Artisans at London-based design studio Bompass & Parr teamed up with scientists at the Aerogelex laboratory in Hamburg, Germany, to transfer the properties of the world’s lightest solid material into an edible dessert.

Aerogel was invented in 1931, by American chemist Samuel Kistler as part of a bet he made with fellow scientist Charles Learned over who could replace the water in gels with air, without causing shrinkage. With an air content of  95% – 99.8%, aerogel is recognized as the lightest solid in the world, so it made sense for designers at Bompass & Parr to try and emulate the making-of process of aerogel to create the world’s lightest dessert.

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A 42-year-old man in India’s Uttar Pradesh state lost his life trying to eat 50 boiled eggs in one go, as part of a stupid bet he made with a friend.

On Monday, November 3rd, Subhash Yadav, 42, and a friend sat down to at get a bite to eat at the Bibiganj market in  the Jaunpur district. At one point, the pair began to argue and as their conflict escalated Yadav bet his friend 2,000 rupees (about $28) that he could eat 50 boiled eggs right then and there. His friend accepted, so they bought 50 eggs from a vendor and Yadav set out to down them one by one. Everything was going well and he was actually making good time, but as he popped the 42nd egg into his mouth, he suddenly fell unconscious.

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A floating tree stump known as the “Old Man of the Lake” has been bobbing in the blue water of Oregon’s Crater Lake for at least 120 years, baffling scientists with its upright orientation and allegedly even controlling the local weather.

The first account of the Old Man of the Lake dates back to 1896, when geologist and explorer Joseph Diller described a splintered and bleached white log floating vertically in Crater Lake. Five years later, Diller observed that the unusual log had moved 400 meters from the location it had originally been spotted at. Further research would show that the Old Man of the Lake is able to move more than four miles in just one day, despite lacking any apparent means of propulsion. How it’s able to do that is still a mystery, but it’s only one of many.

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A North Carolina man who allegedly joined a police chase and later handcuffed the suspect at gunpoint was eventually arrested for impersonating a police officer.

On the night of October 5, police in Wilson, North Carolina, got some unexpected help during a high-speed car chase. At about 11 pm, they stopped a car in search of a murder suspect, but as they approached the vehicle, the driver sped off. The officers got in their patrol car and pursued the suspect’s car, but about 2 miles into the car chase, something really strange happened. A black Ford Taurus with blue lights turned on sped past the patrol car, got in front of the suspect’s car, and slowed down, forcing the car behind to stop.

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Rebecca Munkombwe, an 11-year-old girl from Zimbabwe, is being hailed as a hero for allegedly saving a 9-year-old friend from the jaws of a crocodile by jumping on the reptile and gouging its eyes out.

According to Zimbabwean media, Rebecca and her friends had just got back from a swim in a stream near their home village of Sinderela, when they heard the screams coming from the water. The 11-year-old was shocked to see her 9-year-old friend Latoya Muwani being dragged into the water by a crocodile. While all the other children were petrified or running scared, Rebecca Munkombwe allegedly ran toward the water, jumped on top of the crocodile and started gouging its eyes out until it loosened its grip on Latoya.

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Chinese researchers have come under fire for using live, immature pigs as test dummies in high-speed crash simulations that killed seven of them immediately.

Animal rights activists around the world accused the researchers of unnecessary cruelty, after it was reported that they had used fifteen live pigs as crash test dummies for a study. The animals were allegedly denied food 24 hours before the gruesome tests, then strapped in for high-speed simulations that caused them various injuries, including bleeding, laceration, fractures, abrasions and internal bruising. Seven of the pigs were killed instantly, while the rest survived for another six hours. Scientists then carried out meticulous autopsies to find out how the pigs were injured and killed.

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A 59-year-old man from Moscow risks spending up to five years behind bard for allegedly using a live cat as a weapon against police, last year.

On October 4, 2018, the suspect, Gennady Shcherbakov, was reportedly sitting at the foot of his apartment building’s stairwell. He had been drinking heavily and was causing a ruckus, so some of his neighbors called the police to report the disturbance. However, when police officers arrived on the scene and told Shcherbakov to go home, he refused to comply and instead grabbed a nearby cat and shoved it in the face of one of the police officers. The confused feline allegedly tried clinging to the man’s face, scratching him badly.

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Iceland is one of the few countries in the world where McDonald’s doesn’t operate in. The fast food giant closed its last restaurant in the Northern-European country a decade ago, but the last burger they ever sold has been carefully preserved and it still looks surprisingly edible.

On October 31st, 2009, Hjortur Smarason had the honor of purchasing the last McDonald’s burger sold in Iceland, just before the restaurant’s final closing time. Like many of us, he had heard rumors that McDonald’s food doesn’t decay, and preserving the last burger sold in his home country gave him an extra reason to see if the rumors were true or not. He put the burger and the small order of french fries in a plastic bag and left it untouched for three years.

