They say sports are good for your health, but they probably don’t mean the Dutch sport of Paalzitten or Pole Sitting, which sees competitors literally sitting on wooden poles for dozens of hours, until they surrender to either numbness or boredom.

No one knows exactly how Paalzitten came to be, but some sources claim that it originated in the Dutch province of Friesland, where locals tried to stave boredom by inventing sports that involved objects used in daily life, like wooden poles. It’s not clear exactly why someone thought sitting on a wooden pole just waiting for the other guys to descend first was an antidote to boredom, but somehow the sport of Paalzitten caught on and despite almost going extinct at one point, it’s still occasionally practiced in the Netherlands.

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If we were to make a global top 100 ice cream flavors list, hot-dog probably wouldn’t make the cut, but that hasn’t stopped American processed meat giant Oscar Mayer from announcing the launch of a hot-dog-flavored ice cream sandwich.

Shaking up the hot-dog scene seems like a tall order, but Oscar Mayer is willing to try with its soon-to-hit-the-shelves hot dog ice cream sandwich. Made up of sweet hot-dog cream, candied hot-dog bits, and spicy Dijon mustard gelato, all squeezed between two soft cookie buns, the upcoming treat is advertised as the best way to enjoy a hot-dog in ice cream form. It’s not clear if this is just a one-time marketing stunt or a permanent addition to the Oscar Mayer family of products, but one thing is for sure, hot-dog ice cream sandwich is a real thing.

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While tech giants like Tesla and Google are working hard to perfect autonomous cars, a team of scientists in China is developing a self-driving bicycle and their results are pretty impressive.

Showcased in a short video presentation, the autonomous bicycle developed by scientists at Tsinghua University, in Beijing, can balance itself while also avoiding obstacles, following certain trajectories and obeying vocal commands. It can do all these things thanks to a revolutionary type of computer chip that combines two different architectural approaches to computing that hadn’t really worked well together until now, due to communication difficulties between the two systems. However, if this self-driving bike is any indication, the Chinese seem to have solved those issues.

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Ever since the remains of “Homo Florensis”, an extinct species of unusually short humans, were discovered on Flores Island, in eastern Indonesia, scientists have been fascinated with this patch of land, which apparently has the power to somehow make mammals shorter and smaller.

It all began in 2004, when the remains of a human who would have been about 1.1 m in height were discovered at Liang Bua cave. Partial skeletons of nine other individuals were subsequently unearthed and analysis showed that they were part of a yet unknown species of the “Homo” genus named Homo Florensis. It’s estimated that they lived on Flores Island roughly 190,000 to 50,000 years ago. With an average height of just 1.1 meters, they were shorter than modern pygmies which earned them the nickname of ‘real-life hobbits’. Scientists believed they were the ancestors of the pygmies currently living on Flores Island, which made perfect sense, only it turns out that the two have nothing in common. If anything, both species had been independently “shrunk” by the island itself.

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American basketball player Donell “D.J.” Cooper has been banned from the sport for two years after a urine test found him to be pregnant.

The 28-year-old point guard who last played for AS Monaco, in Europe, was suspended for two years by the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) after a urine sample was found to contain high levels of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG)—a hormone produced by the female placenta during pregnancy. Instead of praising the finding as a divine miracle, FIBA assumed that Cooper had submitted a woman’s urine as his own, without knowing that she was pregnant at the time, so they banned him from playing competitively for two years.

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A Michigan man was recently given a surprisingly light prison sentence after being found guilty of repeatedly spiking his wife’s coffee with high doses of sleeping pills.

Therese Kozlowski filed for divorce from her husband, Brian, in June of 2018 but continued living in the same house. In fact, he even made coffee for her every day, which he used as an opportunity to feed her dangerous doses of diphenhydramine, an antihistamine mainly used to treat allergies and insomnia. Of course, Therese only found out after becoming suspicious and installing hidden cameras all over their house to see what Brian was up to. Shocking footage shows the man breaking up several tablets and dumping them in his wife’s coffee before swishing it around to make the drug melt faster.

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A convicted drug trafficker serving a 73-year prison sentence at Rio de Janeiro’s most notorious prison embarrassed himself trying to break out by wearing a cheap silicone mask and mask wig and trying to pass himself as his 19-year-old daughter.

42-year-old Claudino da Silva, aka Baixinho (Shorthy), fancied himself the Brazilian version of Joaqin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, the Mexican kingpin who stunned the world with his daring prison breaks. Unfortunately, his plan didn’t yield the same results, instead making him the laughing stock of the entire planet. To be fair, trying to pass himself off as his 19-year-old daughter while leaving his actual daughter behind bars was probably not da Silva’s brightest idea ever.

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Dentists at a hospital in Chennai, India, were shocked to find over 520 teeth growing in the mouth of a seven-year-old boy who occasionally complained of toothaches.

7-year-old P. Ravindran was taken to Saveetha Dental College and Hospital in Chennai to have a swelling on his lower right jaw looked at. Dentists ordered an X-Ray and CT-Scan, which revealed that the abscess-like swelling was actually a  sac full of what looked like hundreds of teeth of various sizes. The growth, known as compound composite odontoma, is a benign tumour composed of dental tissue, but this was a particularly large one, made up of a total of 526 teeth.

