The following story actually happened!I wouldn’t have believed it myself if it hadn’t been reported by the German police, following a first-hand experience the likes of which you don’t hear about every day.

A man in Rostock, North-Eastern Germany, had to pay a fine and will likely face a tax evasion lawsuit after he claimed that his Spanish Water Dog was actually a sheep, to avoid paying a mandatory tax. In Germany, dog owners must pay a “dog tax” – ranging 24 to 100 euros ($25 to $107) – and equip their pets with a special tag confirming that they paid the license. This does not apply to pet sheep (remember that, it’s important).

Last Wednesday, the man in question was spotted walking his dog in the Rostock harbor area, by a harbor security officer. Paying your taxes is apparently a big deal in Germany, because after noticing that the animal did not have the tag confirming that the dog tax had been paid, he confronted the owner about it. To his surprise, the man appeared shocked by the question and replied that his pet was not a dog, but a sheep. At first, the harbor employee thought it was a joke, but the man stuck to his original answer, so he had mo choice but to ask for the man’s ID and notify the police about him.

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A young woman from Moscow, Russia, has come up with an innovative way to supplement her income – charging single men a hefty fee for laying in their bed for an hour to warm it and fill it with her positive energy, thus guaranteeing a good night’s sleep.

21-year-old Viktoria Ivachyova is a human be warmer for hire, charging a whopping 4,900 Russian rubles ($82) per night, or 102 700 ($1700) per month to lay down on strangers’ beds and make sure it’s nice and warm when they turn in for the night. Believe it or not, she has already had 10 customers, and with the amount of free publicity she’s getting these days in national media, the unusual service is bound to become more popular. In fact, Viktoria is already planning on putting together a team of female bed warmers to keep up with demand.

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The popular Zeezicht Cafe, in Antwerp, Belgium, has recently stopped serving Coca Cola, Lay’s potato chips and every other American brand previously on its menu, in protest of President Donald Trump and and his controversial executive orders.

“No, it’s not a joke. All American drinks will disappear from the menu as long as Donald Trump’s policy does not change,” one of the owners of Zeezicht told Belgian reporters. “A few days ago, we gathered all the staff and found that something had to be done against the policy of Donald Trump, so someone launched the idea of ​​no longer selling American beverages or food. An economic boycott is probably the only measure Trump can understand.”

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London-based company Naturist Cleaners, “one of UK’s leading naturist and nude cleaning service providers”, is currently looking for women willing to clean private houses wearing just slippers and cleaning gloves. Women “of all ages and sizes” can apply, and the job pays £45 ($57) an hour.

“We are looking for female naturist cleaners who can clean private houses nude,” the job ad reads. “The job will require doing all general cleaning like dusting, tidying up, vacuuming, watering plants, making beds, using the washing machine, ironing clothes and cleaning windows.” So it’s a regular cleaning job, minus the clothes. Clients, most of which are part of nudist community, are charged £65 for the first hour, and £55 for every hour after that. They also have to agree to a “no touching” policy and also not to photograph or film the nude cleaners as they perform their job.

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Creative Home Engineering is the world’s most famous company dedicated to making hidden rooms and secret doors. From wannabe superheroes, to wealthy businessmen looking for a safe space for their prized art collections, they all turn to this particular company when they want one of those fancy hidden doors that you see in the movies.

The idea for Creative Home Engineering was born in 2003, when founder Steve Humble was working as a mechanical engineer designing surgical lasers for a medical device company. He had always been fascinated by hidden doors and passageways, and that year he decided he wanted one for himself, but realized there was no one to build it for him. “I was renting a large house with a bunch of my friends at the time, and we had some extra rooms that we weren’t using. I thought it would be fun to have a secret door like I had seen in the movies, but when I did a little research I was surprised to learn that there was no company anywhere that specialized in hidden passageways,” he recalls. Soon after, Steve quit his job and started building motorized secret passageways for people out of his parents’ garage in Arizona.

Humble got a special contractor’s license created for designing secret lairs, and went on to create over 150 custom installations for clients all over the United States, before expanding globally. Today Creative Home Engineering is the world’s premier designer and manufacturer of motorized and high-security secret passageways, with a portfolio of over 500 satisfied customers from all walks of life.

