A 34-year-old man abducted and sold to a childless family more than 1,000 kilometers from his home was recently reunited with his parents, who had never stopped looking for him, after 32 years.

Mao Yin was just 2-years-old when he was snatched by a stranger on October 17, 1988. He and his father, Mao Zhenjing, were walking home from nursery in the city of Xian in Shaanxi province when the boy asked for a drink of water. The pair stopped in the entrance of a hotel, and when the father turned his back on the boy for only a few moments while trying to cool some hot water, Mao Yin was gone. His family started looking for him right away, putting up posters and contacting police, but it was like he had vanished into thin air. Now, 32 years later, he was miraculously reunited with his birth parents.

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A Honk Kong entrepreneur has come up with an ingenious way of keeping the semi-autonomous city’s recent protests for democracy alive in people’s memories – by introducing a pungent, throat irritating ice-cream flavor reminiscent of tear gas.

The shop owner, who preferred to remain anonymous, told reporters that he created the new “tear gas” ice cream flavor as a reminder “of the pungent, peppery rounds fired by police on the streets of the semi-autonomous Chinese city during months of demonstrations last year”. After trying several ingredients and combinations, including wasabi or mustard, the owner settled on black pepper, both because of its pungent smell and the way it can irritate the throat, just like actual tear gas.

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Chinese media recently reported the bizarre case of a heartbroken young woman who took revenge on her cheating boyfriend by sending a tonne of onions to his doorstep so he could cry as much as she did over his treason.

For most young Chinese couples, May 20 is a very special day, the equivalent of the western Valentine’s Day, but for one heartbroken woman who recently caught her boyfriend cheating, the day will only make her suffering worse. Known only as Miss Zhao from Zibo, in Shandong province, the young woman reportedly went through her boyfriend’s phone a few days ago and was shocked to see that he had been texting other girls and had already cheated on her. Unable to cope with the pain, she ended the relationship and cried her heart out for three days after that. Meanwhile, her ex was out having the time of his life, which only made her more angry…

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Crysomallon squamiferum, commonly known as scaly foot gastropod is a fascinating sea snail that inhabits one of the most inhospitable environments on the planet and has evolved a natural iron armor in order to do so.

“Scaly foot gastropod” has to be one of the most boring names ever picked for one of the coolest creatures on Earth – a sea snail living 2.78 kilometers (1.7 miles) underneath the surface of the Indian Ocean, around hydrothermal vents are spewing out water around 350°C (660°F). Not to mention that this badass snail is the only known creature to have developed a natural metallic armor that is unlike any other known natural or synthetically engineered armor. Did I mention that it doesn’t even need to eat, as a bacteria in its gut produces all the nutrients it needs to survive? Surely such a creature deserved a cooler name…

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Authorities in Cairo, Egypt, have come under fire for approving the construction of an “essential” highway bridge literally half a meter from several apartment buildings.

Egyptian social media has been abuzz over a new high-speed bridge currently under construction in Cairo’s Al-Haram district, for the simple reason that it is being built right next to a number f residential buildings on Nasr El-Din Street. And when we say “right next to”,  we mean that in the most literal sense, as the bridge is just 50 centimetres away from people’s homes. However, in a surprising twist, authorities announced that the bridge had all the necessary permits, and that it was the residential buildings that had been built without a permit. Therefore, an order for their demolition has already been issued.

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A Chinese family recently sued Chinese gaming giant Tencent after their two children were left fighting for their lives a after jumping off of a building to see if they would come back to life like their favorite video game characters.

The two siblings, aged 11 and 9, reportedly became addicted to popular video games Mini World and Game of Peace during the lockdown caused by the spread of the SarsCov-2 virus. Their parents had bought them a smartphone, and they would spend up to eight hours a day playing the two mobile games at the family home in Handan, China. On March 22, the two children jumped off of the family’s 50-foot-tall residential building to see if they would come back to life, just like their video game avatars. The pair were critically injured, breaking numerous bones, and required several surgical procedures.

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Idaho’s natural environment is famous for many things, including breathtaking beauty and fascinating wildlife, but perfect geometry isn’t among them. That’s why this photo of a forest area along Priest River taken from the International Space Station has been getting a lot of attention online.

In January of 2017, astronauts aboard the International Space Station shared a picture of what resembled a near-perfect chessboard pattern located in an area around Whitetail Butte in northern Idaho’s Bonner County. Apparently, the squares in this landscape are the result of a forest management technique dating back to the 1800s, where alternate one-square-mile parcels of land were granted to the US Government to the US Railroad and various other companies. This method ensured the sustainability of forest areas while also enabling logging operations.

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Believe it or not, the Vietnamese province of An Giang, in the Mekong Delta, is less known for its breathtaking natural attractions than for the giant loaves of bread that went viral online a couple of years back.

