Jacqui Kenny has always wanted to travel the world, meet new people and discover different cultures, but she suffers from agoraphobia – an anxiety disorder characterized by fear of public spaces, public transportation, open spaces and/or large crowds – so she rarely gets to leave her house. Luckily, modern technology allows her to live out her dream, sort of.

Jacqui was diagnosed with agoraphobia 8 years ago, but she has been dealing with extreme anxiety and panic attacks for over 20 years now. Last year was a particularly trying time, as a company  that she had co-founded for many years had just closed, and dealing with the stress of it, on top of her mental issues, was tough. She didn’t know what she was going to do with her life, and leaving the house to face the world was not an option. She needed something to keep her busy, and somehow, she discovered Google Street View.

Read More »

Cally Loridas, the owner of a pet grooming salon in Victoria, Australia, may have just sparked the latest trend in feline fashion – colored acrylic claw sheaths that keep your beloved pet from scratching the furniture.

Cat owners from all over Victoria have been pouring in at Cally’s Scratch & Sniffs Pet Grooming Salon, in Cheltenham, after word got out that she was applying stylish silicone nails that not only look good but have a very practical purpose. They keep the cats from scratching at the furniture, or your leg, whatever the case may be, without impeding their movement in any way. The fake nails come in 40 different colors and are guaranteed to give cat owners 6 to 8 weeks of scratch-free time with their pet.

Read More »

Families in Ghana are increasingly turning to troupes of dancing pallbearers to send their loved ones off in style, and bring some joy to what is usually perceived as a very sad event.

Dancing pallbearers not only lift the casket at a funeral, they also lift the mood of attendees by putting on a show. They parade the casket on their backs and shoulders, while at the same time executing a complex choreography that often involves spinning around, dropping to the ground and even pretending to drop the casket, all to the delight of the audience. It’s definitely an unusual display, but families in Ghana are increasingly paying for the services of such troupes to give their loved-ones an upbeat send-off.

Read More »

Woody Woodpecker’s exploits only seemed possible in the popular Looney Toons cartoon, but one real-life woodpecker recently proved that the birds can some pretty incredible things, if they put their mind to it, like peck through an entire wooden power pole.

Last week, a photo posted by the Snohomish County Public Utility District did the rounds on social media, garnering dozens of shares and comments, and for good reason. It showed a wooden power pole barely hanging on by a thread, after having been pecked by a hard-working woodpecker. How the pole was still standing, considering the damage that had been done to it, is anyone’s guess, but a few more pecks or a strong gust of wind would have probably brought it down in a day or two. Luckily, Snohomish County staff managed to change it in time.

Read More »

Elisabeth Anderson-Sierra, a 29-year-old mother-of-two from Beaverton, Oregon, suffers from a rare condition known as Hyperlactation Syndrome. She produces about 1.7 gallons of breast milk per day, almost 10 times as much as most lactating women, and spends around 10 hours every day nursing and pumping her milk. She has so far donated 600 gallons (2.5 tonnes) of breast milk to milk banks and families in need of it.

Ever since falling pregnant with her older daughter, Isabella, who is now two and a half years old, Elisabeth estimates that she has fed thousands of babies with her breast milk. She virtually spends her whole day pumping the liquid gold, which she then stores in four large freezers in her home, for local mothers who cannot breastfeed their newborns, gay couples and breast milk banks for premature babies. Despite the huge amount of time and the discomfort that goes into pumping the milk, the 29-year-old considers it a “labor of love”.

Read More »

Can you imagine receiving dozens of letters from strangers every day, having your utilities cut off, or not being able to unsubscribe from certain services, all because of an unfortunate address? That’s what life is like at 1234 AB, 123 (changed for privacy reasons), the address that most hackers, as well as everyday people in the Netherlands, use when filling out online forms. They do it out of laziness, or to protect their own privacy, without realizing that some of the things they do online actually affect the people at that address.

Motherboard Netherlands recently learned that 1234 AB, 123 was the most spammed address in the country, and decided to investigate if such an address actually existed. A Google search revealed that there was a indeed a place in the Noord Holland province with that exact address, and it even showed up on Streetview. They were soon able to find some phone numbers of the people living there, to ask them if living at the most spammed address in the country affected their lives in any way. Turns out it does, “bigly”!

Read More »

The Bespoke Coloring Book is being hailed as the “world’s most luxurious coloring book” and has a price tag to match – $30,850 for 10 bespoke illustrations created by famed illustrator Ian Beck, based on your personal preferences.

Adult coloring books have become insanely popular in the last few years, with more and more grownups turning to them as a way to relax, combat stress and let loose their inner child. You can find them in virtually any bookstore, and there are literary thousands of themes to choose from. But luxury goods&services company Very First To did some research and found that there was no luxury coloring books for rich people, so they decided to make one. And boy did they come up with something special.

Read More »

Alberto Gutierrez Giron has been living alone in the mountains of Nicaragua for nearly 40 years, sculpting a 300-foot long cliff into a giant artwork, just like the one he saw in a dream, when he turned 9-years-old.

