Swiss premium writing tool company Maison Caran d’Ache and luxury watchmaker MB&F recently teamed up to create a limited-edition fountain pen that’s shaped like a rocket ship and comes in a launch pad box. Considering the theme, the astronomical price of $19,900 is actually not that much of a surprise.

The Astrograph fountain pen is reportedly the most complex writing tool ever designed in the Caran d’Ache workshops. The companies involved in the project said that it was a massive technical challenge that required four years to develop the concept, plus an extra 12 months to come up with a functional final version. It contains no less than 99 innovative components created specifically for its design, and every unit requires over 500 manual operations to manufacture.

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It sounds like one of those funny news articles you read on sites like The Onion, but this one is sadly true. A man from the United Arab Emirates divorced his young wife just days after their wedding, after seeing her makeup free for the first time.

The bizarre news was reported by psychologist Dr Abdul Aziz Asaf, who claims that the 28-year-old woman contacted his clinic to help her overcome the psychological suffering caused by the swift and unexpected divorce. Asaf did not reveal the woman’s identity for reasons of confidentiality, but told Gulf News that she had been engaged to a 34-year-old man for six months, before marrying him. Apparently, he had never seen her without makeup during all that time, because the first time he did, he hardly recognized her. The man accused Asaf’s patient of deceiving him by wearing so many cosmetics, including fake eyelashes, and not looking as pretty as before the wedding.

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An Israeli entrepreneur who has spent a year designing a product that would make him rich, saw his dreams collapse after putting his product on Kickstarer to raise some extra production funding. Just seven days after the start of the crowdfunding campaign, copycats were already available on Chinese online stores like Alibaba.

With the popularity of selfies growing to epic proportions in the last few years, Yekutiel Sherman felt the infectious trend provided a lucrative business opportunity, so a couple of years ago he started working on an alternative to the common selfie stick. By December 2015, he had created prototypes of his innovative Stickbox – a smartphone case that doubled as a selfie stick – secured some funds from his family and even shot a promotional video of two lovers using the Stickbox to get a selfie with the Eiffel Tower. Everything was going according to plan, but that was until he launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for $40,000.

Just one week after starting the Kickstarter campaign, exact replicas of the Stickbox had appeared on Chinese e-commerce giants like Alibaba, at a fraction of the price set by Sherman. It turns out that even before he had had a chance to look for a factory to mass-produce his product, Chinese manufacturers had stolen his idea from Kickstarter and replicated it in record time. He had become a victim of China’s lightning-fast copycats, and there wasn’t much he could do about it at this point.

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In an attempt to create a special snack to go with their high quality beer, Sweetish brewery St. Erik’s has created the world’s most expensive potato chips.

Apparently, St. Erik’s didn’t think Lays or Pringles chips were good enough to pair with their ale, so they decided to create their own exclusive snack and price it accordingly. “St. Erik’s Brewery is one of Sweden’s leading microbreweries and we’re passionate about the craftsmanship that goes into our beer. At the same time, we felt that we were missing a snack of the same status to serve with it,” brand manager Marcus Friari said in a statement. “A first-­class beer deserves a first-­class snack, and this is why we made a major effort to produce the world’s most exclusive potato chips. We’re incredibly proud to be able to present such a crispy outcome.”

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Mohammed Bello Abubakar is one of the most controversial figures in Nigeria. Despite having no discernible income, the 92-year-old man somehow convinced 107 women to marry him throughout his life, 97 of which are still his wives. He claims that marrying as many women as possible is a divine assignment he has received from God.

Mr Bello first shot to fame in 2008, when a series of articles revealed that he had 86 wives and around 150 children, either living with him on his compound in Bida, Niger state, or in his house in Lagos. Muslim clerics accused him of breaking religious rules, which most scholars agree allow a man to marry up to four women, as long as he can provide for all of them and treat them equally. He was given a very simple choice, either divorce 82 of his wives or face the consequences. He refused, arguing that there was no punishment stated in the Koran for having more than four wives, and that every man should be free to marry as many women as he can support. He was arrested at the request of the local Shariah Court, but subsequently released, on the condition that he only keep four of his wives.

Not only did the ‘superpolygamist’ ignore this requirement, but he has since married other women as well. In total, he married 107 women so far, divorced 10 of them, which brings the total wife count to a whopping 97. And despite his ripe old age, Abubakar says he plans on marrying even more. “What I am doing is divine. It is an assignment and I will keep doing it till the end,” he told Nigerian  newspaper Vanguard.

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An IKEA store in Shanghai, China claims it has been forced to enforce special rules in order to keep elderly freeloaders from virtually taking over the place for hours at a time and engaging in blind dating sessions.

