If you though excavating a basement was hard work, try doing it with R/C miniature construction machinery. One Canadian man has been doing it for 14 years and he’s still not done. Luckily, he’s in no hurry to finish.

Joe Murray, a farmer and radio-controlled construction machinery enthusiast from Saskatchewan, Canada, started excavating a basement under his house in June of 2005. In the beginning, he had a hands-on approach, using a pickaxe and an air chisel hammer, but then he started acquiring miniature radio-controlled digging machinery and he took a back seat, letting them do all the dirty work. By 2010, his fleet of trucks and excavators were already doing all the work, while he controlled them from a distance. But the problem with using miniature machinery to dig a life-size basement is that it takes a long time. And I mean a really long time.

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Azusa Sakamoto loves Barbie so much that she spent a small fortune turning her Los Angeles home into a shrine to the popular Mattel doll.

Sakamoto, who goes by “Azusa Barbie” on Instagram, didn’t get to play with Barbie dolls while growing up in Japan, because Mattel’s iconic doll just wasn’t very popular back then. She was already in middle-school when she first got her hands on a Barbie product – a lunchbox she found at an American imports store – but it was love at first sight. She has been collecting Barbie dolls and memorabilia ever since and estimates that she has spent over $80,000 turning her Los Angeles home into a life-size Barbie house.

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The air pollution crisis in Thailand has gotten so bad that authorities are trying some unconventional methods of clearing the air of dust and hazardous particles. For example, the local Government in Bangkok recently started spraying sugar-infused water in the atmosphere.

Yesterday, Thai media reported that in a desperate attempt to bring down critical air pollution levels in Bangkok, local authorities started experimenting with sweetened water, instead of regular one. The idea behind the bizarre pollution-fighting strategy is that by increasing the viscosity of the water using sugar will allow it to trap more dangerous particles when sprayed into the air. However, some experts believe that the unconventional approach could do more harm than good.

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Bryanna ‘Bry” Marie is an Arizona-based artist who specializes in painting on coins, preferably pennies. She’s only been doing it for four years, but looking at the tiny details she’s able to reproduce on such tiny canvases, you’d think she’s been doing it her whole life.

Painting is the only thing Bry Marie has loved doing ever since she was a child, but she only started painting on coins four years ago, as a challenge she set for herself. She had always loved using oil paints on copper, but she wanted to see if she had the steady hand required to paint tiny details on a very small surface, so she chose the penny. After finishing her first miniature painting, she felt a sense of accomplishment she had never had with her previous works, so she decided to paint with oils on coins exclusively.

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Dave Asprey is mostly known as the man behind the “Bulletproof” lifestyle brand and the guy who came up with the idea of adding butter to coffee, but he’s also one of the world’s boldest biohackers. By constantly tweaking his diet and exercise, as well as experimenting with all kinds of new technology to improve his general well-being, Asprey expects to live to at least 180.

45-year-old Asprey’s quest to live longer than any other human in history started during the 1990s, when he was a young, overweight tech entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. He tried the standard ways of losing weight – lowering his calorie intake and working out for 90 minutes – but although he was stronger and healthier than before, he still weighed the same. So he stopped listening to doctors – who thought he was sneaking Snickers bars into his diet anyway – and started experimenting with less conventional options. This kickstarted his appetite for bio-hacking.

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Vishweshwar Dutt Saklani took his last breath on January 18, 2019, but he will live on in the memory of his countrymen as the “Tree Man of Uttarakhan”, a dedicated conservationist who planted over 50 lakh (5 million) trees and turned his once barren homeland into a lush forest.

Saklani had been fond of trees all his life. He planted his first sapling when he was eight years old under his uncle’s guidance, and kept at it for the next seven decades of his life, until he lost his sight and succumbed to the hardships of old age. However, by that time, the once barren hills in and around his native village of Pujargaon had already become home to a lush forest. Vishweshwar Dutt Saklani’s love for trees is well known, as he often used to call them his children or his closest companions, but few know that the legendary conservationist planted millions of trees to cope with the tragedies in his life.

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An Irish man who swallowed an expensive diamond ring at a jewellery store in Turkey recently told prosecutors that he wasn’t himself when he did it, because he “fell into a trance” the moment he saw the beautiful diamond.

Ian Campbell, who was vacationing in the Turkish seaside resort of Marmaris, was arrested on October 4, 2018, after swallowing a $40,000 diamond ring at a local jewellery store. Eyewitnesses later told police that Campbell swallowed the jewel in desperation, after realizing that he was going to be caught trying to steal it. Prosecutors instructed police to take the would-be-thief to the local hospital, where he was administered laxatives to help him “return” the 2.5-carat diamond ring by natural means. Turkish media tracked the “journey” of the jewel through Campbell’s stomach almost in real time, but sadly it got stuck and had to be surgically removed.

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An 18-year-old boy recently shared the story of his impressive physical transformation to inspire other teenagers who consider themselves unattractive to start taking care of themselves and not to be ashamed to use makeup to improve their looks.

