If you’re looking for a truly unique island home, you might want to check out this newly listed property in Hungary. It’s no a tropical paradise and the water is actually a small pond in the middle of an agricultural area, but at least it’s quiet.

The small house is located straight in the middle of a 120-square-meter man-made pond and apparently includes all modern amenities, including running water, electricity and sewage system. Whoever built it must have been a real fishing enthusiast as the pond is stocked full of different kinds of fish, from carp to bream and even sturgeon. Overall, there is a total of over 10,000 kilograms of fish living in the pond and they come with the house.

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Every year, with the coming of spring, thousands of Chinese tourists flock to the The Gorges Reservoir to see an elusive turtle-shaped island rise from the waters of the Muodaoxi River. The event, dubbed ‘spring turtle rising from water’, is celebrated by local residents because turtles are considered auspicious and a sign of longevity.

It sounds like a fascinating natural phenomenon similar to the Jindo Moses Miracle that takes place in South Korea, but in this case the “magic” is man-made. The water level of Muodaoxi River is controlled by the Three Gorges Dam. In spring, the reservoir supplies water to the areas downstream, bringing down the water level and exposing the island.

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Jia Haixa and Jia Wenqi are the most unlikely pair of environmentalists we’ve ever come across. The former is blind, while the latter is a double-amputee. Yet, they’ve managed to use their symbiotic relationship to plant over 10,000 trees in the past decade.

Haixa and Wenqi began their beautiful partnership when they were unable to get jobs due to their impairments. They have now become each other’s eyes and hands, and taken on the task of transforming a three-hectare stretch of riverbank in Yeli village, in north China’s Hebei Province.

“I am his hands,” said Haixia. “He is my eyes. We are good partners.” The 53-year-old was born with congenital cataracts that blinded his left eye. Then, in 2000, he lost sight in his right eye as well after a work-related accident. Wenqi, on the other hand, lost both arms in an accident when he was only three years old.

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There’s a wacky new diet product sweeping Japan, and it’s modeled after Willy Wonka’s famous Everlasting Gobstopper. Aptly named the ‘60-Minute Candy’, it’s a lollipop with a three-centimeter ball of sugar that lasts for an entire hour!

The 60-minute-candy has gone viral in the Japanese Twitterverse, with hundreds of women passing it on as a great way to suppress sugar cravings. A gigantic lollipop doesn’t really pass for diet food, but a few licks of it apparently beat gorging on a candy bar, and since it lasts so long it’s also more affordable.  Well, because it’s long-lasting, it’s actually great to suppress cravings for foods with higher calories. And they’re so handy that people could carry them around and take them out from time to time for a good lick.

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Not long ago, we wrote about how consuming breast milk is the latest fad among bodybuilders to gain muscle faster. And now, a spa in Chicago has found another interesting (albeit weird) use for mothers’ milk – nutritious facials!

The brand new River North spa, called ‘Mud Facial Bar’, features several $40 facials on its menu. But the most intriguing one actually involves breast milk at an additional charge of $10. The milk is mixed with white clay so that it can be applied to the face and dried. The unique treatment can supposedly make your skin as smooth as a baby’s bottom.

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If you thought belly dancing was exclusive to women, you’re in for a surprise. Believe it or not, male belly dancing is a real thing in Turkey, and it’s totally in vogue. Sporting designer stubbles and dressed in skirts decorated with coins and shimmering tassels, the dancers jerk their hips to Turkish tunes, enthralling their audience with their exotic moves.

Interestingly, these male performers are not a recent phenomenon. Known as ‘zennes’, they used to be a regular feature at the courts of Ottoman Sultans, because Muslim women were not permitted to perform on stage at the time. But as the 600-year Empire declined and society modernized, women took on more public roles. The number of female belly dancers rose, and the number of zennes slowly declined.

Although they haven’t made an appearance for decades, interest in the ancient art form is now at a new peak. It all started with the Islamic-rooted Turkish government’s attempt to revive the nation’s conservative Ottoman past. Apart from the government’s attempts, the enthusiasm among the nation’s population for the Ottoman-era culture has helped improve the popularity of male belly dancing.

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Chen Hongzhi, from Hsinchu county, in north-western Taiwan, suffers from a unique condition – he can’t remember anything for more than five minutes. The 25-year-old literally has to start his life from scratch every day. So he writes down every single thing about himself in a diary, in order to keep track of everything that goes on around him.

Hongzhi’s amnesia is the result of a serious head injury sustained during a car accident when he was 17 years old. After spending months in intensive care, his body finally recovered but the span of his memory was reduced to only five minutes. This means that he continually forgets pretty much everything that has happened between five and ten minutes ago.

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Lots of people sell products they don’t believe in, but in Trevor McKendrick’s case, you just can’t ignore the irony. That’s because Trevor is an atheist who sells Bibles for a living – and something just doesn’t feel right about that, even to him!

Interestingly, Trevor did not consciously choose his profession – it sort of fell into his lap by accident. He happened to be out at a dinner with his family in February 2012, when he found out that a relative was making $8,000 to $10,000 a month just by selling iPhone apps.

