Chicago Artist Spends Two Years Collecting Almost 9,000 Drug Bags to Highlight City’s Drug Problem

32-year-old Ben Kurstin, of Humboldt Park, Chicago, has 8,816 dime bags in his apartment, but he’s no drug dealer. The aspiring artist and filmmaker has been collecting drug bags in virtually every color and design imaginable off the streets of Chicago and using them as an art medium.

It all started one day, a couple of years ago, when Ben Kurstin noticed a discarded dime bag on a sidewalk in Humboldt Park, and decided to pick it up out of curiosity. From that point on, whenever he saw drug bags on the street, he would pick them up and take them home. Soon, his unusual habit became an obsession, to the point where he would search for the bags and come home with dozens , sometimes even hundreds of them, every day. He then spent hours cleaning and organizing them by color and design. At one point, he even started thinking of a rational explanation, should police one day stop him, thinking he was a drug dealer.

Read More »

Woman Covers Face in Bright Pink Poster Paint, Hilarity Ensues

Applying bright pink poster paint all over your face can leave you with pink skin. At least that’s what everyone though after seeing the photos of a twitter user who recently did just that.

No one knows exactly why Twitter user @LeleTill decided to put bright pink poster paint all over her face, but she did, and also documented the experience in a series of photos posted on the popular social network. @LeleTill, whose real name is Leah, first drew people’s attention with a picture of herself covered in pink Palmer Washable Glitter Poster Paint. She followed that up with a couple of close-ups of the label on the bottom, which read “Washes off easily off skin and most fabrics”. However, her “after” photo clearly shows that you should never put your trust in labels, especially if you don’t plan on using the product as intended.

Read More »

Mysterious Cliff in China Lays “Stone Eggs” Every 30 Years

If you’ve never heard of an egg-laying mountain, you probably don’t know about Chan Da Ya, a mysterious cliff in China that reportedly lays perfectly round or oval stone eggs every 30 years.

Located in Qiannan Buyi and Miao Autonomous Region, China’s Guizhou Province, Chan Da Ya – Mandarin for “egg laying cliff” – has been puzzling geologists for decades. The 9ft high and 65ft long heavily eroded formation has an uneven surface dotted with dozens of round and oval-shaped stones of various sizes. As the elements continue to eat away at the cliff, the harder “eggs” become even more exposed and eventually fall out of their natural sockets. According to the people of the nearby Gulu village, Chan Da Ya takes 30 years to lay its strange stone eggs.

Read More »

Modern-Day Casanova in Thailand Marries 120 Women And They All Know About Each Other

Polygamy is illegal in Thailand, but that didn’t stop a modern-day Casanova from taking a whopping 120 wives and having 28 children with them. What’s even more unusual is that the women all know about each other and are fine with the arrangement.

Tambon Prasert, the head of Phromnee district, in Thailand’s Nakorn Nayok province, some 90 km  from Bangkok, was recently forced to admit that he had illegally taken over 100 wives, after reporters were tipped off about it by anonymous sources. The 58-year-old local politician and owner of a successful construction business, recently welcomed members of the media into his home to shed some light on his family life, after they traveled to Phromnee to confirm their leads. Asked if it was true that he had more than 100 wives all across the country, Prasert matter-of-factly said “I have 120 wives and 28 sons and daughters”.

Read More »

Chinese “Guardian of Dogs” Has Rescued Over 700 Strays in the Last 8 Years

Zhou Yusong is known as the “Guardian of Dogs” in his home city of Zhengzhou, China’s Henan Province. The kindhearted man has spent the last 8 years of his life rescuing stray dogs and offering them a home at  his animal protection center.

It all started in 2008, when Zhou Yusong, when he noticed an injured stray dog by the side of a road in Zhengzhou. It had been hit by a car and was fighting for his life, but everyone just ignored it. Unable to do the same, he picked up the canine and took it to a nearby pet hospital. After saving the animal’s life, he took it to a dog shelter, as he had no way of taking care of it himself, in his small apartment. Shocked by the large number of stray dogs already at the shelter, he became more involved in trying to make their lives easier, and started donating 200 yuan ($30) every month, for the animal’s food and medical treatments.

