After seeing many of their loved ones kidnapped by a ruthless drug cartel, the people of Totolapan, a small town in Mexico’s Guerrero state decided it was time to fight fire with fire, so they kidnapped the drug boss’ mother.
For years, Totolapan has been under the control of a gang known as “Los Tequillero”, led by Raybel Jacobo de Almonte, better known as “El Tequillero”. Things had gotten considerably worse for the locals in recent months, as the Tequilleros had become involved in a turf war with other gangs, and started abducting people whom they suspected were supporting their rivals. Sick of living under the constant terror of having their loved ones taken from them, the townsfolk decided to fight back.
On Monday, a few dozen masked men appeared in the streets of Totolapan waving rifles and shotguns, and calling for action against El Tequillero. They identified themselves as a “self-defense” force, as Mexican vigilantes usually call themselves, and demanded the release of kidnapping victims taken by the gang.
A 71-year-old businessman from China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region has earned the nickname “The Wolf King” after dedicating the last nine years of his life to raising 150 wolves of 8 different species, in a valley that has now come to be known as Wild Wolf Valley.
Yang Changsheng discovered his passion for wolves in 2007. He was visiting a friend when he noticed a caged female wolf with its paws tightly bound in manacles and chains. She looked miserable, so he asked his friend to open the cage so he could loosen the manacles. Some might say that getting so close to a fierce predator was a stupidly brave thing to do, but to Yang’s surprise, the wolf didn’t seem bothered or threatened by him, and as soon as the cage door opened, she just couched down at his feet like a pet dog. Impressed by the scene he had witnessed, his friend sent him the wolf and several wolf cubs born a few days earlier as a gift.
Emma Tapping, a mother-of-three from the Isle of Man, U.K, first made headlines last year, when she was accused of spoiling her children by getting them 87 Christmas presents each. That didn’t seem to bother her too much, as this year she bought even more gifts for them – 96 each.
After Emma posted a picture of her Christmas Tree buried in a mountain of presents, last year, it went viral and made the rounds online with the caption “Nearly time for all the materialistic parents to compete and broadcast how many presents their kids have on Facebook! Just remember there’s some children’ who don’t get much.” After being approached by various news sites and TV shows about her Christmas shopping habit and the effect it has on her kids, the woman said that she only spoils them on Christmas, because she loves seeing the joy on their faces when they’re opening presents.
“If you ask me if I spoil my kids, I say at Christmas yes I do but I don’t throughout the year. They get the necessities, the school uniform, the things they need but we don’t go on holidays abroad or big shopping sprees,” she said. “Anything they want, they get for Christmas.”
If you’re a dog lover visiting Bangkok, you simply must stop by the True Love Café, a wonderful place where you can get a taste of Thai cuisine, or enjoy some refreshments in the company of dozens of adorable huskies.
The True Love Café opened in 2013, when Chotiros Ratanabirabongse, Paw for short, a long-time husky breeder, decided to convert his farm into a place where people could interact and learn more about this wonderful canine breed. The place instantly became a hit with tourists, and today it is one of Bangkok’s most popular attractions.
China’s incredible development over the last three decades has improved people’s quality of life, but today, loneliness and depression are the two biggest problems of the country’s rapidly aging population. This issues were recently brought to public attention by the heartbreaking plea of a 63-year-old woman looking for a young girl to accompany her on an all-expense paid vacation.
“I live alone in Zhengzhou… I’d like a warm-hearted girl between the ages of 19 and 24 years old to go with me to chat with and take photos,” Li Yanling wrote in a heartfelt post on WeChat. “I’d like to see the sea in Sanya this winter, but just fear the loneliness of traveling solo.” The recruitment ad also specified that the person would not have to pay for anything during the vacation, and would even receive a brand new iPhone 7, as a bonus.
Florencio Sanchidrián has been slicing Iberian ham (jamon) for the last three decades and today his name is synonymous with the Spanish delicacy. The 55-year-old is regarded as the world’s best ham slicer in the world, and he charges accordingly for his services – a reported $4,000 to slice a leg of ham.
Born in the city of Avila, Spain, Sanchidrián trained as a professional bullfighter in his youth, but eventually put his red cape away and moved to Barcelona to work as a waiter. One day, he started cutting ham and simply fell in love with it. He started taking jamon slicing courses, and before long, he was winning slicing competitions as well as national and international awards. Florencio is now known as an ambassador of Iberian ham around the world, and he tours the five continents “with a leg of ham under his arm” at least once or twice a year.
The MEGA shopping center in Krasnoyarsk has become the first in Russia, and probably the world, to have its very own church, where busy shoppers can drop by and pray, take confession or simply get in touch with their spiritual side.