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Nuria Salcedo is a self-taught artist who uses coffee to paint incredibly detailed illustrations and portraits of celebrities. While she also uses brown pencils for the most intricate parts of her artworks, her characters are always painted with various tones of coffee.

A trained architect, Nuria Salcedo never took art classes. She always liked drawing, but her skills are only the result of many hours of practice, her studying Architecture in school, and whatever tips she picked off online. the young Spanish artist was inspired to use coffee as a medium for her art after coming across the works of Maria A. Aristidou, another artist famous for her beautiful coffee paintings. She had been experimenting with many styles and mediums until then, but somehow coffee just seem to suit her best and she’s been painting with it ever since.

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If you’re ever in Bangkok, Thailand, and you;re a fan of unicorns, ponies or just colors in general, there’s a place you simply must visit. It’s called “Unicorn Cafe” and, just like you’d expect, it’s full of plush unicorns, rainbows and lots of other colorful treats.

To say Unicorn Cafe is a colorful place would be an understatement. There’s colorful and there’s this place where even the food, including a multi-layered cake and spaghetti, come in all colors of the rainbow. There are plastic chandeliers and plush unicorns hanging from the ceilings, multi-colored couches, and tiny My Little Pony Toys decorating the tables. Did I mention you can put on a unicorn onesie to really get into a magical mood? It’s the kind of place you’d think only existed in someone’s acid trip, or in a pastel fantasy dream.

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Called an “e-broom”, Toyota’s latest mobility platform looks like a futuristic witch’s broom that users can ride to get around. Apparently, quidditch fans found the concept very intriguing.

Unfortunately, Toyota’s e-broom isn’t yet able to make quidditch players airborne, like in the popular Harry Potter books, but they are capable of propelling people on the ground, as long as they are wearing roller-skates. The e-broom is meant to be ridden like a witch’s broom, only instead of relying on magic to whisk its users towards the sky, it relies on an electrical motor and a wheel at the bottom to propel its rider forward at moderate speed. It’s not as impressive as we’d like it to be, but at least it’s a step toward a real life quidditch broom.

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A 650-kilogram bull that managed to escape from a Croatian slaughterhouse last Friday managed to get the attention and support of an entire nation as he continues to elude his owner, police and veterinarians.

The elusive animal, nicknamed Jerry, after the famous mouse in the “Tom&Jerry” cartoon, has been evading his would-be captors and roaming the Croatian coast, outside the town of Split, since last Friday. His owner had sold him to a slaughterhouse, but shortly before being put down, Jerry managed to escape a corral where cattle intended for slaughter were kept and vanish into the nearby woods. Slaughterhouse staff can’t explain exactly how Jerry escaped, but apparently this sort of thing doesn’t happen very often.

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Kumitaiso, a gymnastic formation in which students climb on top of one another to create a pyramid, has at the center of growing controversy in Japan, due to the high number of serious injuries reported by schools.

At its core, kumitaiso is a routine supposed to encourage teamwork and endurance among young students, and as such it has been a mainstay of annual school sport festivals across Japan. However, problems began to occur as the human pyramids organized by schools started getting higher and more difficult to support by the students at the bottom. Seeing dozens of students working together to create these complex structures is undoubtedly impressive to behold, which is why many schools kept pushing the limits over the years, with some devastating results. With hundreds of reported injuries reported every year, many in the Asian country are asking authorities to ban kumitaiso.

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A famed restaurant in Peru was recently fined $62,000 for discriminating against women by giving ladies who dined with men menus that didn’t feature any prices.

La Rosa Nautica, a pricey restaurant built on a peer overlooking the ocean in the Peruvian capital, Lima, was ordered to pay a 210,000 sol ($62,000) fine for offering women a different menu when they dined with men. While gentlemen were given a blue menu that featured both the dishes available and their prices, ladies got a gold version that mentioned no prices at all. The owner of the high-end restaurant defended the practice by calling it a way for women to enjoy a romantic night out without having to worry about costs, but Peruvian authorities ruled that it was discriminatory against women.

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We all know sitting at a desk for long periods of time has negative effects on our health, but if this life-size model of what an office worker could look like in 20 years is any indication, the future doesn’t look too bright.

Emma, as her creators have named her, doesn’t look so good. She has dry and red eyes from hours staring at a computer screen, a hunched back that makes you think she’s been ringing the bell at a recently burned down French cathedral, excess weight, swollen limbs due to poor circulation, and stress-caused eczema, among other alarming symptoms. Luckily, Emma is just a life-size doll created by a team of researchers led by behavioral futurist William Higham, but the world could be full of Emmas if we don’t do something to change the office environment and culture.

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