IKEA is very popular in China. Some people love the furniture mega-stores so much that they spend whole days in them without buying a single item. A few years ago we reported on a bizarre trend that involved people simply coming to IKEA and sleeping on the comfortable beds and sofas on display for hours, or just walking around and enjoying the free air conditioning. This kind of thing has been going on in China for the past 15 years, since the chain arrived in the Asian country, and it’s still very popular today. But it’s apparently not the only problem the Swedish retailer has been facing. Recently, an IKEA store in Shanghai has been dealing with a large group of elderly people that frequently spends hours in its popular cafe without buying anything.

Chinese media reports that dozens sometimes hundreds of elderly men and women meet up at the IKEA cafe in Shanghai every week, for long blind-dating sessions. They stay there for hours without buying any foods or drinks, and act like they own the place. According to a notice board put up by the Shanghai store, the group has been seriously affecting the cafe’s operations with their “uncivilized behavior”. Among the cited offences, the notice mentions “taking up seats for long hours, bringing outside food and tea, speaking loudly, spitting, and having quarrels and fights.”

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According to a recently published medical report, a 47-year-old American man who ate a burger smothered in Ghost Pepper puree ended up with a large hole in his esophagus.

The report published in the Journal of Emergency Medicine mentions that the unnamed man ate ‘ghost peppers’, also known as Bhut jolokia, in puree form, smothered on top of a burger, part of an eating contest. Soon after finishing the scorching hot meal, he began to experience violent retching and vomiting, as well as severe abdominal and chest pain. As these symptoms kept getting worse, the man called emergency responders, who took him to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with Boerhaave syndrome, or spontaneous esophageal rupture.

An abdomen and pelvic scan revealed a build up of air, fluid and food inside the man’s body, so doctors decided to perform emergency surgery. They discovered a 2.5cm tear in the left side of his throat and had to insert a tube into the rupture to aid his breathing. The tube remained in place for two weeks, while the man’s wound healed. He ended up spending another nine days in the hospital, before being discharged with a feeding tube in place.

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Having to decide between saving your unborn child or your brother is a choice no person should ever have to make, but it’s exactly what a young Chinese woman recently went through. Her touching story has been doing the rounds online, leaving millions of people wondering what they would have done in her place.

24-year-old Yang Li, from Hangzhou City, was already three months pregnant when she received news that her brother, Yang Jun, 29, was going to die unless he received a bone marrow transplant. He had been diagnosed with lymphoma in September 2015, and had since undergone 5 chemotherapy sessions, 18 radiotherapy sessions as well as an autologous bone marrow transplant. The treatment was deemed a success, but in July of this year, an examination revealed the recurrence of the lymphoma. Doctors told Jun that his only chance of survival was a hematopoietic stem cell transplant, and that his sister was a perfect match.

Having to break the news to his little sister, knowing she was pregnant, was the hardest thing Jun ever had to do. But at the same time, he thought about his own 7-year-old daughter who would otherwise have to grow up without a father, and about his wife. With tears in his eyes, he told Li that she was his last chance.

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A naive restaurant owner in Guiyang, China, who thought that appealing to people’s inherent goodness would be a good way to attract customers to his new karst cave-themed restaurant, managed to lose over 100,000 RMB in just seven days.

Liu Xiaojun and his two business partners did the math, and decided that promoting their new restaurant by applying the now-famous “pay what you want” policy would be a good idea. Choosing to ignore the disastrous experiences of other restaurant owners who allowed customers to pay what they wanted for the food, the three simply assumed that the vast majority of customers would be rational and fair. They were wrong.

To be honest, their idea wasn’t a total failure. The news that they could order as many dishes as they liked and pay whatever they wanted for them attracted lots of customers, but many of them paid only 10% of the cost of their meal, while a few even dared to leave just 1 RMB (¢15) on the table. In just seven days, the restaurant had incurred losses of over 100,000 RMB ($15,000) and the promotion fell apart. Following the disastrous result, the three owners got into a serious argument and one of them left the city, vowing never to return again.

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Beautiful people sick of having to share the same partying space with less attractive human specimens will soon get the chance to mingle only with their own kind at a new bar that turns away ugly people.

It sounds like a joke, but, sadly, it is not. The new venue is being opened by BeautifulPeople.com, an exclusive social media platform that only accepts good looking men and women. Since it launched in 2002, it has reportedly rejected over 11 million people, with only 800,000 gaining the coveted membership status. To join the controversial website, applicants have to pass a strict rating process, where current members vote during a period of 48 hours, based on submitted photographs and a short bio.