It all started in spring of this year, when the shopping center management reached out to Archpriest Georgy Kozgov, asking for “the spiritual nourishment of security guards and visitors.” To make his job easier, they even offered him a room within the shopping center where he would regularly perform Confession and Communion, or have spiritual conversations with guards and shoppers. But as more and more people learned about the Father Kozgov and asked to see him, it soon became clear that the small room he had been operating out of was just too small for the huge demand of spiritual guidance.
Vladimir Skvortsov, manager of the security guard firm under contract with the MEGA shopping center was the one who approached management about offering Archpriest Kozgov a bigger space where he could conduct even more religious services and cater to more people. And that’s how the unusual shopping center church of Krasnoyarsk was born. It is located on the fourth floor of the MEGA center and is equipped with just about anything a Christian Orthodox church needs, including a sanctuary, hand-painted icons, wooden benches for visitors, as well as church tools made by prison inmates.
“There are no churches in this area of the city, and in our team, as everywhere else, there are people in need of spiritual guidance,” said Vladimir Skvortsov, manager of the center’s security guard firm.
“There are many people in need of spiritual guidance. After all, where there is trade, there is always a lot of negativity,” Father Kozgov added. “And now there is a place where everyone can be cleansed spiritually.Everyone who has come to my church has been very pleased.”
Divine Liturgy is performed at the church every Saturday morning, if you happen to be in the area, and feel like taking a spiritual break from weekend shopping.
By Spooky onDecember 12th, 2016 Category: Architecture
From the outside, the Jardines del Humaya Cemetery, in Culiacan, Mexico’s Sinaloa state, looks pretty ordinary, but the deeper you go, the more you get the impression that the place is actually a rich suburb full of over-the-top mansions. These are actually the world-famous mausoleums of some of the most ruthless “narcos” in Mexico.
They say you can’t take your money with you when you die, but that doesn’t mean some people don’t try, or at least take it all the way to the doorstep into the afterlife. Even in death, members of the dreaded Sinaloa cartel love nothing more than to flaunt their ostentatious lifestyle in the form of elaborate mausoleums that cost a lot more than an average family home in Mexico. Jardines del Humaya has become famous for its impressive villa or chapel-like tombs, with people from all over Mexico, and sometimes from abroad, traveling there just to see them in person.
Visiting a cemetery in one of the most dangerous places in Earth doesn’t sound much like a trip too many people would like to make, but there is no denying that the dozens of tombs in the cemetery’s “high-class” area are worth a look. Once you pass the average-looking graves of the poorer folk, near the entrance to Jardines del Humaya, you are treated to a plethora of architectural wonders all of which seem out of place in a cemetery. There are mansion-like mausoleums, two-story villas, small chapels, and even miniature castles, all built to show the greatness of the people resting in them.
And it’s not just the outside that’s impressive about these luxurious mausoleums. According to several reports, many of them come with modern amenities that many regular Mexicans can only dream of, like 24-hour air-conditioning, living rooms, bedrooms, fully equipped kitchens, bulletproof glass, alarm systems and wi-fi. All so that visiting families and friends can enjoy their stay.
“It’s an expression of the power that they once had and a manifestation of their desire for eternity, which is natural in any human being,” Juan Carlos Ayala, a philosophy professor at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa, said about the uncanny narco mausoleums. “It’s also a demonstration for those who survive them that this man was important.”
Professor Ayala estimates that the cost of some of these lavish mausoleums reaches up to $390,000, but according to a Daily Mail article from last year, some of them actually cost much more than that. For example, the massive mausoleum complex built for Arturo Guzman Loera, the brother of the famous ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, reportedly cost $1,200,000 to build, and features several bedrooms, 24-hour surveillance and air-conditioning, among others.
The mausoleum of Arturo Beltran Lyva, ‘The Boss of All Bosses’, looks like a small castle-fort and features satellite television, wi-fi internet connection, kitchen, bedrooms and a burglar alarm. It is estimated to have cost around $600,000.
With these lavish tombs boldly flaunting the lavish lifestyle of their permanent inhabitants, it’s no wonder that Mexican authorities have been considering placing a ban on such structures, to deter young people from joining drug cartels.
Interestingly, outrageously luxurious tombs and mausoleums are not unique to Mexico’s narco culture. Earlier this year, we featured Manila’s ‘Beverly Hills of the Dead‘, a Chinese cemetery filled with mansion-like mausoleums that are also equipped with state-of-the-art facilities.
48-year-old Mark Leigh, from Surrey, UK, is a self-confessed boring man who enjoys nothing more than to spend his days photographing lost gloves.
It all started around three years ago, when Mark found a lone glove on a stairwell at his workplace and thought it was strange. The very next day, he spotted another one in the street, and from then on, he just sort of had an eye for spotting them everywhere he went. “Once you’re aware of something, you see them everywhere,” he says. He soon started photographing his finds, and today he is proud owner of a collection of over 300 photos of lost gloves, the largest in Britain.
