A 29-year-old man from Guangzhou, China experienced sudden paralysis of all four limbs after spending two consecutive days playing on his mobile phone. The man reportedly spent a lot of his time looking down at his handheld, but this latest gaming marathon was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Late last month, the yet unidentified gamer spent two consecutive days trying to advance as much as possible in the mobile video game he was so passionate about. In the early hours of the third day, he felt a sudden pain and stiffness in his neck. Within moments all four of his limbs went numb, and he found himself paralyzed. His family rushed him to the emergency department of Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, where, after an MRI and other tests, Shen Huiyong, the orthopedic specialist, diagnosed him with cervical spondylosis hematoma. That meant that his paralysis was caused by blood clots in his cervical spinal tube pressing against his spinal cord.

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German architect Marc Wübbenhorst has to drink at least 20 liters of water a day or risk dying from dehydration. The 35-year-old suffers from the rare metabolic disease Diabetes insipidus, which causes intense thirst and the frequent excretion of large amounts of diluted urine. If Wübbenhorst stops drinking water, his body starts to dry out, and he can die of thirst in a matter of hours.

Constant thirst has been a part of Marc Wübbenhorst’s life for as long as he can remember. It’s nothing like the thirst a normal person experiences, because it doesn’t go away after drinking a glass or two of water. His body can’t hold any water, as his kidneys eliminate the fluids almost as fast as he ingests them. Marc can never ignore his thirst for more than an hour, because he starts to experience severe symptoms of dehydration, like cracked lips, dizziness and confusion. These are symptoms that most adults experience after two or three days of fluids deprivation.

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Bionic limbs used to be restricted to the realm of fiction, but the technology, first released in 1993, has been making massive leaps in the past few years. Now, one Italian Robotics company called Youbionic has taken the next significant leap forward by releasing a 3D printed and customizable bionic appendage consisting of two robotic hands.

The 3D printed device, designed by Federico Ciccarese, is made from nylon dust and consists of an Arduino micro-controller, actuators, and three electrodes that are activated by nerve impulses in the same way that muscles move when neurons send signals from our brains.

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When it comes to getting money, some people will do just about anything, even marry their relatives. Take 25-year-old Mauricio Ossola, from Argentina, who last year married his 91-year-old great-aunt, so he could collect a widower’s pension after she died.

Mauricio moved in with his great aunt Yolanda, in the city of Salta, north-west Argentina, eight years ago, after his parents split up. He, his mother, her brother and his grandmother shared a home with the elderly woman in the neighborhood of Tres Cerritos, and apparently got along very well. So well, in fact, that two years ago Yolanda agreed to marry Mauricio so that he could collect a widower’s pension after she was gone. The then 23-year-old had told the woman that he planned to quit his law studies due to financial constraints , and she assured him that she would do everything she can to make sure he graduates. The young man recently admitted to reporters that he was the one who proposed they get married, and that she accepted. They tied the knot in February of 2015, in what he describes as a “discreet civil ceremony”.

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A boxing coach in Houston staged his own death after discovering his wife had hired a hit man to kill him. Ramon Sosa, 50, began working with the FBI and Houston detectives to prove that Maria “Lulu” Sosa, 43, attempted to have him killed. She unknowingly exposed her intentions by attempting to hire a hitman, who, coincidentally, turned out to be a friend and former boxing student of Ramon’s.

In order to prove without the shadow of a doubt that his wife had actually paid someone to have him killed, Sosa had to make himself dead, using makeup, and lying in a shallow grave in the desert with what appears to be a gunshot to his right temple and fake blood dripping on his face and naked torso. He then had to lay low until the police nailed his wife, who apparently laughed when she saw the photo of her dead husband.

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Some people like to refer to the iPhone as an absurd luxury product to pay money on, but if buying an Apple smartphone is burning money, what do you call spending $1,000 on a tin can from New York jewelers Tiffany & co.?

“Upgrading” everyday objects to luxury item status is apparently really trendy these days. From leather-bound rocks to solid gold fidget spinners and even car mats reimagined as designer skirts, everyone is just slapping obscene price tags on average things. The latest company to jump on the upgrading train is Tiffany & co, with their eyebrow raising tin can priced at a whopping $1,000. That’s more than most people spend on actual jewelry, let alone one that looks like a shiny tin can.

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Cape Town-based magician and illusionist Russell Fox is attempting to set a new Guinness World Record by walking 32 km barefoot across broken glass. Fox, aged 43, is endeavouring to do it in under 29 hours (the current record).

Aside from earning himself a mention in the record books, Fox hopes to raise funds for the South Africa-based charity Nosh for Josh foundation for those affected with Autism, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and Muscular Dystrophy. Fox himself suffered from epilepsy‚ ADHD‚ Tourette’s and dyslexia as a child, so the foundation is close to his heart. Fox’s chief goal is to send children living with the listed disorders to India for Stem Cell Therapy Operation at the NeuroGen Brain and Spine Institute.

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Meet Mahdi Gilbert, the 25-year-old Canadian magician making waves in the world of magic. He practices card manipulation and sleight of hand, a common skill set for a magician, but what sets him apart is his lack of hands.

