Weng Xiaoping, formerly a renowned doctor in China, is spending her retirement caring for stray animals. In what may seem like an unthinkable act to most people, Weng sold two of her properties for 1.8 million yuan (almost $300,000) immediately after she retired and decided to use all that money to fund her new mission in life.

With the money in hand, Xiaopang moved to the mountainous village of Taipingqiao, near Huzhou city, to build a sanctuary for unwanted dogs and cats. In the past eight years, she has adopted and cared for hundreds of animals. She has also hired two assistants, using her pension of 7,000 yuan per month to pay them.

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Even if you’re into weird foods and like trying new and exciting things, you’ll still probably find the menu at this Japanese restaurant too hardcore. With dishes like cooked crocodile feet, grilled piranha and battered, deep-fried whole salamander, this place makes frog legs seem like baby food.

Located in Yokohama’s Noge district, Chinju-ya (rare meat monger) Restaurant is certainly not for the faint-hearted. In the six years he has been running the place, chef Fukuoka has taken pride in serving customers the rarest and most unusual meats from across the world. using his international connections, he can apparently get his hands on anything from axolotls and isopods to black scorpions and even camel meat. Their twitter feed ‘@Noge_chinjuya’ is frequently updated with their latest and greatest imports. Read More »

Marrying for love is still taboo in many parts of India, especially outside the boundaries of caste or religion. But there are people who do sympathize with young couples, like the Love Commandos, a four-man activist organisation based in the nation’s capital, New Delhi. Their mission is to help couples elope and start a new life together, safely away from the wrath of their families.

“The main function of the Love Commandos is to allow people to do this in safety and in accordance with the laws of India, and to prevent honor killings happening to young couples,” Belgian author Hans Theys wrote in the introduction to photographer Max Pinckers book Will They Sing Like Raindrops or Leave Me Thirsty on India’s Love Commandos, a project that won him first prize in the Photographic Museum of Humanity competition in 2014.

And that’s exactly what the Love Commandos are all about. They encourage lovers to reach out to them via a telephone helpline, or their website, for any kind of assistance – including accommodation in safe rooms and shelters across India. They’ve even sent out rescue teams to protect newly-weds running away from enraged relatives. The group boasts of having helped over 40,000 couples in nearly six years of existence. Of course, they couldn’t have done it without the help of hundreds of volunteers and priests who agreed to organize and perform the clandestine marriage ceremonies and getaways.

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If your job involves standing for several hours at a time, then this innovative Archelis chair is just the productyou’ve been waiting for. The strap-on wearable chair effectively enables you sit while you’re standing.

Technically, Archelis isn’t really a chair. It’s more like a leg brace that wraps around your buttocks and legs, helping you choose a stance that’s more comfortable than standing upright. You can lock the device at various positions to adjust the angle of your ankle and knee joints. Once you select the position of your choice, you’ll experience the relaxation of sitting without actually being seated. The device distributes the pressure over your shin and thigh, reducing overall muscle and joint fatigue.

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From the outside, this house in Newport, Oregon, looks pretty ordinary, with yellowed brick walls, white cladding, and a two-car garage. But you’ll be surprised to learn that inside it’s actually an opulent Renaissance-era palace complete with hand-carved doors, stained-glass windows, and centuries-old antique decor.

The unique house belongs to a member of the British nobility – the Right and Honorable Dowager Countess of Shannon, Almine Barton – apparently has excellent reason for maintaining the striking contrast between the spectacular interior and rather drab exterior – taxes.

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People have been temporarily living on oil platforms ever since they were created, in the early 20th century, but Neft Dashlari, a giant oil platform complex in the Caspian Sea, roughly 40 miles east of Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, serves as a permanent residence to around 1,000 souls. Known as the largest and oldest offshore city in the world, the Soviet-era structure was built in 1949, after engineers found vast resources of oil in the region, thousands of feet beneath the sea floor.