Read More »

Meet Cygnus, the Cat with the World’s Longest, Most Luscious Tail

Lauren and Will Powers, of Ferndale, Michigan, don’t need to dust their home like the rest of us. Their cat, Cygnus, does it for them just by walking around the place and wagging his incredibly long and fluffy tail.

Cygnus Regulus Powers was recently featured in the 2018 Guinness Book of Records for having the “longest tail on a domestic cat”. The official measurement put his tail at a whopping 44.66 cm (17.58 inches) from the base of his butt to the end of the “meat” of his tail, but it must have been done a while ago, because in June of last year, his owner Will Powers told Love Meow that Cygnus’ tail already measured 18.4 inches (24 inches, if you count the fluff). And considering that the cute Main Coon was only about a year old at the time, his tail must be considerably longer now.

Read More »

Japanese Homeless Comedian Makes a Good Living Renting Himself to People for 45 Cents a Day

It’s hard to believe that anyone could survive on just 45 cents a day, especially if they don’t even have a place to sleep, but Japanese comedian Kotani Makoto has been doing it for a while now, and claims that he’s happier and more successful than ever before.

But it’s not just that Kotani Makoto is doing better than ever on ¥50 (¢45) a day that’s intriguing, but also how he gets that money. Four years ago, soon after moving to Tokyo to make it as a solo comedian, Makoto found himself unable to afford his own place, so he moved in with a more established comedian called King Kong Nishino, for a reasonable ¥40,000 (~$400 USD) monthly rent. However, Nishino could only put up with his new roommate’s sloppy and messy lifestyle for a couple of months, after which he just shook his head and told him “”Starting today, you should become homeless. Your life will definitely be better that way.” Nishino took the advice to heart and claims it changed his life for the better.

Read More »

Woman with 12.4-Centimeter Eyelashes Sets Guinness Record

To say You Jianxia has long eyelashes would be a gross understatement. The average person’s lashes are between 0.8 and 1.2 cm-long, but the hairs growing on the edges of this woman’s eyelids reach a whopping 12.4 cm. That’s nearly 5-inches!

The 2018 Guinness World Records category for “world’s longest eyelashes” was one of the most popular, with over 500 entries from all around the world, but no one even came close to You Jianxia, a former investment fund director from Shanghai, China. With eyelashes reaching all the way down from her eyelids past her mouth, the 49-year-old easily bagged the world record. When her lashes were officially measured, on 28 June 2016, the longest of them was 12.4 cm, and considering that was a year ago, it’s probably even longer now. If not for the photos of You doing the rounds online, I would never have believed such long natural eyelashes were even possible.

Read More »

Doctor Performs Colonoscopy on Himself to Better Understand Patients’ Pain

In order to better understand what his patients go through, Dr. Feng Zhuo, a deputy director of the Proctology Department at a Shanghai hospital, recently performed a 15-minute colonoscopy on himself.

Ask anyone who’s ever had a colonoscopy and they’ll tell you that it’s one of the most painful and uncomfortable things they’ve ever experienced. Despite sedation being used to relieve discomfort, having a flexible instrument about the diameter of an index finger inserted through your backside and poking around through your colon is not the most pleasant thing in the world, but it is the most effective way of detecting bowel diseases like colon cancer. No one in their right mind would ever undergo the invasive procedure unless their life literally depended on it, and yet one Chinese proctologist  performed it on himself, even though he didn’t need to.

Read More »

Indian Woman Claims She Hasn’t Eaten Solid Food in 60 Years

Saraswati Bai, a 75-year-old woman from India, claims that she hasn’t consumed a grain of rice, or any other solid food, for that matter, in the last 60 years. Apart from one banana a week – eaten only occasionally – she survives on water and tea alone.