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If you’re sick of waiting for summer to get a natural tan, it’s time you learned about TanRound, the world’s only apparel that lets you sunbathe all year round, even in the cold winter months.

Let’s face it, spray-on tans look nasty, and UV tanning beds are dangerous, but what’s a person to do when it’s too cold to go outside for good ol’ fashion sunbathing that not only makes you look good but replenishes your vitamin D reserves? Well, until not too long ago, we didn’t have too many options, but now there’s TanRound, an innovative line of apparel that allows wearers to sunbathe in cool temperatures down to -1 degrees Celsius. If you have no problem walking around in see-through plastic, it might be just what you’ve been looking for.

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The “Take In” restaurant in Helsinki, Finland, is currently in the news for its ingenious service. Instead of cooking the meals in its own kitchen – which doesn’t exist – it allows patrons to order various dishes from a selection of 20 other restaurants in the city.

Sponsored by American Express and Wolt, a popular food delivery app, Take In is a pop-up restaurant that opened at the beginning of November 2016, and will run through April 2, this year. As you’ve probably already guessed, the name “Take In” is a clever play on words, as in take-out eaten in a restaurant. It sounds like a dumb concept, I know, after all, the whole point of ordering take-out is to avoid going to a restaurant, and if you’re going to dress up to go out, you might as well go straight to your favorite restaurant instead of ordering food from it somewhere else. But here’s the idea behind it – when you go out with a group of friends and you can’t decided where to go for dinner, because everyone wants to order something else, Take In is the perfect solution. You can have a pizza, while your buddies enjoy Japanese, Chinese or even a gourmet burger.

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In an effort to ease the intense pressure that its students face in China’s notoriously rigid exam-based education system, a school in Nanjing has created a “grade bank” that lets students “borrow” grades so that they can pass exams, and then repay them in subsequent tests.

Oh man, I wish we had something like this when I was in school, because this system sounds awesome! So here’s how it works: the innovative mark bank allows students to loan marks to make up for a failing grade in any exam. But, just like regular banks, it requires “clients” to pay back the loan on time, with interest. Thus, students have to make up for the loan by scoring extra points in future exams. Some teachers also allow the students to repay the bank by conducting lab experiments or giving public speeches. Pupils who default on their loans are blacklisted by the bank, just like in real life.

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Solid glass or crystal doorknobs look pretty cool, but it turns out that they can literally set your house on fire if hit by direct sunlight. One family from the UK learned that the hard way last September, when one of their glass doorknobs focused the sun’s rays on nearby clothing, setting them ablaze.

Luckily  for Londoner Clare Thomson and her family , who were at home at the time of the fire, a smoke alarm fitted on the property went off before the fire got out of control, and they were able to safely leave the house. “I was amazed at how intense the low September sun could be and I was amazed at how quickly a small fire could take place,” Thompson said. “I would advise people not to buy crystal doorknobs, and I would advise home stores to be aware of the fire risk when stocking. Or, at least, such doorknobs should come with a warning.”

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Robert Bobroczky, a 7-foot-7, 16-year-old freshman at SPIRE Institute, a state-of-the-art international academy in Geneva, Ohio, is set to become the tallest player to ever play in the NBA and of the tallest in the history of the sport.

Bobroczky, a native of Romania, has been described as “so tall he doesn’t look real”. At age 12, he was already 7 feet tall, and although his growth rate has slowed down over the last four years, he is still on track to become the eighteenth person in medical history to reach or surpass eight feet in height. Unfortunately, his weight has been having trouble keeping up with his growth, and at 7-foot-7, he weighs only 190 pounds. Robert is honing is skills on the basketball court, but if he is to reach the NBA, the first priority is bulking up.

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Hava Celebic, an 80-year-old woman from the Bosnian village of Crnjevo, claims to be somewhat of a miracle worker. She is allegedly able to clean people’s eyes of various debris using only her tongue.

Celebic, who is known as “Nana Hava” in her home village, says she learned the bizarre medical procedure a long time ago, from another woman, also called Hava. She has been cleaning people’s eyes by licking their eyeballs, for decades now, and claims to have been sought out by people of all nationalities, from Russians to Americans. Many of Hava’s patients turn to her out of desperation, after modern medical procedures fail to solve their problems. But her tongue is apparently infallible when it comes to locating and removing various debris – pieces of lead, iron, coal, sawdust and glass – from people’s eyes.