It all started in 2018, when lifestyle and entertainment website Brightside published a list of the world’s strangest foods, including a giant loaf of bread that was supposedly very popular in Vietnam’s An Giang province. There were those who claimed the accompanying photos of the bread were either photoshopped or shot from a certain angle to create the illusion that they were much larger than ordinary loaves, but then other photos and videos of the unusual bread started going viral online. Vietnamese media started giving the giant loaves a lot of attention, and soon the whole world knew about the now famous giant bread of An Giang.

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At just 27 years old, Li Jiaqi is already one of the most successful online personalities in China. He specializes in selling makeup, particularly luxury brand lipsticks, which has earned him crazy nicknames “King of Lipstick” or “Iron Lips”.

With over 40 million fans on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, and millions others on various other social networks, Li Jiaqi is perhaps the most sought after beauty vlogger in all of China. Whatever product he chooses to promote turns into an instant hit, and companies are desperate to work with him, but he remains mostly focused on makeup, lipstick in particular. It’s not really the kind of career you would expect a young man to venture into, especially in a traditionalist country like China, but his success is proof that unconventionality can be an advantage. That’s how Li Jiaqi looks at it, anyway. He says that most people doubted him at first, saying that he could never sell to a female audience, but he had always been confident that he had an advantage over female beauty vloggers – stamina.

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“A group where we all pretend to be ants in an ant colony” has to be one of the most popular and at the same time strange Facebook groups ever created. It’s basically 1.8 million people pretending they are ants and worshiping their queen.

Being stuck at home for weeks on end makes people do crazy and unusual things, and the rise of Facebook’s now famous “ant group” is a perfect example. Created in June of 2019, A group where we all pretend to be ants in an ant colony numbered a respectable 100,000 members in march of 2020, but then the Covid-19 pandemic started wreaking havoc everywhere prompting social distancing and isolation measures, and the number of members skyrocketed to over a million in less than two months. At the time of this writing, the Facebook group where everyone “worships the Queen and do ant stuff” has over 1.8 million members.

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Last month, South Korean television featured the bizarre case of a shoe repairman from Seoul who has been conditioning his body by banging his body and his head against a tree for the last five years.

Would you ever pick on a man after seeing him violently banging his forehead against a full-grown tree trunk? I myself would, steer away immediately, which is just what the hero of our story is betting on. Back in April, South Korean TV show X SBS WOW featured a shoe repairman from Seoul’s Sinchon neighborhood famous for banging his head and body against a tree every day. You’d think they had made up such a preposterous story, but this man has the forehead callus to prove that he has been doing a lot of head banging for quite some time.

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Looking at photos of Chinese cosplayer CROME拉面猫就是星空萌 dressed up as some of the most famous anime heroines, you would never guess that the person under all that makeup and female clothes is a man.

A former art teacher, CROME拉面猫就是星空萌 now works as a full-time cosplayer, regularly posting new photos and updates for his legion of online fans, attending events and working on new costumes. He reportedly started trying on women’s clothes in secret, in 2007; it was nothing fancy, he didn’t experiment with makeup at the time, and he didn’t tell anyone about it, but he considers those days the true beginning of his female cosplaying career. It wasn’t until 2012 that he was comfortable enough to go out in public dressed as one of his favorite anime characters.

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Chinese media recently reported the bizarre case of a 10-yer-old boy who allegedly developed black mold in his ear canal because of wearing earbuds for long periods of time.

You would think that the human body had some way of preventing mould from developing, even in dark and secluded orifices like the ear canals, but it turns out that with the right conditions fungal infections can occur in our ears. Doctors at the Shunyi Women and Children’s Hospital in Beijing recently reported the case of a young boy who came in with his mother complaining of ear pain and stuffiness-like sensation. Upon examination, he was diagnosed with ear canal mycosis, or in simple terms – mold in the ear canal.

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If, like me, you spent a fair bit of your childhood on a farm, or if you’re simply fascinated by domestic birds, you’ve probably seen a crested duck at least once in your life. Their fluffy headgear is a adorable to look at, but it comes with some severe side-effects.

First of all, the funny-looking plumage on the heads of crested ducks is just a genetic defect, and one that has some serious health implications. The fluffy hairdo actually grows out of a section of fatty tissue that covers a gap in the duck’s skull. Not only does this defect make it dangerous for a female crested duck to mate – especially with a particularly aggressive drake – but it has also been linked to seizures, neurological problems and early death. Unfortunately, the photos of cute crested ducks circulating on social media these days don’t come with information about these issues, which only makes the ducks sought after as pets. That leads to another serious problem, breading…

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Lee Su Jin, a 51-year old dentist from South Korea, has amassed quite an impressive online following thanks to her incredibly youthful looks.

The first time we featured Lee Su Jin on Oddity Central was back in 2016, when photos of her went viral on Asian social media, along with the heart-to-believe information that she was 48-years-old. It turned out her age was correct, and we subsequently learned that she was already popular in her native South Korea, having already appeared on several television shows. She has since solidified her reputation as a “goddess of eternal youth”, as the years keep rolling by, but she simply refuses to age.

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