Standing at four-feet-six inches, Gilbert’s left arm stops at the elbow, and he has an articulated appendage on his right arm. Gilbert was forced to reinvent magic for himself, individually recreating all of the techniques used in his illusions. “I had to become self-sufficient from an early age; there’s (sic) no magic books written for me,” Gilbert said in an interview for the documentary Our Magic.

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A small school in rural India is gaining attention over the fact that all 300 students are ambidextrous. Data shows that only one percent of the global population is ambidextrous, but the ambitious founder of Veena Vandini School, in Madhya Pradesh, is aiming to change that, starting at a local level.

Former soldier and Veena Vandini School founder VP Sharma stated that he was inspired to focus on ambidexterity training by India’s first president Rajendra Prasad (in office from 1950 to 1962) who was ambidextrous. “I read in a magazine that Dr. Rajendra Prasad India’s first president used to write with both hands. This inspired me to give it a try,” Mr. Sharma said. “Later when I launched my school at my native village, I tried training the students.”

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Deepti Regmi, an 11-year-old girl from Nepal, spontaneously developed a peculiar ability last year. She is, inexplicably, able to smell colors, and can supposedly even identify them while blindfolded. Although she does not have an official diagnosis, her ability appears to be related to the sensory phenomena known as synaesthesia.

Synaesthesia causes the person’s senses to become confused, causing sensation to one sensory input (such as the eyes) to stimulate sensation in another (the nose). This is what causes Deepti to smell color, and others to visualize color when they hear music, or to taste flavors when they hear certain sounds. Any combination of this sensory “cross-wire” is possible however, and not at all limited to the examples above.

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South Korean artist Young-Sung Kim has a very special talent, he can paint photographs. That may sound like a gross exaggeration, but just take a look at what he’s able produce with a paintbrush, some acrylic and mountains of talent and patience.

The old saying, ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’, doesn’t really apply to Youn-Sung Kim’s art. You can stare at his incredibly detailed painting for hours and still not be able to tell them apart from high-resolution digital photographs. Kim is so good at what he does that, sometimes, he himself has trouble telling his hyper-realistic paintings from the photos that inspired them. Once, he actually mistakenly sent the press the file of a photo he took, instead of the painting he did, because they looked virtually identical to the naked eye.

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Lindsey Partridge, a horse trainer from Canada, recently tested the pet policy of a hotel in Georgetwon, Kentucky, by trying to check her 5-year-old thoroughbred into her room. Believe it or not, she was successful, and it only cost her $10.

Partridge, from Ontario, Canada, recently traveled to the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky, to compete in the Retired Racehorse Project’s Thoroughbred Makeover, an annual competition in which retired racehorses compete in various categories. As she approached the town of Georgetown, where she had booked a room for the week, she decided to stop and drop off her luggage, before driving to the contest venue. Little did she know that one of her horses would be joining her in the room as well.

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In an attempt to tackle obesity on its campus, a university in Jiangsu, China, is offering overweight students the chance to enroll in a special weight-loss program, where they will receive their grades based on how much weight they shed and on how well they do in class.

Zhou Quanfu, a lecturer at the Nanjing Agriculture University, came up with the idea for the accredited weight loss program after learning that most of his overweight students didn’t exercise because they thought it was pointless. So he decided to motivate them by having their grades depend more on their physical shape than on their actual performance in school. Sixty per cent of each student’s grade is determined by how much weight they lose in a set period of time, with their curricular activity only accounting for 40 percent of the total score. Students enrolled in the program have to lose at least 7 percent of their original weight by the end of the semester in order to receive full grades.

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The vast majority of nutritionists claim that, if you want to lose weight, fast food is among the first things you should cut from your diet, but one man recently proved that you can actually eat pizza every single day and still maintain a healthy figure.

Brian Northrup, aka “Lord of Pizza” set out to prove that you can still lose weight while eating your favorite foods, by eating one medium Domino’s pizza every day for a 367 consecutive days. The New Jersey native documented the whole project on his Instagram page, posting photos of every pizza he ordered, and on YouTube where he posted videos of himself eating them. At the end of the year-long experiment, Northrup had lost about five pounds and was in tip-top shape. How did he do it? Well, the pizza fan claims that he just burned the extra calories by working out.

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Shayna Leib’s French desserts may look delicious, but they are only meant to be savoured with the eyes. While these exquisite treats may appear to be the work of a talented confectioner, Leib is actually a porcelain and glass artist.

If, like me, you have an insatiable sweet tooth, you’re probably wondering how anyone could be so cruel as to tempt us with these positively mouth-watering desserts that we’ll never get to try. Well, in Shayna Leib’s case, the idea for her “Patisserie” porcelain and glass series was inspired by her own inability to indulge in decadent desserts. Apparently, her body reacts to food with high histamine, salicylate, and copper content, like puff pastry and chocolate mouse, which results in many dietary restriction. So by salivating over photos of her porcelain and glass desserts, you get a taste of how she feels every time she walks by a dessert shop.

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