“There are a lot of those that modern medicine could not help,” Nana Hava said. “They came to me out of the hospital with swollen eyes, I clean them and remove the speck.” The tongue healer claims she has helped cure over 5,000 people in her lifetime. In fact, Hava is so valuable to those who believe in her gift that she’s been told that when she dies. villagers will cut off her tongue so that it can continue to cure people.

So, you’re probably curious about how Nana Hava uses her tongue to clean people’s eyes. It’s fairly simple, actually. She starts by sterilizing her mouth with alcohol, after which she will ask the patient to hold their eyelid raised, and begin searching for speck in the eye socket with the tip of her tongue. Sounds pretty disgusting, doesn’t it. Her kids seems to agree, which is why she has been unable to pass down the bizarre practice to them.

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Shanghai-based artist Hong “Red” Yi is well known for her use of unconventional materials, and her latest masterpiece – a portrait of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei made with 20,000 meticulously arranged sunflower seeds – is worthy of her reputation.

Inspired by Ai WeiWei’s quote – “the seed is a household object but at the same time it is a revolutionary symbol” – Red sprinkled 20,000 sunflower seeds onto a white canvas and painstakingly arranged them all by hand to recreate Weiwei’s famous portrait with his hands stretching his eyes wide open. Remarkably, she managed to capture his features in great detail, just like she had managed to do with other unusual mediums in the past.

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Every winter for the past three years, 80-year-old Mette Kvam, from the Norwegian town of Aurland, has been getting two daily visits from a very special friend – a majestic stag who seems to love her tasty snacks.

It all started three years ago, when Mette first saw her friend “Flippen” hanging out in her yard, on the edge of the nearby forest. She opened the window and offered the beautiful animal a crunchy cookie. To her surprise, the animal came closer and stretched its neck to grab the treat. Flippen must have liked it very much, because he has been coming back for more ever since. He visits Mette every morning and evening, from early November to April, when he and his deer friends head higher up into the mountains for the warm season. But as soon as they come back down, he starts coming by the woman’s house again.

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Kayashima Station, in Neyagawa, a north-eastern suburb of Osaka, is one of the most unusual-looking train stations in all of Japan. Despite being located on an elevated platform, Kayashima has a giant broccoli-like tree pocking out through a rectangular hole in its roof.

The Big Kusu Tree of Kayashima, as the camphor tree is commonly known in Japan, is older than most records, but officials estimate that it has been around for at least 700 years. In 1910, when Kayashima train station was originally opened, the tree stood right next to it, offering travelers some much needed shelter on both sunny and rainy days. It didn’t bother anyone for the next 60 years, but as Japan’s population increased at an accelerated rate, overcrowding became a problem and local authorities decided that the train station needed to be expanded. Plans were approved in 1972, and the old camphor tree was going to be cut down.

The stories about how the ancient camphor tree of Kayashima cheated its fate vary, but they all border on the supernatural. Spoon & Tamago reports that the tree had long been associated with a local shrine and deity, and news of its removal caused an uproar in the community. Rumors about the tree being angry about the authorities’ decision also coincided with a series of bizarre events. People reported seeing a white snake slithering through the branches of the tree, others claimed to see smoke rising up from the tree, and a worker who cut off one of the tree branches developed a fever later that day.

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When Andy Poineau of Boyne City, Michigan, posted a set of photos showing him seemingly levitating on the clear water of Lake Charlevoix, he had no idea he would soon become an overnight internet sensation. But looking at the photo below, it’s easy to see why people went crazy over it.

At first glance, this photo of Pointeau, a 63-year-old architect, sitting on what looks to be still water, looks like a classic case of botched Photoshop. It just looks like someone cropped him and his shovel out of another photo – probably of him shoveling snow – and just placed him in the middle of the lake. But as several photo-editing experts have already pointed out on social media, this image has not been altered in any way. It’s just a rare photo of a brave man sitting on the perfectly clear ice of a frozen lake.

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