Saraswati remembers that she used to have a normal diet until she got a Typhoid infection, right after her first son was born, 60 years ago. She couldn’t keep anything down and suffered severe stomach aches, so she gave up eating completely. As her condition improved, she started taking small sips of tea, but her appetite never returned. Concerned about both her well-being and that of their son, her husband Dwarka Prasad Patikar, tried convincing her to start eating, but she just couldn’t do it. She felt fine living on water and tea alone, and continues to do so today.

Read More »

Piero Manzoni – The Artist Who Became Famous for Selling His Own Poop

Ask anyone if they would pay anything to own another’s person’s poop, and they will most likely say “hell, no”. But everything changes when the said poop becomes a work of art. Case in point, “Artist’s Shit”, a collection of 30g tin cans allegedly containing the poop of Italian artist Piero Manzoni. Art collectors are buying them for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

When Piero Manzoni came up with the idea to can his own poop, in 1961, he probably had no idea that his 30g metal containers would one day sell for astronomical prices. In 2007, the Tate art gallery in London, bought one of Manzoni’s 90 cans for £22,350 ($30,000), and while that may seem like a lot for what is literally just canned crap, they actually got a great deal. In 2007, another can of “Merda d’Artista” was auctioned off in Milan, for a whopping £81,000 ($108,000). Crazy, right? Not really, just another good deal, because Manzoni’s cans of poop are currently worth around $300,000 apiece. Last year, someone bought can no. 54 for £182,500 ($242,000). At this rate, they’ll soon be worth millions.

Read More »

Mysterious Condition Causes Woman’s Eyes to Clamp Shut for Three Days at a Time

For the past 13 years, Natalie Adler, of Melbourne Australia, has been battling a strange medical condition that causes her eyelids to close for up to three days at a time, rendering her completely blind. After countless tests and procedures, doctors still don’t have a proper diagnosis.

Natalie’s life changed dramatically one seemingly normal Sunday, when she was 17-years-old. She just woke up with extremely swollen eyelids and her eyes soon started closing intermittently for various periods of time. In a few weeks time, they were closing for three days, followed by three normal days, and she found herself having to get used to the unusual routine, because doctors could not figure out what was wrong.

Read More »

Indian Girl Allegedly Has “Cotton Tears” Oozing From Her Eyes Every Day

An 11-year-old from the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh has allegedly been popping out 35 to 40 small white pebbles of what looks like cotton from her eyes, every day for over two weeks.

Manasi, a sixth-grader from the village of Pachkhura, apparently started producing the bizarre white “cotton tears” on August 25, and her father, as well as the locals are convinced that she is possessed by a ghost. Villagers have been avoiding the girl and her family ever since word got out about her condition, fearing divine wrath, and her parents are so superstitious that they have yet to consult an ophthalmologist.

Read More »

Hermes Sells Rocks with Leather Straps as $840 Paperweights

Paying $840 for an original Hermes item seems like a great deal, but in this particular case we’re talking about a paperweight consisting of a rock and a calf leather strap. How do you even sell something like that?

Well, the French luxury brand found a way – they are marketing the “galet pebbles” (rocks) as unique, which means no one else in the world has the exact same item. But I’m pretty sure you can say the same thing about any river stone. The odds of finding another with the exact same shape and pattern are probably astronomical, and you don’t have to pay anything for that. Sure, it doesn’t come with a fancy calf leather strap, but still…

Read More »

Start-Up Creates Portable Scanner That Can Detect Fake Designer Goods

New York-based startup Entrupy has invented a small, portable scanner that rich people can use to check the authenticity of designer bags in mere seconds.

According to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the global counterfeit industry is worth around 460 billion dollars, a big chunk of which involves counterfeit luxury goods from brands like Louis Vuitton or Channel. The thing about such fakes is that they are often so well-made that the human eye simply cannot tell them apart from originals. That’s where technology come in. Using a high-quality scanner and deep-learning technology, the brilliant minds behind Entrupy, have come up with a device that allows anyone to check the authenticity of luxury products, anytime, anywhere.

Read More »