Trevor found the prospects too good to ignore, so he decided to step into the app business himself. All he wanted to do was to make about $600 a month, which would have been enough to cover his rent. So he went on to the Apple store to find an app that was making a lot of money, but “sucked”.

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At an age when people usually start forgetting things, this Chinese woman has managed to do the opposite – she’s actually memorized the entire Oxford English-Chinese dictionary from cover to cover!

Li Yanzhi, 51, from China’s Shaanxi Province, can not only recite all 220,000 entries in the 2,458-page dictionary, but can also accurately describe their meanings. Ms. Li works as a lecturer in Financial English at Xian Transport University’s Economic and Banking School. But she needs an extra income to be able to support herself and her 26-year-old autistic son who is unable to care for himself. A mother and divorcee of 20 years, Ms. Li said she took on the Herculean task in the hope of receiving more translating work.

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Indonesian homeowner Wina Lia has come up with an innovative strategy to find matrimonial bliss – she’s put up her house for sale and has offered to marry the buyer! 40-year-old Lia owns a two-bedroom home in Sleman, a sleepy little district near the Javanese city of Yogyakarta. The lovely house comes with a small fish pond, a spacious backyard, and of course, the chance to gain Lia’s hand in marriage.

The online ad featuring Lia’s home listed the asking price at $76,500 but also mentioned a unique bonus: “Buyers who don’t negotiate the price can ask the owner to marry (terms and conditions apply).” The ad promptly went viral, with local news agencies tracking Lia down to check if the claim was genuine. Turns out that it was.

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We’ve heard people going on all sorts of crazy diets, but this one is a first – an American student recently went a 30-day bug fest! Throughout  the month of February, Alabama student Camren Brantley-Rios ate insect-laced meals three times a day.

The 21-year-old, who documented his bug-eating experience on a blog called ‘30 Days of Bugs’, believes that traditional meats such as pork and beef are unsustainable as sources of protein. He considers insects to be the diet of the future, so he’s experimenting with creepy crawly ingredients to make delicious dishes.

There was a time when Camren himself was repulsed by the idea of consuming insects. But now that he’s actually done it, he says it hasn’t been too difficult to get used to. “I’m mainly sticking to three species,” he said. “Mealworms, waxworms and crickets. Those are definitely the bulk of my diet. But I’m trying here and there to incorporate things a little bit more exotic.”

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A YouTube video of a monk praying calmly in a vat of boiling oil has recently has been doing the rounds online, leaving viewers wondering how the monk can keep from screaming in agony.  Social media users were enthralled by the possibility of this Thai monk’s ability to defy physics with his ‘magic’. Unfortunately, skeptical scientists soon pointed out a few facts that pretty much ruined the illusion.

The monk, from Thailand’s Nong Bua Lamphu province, looks at ease despite sitting in a vessel of oil with a fire raging underneath. He is also seen sharing his magical powers with others by touching objects that they pass to him. His followers believe that his touch can make their amulets or pieces of fabric powerful. These objects are apparently sold to the locals and other places of worship.

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Alexander Zhuikov, a student from Novosibirsk, Russia, was recently in the news for his highly realistic snow sculpture of a life-size tank. It took him a month to create the frozen masterpiece, which he later entered into a contest held by the makers of popular online game World of Tanks.

Alexander, 20, began his project by downloading various tank drawings from the internet. He chose a spot in his grandmother’s garden and with the help of his friends, he cleared the place by shoveling  about 20 tonnes of snow. He then set about building the snow machine and making a shield to protect it from the sun, using simple tools like spades, knives and trowels. He even created a self-propelled cabin that can be accessed through a hatch. Everything is made of snow, except for the rope, barrel, and other small parts.

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For several years, the residents of Hamburg party hub St Pauli have tolerated public urination by drunken partygoers. But now they’ve decided that it’s ‘peeback’ time. In an attempt to combat the problem, they’ve coated their buildings and streets with a special hydrophobic paint that bounces the urine on the urinators!

Local community group IG St Pauli came up with the brilliant idea after they realized that traditional signs and warnings just weren’t working. “Prohibitions and fines do scarcely anything,” a member of the group said. “So we decided to solve the problem our own way. Now, St Pauli pees back.”

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The street corner at the intersection of Riverside Drive and Lexington Avenue, in Elkhart, Indiana, is home to an unusual memorial – a concrete block full of human teeth. While the teeth aren’t visible from afar, a closer look will reveal dozens of molars, canines and incisors sticking out from almost every crack and crevice.

The strange monument was created by local dentist Dr. Joseph Stamp, who practiced for 60 years in the area before he died in 1978. He had an interesting habit of saving every single tooth he extracted, preserving them in a barrel of chemicals in his basement.

At some point during those years, Dr. Stamp lost his dog – a German Shepherd named Prince. The incident left him heartbroken, and as a tribute to his loyal friend, the doctor created the concrete block embedded with thousands of teeth from his collection.

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