At 91 years of age, LC “Buckshot” Smith may just be the world’s oldest serving police officer, but he says he has no plans to retire just yet.

Buckshot doesn’t move around as fast as he used to, but that hasn’t been stopping him from patrolling the street of his home town, Camden, in Arkansas, four days a week. After serving for 46 years as a deputy, he retired, but he couldn’t stay away from the job for more than five months. He doesn’t hunt, doesn’t fish, all he ever enjoyed doing was being a police officer, so he went back to work in his 80s, as a rookie cop. He loves serving his community and only plans to retire for good “when the good Lord tells him to”.

Read More »

Once called a madman and laughed at by members of his community, an Indonesian man is now being hailed as a hero after spending a quarter of a century covering 250 hectares of barren hillsides around his home with banyan and ficus trees.

The story of Sadiman, the Indonesian man who singlehandedly brought a forest back to life, began in the early 1990s, but the problem he helped fix can be traced back to the 1960s. It was then that great forest fires ravaged the forests on the southern slope of Lawu Mountain, in Central Java, turning hundreds of hectares state-owned pine forest to ash and leaving barren hills in their place. For decades dozens of villages in the Regency of Wonogiri battled draughts and famine, until an unlikely hero took it upon himself to bring back the forest and create a better life for him and his community.

Read More »

Budimir Buda Šobat, a 54-year-old man from Croatia, managed to set a new world record for the longest time breath held underwater, after spending 24 minutes and 33 seconds underwater without coming up for air.

The incredible feat was achieved in a swimming pool, in the town of Sisak, under the supervision of doctors, reporters and supporters, and saw the 54-year-old diver push his body to the limit. After spending a few minutes hyperventilating on pure oxygen, to increase body oxygenation, Šobat spent close to half an hour face down in the pool, without coming up for air. It sounds like an impossible achievement for a mere mortal, but for the Croatian daredevil it’s the crowning achievement of years of training and conditioning.

Read More »

A tire startup has teamed up with NASA to bring the world’s first space-age alloy bicycle tires to the mainstream market.

The SMART Tire Company recently announced an innovative airless bicycle tire originally developed and tested by NASA for future Mars Rover missions. Dubbed METL, the revolutionary tire is made from smart memory metal that ,unlike stretching, rearranges its molecular structure when you bend it, but instantly goes back to its original shape. It basically has the flexibility of rubber but is as strong as titanium, which means that you probably won’t have to change another bicycle tire in your lifetime.

Read More »

A California couple who thought they were buying their dream home, ended up in a real-life nightmare after the old owner refused to move and is still living there over a year since the transaction.

On January 31, 2020, Tracie and Myles Albert put down money on a beautiful four-bedroom home in Riverside, California, but over a year since, they are still unable to move in, because the former owner refuses to leave. The man collected the asking price of $560,000, but after the contract was signed, he refused to turn over the keys and move out. Although the Alberts have tried appealing to the authorities, a California moratorium prevents evictions during the Covid-19 epidemic, so there’s nothing anyone can do.

Read More »

Did you know there was a way to simply pull off the wool of sheep as you would a sweater, thus making classic shearing obsolete? It’s actually been around for decades, but for some reason, it never caught on.

When BioClip was first introduced in the early 1990s, it was supposed to completely replace sheep shearing in a matter of years. To be honest, it was a truly revolutionary product that relied on an effective biological agent to harvest sheep wool in a totally different way. A singly injection of BioClip caused a temporary break in the wool
follicle fiber synthesis process, essentially detaching the wool coat from the animal, and allowing owners to remove it as they would a piece of clothing. Videos of the process have been doing the rounds online for years, and they just never get old.

Read More »

Japanese television recently featured the unusual story of a young couple who, despite being married for two years, still go Dutch about everything from expenses to house chores.

39-year-old Aiko and her 42-year-old husband, Kazuki, met at a video-game production company, and after going out on a few dates, they quickly realized that they had very different interests. That didn’t mean they were incompatible, though, so they decided to continue their relationship, while remaining as independent as possible. And even though they tied the knot very early into their relationship, they continued to go Dutch, and have done so to this day. Their unusual arrangement recently attracted the attention of a popular TV show in Japan, where they revealed exactly how they make it work.

Read More »

An attractive female Twitter user in Japan recently shocked her tens of thousands of fans after going on a national television show to unmask herself as a 50-year-old man using a popular smartphone app to alter her appearance. I think it’s safe to say that after reading this story, you’ll never trust another internet photo again. Nor should you!

