In most places around the world, people are taught that eating raw meat is bad for them due to the high risk of contacting parasites and harmful bacteria, but in Ethiopia raw meat is a popular delicacy.

Walking through the streets of Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, it’s not uncommon to see groups of people gathered around restaurant tables feasting on chunks of raw beef or goat meat. Although particularly popular on holidays or various celebrations, like weddings, a lot of people consume raw meat virtually every day. They will tell you that raw meat is a hearty meal that energizes them and refreshes their bodies, as for the risks associated with eating uncooked meat, which include exposure to tapeworms and dangerous bacteria like salmonella and E-coli, most just choose to ignore them.

Read More »

Beau Jessup, a 19-year-old entrepreneur, has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars through her ingenious online service, Special Name, which helps Chinese parents choose an appropriate English name for their babies.

Finding a suitable name for a baby is a big deal in China. When picking out their child’s Chinese name, parents usually select two or three characters that have a carefully thought out meaning, but when deciding on an English name – to help them interact with native English-speakers easier – many of them struggle. That’s where 19-year-old Beau Jessup and her company, Special Name, come in. For a small fee, Special Name suggests several English names that have different traits, like honesty or ambition, associated with them. In the last three and a half years, Jessup has helped name 677,900 Chinese babies, and earned over $400,000 in the process, more than enough to cover her college expenses.

Read More »

A group of 75 female volunteers from India’s Odisha state has spent every day of the last 20 years patrolling a 75-hectare forest to protect it from woodcutters and timber smugglers.

In 1999, the eastern state of Odisha was ravaged by a supercyclone. People lost their homes, their crops and had to go without food or clothing for several days. But many in Gundalba, a small village in the Mahanadi delta of Puri district, realized that the only reason they were still alive was thanks to a forest and mangrove area that had shielded them from the brunt of the devastation. They knew they had to protect it at all costs, but with all the men busy rebuilding the village after the supercyclone, the task of watching over the forest fell to the women. They quickly formed a vigilante group and  have been taking turns patrolling the forested area in search of timber smugglers and woodcutters for the last 20 years.

Read More »

A 19-year-old Missouri man admitted to spiking co-workers’ drinks with LSD because they were “too uptight” and “needed to have better energy”.

What’s the fastest way to change your co-workers’ mood and help them relax? Well, according to a young Enterprise Rent-A-Car employee, lacing their drinks with strong mood-altering drugs without telling them is one way of going about it.

Two employees at an Enterprise Rent-A-Car office in Arnold, Missouri, needed to be hospitalized last week after reporting symptoms like dizziness and uncontrollable shaking, for no apparent reason. Their manager called an ambulance, but also notified the police about the situation, after seeing another member of her staff holding a dropper and messing with everyone’s drinks. Confronted by the officers, the man nonchalantly admitted to spiking his colleagues drinks with LSD, because they had “negative energy”.

Read More »

Police in Zhenxiong, China’s Yunnan province recently apologized after being ridiculed online for using a 17-year-old suspected criminal’s childhood photo for a wanted poster, because they couldn’t find a more recent one.

Look at those chubby cheeks! Does this look like the face of someone who could commit gang crimes and other violent offences? Well, technically, yes. You see, the photo below is of Ji Qinghai, a dangerous alleged criminal who has been successfully avoiding police for a long time. He’s also just a pre-schooler in this picture, which makes things a bit confusing. He’s actually 17 now, but police couldn’t find any recent photos of him, so they just decided to go with one of him as an adorable kid.

Read More »

The Resistencia Sport Club, a small football club in Paraguay’s second division, is the first in the world to make a tree growing in the stands of its stadium an official supporter, even offering it a membership card and complimentary jersey.

Resistencia’s evergreen supporter is as old as the club, so both the team and its human supporters consider it part of their history. It was around back when the stadium was a mere football field in the middle of a wasteland, so 20-years ago, when the club decided to built concrete stands for its fans, it never even considered the possibility of cutting down their oldest supporters. Instead, they asked the architects and engineers in charge of the project to come up with a solution that would allow it to thrive. So they built the stands around it, allowing human fans to watch home games in its shade. A couple of years ago, when Resistencia celebrated its 100th anniversary, management decided to honor the tree by making it an official member of the club, complete with its own member card and jersey.

Read More »

Solothurn is a picturesque town in the north-west of Switzerland known primarily for its special affinity for the number 11. It seems like everything in this place was designed around this magical number, from the fact that there are precisely 11 churches and chapels, as well as eleven historical fountains, eleven museums and eleven towers in Solothurn, to the rather bizarre clock in the town square that features an 11-hour dial and the number 12 missing.

Although virtually everyone in Solothurn knows about the town’s obsession with the number 11, its origin is shrouded in mystery. Some say it was inspired by a folk legend about magical elves coming down from the nearby Weissenstein mountain to hearten the people of Solothurn, who worked hard but never prospered. The grateful inhabitants started incorporating the number 11, or ‘elf’ in German, as a tribute for the creatures’ aid. But there are also those who claim that the number 11 has biblical connotations, deeming it holy and prophetic. One thing’s for sure, though, Solothurn’s obsession with this number can be traced back centuries.

Read More »

A small batch honey producer in Oita Prefecture, Japan, recently sparked controversy online after it was reported that it sells a product aptly called Honey with Hornets, which actually contain a giant dead hornet suspended in the sweet liquid.

