Deinococcus radiodurans is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as “the world’s toughest bacterium,” and it is fully deserving of that title.

Scientists discovered the red, spherical bacterium that later came to be known as deinococcus radiodurans about 70 years ago, when examining a can of ground meat that had spoiled despite having been sterilized by exposure to doses of radiation in the megarad range. Research would later show that this lowly bacterium can withstand 10,000 times the amount of radiation that would normally kill a human being, thanks to a miraculous ability to repair numerous DNA double-strand breaks in a matter of hours.

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Shenshayba Bazaar, an Afghan village near the city of Herat, has become known as Afghanistan’s ‘one kidney village’, because of the large number of residents who have sold one of their kidneys in order to make ends meet.

Afghanistan wasn’t doing too well economically before the Taliban came to power last year, but the brutal takeover caused the economy of the Asian country to collapse and left many struggling to put food on the table for their families. In some cases, things got so bad that people decided to sell one of their kidneys in order to pay their debts and buy food. One small village in Herat Province has become known as the ‘one kidney village’, because of the large number of residents who sold one of their kidneys on the black market.

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Panzhiga, a remote mountainous village in China’s Yunan Province has been dubbed “Tesla Village” for the unusually high number of Tesla electric cars owned by the locals.

The popularity of electric cars around the world is growing at an unprecedented pace, but there are still many skeptics who believe the rapid adoption of electric vehicles is hampered by infrastructure and logistic problems. For example, while rapid charging stations are being built in cities and along busy roads, using an electric car in remote areas is considered inefficient. However, that theory is being challenged by a small mountainous village in China where Tesla is by far the most popular car brand.

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David, a 10-year-old boy from Singapore, was diagnosed with Prader-Willi Syndrome, a complex genetic condition that makes him feel hungry no matter how much he eats.

Imagine filling your stomach with copious amounts of nutritious food and never actually experiencing that sensation of fullness that we know as ‘satiety’. That is what David Soo, a 10-year-old boy from Singapore has to deal with every day of his life. He suffers from a complex rare disease called Prader-Willi Syndrome, which, among other serious symptoms, leaves sufferers feeling hungry regardless of how much they eat. It is caused by the loss of function of genes in a certain region of chromosome 15, and it is incurable.

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Corbezzolo Honey is a unique type of honey famous for tasting nothing like we expect honey to taste. To say that this Sardinian treat is not sweet would be an understatement, because it’s downright bitter.

Italians have been making corbezzolo honey in Sardinia for a very long time. How long, is impossible to say, but there are references to it in the writings of famous ancient figures like Cicero, Virgil and Ovid, who noted the contrasting taste between Sardinian honey and the sweet honey of the Hyblean Mountains. But if you can get past the bitterness, you’ll discover an amber nectar full of nutrients and natural medicine. It’s packed full of vitamins and minerals, has anti-inflamatory properties, and has been used as a sleep inducer and cough sedative for generations.

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In what may be one of the creepiest, most disturbing stories we’ve ever featured on Oddity Central, a young man was arrested for stalking a New Hampshire woman, hiding in her attic and filming her as she slept.

Mauricio Damian Guerrero, a 20-year-man from Philadephia, was arrested last month on the roof of a house from which he had allegedly been stalking an OnlyFans woman he had become obsessed with. The young man had reportedly gotten his hands on the woman’s keys, made copies of it, which allowed him to come and go from her house as he pleased, and hid in her attic, waiting for her to go to sleep so he could come down and film her. The victim only realized something was wrong when her mother started hearing strange sounds from the attic.

Guerrero’s victim, only referred to as “NR” by the media, told investigators that she had been contacted by the Philadelphia man in October of last year, on OnlyFans, where she published adult content for paying members. At one point, he promised to buy NR a television set and a fireplace, so she gave him her address, for shipping purposes. Then he began being pushy, asking to meet her in person, despite her best efforts to make him understand that she wasn’t interested.

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Hematogen, or gematogen, is a Soviet-era supplement notorious for containing at least 5 percent black food albumin, a technical term for cow’s blood.

In the Soviet Union, even sweet treats had a practical purpose. In the case of Hematogen, its controversial secret ingredient helped consumers treat anemia, malnutrition, and fatigue. It was consumed by both children and adults, who loved both its sweet vanilla flavor and the effect it had on their health and overall food. Once only sold to the public in pharmacies, Hematogen can now be found in a variety of stores and shops in ex-Soviet countries like Russia and Ukraine, and even as far as the US and Canada. You can even order them on Amazon.

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Yakei, a 9-year-old female Japanese macaque at the Takasakiyama natural zoological garden, shocked staff by fighting her way through several strong males to become the first female alpha in the troupe’s 70-year history.

