Poppy Johnson, a 23-year-old woman from the UK, claims she has been suffering from an irrational fear of pop legend Michael Jackson for 18 years, ever since she saw the Thriller music video for the first time.

The London-based bar tender was only five when she saw Michael Jackson’s iconic Thriller music video. She recalls being freaked out by it, especially the artist’s face change from the wolf. Ever since then, every time she sees or hears anything related to Michael Jackson – a song, an interview or even a poster – she has flashbacks of that traumatic experience and an unexplainable fear sets in. Poppy says she experiences sweaty palms and starts to feel shaky. To make matters worse, Poppy’s parents are big Michael Jackson fans and have lost of memorabilia around their house, but she never told them about her phobia.

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Armed robberies have become so common in Mexico City that people have started buying fake smartphones to hand over to trigger-happy criminals who would rather shoot them than leave empty-handed.

Walking on the street or getting on public transportation in Mexico City have become increasingly risky affairs. According to recently released data, there were an average of 70 violent reported muggings in the Mexican capital in the first four months of 2019. Around two thirds of these crimes targeted pedestrians, while the rest were evenly committed against public transportation passengers and motorists stuck in traffic jams or waiting at traffic lights. The incidence of such crimes has been steadily increasing in the city, but it has gotten so bad that people are now buying fake smartphones to hand over to muggers instead of their real ones.

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Hamburg police recently took to Facebook to report the hilarious case of two young parents who forgot their newborn baby in the back of a taxi on their way back from the hospital where it had been delivered.

According to the viral social media post, the forgetful parents had just given birth to their second child at a Hamburg hospital and were excited to get back home as a family of four. So excited in fact, that when it was time to get out of the taxi and introduce their bundle of joy to his crib, they actually forgot to take the said bundle of joy with them. They took the baby’s one-year-old sibling out of the car, paid the cab driver and said their goodbye. But as the tax was pulling away, the couple got a strange feeling that something was missing, only by the time they realized they were missing their newest family member, it was too late.

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A 12-year-old by from Nanning, China recently won first prize at a regional science and innovation contest for creating an automatic clothes drying rack that retracts whenever it detects rain and extends again when the sky clears. The ingenious contraption impressed a lot of people, but it was the inspiration behind it that really got people talking.

Lu Jiezhen, a sixth-grade student at North-East Women’s Education Center in, Nanning, China’s Guangdong Province, came up with the idea for the automatic rain-detecting drying rack after being yelled at by his mother. One day, she had to leave the house and asked him to look after the clothes she had hung out to dry, reminding him that he was to take them inside in case it started to rain. Needless to say, the 12-year-old started playing around the house and forgot to pick up the clothes when the rain inevitably came. When his mother returned, she found the clothes soaking wet, and scolded him for disobeying her. But instead of finding excuses, Lu started thinking about a solution that would make his forgetfulness irrelevant in the future.

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A family in Granada, Spain was shocked to discover that the constant buzzing coming from behind their bedroom wall turned out to be a massive bee colony numbering over 80,000 honey bees.

Spanish social media has been buzzing with the news of a couple in Pinos Puente, Granada, who recently asked a local beekeeper to investigate the increasingly loud buzz sound coming from behind their bedroom wall. They had been hearing it for a while and had long come to the conclusion that it must be caused by bees, but it wasn’t until the buzzing got so loud that they couldn’t sleep at night that they decided to get professional help. Beekeeper Sergio Guerrero had helped remove bee colonies from their properties before, but what he found behind the wall of this particular house left him speechless – a hive of over 80,000 bees and honey combs over a meter long.

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It’s crazy what people these days will do for a bit of attention and some social media followers. Julia Słońska, a young model and online influencer with over 6,000 followers on Instagram, was widely criticized after a viral video shot by a friend showed her smashing the nose of a 200-year-old statue with a hammer.

Słońska has been forced to issue a grovelling apology after a video of her smashing the nose of a post-war statue in Warsaw received massive criticism online. Posted as a story by fellow Instagram user @advvx, the shocking video shows the young model holding a hammer and asking the person behind the camera if they are filming before proceeding to smash the statue’s nose to smithereens. The pair then continue to laugh as they walk away leaving the now-noseless statue to be discovered by local authorities. Although Słońska has yet to reveal the motivation behind this act of vandalism, it is believed to have been a stunt meant to attract social media followers.

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‘Beautiful’ is probably not the first word most people would use to describe mold, but to an online community in Russia, the fungi commonly associated with death and decay truly is a thing of beauty, and they have the photos to prove it.