Popularly known as the “Hermit of Nicaragua”, “Stone Man” or “Sculptor of the Mountain”, Alberto Gutierez claims he was born on October 17, 1944 – although he doesn’t have a birth certificate anymore – in a village near Esteli City. He had always loved exploring the forests around his home, and at age 33, he decided he wanted to live his whole life surrounded by nature, creating an epic stone artwork he had dreamed of as a young boy. He had been thinking about it for years, but during the war that swept Nicaragua at the time, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get away from it all.

Read More »

A man from Surrey, UK, lost consciousness and had to be hospitalized after he and a few friends shared a bottle of Satan’s Shot vodka, a special liquor infused with Carolina Reapers, the hottest chillies in the world.

Emma Mirrington, 42, from Farncombe, bought a bottle of Satan’s Shot vodka at Guildford Cheese and Chilli Festival, on Sunday, and decided to share it with some friends. They all gathered at at The White Hart pub to sample the rare spirit, ignoring the label warning “Only Satan himself is brave enough to drink this vodka neat, if you feel fearless and want to drink with Satan, you will feel like you are burning in hell itself.” It turns out the bottling company wasn’t exaggerating one bit.

Read More »

Armenian-based startup Volterman has recently unveiled a smart wallet that takes security to the extreme. It comes with a built-in alarm system, a global GPS tracker, and even a front facing cameras that takes photos of whoever tries to open it, and sends them to the owner.

Wallets almost seem obsolete in this digital age, but the Volterman Smart Wallet is not your average wallet. Apart from the screen, it packs about as much technology as your smartphone, including 512MB of RAM, a built-in camera, power bank, GPS tracker, alarm system, RFID protection and even Wi-FI hotspot capabilities. It may look like a simple leather wallet on the outside, but it’s a whole different beast on the inside.

Read More »

Most commuters in Munich, Germany, spend hours stuck in traffic or trying to squeeze into one of the overcrowded subway trains, every morning, but for 40-year-old Benjamin David, commuting is actually a relaxing experience. Every day, he jumps into the Isar River and swims two kilometers to his workplace in Kulturstrand.

Benjamin David used to be one of the thousands of Münchners trying to make their way to work on busy roads and cycling paths, but two years ago he decided that he needed to find a simpler alternative and the Isar River seemed like the obvious answer. It flows right past his apartment in Baldeplatz, and, even though no one has been using it for traveling purposes in decades, it used to be the best ways to get around. People traveled up and down the Isar using rafts, and, at one point, it was one of the most popular routes between Rome and Vienna. But instead of paddling on a raft, Benjamin decided to swim to work instead, and that’s been his main commute for the past two years.

Read More »

At age 10, Caden Benjamin, from Mpumalanga, South Africa already tips the scales at a whopping 90 kg. He suffers from a rare genetic disorder known as Prader-Willi syndrome, which makes him feel hungry all the time.

Caden was always a hungry child, but his mother, Zola, realized that there was something unusual about his appetite at age 3, when he already weighed 40 kilograms. He took the boy to several doctors, but no one could explain why he was so hungry all the time and gaining so much weight. Finally, a doctor at Steve Biko Academic Hospital in Pretoria ran some tests and diagnosed Caden with Prader-Willi syndrome, an incurable condition that affects about 20 000 people worldwide.

Read More »

A 44-year-old man from Quzhou, China’s Zhejiang province, was recently hospitalized with severe kidney problems, after eating a whopping 54 ice creams in one sitting, and washing them down with ice water.

The man, surnamed Zheng, was at his home, on July 15, when he began to feel the effects of the heatwaves that have been sweeping China for the last few weeks. Tired and dehydrated after a hot day, Zheng went to his refrigerator and grabbed an ice cream to cool off. Problem was that that first ice-cream only made him crave another, and then another, so he kept eating them until he went through all the 54 frozen treats he had in his fridge. I’ve never head of anyone having that many ice-creams in their home, but apparently this guy did.

Read More »

Filmmakers usually strive to make their productions as entertaining and engaging as possible, but the people behind “Baa Baa Land”, an epic 8-hour movie scheduled for release this September, set out to do just the opposite. With no dialogue, no plot and no human actors, just lots and lots of sheep, the so-called “world’s dullest movie” was designed to put viewers to sleep.

Produced by Calm, a company that produces mindfulness meditation products, Baa Baa Land is being advertised as “the ultimate insomnia cure” and “better than a sleeping pill”. It was filmed in Essex, England, and consists of slow motion shots of sheep in a field. Basically, nothing happens for eight hours, but that was the whole the whole point. Producer Peter Freedman, said that he believed it could be the dullest film ever made, adding: “We hope that audiences will, too”.

Read More »

Solange Amorim, a 50-year-old mother from Manaus, Brazil has been getting a lot of online attention lately for her ability to transform herself into popular cartoon characters and her courage to regularly attend cosplay events, which usually appeal to youths.

Solange, who goes by Tia Sol on social media, discovered the wonderful world of cosplay when she started accompanying her daughter, Jessica, to local events. She fell in love with it immediately, but it wasn’t until a few years ago, when a friend asked her if she had the courage to dress up as a cartoon character herself that she really got involved in the cosplay community.

Read More »