Aleeda Rodriguez Pedrasa has one of the most unusual jobs in the world – she gets paid by the Cuban government to make sure that a statue of John Lennon in Havana always has a pair of glasses on when tourists come to take a picture with it.
In 1964, Fidel Castro declared a ban on Beatles’ music in Cuba, as part of his all-out war against capitalism, but the band was so popular that people steel smuggled copied of their records into the island nation. But when John Lennon became an outspoken political dissident, criticizing the United States for its involvement in foreign affairs, Castro openly embraced him, and in the year 2000, on the 20th anniversary of Lennon’s death on December 8th, he even unveiled a bronze statue of the legendary musician, in the Havana park that bears his name.
The statue of John Lennon sitting on a park bench quickly became a major tourist attraction, but also a target for thieves who loved nothing more than to steal the artist’s iconic round-lens glasses. In the beginning, the Government would replace the stolen accessories with new ones, but the new pair wouldn’t last long. It got really old really fast, and that’s when Aleeda Rodriguez Pedrasa came into the picture, as the guardian of the glasses.
If you love ramen and want to get paid for eating lots of it, I suggest visiting the Umakara Ramen Hyouri restaurant, in Tokyo, Japan. They will pay a cool 50,000 yen ($438) to anyone who finishes their giant bowl of delicious ramen in under 20 minutes, Easy money, right?
Well, they don’t call these things eating challenges for nothing, so it’s definitely not a walk in the park. In fact, in the three years since the Japanese restaurant introduced the challenge, only nine people have managed to finish the gargantuan dish in the allotted time. Legend has it that they didn’t eat for a week afterwards and never spoke the word “ramen” again. Nine is not that many, but at least it’s doable right? And here’s an extra incentive: if you think that 20 minutes is just not long enough to gobble this delicious monster, Umakara Ramen Hyouri is also willing to pay $236 to whoever manages to eat it all in 30 minutes.
Who could have imagined that a treadmill on wheels would one day become a thing?!? Lopifit is an unusual means of transportation that allows you to power an electric bicycle by walking on a treadmill. It’s actually way cooler than it sounds.
Lopifit founder Bruin Bergmeester says it all started when he asked himself the question “How can I use a treadmill outdoor?” Why anyone would asked themselves that, I have no idea, but the point is that this guy spent the next few years figuring out a way to make it work. He eventually came up with an functional design, added an electric engine, and the Lopifit was born. It’s similar to an electric bicycle in that the motor only engages when the rider puts power in as well. Only while typical e-bikes give pedal assist, the Lopifit senses when you walk on the treadmill and uses the motor to turn a drive chain at the rear of the treadmill, helping you reach a top speed of 17 miles per hour.
American department store Nordstrom recently made international headlines for selling good ol’ fashion stones partially wrapped in leather at the insane price of $85. But that’s not even the strangest part. For some reason, people apparently loved them so much that the bizarre item is now sold out.
Called simply a “Medium Leather Wrapped Stone”, Nordstrom’s latest hit product is just that – a simple rock around 3 inches by 4.5 inches by 2 inches partially wrapped in a vegetable-tanned leather pouch. Frankly, the only special thing about it seems to be the price, a whopping $85. Why someone would want to spend that kind of money on a rock is anyone’s guess, and Nordstrom seem to agree.
“A paperweight? A conversation piece? A work of art? It’s up to you, but this smooth Los Angeles-area stone—wrapped in rich, vegetable-tanned American leather secured by sturdy contrast whipstitching—is sure to draw attention wherever it rests,” the online product description states.
22-year-old Mary Krupa started interacting with the squirrels living on the Penn State University campus four years ago, and became an internet sensation after posting photos of the adorable rodents wearing tiny outfits and posing with various props. Today, everyone at the university knows her as the “Squirrel Whisperer” or “Squirrel Girl”.
Mary says that she became friends with the grey squirrels during her first week at Penn State, after spotting them running around and idly wondering what one of them would look like with a tiny hat on its head. She started bringing them food, and little by little they began to trust her. She actually managed to put a hat on a squirrel and take a picture, which she then sent to her grandmother, who loved it. Thinking that her Penn State colleagues could use something to lift up their spirits, she started posting photos of the squirrels wearing funny hats and playing with props she made herself, on Facebook. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and before long Mary and her squirrels became internet sensations.
A Slovakian luxury comb company is giving the phrase “luxurious hair” a whole new meaning with a limited edition solid gold comb priced at a whopping $9,700. Yes, you read that correctly!
If you’re the kind of person who only visits the best salons, uses only top quality shampoos and ultimately wants only the best for their hair, than you might be interested in this solid gold comb made by Tomas Veres. The Slovakian company was built “on the passion to create extraordinary and exclusive objects for extraordinary people, who appreciate the finest things in life.” That basically means that they make outrageously expensive combs that most people can’t afford.
