the early twentieth century contained up to 25 percent uranium. Interestingly, the fluorescence of uranium glass is not related to its radioactivity, but is a chemical property of the uranium. In fact, uranium glass is considered generally safe to use, as long as you don’t use it constantly…

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Bosco Vericale is a unique residential complex in the center of Milan, Italy. It consists of two towers that stand 80 and 112 meters high and are covered in plants and trees giving them the look that inspired their name – vertical forest.

Designed by a team of architects at Boeri Studio, Bosco Verticale was designed as a “home for trees that also houses humans and birds”. It was inaugurated in October 2014, in Milan’s Porta Nuova Isola area, as part of a wider renovation project. The two towers are home to a total of 800 trees (480 first and second stage trees, 300 smaller ones), 15,000 perennials and/or ground covering plants and 5,000 shrubs. That amounts to 30,000 square meters of woodland and undergrowth, concentrated on 3,000 square meters of urban surface. And the vegetation is not just for show, it serves a purpose that the residents themselves acknowledge.

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The African crested rat, an elusive rodent that lives in forested areas of Eastern Africa, has a very strange yet intriguing defense mechanism against would-be predators – it licks deadly toxins onto its own fur.

People inhabiting the highland forests and woodlands of countries like Somalia, Sudan or Ethiopia have long known to stay clear of the large maned rat that makes its home in those areas. Known as Lophiomys imhausi to scientists, this long-haired rat is the world’s only poisonous rodent. But the most interesting thing about it is that it’s not born poisonous; it actually “borrows” the lethal toxin of a plant known as the “poison arrow tree”, which contains a poison strong enough to kill an elephant, when applied to an arrow head. The rat applies this toxin to specialized hairs on the sides of its body, turning itself into as lethal weapon against anyone foolish enough to attack it.

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Japanese field voles can seriously impact the profits of apple orchard owners, if left unchecked. For centuries, many farmers have relied on owls to keep vole numbers to manageable levels, and research has shown the night predators to be incredibly efficient.

Ural owls have been setting up their nests in orchards with high rodent populations for a very long time, but Japanese apple growers were the first to notice the beneficial effect the winged predators had on their orchards and actively try to use them as a means of natural pest controls. Apart from allowing the owls to set up nests in tree hollows, they also started installing man-made tree houses to encourage owls from settling on their properties. They soon noticed that the owls brought the vole population down significantly, which meant healthier trees and bigger profits.

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Maryam al-Balushi, an animal lover from Muscat, in Oman, shares her house with 480 cats, most of which were strays, and 12 dogs, spending almost $8,000 a month on food and vet bills for them.

The 51-year-old retired civil servant might seem like a life-long animal lover, but the truth is she hasn’t always been fond of them. It all started in 2008, when her son brought home a small Persian cat as a pet, which al-Balushi wasn’t at all thrilled about, especially since her son didn’t really take care of it. As time went by, Maryam started getting used to her feline pet, and eventually they became inseparable. In 2011, Maryam al-Balushi went through a severe depression, and she credits her first cat for helping her through that difficult period. In the years that followed, she dedicated herself to helping stray cats and taking them into her home.

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Cookies come in all shapes and sizes, but few look as exquisite as those of Costa Rican confectioner Lorena Rodriguez, founder of Lorena’s Sweets.

Looking at the edible works of art created by Lorena Rodriguez, once doesn’t know if to eat them or hang them up on a wall somewhere, for everyone to see. Some of the experienced confectioner’s cookies certainly don’t look like the variety you find in most cookie jars, that’s for sure. They range from realistic-looking paintings with elaborate, gilded frames, designs inspired by rococo architecture, and edible Christmas decorations. They consist of a Danish-style cookie expertly decorated with a high-quality fondant molded into shape using silicone molds.

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A 59-year-old man in Zelenograd, Russia, lived with serious nose breathing difficulties for over half a century, because of a coin he had shoved up his nose as a child and forgot about over the years.

Doctors at the Konchalovsky City Clinical Hospital in Zelenograd recently reported the strange case of a patient who said he had been completely unable to breathe through his right nostril for several months. A CT scan showed that the right nasal passage was completely blocked by a foreign body of stony density stuck in the posterior, close to the nasopharynx. A more common curvature of the septum was also observed, but it would not have obstructed the nasal passage completely all by itself. The foreign object was the problem, but the deviated septum had emphasized the breathing difficulties to the point where the patient had no choice but to seek help.

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Fritillaria delavayi, a plant used in traditional Chinese medicine, has apparently evolved to match its background and become more difficult to spot as a direct consequence of heavy harvesting.

Scientists had known that many plants evolved to use camouflage as a way of hiding from herbivores that may eat them, but a recent study suggests that one particular plant species has developed the same mechanism to hide from human harvesters. Researchers found that fritillaria delavayi plants, which grow on the rocky slopes of China’s Hengduan mountains, match their backgrounds most closely in areas where they are intensely harvested by humans.

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