Located 2,400 meters under the Earth’s surface, the Deep Underground and Ultra-low Radiation Background Facility for Frontier Physics Experiments (DURF) is the world’s deepest underground laboratory.

In December 2020, Tsinghua University and Yalong River Hydropower Development Company, Ltd. began work on a daring project under Jinping Mountain in Sichuan’s Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture. Designed to facilitate China’s research in relevant frontier fields, such as particle physics, nuclear astrophysics, and life sciences, the DURF reportedly provides the cleanest space on Earth to study the invisible substance known as dark matter, as the extreme depth it is located at (2,400 meters underground) helps block most of the cosmic rays that usually interfere with the observation of dark matter.

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A McDonald’s restaurant that only opened a week ago has already gone viral on social media because of its unusual location – in rural Quebec, Canada, surrounded by farmland.

McDonald’s is one of the world’s most recognizable brands, and one of the ways it built this reputation was by opening restaurants in busy areas that all but guaranteed a certain number of potential customers. However, a newly opened location has been drawing attention for flipping that recipe on its head. The new McDonald’s restaurant located at 8075 Avenue Marcel-Villeneuve in Saint-François is surrounded by farmland and is apparently not even connected to the power grid, instead functioning on a generator.

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Italian police recently arrested a Genoa barber for drug dealing after noticing that many of the clients going into his shop were bald and beardless.

The Carabinieri (Italian police) had received reports of drug dealing activity in Genoa’s Foce area, but they didn’t really have any strong leads. An investigative unit was charged with gathering more information and, with the collaboration of the Forte San Giuliano station, setting up surveillance teams to spot any unusual activity. It was one of these teams that reported an unusually high number of bald, beardless men visiting a small barber shop operated by a 55-year-old man. The individuals were of different ages and appeared to be from varied walks of life, but they had one thing in common – they didn’t appear to need a haircut or a shave…

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The people of Vastogirardi, a town of 600 souls in the south of Italy, have finally solved the mystery of a series of flat tires over the last few months – a local dog with a bad case of gingivitis.

It all started in July of this year when the quiet town of Vastogirardi was faced with its first intentional tire puncture case in many years. The owner of a car left parked in Piazza Giusto Girardi found it with a punctured tire and called the carabinieri, but after an inspection of the surrounding area and a brief investigation, no suspects were identified. By the end of October, a handful of similar tire puncture complaints had been registered, all of which occurred in the town square. Rumors of rows between neighbors and even intimidation attempts by the Mafia started going around, but in the end, the true cause of the punctures proved even more surprising.

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A former Chinese whizkid who entered university at the age of 10 and was already a PhD candidate in Applied Mathematics at 16, spends his days doing nothing and relies on his parents for money.

Zhang Xinyang had always been destined for greatness. At just two and a half years old, he learned over a thousand Chinese characters within three months, and by age four, he was already in primary school. Born into a modest family, Zhang benefitted from his father’s tutelage and managed to skip several grades. At age six, he was already in fifth grade, and by age nine, he was enrolled in the third grade of high school. When he was ten years old, Zhang Xinyang became China’s youngest university student, getting accepted at the Tianjin University of Technology and Education. His genius surprised everyone, but as he grew, his attitude started to change…

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A Japanese izakaya bar has come under fire for offering patrons the rather controversial service of being slapped on their faces before having their meals served.

The Shachihoko-ya izakaya in Nagoya served its snacks with a hearty side of slaps delivered by its female staff. The bizarre service is said to have revitalized the establishment’s business, attracting an increasing number of patrons willing to try the painful experience. In the beginning, the face slapping was done by just one member of the izakaya staff, upon request, but as demand grew, management hired several girls willing to dish out some slaps and even started charging a fee of 100 yen (90 cents) per slap.

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Every year, Germany hosts the Stapler Cup, a competitive event that sees hundreds of forklift drivers from around the world going head to head in a series of difficult challenges for the title of world’s best forklift operator.

Competitive forklift driving probably doesn’t sound like the most exciting competitive event in the world, but that’s probably because you’ve never heard of the Stapler Cup. This yearly event organized by Linde Materials and Handling (Linde MH) is not only regarded as the ultimate test for certified forklift operators but also as an entertaining event that draws tens of thousands of spectators. Thousands of forklift drivers attempt to qualify for the Stapler Cup in national events, so only the very best get to showcase their skills on the big stage in a series of tests aimed at pushing their talent, coordination, and reflexes to the limit.

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A Turkish man had to endure over a month of excruciating pain after he had four of his front teeth extracted by a cleaner posing as a dentist at a clinic in Istanbul.