‘Mom, I Have Grown Mold’ is a growing community of mold enthusiasts who love uploading their own photos of mold and commenting on those uploaded by other members. The public group was created back in 2015 on popular Russian social network VKontakte, and has grown to over 50,000 members, many of which constantly post intriguing photos of mold cultured they grow in their own homes. Some of them are actually quite intriguing, if you can get past your disgust and really appreciate the beauty behind it.

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A 33-year-old law-school graduate from London decided to start her own her own retail company selling vintage clothes online after struggling to find a job because of her good looks.

Russian-born Irina Kova claims that being attractive has made it harder for her to get a job in London, as women simply don’t trust her or find her intimidating, and men don’t take her seriously. Kova, who used to work in business development for important clients, believes her good looks ruined her career and made it harder to find another serious job, despite having a law-degree and an impressive CV.

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A young Norwegian woman recently went viral online for her very unusual skill – she can trot, canter, gallop and even jump over obstacles with same form and cadence as an actual horse.

If, like me, you’re an incurable procrastinator who wastes hours everyday watching random things on the internet, chances are you’ve already seen Ayla Kirstine in action. A video showing her trotting and cantering like a horse went viral on Twitter last week, getting over 18 million views on that social media platform alone. Ayla is so good at what she does that, seen from afar at the beginning of the video, she actually looks like a four-legged animal, which a lot of people found uncanny.

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A Florida man who was spotted standing through his sunroof while driving on a busy expressway told police that he would rather get locked up than go home to his wife.

70-year-old Leonard Olsen was detained last week after being spotted by an off-duty policeman while standing through the sunroof of his car with his arms spread out. The witness, who actually managed to film the bizarre stunt, said that at one point Olsen was just sitting on his sunroof while the car was still moving. After being stopped by troopers alerted by the off-duty officer, Olen initially denied that he had ever stood out the sunroof while driving, saying that he didn’t “know about that”. However, after being told that someone had seen and recorded him doing just that, the man changed his story, telling the troopers that he planned to turn himself in because he didn’t want to go back to his wife.

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A Chinese DIY enthusiast has become an overnight sensation thanks to his unusual approach to solving household problems. He uses foods like instant noodles, Oreo cookies and rice to expertly fix various pieces of furniture, leaving them as good as new.

The unconventional handyman, who goes by Xiubandrng on Chinese video upload platform Douyin, has been wowing Chinese fans with his skills for months, but the Western world was only introduced to his amazing DIY work this week, when a video of him repairing a broken sink with dry noodles and glue went viral on several social networks. He just fills the hole in the sink with noodles, pours some glue over them, smooths it out with an abrasive strip and paints the whole thing white. When he’s done, the sink looks brand new.

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A Spanish inmate recently invoked the principle of religious freedom in an attempt to convince the prison warden to serve him a glass of wine with every meal so he could worship his chosen deity.

In a letter addressed to the director of Zaballa prison, in Spain’s Basque Country, the unnamed prisoner declares himself a disciple of Bachus, the Roman god of wine, and asks that he be provided with a glass of wine for every meal, so he can properly worship his deity.

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A young dog breeder in eastern China was recently arrested and sentenced to ten days in a detention center after giving two of his canines controversial names that refer to Chinese government and civil service workers.

The 30-year-old man, surnamed Ban, was summoned by police on Monday, after posting on Chinese social network WeChat that he had named two of his dogs Chengguan and Xieguan. The first refers to officials tasked with tackling low-level crime, while the second is a name used to describe informal community workers, such as traffic assistants. Ban said that he didn’t know using the two words as names for his dogs was illegal, and that he had done it as a joke, but police failed to see the humor and launched an investigation after the man’s post went viral online.

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British insurance company Endsleigh Insurance Services recently launched its “Spoiler Cover” package, which allows Game of Thrones fans to receive financial compensation for plotlines ruined by friends, family or social media.

With the HBO series’ grand finale expected to air in the UK at 9pm on Monday 20 May, a full 19 hours after the final episode airs in the United States, the chances of plot leaks ruining fans’ viewing experience are pretty high. One insurance company came up with the idea of appeasing disgruntled fans by offering them financial compensation up to the sum of £100 per person if they accidentally fall victim to spoilers or unwanted plot reveals.

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A young Filipino woman working as a maid for a wealthy family in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, was reportedly tied to a tree by her employers as punishment for leaving a valuable piece of furniture in the sun.

26-year-old Lovely Acosta Baruelo is said to have angered her Saudi employers by leaving a piece of furniture outside, where it risked being damaged by the sun. As punishment, the family decided to make her feel the effects of staying in the scorching sun for too long, by tying her to a tree in their opulent Riyadh mansion. Photos of the woman tightly bound to the tree with a rope, as other servants carry on with their work around her unable to help, were allegedly taken by another Filipino worker who later shared them online, begging authorities to help the victim of the abuse.

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