While the decision to put a dead hornet inside a jar of honey can definitely be called questionable, even more so is the fact that the giant Japanese hornets are actually placed inside the jar while still alive and left to drown in the viscous liquid. According to an article on SoraNews24, the hornets, which are known natural enemies of bees, are captured alive by beekeepers while trying to encroach on the bees’ territory to be used as macabre decorations for the company’s jars of honey.

Read More »

Looking at the edible masterpieces of culinary artist and Instagram sensation mikyoui00, it’s hard to believe his journey into the world of food art began as a way of getting his son interested in cooking.

mikyoui00 never had any professional art or design training, but he was always passionate about food preparation and plating, and wanted to instill that same kind of love in his son. But getting a young boy interested in cooking isn’t the easiest thing in the world, and his father quickly realized he needed to think outside the box to make it happen. In the summer of 2017, he started working with fish and teaching his son the art of slicing and plating sashimi by creating all kinds of cool edible art. It was a fun activity that allowed them to bond over something he loved, and the more time he spent coming up with new sashimi designs, the better he got at it.

Read More »

Sanom Chantaraphirom, a 58-year-old man from Thailand who had become famous for wearing an eye-catching “Buddha armor” made up of dozens of blessed Buddha amulets to enhance his luck, recently died in a tragic car accident after leaving his house without his protective garment.

Chantaraphirom, a dedicated Buddhist, first made news headlines in Thailand two years ago, when a video of him wearing one of his several Buddha armors on the streets of his native Sawaeng Ha district, in Ang Thong Province, went viral. Reporters soon got in touch with him and learned that the man, who earned a living making errands with his rickshaw, had accumulated hundreds of blessed Buddha amulets from various temples around the country and had fashioned them into a chain mail-like armor complete with a helmet. Buddha amulets are considered tools to increase the wearer’s luck in different aspects of life, and virtually every Buddhist in Thailand owns at least one, but Sanom Chantaraphirom wore dozens of them over his clothing as a sign of his dedication to Buddhism.

Read More »

The Russian city of Krasknoyask recently hosted the country’s first ever amateur face-slapping championship, which had participants slap each other across the face until one of them got knocked out.

The controversial event was held during the Siberian Power Show, a popular sports show held in Krasnoyarsk on March 16 and 17. A similar competition took place last year, in Moscow, but it featured only professional athletes competing for the unofficial title of most heavy-handed face slapper. This time, organizers decided to give amateurs the chance to prove themselves, so anyone willing to engage in some manly face slapping was invited to sign up. Most of the participants were just random guys who had come to attend the power show and decided to try something new. It’s fair to say that some of them didn’t know the world of pain they would be experiencing at the hands of a mountain of a man…

Read More »

He Yuhong, a 27-year-old beauty blogger from China, has become an online sensation thanks to her amazing ability to transform herself into a doppelganger of celebrities and iconic characters, using makeup.

He, who posts photos and videos of her work on various social networks under the pseudonym Yuyamika, shot to fame last year, when she used her makeup skills to turn herself into a real-life version of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. The video of her remarkable transformation got tens of millions of views on China’s Weibo platform alone, and quickly went viral on Western social networks as well. Since then, Yuhong has been entertaining her growing fan base with more makeup magic, turning herself into doppelgangers of celebrities like Johnny Depp and Taylor Swift, as well as Albert Einstein or the Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Read More »

A Chinese woman obsessed with unconventional health treatments can consider herself lucky to be alive after she injected the juice of 20 types of fruit directly into her bloodstream.

The 51-year-old woman, surnamed Zeng, had apparently become obsessed with leading a healthy lifestyle to the point where she didn’t shy away from trying things most people wouldn’t even consider. On February 22, Zeng made juice from 20 different fruits, but instead of drinking it, she decided to injected into her vein, using a drip. It wasn’t long before she started experiencing worrying symptoms, like itchiness and rising body temperature, but she simply ignored them. Luckily, the woman’s husband noticed her discomfort and as soon as he learned about the bizarre fruit juice infusion, he took her to the hospital.

Read More »

Fathers sometimes like to say that they can do anything mothers can, except give birth and breastfeed. Well, thanks to a new device developed by Japanese company Dentsu, breastfeeding babies may not be a problem for fathers in the near future.

Recently unveiled at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, the Father’s Nursing Assistant is an intriguing, if somewhat bizarre, gadget that aims to allow fathers to help out with stressful tasks usually reserved for mothers. Data shows that much of the parental stress and difficulties associated with taking care of a baby are related to feeding and sleeping, responsibilities in which fathers’ participation tends to be low. In order to get fathers more involved and relieve some of the burden off mothers, Japanese corporation Dentsu has created a wearable milk or formula tank shaped as a pair of female breasts, which allows men to breastfeed children.

Read More »

Whenever 19-year-old Optimosprayn Ismael Meza Barbosa tells people his name, they think he is making fun of them. That’s because his name is the phonetic version of how some people pronounce “Optimus Prime” in Spanish. It was given to him by his father, an avid fan of the Transformers animated series.

The Paraguayan teen recently got his five minutes of online fame after a photo of his ID card went viral on social media. A lot of people thought it was digitally altered to attract attention, but Optimosprayn recently sat down with Paraguayan newspaper Cronica to confirm that he was indeed the Latino namesake of Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots.

Read More »