The original foundation consisted of pillars mounted on seven sunken ships, including Zoraster, the world’s first oil tanker. The poles were erected around a central hub, a 17,300-acre artificial island where the main oil wells were located. Between 1952 and 1958, the city grew in size to include 2,000 drilling platforms, joined by a 300-kilometer network of bridge viaducts, spread in a 30-kilometer circle.

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If you thought spending money on painted firewood logs was ridiculous, you’re not going to be able to wrap your head around this: a man in Paris recently spent a whopping €1,000,000 (over $1 million) on a photograph of a potato, making it one of the top 20 most expensive photos ever sold!

To be fair, it wasn’t any ordinary potato portrait – it was clicked by Kevin Abosch, the hottest photographer in the world right now, according to Business Insider. His claim to fame includes photographing major Silicon Valley bigwigs like Sheryl Sandberg, Eric Schmidt, and Jack Dorsey. Some of his other famous subjects include Johnny Depp, Steven Spielberg, Dustin Hoffman, Dennis Hopper, and Malala Yousafzai.

Irish-born Abosch is also apparently obsessed with potatoes – he’s taken tons of photographs of the starchy tuber set against his trademark black backdrop. “Kevin likes potatoes because they, like people, are all different yet immediately identifiable as being essentially of the same species,” his studio said in a statement. “He has photographed many potatoes. This is one of his favorites.”

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Rob Spence, a Toronto-based filmmaker, is so dedicated to his craft that he’s replaced one of his eyeballs with a camera-eye. Before you become too horrified, you should know that he hasn’t taken out a real eyeball, just a fake one that he’s had since he was a kid.

43-year-old Spence – who calls himself an Eyeborg – lost sight in one eye in a freak accident at age nine – he was shooting a pile of cow dung and badly injured his eye when he held the shotgun incorrectly. Since then, he’s lived with a fake eyeball in his right socket. But he recently thought it would be more interesting to remove it and replace it with a camera of his own invention.

The camera-eye looks like a regular prosthetic, but it isn’t connected to an optic nerve so Spence cannot actually see with it. It is equipped with a micro radio-frequency transmitter and whatever the eye can ‘see’ is played on a handheld monitor. The camera can be switched on and off with a push of a button.

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Jamie ‘Canhead’ Keeton, a.k.a the ‘human suction cup’, can stick cans, bottles and other inanimate objects on to his skin. And he does it without using any external adhesives, because his skin’s pores are magically able to “suck up things” and make them stick!

Things have always been sticking to Keeton, but as a kid living in Florida he used to climb pine trees, so everyone thought it was because of the pine sap. He first discovered his sticky ability about 20 years ago, after shaving his head for the first time. “It was a hot day, and I was trying to cool my head down by holding a soda pop to it,” he said. “But then the team hit a home run and I let go of my soda to try and grab the ball, but I missed. Then I was like, ‘Where’s my drink?’”

The can, it turned out, was stuck to the back of his head horizontally, and the drink was pouring out of it. “Everyone was laughing,” he recalled.

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Having to roam the world in search of company, constantly calling out for a mate but never getting an answer sounds terrifying and sad, which is why so many around the world empathize with ’52’, the loneliest whale in the world.

The solitary whale, named after the distinctive 52 hertz frequency of its call, belongs to an unknown, unidentified species. The sound it produces is just above the lowest note on a tuba – clearly that of a whale, but one that no other whale in the world shares or recognizes. So it roams the world’s largest ocean, year after year, desperately calling out for a mate but never finding one.

Interestingly, 52 has never actually been seen; only its forlorn love songs have been picked up by navy sonar detectors, but never accompanied by another whale call. This phenomenon is so intriguing that scientists have closely been monitoring the frequency since it was first detected by William Watkins of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1989. He happened to be studying the mating calls of male whales in the North Pacific, when he came across the anomaly of 52.

