The Eerie Tree Carvings of Perryville Park, in Maryland

Maryland’s Cecil County is home to many interesting parks, but none more mysterious and disturbing than the Perryville Community Park, in Perryville, where around 100 trees are marked by eerie messages left by patients from a veteran psychiatric and rehabilitation center, decades ago.

Before becoming a public park, the land was owned by the nearby Perry Point VA Hospital, and some of its former patients carved their disturbed thoughts into the trees. Over time, the words and drawings etched into the tree bark have grown larger, drawing the attention of curious passers-by. Interestingly, even though the mark trees of Perryville Community Park have become quite popular among fans of eerie tourist attractions, and even gotten their own Wikipedia entry, few residents of the Maryland town know about them and their history.

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Indonesian Man Is Best Friends with a 400-Pound Bengal Tiger

What started out as a simple job turned into an amazing friendship between a man and one of the most efficient predators on Earth. 10 years ago, Abdullah Sholeh became a “nanny” for a 3-month-old tiger cub, but they eventually became so close that even after the tiger matured, they spend almost every minute of the day together, and sometimes even sleep in the same enclosure.

Mulan Jamillah, a beautiful Bengal tigress, was donated to the Islamic school in Malang, Indonesia, when she was just 3-months-old, and then 25-year-old Abdullah Sholeh became her full-time caretaker. Her previous owner was unable to take care of her, but the young student was more than happy to dedicate most of his time to the adorable cub. The only problem is that what started out as a temporary job eventually turned into a full-time friendship, with Abdullah having to spend almost 24-hours with the tiger, which earned him the nickname “The Nanny”.

 

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Disabled Pensioner Dedicates His Life to Building Secure Mountain Roads for Isolated Village, Out of His Own Pocket

76-year-old Zhang Jiwen is almost completely deaf, but he has two able hands and a strong desire to help those less fortunate. Ever since 2012, he has been carrying building materials up a mountain in Fuling Forest Park, near the city of Chongqing, and building safe walking paths leading up from the modern road at the base all the way to an isolated village near the top. He has already completed a safe path a few hundred meters long and has started work on another leading to the water source of the village.

Zhang grew up in a village in the forests of Fuling, and even though he moved to the big city as an adult, he never forgot about his roots. When he heard about an isolated mountain village whose children had to come down precarious slopes in order to reach their school, he decided that he just had to help. For the past five years he has been taking a bus from his home in Chongqing to Fuling Forest Park to work on a better road for the village located on a mountain there.

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Swedish Tech Company Implants Microchips in Employees’ Bodies to Make Their Lives Easier

Epicenter, a technology startup hub in Stockholm, Sweden, has been offering employees the chance to have a small microchip implanted in their hand, ever since 2015. So far, 150 of its 3,000-strong staff have taken bosses up on their offer, and they couldn’t be happier with their decision.

Implantable microchips the size of a grain of rice have been around for a while now, but they are usually used as virtual identification plates for pets, or as tracking devices for deliveries. Up until a couple of years ago, when Epicenter started offering its employees the chance to have them implanted into their hands, these tiny devices had never been used to tag humans on a large scale. For many people, having a chip inserted into their body sounds like something out of a dystopian future, or, at the very least, raises privacy questions, but the 150 Epicenter employees who have had them implanted say the technology just makes their life easier.

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Russian Model Protests Poor Road Conditions with Professional Pothole Photo Shoots

In an effort to draw attention to the poor state of roads in her home city of Saratov, a Russian model organized a professional photo shoot at one of the largest water-filled pot holes in her neighborhood, posing in a Baywatch bathing suit with a large inflatable flamingo.

Model/Fashion Blogger Anna Moskvicheva originally intended to have the photo shoot in the town of Mirny, where her aunt lives, but after heavy rains created giant road puddles right in her own city, she changed plans and had the photos taken on Tverskaya street, in Saratov. She put on a red Baywatch-style bathing suit, put on a large summer hat and stepped out into the flooded street to pose on a giant inflatable pink flamingo. The resulting photos have been shared on Russian social media thousands of times, with most people congratulating her on the original protest.