They say a person’s personality is more important than their physical looks, but try telling that to a high-school student who constantly gets ridiculed for their his acne, geeky glasses and poor fashion sense. The protagonist of this story knows all about that, but unlike most other teens in his situation he actually did something about it and recently took to the internet to share the details of his transformation, hoping to inspire other “ugly ducklings” to enhance their appearance.

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Leo Blanco, a 22-year-old man from Buenos Aires, in Argentina, has reportedly spent over $30,000 on plastic procedures over the last seven years, in an attempt to mimic Michael Jackson’s look.

Blanco is one of the thousands of Michael Jackson impersonators around the world, but what sets him apart from all the rest is is his obsession with looking just like his idol. He started watching the King of Pop as a young child and knew very early on that he wanted to be just like him. At age 15, Leo turned to plastic surgery to fulfill his dream of becoming a lookalike of his idol, but seven years and 11 plastic surgeries later, he is still not content with his look, and plans to alter his appearance even more.

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Authorities in the Chinese province of Hebei have created a smartphone app that allows users to see if they are within 500 meters of a person in debt so they can report or publicly shame them.

Failing to pay off your debts is generally frowned upon all over the world, but one country has been cracking down on the practice harder than any other. In the last couple of years, Chinese authorities have used a variety of techniques to coerce debtors to pay up, with public shaming being the most popular one. Last year, the local government in Hejiang county, Sichuan, started showing their faces and names during short clips played in cinemas before the main screening, and now authorities in Hebei have announced an app that detects debtors in a 500-meter-radius, allowing users to report or shame them.

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Correction: A previous version of this article stated that the name of Maruyama’s boyfriend was Li Huayu, and that the girl still lost her memory every day, when in reality this only occurred only in the first two months after her accident.  

The touching love story between an amnesia sufferer whose memory was wiped clean every morning and the loyal boyfriend who makes her fall in love with him every day has touched the hearts of millions in Japan.

“50 First Dates”, a 2004 romantic comedy starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, tells the story of a young woman whose short term memory was affected by a car crash. Every morning, her memory resets to the day of the accident, but that doesn’t deter Sandler’s character from making their relationship work, even if it means making her fall in love with him every day. It’s one of the best romantic comedies of all times, in my opinion, but I never imagined that such a love story could exist in real life. Well, a Japanese couple reportedly lived their very own “50 First Dates” romance for to months.

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Getting a house cat to exercise can be quite a challenge, but a Korean company claims that it’s smart exercise machine can keep felines in tip-top shape even when their owners are away. There’s just one catch – it costs $1,800.

Korean startup Pet Ding unveiled its smart treadmill for cats earlier this month, at CES Las Vegas. The Little Cat relies on LED lights to motivate cats to exercise, allows owners to check on the cat’s activity when they’re away and record encouragement voice messages for their pet, and a companion app lets users set fitness goals for their purring felines. The smart exercise machine features an auto mode that promises to “provide the ideal workout program for your cat, and manage workout patterns,” but also lets users who want to get more involved in their cat’s workout control the speed of the treadmill.

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Scamp, an English springer spaniel sniffer dog, is so good at his job that criminal organizations have put a sizable reward on his head.

During his five-year career as a sniffer dog for BWY Canine, in Pembrokeshire, UK, Scamp managed to detect around £6m ($7.8 million) worth of illegal tobacco, causing significant headaches for criminal organizations specialized in tobacco smuggling. But while Scamp’s powerful sense of smell has earned him praises from both his handler and police, it also made him a target for the nasty people whose plans he keeps foiling. According to Stuart Philips, who runs the BWY specialist detection dog service, Scamp has a bounty on his head.

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Two teenage sisters in India were recently honored for their grit and determination after it was discovered that they disguised themselves as boys for four years in order to keep their father’s barbershop open after he became ill.

Jyoti Kumari, 18, and her 16-year-old sister, Neha, from Banwari Tola, in India’s Uttar Pradesh state, took over their father’s barbershop in 2014 after he suffered a severe paralytic attack that left him bedridden. The girls were only 13 and 11-years-old at the time, but the barbershop was the family’s only source of income, so they had to do something to put food on the table. At first, the barbershop was closed, but as the family savings evaporated, Jyoti and Neha reopened it and started running it themselves. But things didn’t go well at first, as some men were skeptical about having girls shave their beards and trim their mustaches, while others treated them badly. So they started disguising themselves as men.

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Most people would never use a tissue that someone else sneezed in, let alone pay $80 for one, but one Los Angeles startup claims to have already sold close to a thousand sneeze-filled tissues to people who want to catch a cold virus now so they don’t get sick with the same cold later. Does that make any sense?

Vaev bills itself a “wellness brand” although technically it’s helping people get sick by selling them tissues that complete strangers sick with the cold have allegedly sneezed into. But who in their right mind would pay $79.99 on a germ-contaminated used tissue? Well, that would be “open-minded people” who appreciate the luxury of being able to get sick “on their own terms”. Vaev founder Oliver Niessen, 34, claims that these expensive used tissues should be viewed as alternatives to conventional medicine, in that they allow you to purposely catch a cold whenever you want, in order to decrease the risk of catching that same cold at a later date. It’s basically all about choice and getting “sick on your own terms”.

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