According to documents relating to a recently resolved case filed with the Istanbul Civil Court, 42-year-old Hakan Yıldırım, an Istanbul man suffering from a severe toothache, called a dental clinic in the Kağıthane district to make an emergency appointment. His call was answered by Cemal Şenaslan, who introduced himself as a dentist and told Hakan to come by the clinic in the evening to have his dental problem examined and hopefully resolved. When the patient turned up at the clinic later that day, he was greeted by Şenaslan, who bragged about being a lecturer at a dentistry university, to make Yıldırım feel more comfortable. Little did the poor man know he would soon endure the most painful experience of his life…

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An android waitress working at a restaurant in Chongqing, China, went viral last month, mesmerizing viewers with its precise robotic movements, but she turned out to be nothing more than a choreographed illusion.

With the threat of AI-powered robots stealing humans’ jobs looming over the world these days, the sight of a humanoid robot seemingly working as a waitress at a restaurant in China scandalized a lot of people when videos of it started circulating on Douyin (China’s version of TikTok). Some viewers were in awe of the android’s human-like appearance and its ability to interact with real people, greeting them as they entered the Chongqing restaurant, taking their orders, and bringing them to their tables, but others declared themselves a little creeped out by it, a relatively common reaction to the uncanny valley effect. But it turned out that the android waitress was more lifelike than people thought…

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Northern US states are preparing for an invasion of incredibly intelligent and highly adaptable ‘super pigs’ that threaten to spill over the border from Canada.

Feral pigs have been the bane of North America’s flora and fauna for many years now, but a new breed of ‘super pigs’ is threatening to take the problems they cause to a whole new level. The result of cross-breeding domestic pigs with wild boars, these new feral pigs combine the survival skills of the wild Eurasian boar with the size and high fertility of domestic swine, a combination that is apparently nigh impossible to control. Not only are they capable of surviving cold climates by tunneling under snow, but they also devastate crops, feed on animals of all sizes, from quails and wild turkeys to deer and elk, and spread deadly diseases like the African swine flu and strains of influenza that can affect humans.

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The winner of the second-biggest prize in the history of the Mega Millions lottery has taken the mother of his daughter to court for telling his parents about the win despite signing an NDA.

The unidentified man, who chose to remain anonymous, for obvious reasons, claims that his daughter’s mother was one of the few people who knew about his lottery win in January 2023. She was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) preventing her from spilling the beans to anyone for a period of almost a decade, as the lottery winner considered “the best uses of the life-changing prize,” but she broke that legally-binding agreement by allegedly telling his parents and sister. Now, the man wants her to pay compensation of “no less than $100,000 per unauthorized disclosure”.

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A 75-year-old Vietnamese woman claims she has not eaten any solid food in 50 years, instead surviving only on water and sugary soft drinks.

Ms. Bui Thi Loi, from Loc Ninh commune, in Vietnam’s Quang Binh Province, looks in great shape for her age, which only makes her diet that much more surprising. The elderly woman insists that she has lived on water and soft drinks for half a century and that she never craves solid foods. It all started in 1963 when she was struck by lightning while she and other women were climbing up a mountain to treat injured soldiers during the war. She was knocked unconscious and although she survived, she was never the same after that. She didn’t eat anything for days after coming to her senses, so her friends started giving her sweetened water.

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A Chinese man barely managed to get off his smart toilet with his bum intact after smoke started coming out of the toilet bowl and the whole thing burst into flames.

The Yangtze Evening News newspaper recently reported the story of a man from Xiamen, Fujian Province, who recorded his smart toilet burning after a suspected short-circuit. The incident occurred on November 10, while the man was using the toilet. At first, there was the smell of smoke, then plumes of white smoke started billowing from the toilet bowl, and finally, just as the man got up from the toilet, the smart toilet burst into flames. Photos taken by the shocked man show that he didn’t even have time to put his shorts on before the toilet started burning.

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A Japanese precision part manufacturing factory recently went viral for its bizarre new product – a line of hammers shaped like realistic bananas.

Hiroshima-based Iron Factory Ikeda is not your typical precision metal manufacturing plant. They specialize in precision metal processing for creating original products with the potential to go viral online. Over the years, they created all sorts of geeky products, from anime-inspired robot masks, figurines, and realistic metallic replicas of various fruits and vegetables, from pineapple to broccoli, but their most popular product so far has to be the banana hammer. It has been around for a while but the company recently launched a new variant and it went viral on social media again.

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A Vietnamese man who had been suffering from severe headaches and even loss of vision over the last five months recently learned that he had a pair of chopsticks stuck in his skull.

The unnamed man was recently admitted to the Cuba Friendship Hospital in the city of Dong Hoi, Vietnam’s Quang Binh province, after complaining of constant headaches, vision loss, and fluid discharge from his nose. When asked, the man revealed no possible cause for these symptoms, but a CT scan showed a tension pneumocephalus, the intracranial equivalent of a pneumothorax, as well as two foreign objects protruding from his nose into his brain. Upon thorough examination, the objects were identified as broken chopsticks…

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