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Did you know electricity can alter the way we taste food? Proving this fact is a revolutionary electric fork designed by Japanese researchers that can make any dish taste salty, thus acting as a substitute for the popular seasoning.

According to Hiromi Nakamura, a Post Doc Research Fellow at Tokyo’s Meiji University, the technology can be very useful for people on special diets. Patients with low blood pressure, for instance, can easily go on a low-salt diet and still enjoy delicious food. And with the fork, there’s absolutely no risk of over-salting your food. Luckily, the voltage is so small that there is no risk of electrocution either.

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‘Teledisko’, the world’s smallest disco, is probably the most exclusive party place you can find. Started by German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom, the nightclub – a repurposed phone booth located in the Berlin’s trendy Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district – can only accommodate two people at a time.

The coin-operated entry ensures that no one but you and your chosen friends can  access the bright yellow party booth. Inside, Teledisko has all the trimmings of a proper nightclub – a smoke machine, stroboscope, light effects, a disco ball, dry ice, and a touchscreen that lets you select and play your favorite music. The cramped interiors might prevent you from taking selfies, but the booth comes with a built-in camera that takes pictures and records videos of your unforgettable night.

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In a bid to raise awareness about dementia, UK based healthcare training institute Training2Care has started a new initiative – the Mobile Virtual Dementia Tour.

Feared more than cancer, dementia is a general term referring to the decline in mental ability, marked by memory disorders, personality changes, and impaired reasoning. Sadly, it only receives a tenth of the funding of cancer. Which is why Glenn Knight, chief executive of Training2Care, hopes that more hospital trusts will host the tour and raise awareness about the condition.

The Virtual Dementia Tour isn’t new – it’s been in the US for a decade, and is currently available in 17 countries around the world. It’s been in the UK for two years now, but this is the first time a mobile version is being made available to the public. The tour is designed to take away all the primary senses, allowing participants to experience the troubling states that people with dementia go through every day.

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There’s a special football league in England dedicated to helping men keep up their weight-loss resolutions each year. Aptly named ‘Man v Fat’, the league caters exclusively to overweight men with a body-mass index (BMI) of 30 or above. Teams win points for matches won, as well as pounds lost during the 14-week competition.

Based in Solihull, in the West Midlands, the league was started two years ago by 37-year-old Andrew Shanahan. Andrew said he came up with the idea because he was sick of traditional weight-loss classes filled with women. “There was no help for me, and all the classes seemed tailored to women’s needs. I remember going to a Weight Watchers meeting and I was the only guy there. It was embarrassing and I was so out of my depth. The leader was talking about when you’re on your period you can go up or down in weight and I just thought, that’s not my issue. That’s really not what’s affecting me.”

“I started Man v Fat because I was morbidly obese and experienced first-hand the difficulties men face during weight loss,” he said. “I was 17 stone in 2013 and now I’m just over 12 stone, but I was shocked at how little support blokes get for weight loss.”

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In a bid to get residents interested in a healthy lifestyle, municipal officials in Lynwood, California, have a yearly program in place called ‘Cash for Chunkers’. Participants are divided into teams of four, and for 12 weeks they compete to see who can lose the most weight. This year, the winning team gets to take home a cash prize of $3,500.

Lynwood has a serious weight problem – one in five adults here are obese – but instead of taking restrictive measures like banning sodas or raising taxes on fast food, local authorities decided to motivate people to shed some pounds by offering them cash prizes.

Cash for Chunkers is self-funded, with a $25 entry fee per participant, and a $1-fine per pound gained during the 12-week period. The program is meant to get the people of Lynwood to eat healthy and exercise regularly. To help participants do better, it includes motivational discussions and classes on nutrition, cooking, and exercise. The teams also meet up every Saturday for a weighing session. “If they fail, they later return because they know we’re going to help them here and we’re going to work as a community,” said Mark Flores, director of Lynwood’s Recreation and Community Services Department.

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