The story of Yakei’s rise to power sounds like the plot of a Hollywood epic. Born into the 677-strong troupe B at the Takasakiyama zoo in Japan’s Oita city, the female inherited the rank just under her mother, as per the rules of macaque society. The higher an individual’s rank, the greater its access to food, mates and resting locations. Last March, Yakei fought her own mother and won, becoming the leader of the other females in her group. For most females, this would have been more than enough, but for Yakei it was only the first step to a much more ambitious goal – leader of the entire troupe.

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The Onagadori (‘honorable fowl’ in Japanese) is a rare chicken breed known for its exceptionally long tail, which can reach over 10 meters, putting even peacocks to shame.

Of the seventeen chicken breeds considered Japanese national treasures, the Onagadori is the only one to have “special” status. Ever since it received this status in 1952, exports of Onagadori birds and eggs were forbidden, so there are very few specimens, if any, found outside of Japan today. The breed is famous for the non-molting, and thus incredibly long tails of roosters, which, if kept in the best conditions with high levels of animal husbandry, can grow for the lifetime of the bird.

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What do you get if you mix a bird, a squirrel and a lizard? Well, I think you’ll have a tough time finding a better answer than the Great Eared Nightjar.

Seeing a great eared nightjar for the first time, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for a squirrel or even a lizard. The fact is it kind of looks like a combination of animals, or even a real-live version of Toothless, the dragon from DreamWorks Studios’ hit animation “How to Train Your Dragon“. You could say it’s living proof that birds are more closely related to dinosaurs than reptiles.

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In South Korea, people who can’t convince their neighbors to keep the noise down are increasingly turning to expensive but effective sound systems designed specifically to irritate neighbors.

South Korean media first started reporting on these specialized sound systems back in 2016, when they were viewed as an almost funny way that some apartment building neighbors used to settle their disputes regarding noise. However, as time went by, they became incredibly popular as they delivered on the promise of making next-door or above-floor neighbors pay for ignoring requests to keep noise levels down. There are now different types of wall-mounted speakers designed specifically to annoy.

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Thousands of Porsche, Audi and Lamborghini cars have been abandoned on a cargo ship after it caught fire on its way from Germany to the United States.

The Felicity Ace was traveling from Emden in Germany when the crew announced a fire on board, last Wednesday. The 22-member crew has since been evacuated, but the ship and its precious cargo continue to burn, despite firefighters’ best efforts to contain and hopefully put it out. The cargo ship was carrying an estimated 4,000 vehicles including Porsches, Audis and 189 Bentleys, some of which were equipped with lithium batteries. It has been speculated that one of these batteries could have sparked the blaze, and while has yet to be confirmed, firefighters say that the lithium batteries are now definitely “keeping the fire alive”.

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Carlos Henrique Raposo, aka Carlos Kaiser, is a Brazilian former football player known primarily for having a decade-long career without actually playing a single game.

As children, most people grow up dreaming of one day becoming sports champions, despite an obvious lack of athletic abilities. Most of us realize this to be nothing more than an impossible dream and move on, but a few still manage to find ways of making their goal a reality, by any means necessary. This is the story of Carlos Henrique Raposo, a Brazilian athlete who “wanted to be a footballer, but did not want to play football”. Believe it or not, he managed to be just, playing for top-ranked Brazilian and international clubs for over a decade. ‘Playing’ may not be the right word, though, as he never actually played an official game in his entire 12-year-long career.

Carlos Kaiser – nicknamed earned due to his alleged resemblance to German football legend Franz Beckenbauer – always knew that he had the physique of a professional football player, but not the necessary talent and skills to make the roster of top football clubs, so he relied on a variety of tricks to build himself up as this great player that every team was after.

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A Swiss man has found himself at the core of a modern mystery after discovering that he had been by a bullet that seemingly came out of nowhere.

Last Thursday, the unnamed 38-year-old man was walking with his two children and an acquaintance in Frauenfeld, a town around 45 kilometers northeast of Zurich, when he felt a sharp pain in his lower body. Unable to explain the pain, the man headed to the emergency room of the local hospital, where doctors informed him that he had been shot. They removed the projectile and treated his wound, but neither they nor the patient could explain how the bullet had entered his body.

Thurgau canton police spokesman Matthias Graf told reporters that an investigation in this bizarre case is currently underway and that there are currently no leads. Neither the shot man, the people he was with at the time of the incident, nor anyone else in the area heard any gunshot or saw someone with a firearm. It’s like the bullet came out of nowhere.

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A Catholic priest who has performed thousands of baptisms over the last two decades recently resigned after learning that they are all invalid, because of a simple mistake.

Father Andres Arango recently resigned as a priest from St. Gregory’s Catholic Parish in Phoenix, Arizona, after a 25-year career. He stood accused of botching thousands of baptisms while serving as a priest in California, Brazil, and Arizona, and he was recently found guilty. Interestingly, it all came down to a simple wording issue, which apparently mattered a lot more than Aango or anyone outside the Catholic CHurch ever imagined.

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