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The World’s Most Amazing Five-a-Side Football Field

This photo of a five-a-side football field surrounded by lush greenery in the jungle of Sabah, Malaysia, has been doing the rounds on the internet for the last few days. And for good reason, as it looks like a place that can only exist in someone’s fantasy.

The picture was captured by a teacher at the Longongon National School, in Nabawan, Malaysia, using a Mavic Pro drone. It shows the unreal-looking pitch located on a greenery-covered hillside, with thick vines seemingly encroaching on the playing field. Allowing the thick layer of living plants to completely take over the fencing around the pitch was apparently by design, as this helps cool the players during hot summer days and provides much-needed fresh air.

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Don’t Freak Out, But Those Digital Adverts at the Shopping Mall May Be Watching You

A pizzeria in Oslo, Norway, recently came under fire after it was revealed that its digital adverts were actually filming passers by, analyzing their facial features and displaying different adverts according to a variety of factors.

The monitoring system was accidentally revealed at the beginning of May, when the system crashed and software code was displayed on screen instead of the usual ads. Linus Tech Tips forum user “Nepturion” happened to be passing by Peppe’s Pizza, in an Oslo shopping center, when he noticed the bizarre code generated on the digital advertising banner. A closer look revealed a small camera concealed in the wooden frame of the advert, and after watching the screen for a few minutes, Nepturion realized that the messages generated by the computer were describing him, and changed every time a different person passed by.

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Kopi Joss – Sweet Coffee Served with a Lump of Burning Coal

If you’re looking for a new and interesting way to enjoy your daily cup of java, try dumping a lump of hot coal into it. The trick worked for a small coffee stall owner in Indonesia who has become famous for his sizzling charcoal coffee.

The Indonesian city of Yogyakarta is perhaps the only place in the world where you can have your coffee served with a piece of red-hot coal. It’s called “Kopi Joss” and it was apparently invented back in the 1960s, by a local coffee stall owner known only as Mr. Man, to help him deal with a troubled stomach. The current stall operator, Alex, says that Mr. Man, who has since past away, was making his coffee as usual, when he laid eyes on the burning coal that he used to boil the water, and an idea popped into his head. His stomach was giving him problems and thought that the coal could make it better. So he took a piece of hot coal and dumped into a cup of coffee. It worked, and he since started selling it to brave customers as well.

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Young Mexican Artist Creates Stunning Ball-Point Pen Drawings

Most artists take decades to master their tools, but at 23 years of age, Alfredo Chamal is already one of the world’s best ball-point pen artists in the world. He specializes in hyper-realistic drawings that look like artistic photographs from afar. It’s only when the viewer approaches the artwork to take a closer look that he realizes it is actually a hand-drawn large-scale drawing, and not a photograph.

Made famous by by Spanish illustrator Juan Casas, the ball-point pen is not the most popular art tool in the world, partly because of it’s permanent effect which makes covering up any mistakes very difficult. But that din’t stop Alfredo Chamal from using the tool to experiment contemporary realism. Based on photographs he takes himself, Alfredo’s large scale drawings take several days to complete, but the end result is always more than worth the effort that goes into them.

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Bolivian Man Builds Transformers-Themed Houses for the Rich

Santos Churata has been a fan of the Transformers universe since early childhood. Now a licensed home builder in the Bolivian city of El Alto, the 34-year-old uses his passion for autobots and decepticons as inspiration for the design of eye-catching houses for the rich.

The city of El Alto, located at 4,070 meters above sea level, has become well-known for a unique architectural style called “chola architecture”. Sometimes described as psychedelic baroque, it incorporates symbols of native Andean culture, Chinese design elements and all the colors of the rainbow. For the new wealthy indigenous Bolivians, who have made millions in recent years, these modern-day palaces are a reflection of both their social status and their proud Aymara heritage. In 2015, there were over 170 unique chola houses in El Alto, enough for the city to set up a tourist route for the most impressive ones.