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Politicians always make promises they can’t keep during electoral campaigns, but voters hardly ever hold them responsible for lying. Well, residents in a small Mexican town recently decided to teach their mayor a lesson for failing to fulfil his campaign promises by parading him in women’s clothes for four straight days.

Javier Sebastián Jiménez Santiz won the mayoral race in the town of Huixtán on promises of improving the local water system, but failed to live up to the expectations of his constituents. Lat last month, after getting sick of his excuses and promises, locals stormed into the mayor’s office and dressed up Santiz and municipal trustee Luis Ton in women’s clothing. Mayor Santiz had to wear a long dark skirt and white blouse with ruffles and flowery embroidery, while Ton was given a bright pink dress with white polka dots.

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When you think of possible emotional support animal species, alligator probably isn’t at the top of the list. But that didn’t stop one Pennsylvania man from relying on a hug-loving alligator to keep his depression in check.

65-year-old Joie Henney received approval from his doctor to use an alligator as an emotional support animal, after refusing to go on medication for depression. Named Wally, the unlikely pet reportedly likes to snuggle and loves being hugged and petted. Henney describes the five-foot-long alligator as a big softy, telling reporters that he never bit anyone and is even afraid of cats. Despite being fully aware of the fact that Wally could rip his arm off if he wanted to, the 65-year-old says he isn’t afraid of him at all.

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Azadar Hussain, a news reporter for Pakistani channel GTV News, shot to worldwide fame last week after footage of his daring reporting of local floods went viral online.

In a commendable attempt to show viewers what the people of Pakistan’s Kot Chatta region had to put up with following devastating floods, Azadar Hussain decided to conduct his on-location reporting submerged in floodwater to the point where only his head and the hand holding the microphone were visible. Hussain’s head is seen bobbing above the water as he clutches onto the microphone, but manages to remain calm and composed, offering a very clear and accurate depiction of the situation.

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We’ve seen plants and insects posing as something else entirely in order to confuse their natural predators, but Macrocilix maia, a moth native to Southeastern Asia, takes mimicry to a whole new level by literally painting an entire scene on its wings.

Looking at a Macrocilix maia moth, it’s impossible to ignore the scene painted on its wings – two flies feasting on some brown spots that could be mistaken for fresh bird droppings. It’s a pretty disgusting picture, and apparently we’re not the only ones who think so. Many of this moth’s predators tend to skip on insects feasting on bird droppings, associating them with potential disease, so the natural pattern acts as a defense mechanism for the otherwise helpless insect. And as if this visual representation of flies eating bird droppings wasn’t impressive enough, the moth reportedly also gives off a pungent odour that could be mistaken for actual bird droppings.

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When it comes to keeping your self awake while doing homework, I could think of much better techniques than inserting a 10cm metal needle through my urethra, but it seems that’s the best a 12-year-old boy in China could come up with.

The unnamed by from Shanxi, China’s Xi’an province, was apparently so desperate to stay awake while doing his homework that he did something most of us couldn’t even imagine – he took one of his grandmother’s long acupuncture needles and shoved it down his urethra, the sensitive tube through which urine is pushed out of the body. It’s not clear exactly how that helped him stay awake, but that’s what he told his mother pushed him to do it. He later learned that shoving it too hard made it impossible to retrieve, which in turn made him unable to walk normally without enduring stringing pain.

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The makers of popular Australian beer Victoria Bitter have released a limited edition VB Tea that combines Ceylon black tea and Super Pride hops, the same variety of hops that gives Victoria Bitter its bitterness. The result, a cup of tea that tastes like beer.

Or at least that’s what the people at Victoria Bitter would like you to believe. They’ve allegedly created the special non-alcoholic, beer-flavored tea for Australian cricket fans watching their national team compete in England this month, at hours when drinking a lager is considered inappropriate – late at night or early in the morning. With VB Tea, they can enjoy the characteristic bitterness of Victoria Bitter without worrying about the alcohol. Of course, they could have settled for a non-alcoholic beer, but since the cricket is taking place in England, tea just seemed more appropriate.

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An Indonesian man has been making news headlines around the world for embarking on a unique challenge to save the environment. 43-year-old  Medi Bastoni is walking backward some 800 kilometers, from his village in East Java all the way to the capital Jakarta, to meet the president.

Bastoni set off from his home village of Dono, in East Java, on Jul. 18 and opes to reach the presidential palace in Jakarta in time to celebrate Indonesia’s 74th Independence Day on August 17, alongside President Joko Widodo. The main goal of his unique endeavor is to ask Indonesia’s president for a symbolic tree seed, to be planted in the forests on Mount Wills, near his village, to raise awareness about preserving the rainforest. He claims activists are already fighting to preserve the environment, but a symbolic gesture by the president would boost their efforts even more. And his willing to walk backwards for 800km just to meet Indonesia’s leader.

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