Azusa Gakuyuki, a young, attractive girl who had been entertaining her Twitter followers with photos of herself indulging in her biggest passions (motorcycle riding, mountain hiking, skiing and other outdoorsy activities) went on popular television program Monday Late Show (から夜ふかし) to reveal something that left everyone flabbergasted. The beautiful girl, who appeared to be in her early 20s, was actually a 50-year-old man using the popular app FaceApp to alter his appearance and pass himself off as a woman.

Read More »

Blackbird is a unique stone violin carved by Swedish sculptor Lars Widenfalk, based on drawings by Stradivarius, but with modifications that allow it to be played.

Lars Widenfalk came up with the idea of creating a violin out of stone in the late 1980s, while chiseling away at a piece of diabase and being impressed by the pleasant sound it made when hit with hammer and chisel. It wasn’t until 1990 that he finally got his hands on a piece of diabase large enough to be sculpted into a life-size violin, but as soon as he did, he got to work. In the end, he needed a second piece for the back of the violin, but after two years of hard work, Blackbird, the stone violin named after the homonymous bird, was finally completed.

Read More »

It’s been 10 years since Yasuo Takamatsu lost his wife Yuko when a devastating tsunami hit the town of Onagawa, in Miyagi prefecture, but he continues to search for her every week.

On the day that Yuko disappeared, in 2011, Yasuo Takamatsu received one last text message from her. It read “Are you ok? I want to go home.” He has been looking for her ever since, and doesn’t plant to stop until he finds her or he stops drawing breath. In the beginning, the grieving husband searched for Yuko on land, starting at the bank where she was last seen, then along the beaches of Onagawa, in nearby forests and mountains. Two years after her disappearance, Yasuo contacted the local dive shop asking for diving lessons, so he could start searching for her in the sea. He has been going on weekly dives for the past seven and a half years, racking up almost 500 underwater searches.

Read More »

In a first-of-its-kind case in the UK, a 41-year-old unemployed Oxford graduate has taken his parents to court in a bizarre attempt to make them support him financially for life.

Despite being a trained lawyer and having a degree from the prestigious Oxford University, 41-year-old Faiz Siddiqui claims that he is completely dependent on his Dubai-based mother and father. In court filings obtained by the press, Siddiqui describes himself as a “vulnerable” grown-up child due to health issues, and insists that being cut-off by his wealthy parents would be a violation of his human rights.

Read More »

Minato-san, a 30-year-old male office worker and cosplay enthusiast, recently shocked Japanese social media with his transformation into an anime-inspired heroine.

It’s no secret that great cosplayers can alter their physical appearance to the extreme, but in some cases the change is downright scary. Take the case of Minato, a 30-year-old Japanese man who likes to cosplay as an anime girl, and is so good at it that it’s impossible to guess his gender by looking at him. With a clever use of makeup, modern accessories like prosthetic breasts, and a bit of digital manipulation, Minato-san can transform into a whole new person that often leaves the viewer confused.

Read More »

If you’re the kind of person who uses pencils often, you know how pesky those eraser shavings can get after a while. But what if you could put them all o good use, sort of?

Japanese media recently showcased the story of a Chinese teenager who has been saving all his eraser shavings since he was in first grade. Guang Ying originally appeared on TV five years ago, when he was in sixth grade and had already been saving all of his eraser shavings for five years. At the time, he had already created a round mass of shavings the size of a baseball, which was pretty impressive, albeit somewhat gross. But it was nothing compared to how it looks today…

Read More »

A 23-year-old Russian woman has become a mother of 11 in just 10 months time, after turning to surrogates in order to have as many babies as possible, as quickly as possible.

Christina Ozturk only gave birth once, at the age of 17, when she had her first daughter Vika, but after marrying millionaire husband Galip Ozturk, 56, she was keen on building a big family with him, so she turned to surrogate mothers to have 10 babies in just 10 months. The couple’s first child together, Mustafa, was born in March of last year, while their most recent addition to the family and tenth child together, Olivia, was born last month. Christina and Galip don’t know how many children they’ll end up having together, but they definitely don’t plan on stopping at 10.

Read More »

Human curiosity has been at the core of many breakthroughs throughout history, but its outcome isn’t always positive. The the case of this 12-year-old boy who swallowed dozens of magnetic balls, just to see if metal would stick to his stomach.

Rhiley Morrison, and English schoolboy from Greater Manchester, had to undergo life-saving surgery after deliberately swallowing 54 magnets as part of a dumb experiment. The wannabe Magneto ingested the magnets he had received for Christmas to see if metal objects would stick to his stomach, and also what the metallic balls would look like when he passed them. Unfortunately, things didn’t go according to plan, and after days went by without him passing a single magnet, he finally told his mom.

Read More »