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Thai Dessert Shop Makes Realistic Puppy Puddings, Divides Internet

Coconut cream puddings are very popular in Thailand, but while they usually come in flower shapes, one dessert shop in Pathun Thani, north of Bangkok, decided to shake things up a bit by using puppy-shaped molds instead. Photos of the realistic-looking edible puppies made quite an impact online, sparking a heated debate.

Within six hours of posting photos of their new treats on Facebook, Thai dessert shop Wilaiwan had already gotten over 10,000 shares and hundreds of comments. But that was only the beginning, as the photos soon started making the rounds on blogs and news sites, and even attracted the attention of international news networks. Some people loved them and said that they would love to eat a slimy puppy, while others said they looked too much like their pets, and couldn’t even think about sticking a spoon in one.

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Farmer Buries His Faithful Truck After 48 Years of Service

Alcides Ravel, a farmer from Uruguay, bought his Ford F-350 in 1969, when he was 35 years old. Recently, the 83-year-old man finally put his faithful vehicle to eternal rest, after 48 years of service, by burying it on his farm.

For most people, trucks are mere tools to be used and sold when they outlive their usefulness, but that’s not the case of Alcides Ravel. Although his old truck had been broken down for over four years and mechanics had told him that it was beyond fixing, he couldn’t bring himself to sell it to the scrapyard. Instead, he kept it safe from the elements in a shed on his farm, near the town of Barker, until he was finally ready to part with it. Three weeks ago, he buried his faithful companion on his land, a “small gesture” in honor of nearly five decades of service.

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Woman Who Broke Her Neck Sneezing, Five Years Ago, Does It Again While Laughing

One morning, in 2011, Monique Jeffrey, of Rose Bay, Australia, was at home, in her bed, checking her emails. She sneezed and her head suddenly jolted forward, collapsing the C1 and C2 vertebrae in her neck. She had broken her neck in what experts called a “freak accident”, but the chances of something like this happening twice to the same person were apparently “slim to none”. And yet, last month, Monique suffered the same ordeal, this time while laughing with some colleagues at work.

“I texted Sam (her husband) just saying ‘help!’ and he called me and I answered on speaker phone, because I couldn’t put the phone to my ear,” Monique recalls about the bizarre accident she suffered over five years ago. “He came home and called an ambulance. It was pretty scary and it was such a strange sensation. I was in so much pain after just one little sneeze.”

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New World’s Hottest Chili Is Deceptively Tiny, Could Send You Into Anaphylactic Shock

When Welsh fruit grower Mike Smith set out to create a novelty chili pepper for a national grower’s show, he had no idea he would accidentally end up with the world’s hottest pepper. Called Dragon’s Breath – a tribute to its Welsh heritage – the record-breaking pepper scores a whopping 2.48 million units on the Scoville scale of hotness.

Intended to be a tiny thing of beauty, the Dragon’s Breath pepper turned out to be a sensory beast that can’t really be consumed unless you’re willing to put your life at risk. Just to put into perspective how hot this thing is, the Scotch bonnet, a chili usually eaten as a challenge, scores between 100,000 and 350,000 Scovilles, military-grade pepper spray registers at 2 million units on the same scale, and the previous world’s hottest pepper was rated at a maximum 2.2 million units. Dragon’s Breath blows them all away with an impressive rating of 2.48 million Scovilles.

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Woman Sews Over 10,000 Candy Wrappers Into Stylish Upcycled Dress

After “diligently” saving up colorful Straburst candy wrappers for nearly five years, a Pennsylvania woman linked over 10,000 of them together to create a beautiful dress.

Making a dress out of waxed paper candy wrappers might sound silly to some people, but for Emily Seilhamer, of Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, it was a monumental undertaking that took half a decade to complete. It all started in college, when she met her husband Malachi, who happened to be a big fan of Starburst candy. When they first met, he offered her a pack of Starburst, and kept bringing her candy on dates. At one point, Emily realized she could make something out of all the wrappers, and asked him to save them for her. So he would eat them and bring her grocery bags full of the colorful pieces of paper.

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