Greg Hodge, managing director of BeautifulPeople.com, says that the new club is the materialization of the website users’ wishes. “We listen to our members and they are fed up of going out to expensive bars, hoping to meet similarly beautiful people, only to spend the night wishing that the lighting was lower,” he recently said. We are very excited about the opening of our flagship bar. We will take the same ethos into this project as we did when we launched the dating site, we are simply taking the BeautifulPeople concept into the real world.”

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Five years ago, the people of Cherán, a small town in Mexico’s Michoacan state, made international headlines for taking up up arms against the powerful drug gangs threatening their livelihood, driving off local politicians and police in the process. Today, the self-governed settlement is a beacon of hope for many other Mexican communities.

The inspiring story of new Cherán began in 2011. For three years, the locals had watched helplessly how loggers supported by drug cartels like the Familia Michoacana ravaged their ancient forests, carrying away the big tree trunks and burning the rest, to prepare the land for avocado plantations. They had asked the Government for help with the situation, but received none, and the corrupt local politicians and police simply chose to look the other way. Left with no other options, and with the loggers nearing one of the town’s water springs, the people of Cherán decided it was up to them to fight for the forest and their livelihood.

“We were worried,” Margarita Elvira Romero, one of the conspirators of the historic uprising, recently told the BBC. “If you cut the trees, there’s less water. Our husbands have cattle – where would they drink if the spring was gone?” She and a few other women first went into the forest to try and reason with the loggers, but they were verbally abused and chased away by the armed men. So they came up with a plan to stop the trucks when they passed through Cherán, and hopefully receive the support of the whole community.

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A thoughtful husband in Singapore recently ended up fighting to save his marriage after buying three Pokemon plush toys as a surprise for his wife, a big Pokemon Go fan.

The poor guy, known only by his handle – featherlit – on online marketplace Carousell, posted an ad on October 12, pleading with people to get three Snorlax plushies off his hands and help him save his marriage. In the item description section, he wrote how he decided to buy the adorable plush toys for his wife, as she was always talking about how “cute and dumb” the Pokemon character looked. So without giving the much thought, he went online and ordered three plush Snorlax figures.

Featherlit was expecting to receive miniature versions of the Pokemon that they could set on the living-room coffee table as decorations, but to his great surprise, the three Snorlaxes tuned out to be life-sized, with each one measuring around 1.5 meters tall. But that was nothing compared to the shock he got when his wife flew into a rage, after seeing most of their living space taken up by the huge plush toys. He was forced to put them up for sale, after the spouse threatened “to move back to her mom’s home” if he didn’t get rid of them.

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Kiyoto Saito, a young rice farmer from Kengo, Japan’s Yamagata prefecture, is trying to change people’s perception of agricultural work through his unusual attire. Whether he’s driving a tractor, or is standing up to his knees in the marshy rice fields, Kiyoto is always wearing an elegant suit complete with shirt and tie.

Kiyoto’s family has been cultivating rice in the fields around Kengo for around 400 years, but as a teenager he found the tradition boring, and moved to the city. He returned to his native town a few years ago determined to start a family and get involved in the family business, but decided to put his unique twist on it.

The idea of wearing a suit in the fields started as a joke. One day, at the dinner table, his brother joked about farming in an elegant suit, but Kyioto took it seriously. He viewed the idea as the perfect way to change public perception of agricultural work in Japan. “Most people think of farmers as ‘dirty all day’ and not making much money,” he told Zoomin TV. “I want youngsters to think ‘ farming looks fun’.

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Snobby rich kids sick of sharing the social media space with plebs can now sign up for the “world’s most exclusive social network”. It’s even named after them and only costs $1,000 a month. What’s not to like, right?

These days, anyone with a smartphone, tablet or laptop can just go online and create an account for the world’s most popular social networks, for free, and start posting their life online. It’s this inclusivity that makes social media so popular, but it’s also what’s making it more difficult for attention-seeking, filthy rich snobs to stand out. But a new social network called Rich Kids promises to offer rich people the chance to shine online, by making the platform virtually unaffordable to anyone else.

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American designer Richard Clarkson has recently teamed up with Crealev, a company specializing in levitation technology, to create ‘Making Weather’ – a Bluetooth speaker disguised as a realistic-looking levitating cloud.

This wonder of design and technology is a continuation of Clarkson’s 2014 ‘Smart Cloud’ project. Originally unveiled as a hanging lamp, his indoor cloud has recently evolved into a levitating unit, thanks to innovative technology developed by Dutch startup Crealev. With the help of powerful magnets embedded into an oval base and the cloud, Making Weather floats 1-2 inches off the ground. The designer claims that the cloud has “full rotational movement” and even bobs slightly up and down to create a “realistic atmospheric experience”.

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