A Russian man who had spent the last 22 years of his life in a penal colony for serious crimes, recently escaped on the very day he was supposed to be released.

According to the SHOT Telegram channel, Kamoljon Kalonov had been serving a lengthy 22-year-sentence for a double murder, theft,  and possession of weapons, ammunition, explosives, and explosive devices, but he was supposed to be released from the IK-19 penal colony in the village of Markova near Irkutsk last week. However, the regional department of the Federal Penitentiary Service told RIA Novosti that on the morning of his release day, at around 4 in the morning, Kalonov disappeared from the colony without informing anyone and is now supposedly on the run.

Read More »

A 69-year-old man from the Russian Republic of Dagestan claims to have set a new world record for fastest weight loss, after allegedly losing over 11 kilograms during a 2.5-hour race.

Bahama Aigubov had already had his name inscribed in the Russian Book of Records in 2019 when he lost 9.3 kg after a five-hour race, but he recently managed to blow his own record out of the water by losing  11.1 kg in 2.5 hours during a 21 km race in Makhachkala. Aigubov cannot have his record recognized by the Guinness Book of Records, as it does not acknowledge achievements in rapid weight loss so as not to encourage people to engage in dangerous experiments, but the pensioner claims to be the fastest body weight shedder in the world, by far.

Read More »

Belly button stickers are apparently all the rage in China these days, as a growing number of women are reportedly using them as a way of making their legs appear longer.

There is a curious beauty trend going on in China right now. Young women are paying 5-10 RMB ($0.70 to $1.40) for sheets of temporary tattoos designed to look like belly buttons. The stickers are usually placed a few centimeters above the real navel, which is then concealed with skirts or pants, in order to make the torso seem shorter and the legs, longer. It sounds pretty dumb, but belly button sticker manufacturers are struggling to keep up with demand, and social media platforms like Xiaohongshu are being flooded with video tutorials on how to use the temporary tattoos and clips showing their effects on the wearer.

Read More »

Maleesha Kharwa grew up in Mumbai’s infamous Dharavi slum, but thanks to a chance encounter with an American actor, she became one of India’s most popular teenage models.

At just 15 years of age, Maleesha Kharwa has already graced the covers of international fashion magazines like Vogue and Cosmopolitan, become the face of a luxury skincare brand, and amassed over 300,000 followers on Instagram alone. She is one of the most recognizable faces in India, and it’s almost impossible to believe that only three years ago she was just another girl in the slums of Mumbai. It was only thanks to a lucky encounter with Step Up 2: The Streets and Grey’s Anatomy actor Robert Hoffman that her life changed drastically and she got the chance to live out her childhood fantasy of one day becoming a fashion model.

Read More »

Danish artist Jens Haaning has been ordered to repay the Kunsten Museum in Aalborg 532,000 kroner ($76,000) after handing in two blank canvases as artworks in a project he named ‘Take the Money and Run’.

In 2021, Jens Haaning, a Danish conceptual artist whose work focuses on power and inequality, was commissioned by the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg to recreate two of his earlier artworks for which he had used a bunch of banknotes to represent the average income in Denmark and Austria. The artist agreed and the museum provided about 532,000 kroner ($76,000) for him to recreate the art pieces, including a fee of 40,000 kroner. Only when the museum staff unpacked the two artworks from Haaning, they found two blank canvases titled ‘Take the Money and Run’.

Read More »

12-year-old Bayleigh Teepa-Tarau has become the talk of the town in his native New Zealand after winning a national golf tournament despite having played just three rounds of golf his entire life.

Playing with borrowed clubs and wearing basketball sneakers, Bayleigh Teepa-Tarau managed to score an impressive 87 Stableford points during his three nine-hole rounds at this year’s Association of Intermediate and Middle Schools (AIMS) Games. His feat is even more impressive when you consider that he had previously only played three full rounds of golf his whole life. A few months back, his teacher-aide noticed that the 12-year-old autistic boy loved swinging a stick all the time, so he suggested he tried golf. Bayleigh said ‘ok’, and despite having only completed three rounds of golf, he managed to beat everyone at the recent AIMS Games and take home the gold.

Read More »

A 39-year-old Japanese man has been described as ‘trans-age’ after reportedly identifying as 28 because it’s an age that better describes his still immature personality.

In the age of ‘self-identified diversity’ where anyone is free to identify as whatever they want, a Japanese man has come out as ‘trans-age’, meaning that he chooses to identify as 28 years old, despite having been born 39 years ago. The Kyoto-based man known only as Jackie appeared on the reality show ABEMA Prime where he explained that he didn’t feel comfortable as a 39-year-old man, so he decided to be 28 instead. Apparently, the trans-age man settled on this particular age, because it strikes a good balance between being an adult and still having a childish side without attracting the judgment of others.

Read More »

A UK man has set a new world record for the most tattoos of the same name on the body after having his daughter’s name tattooed a whopping 667 times.

Mark Owen Evans originally got his name mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records in 2017, when he was featured for having his daughter’s name tattooed on his back 267 times. However, in 2020, he was dethroned by Diedra Vigil, a 27-year-old woman who had her own name tattooed on her body 300 times. Even though there wasn’t much space left on his back, Evans was determined to get his world record back, so he kept having his daughter’s name, ‘Lucy’, on his thighs. After going under the needle for five and a half hours for all 400 tattoos – 200 on each leg – Mark once again holds the Guinness record for the most tattoos of the same name on the body – 667.

Read More »

The Omnivision OVM6948 CameraCubeChip® holds the record for the world’s smallest commercially available camera. It measures 0.65 mm x 0.65 mm, with a z‑height of just 1.158 mm.

Developed by Omnivision, a global technology company specializing in innovative advanced digital imaging, analog, and touch & display solutions for multiple applications across several industries, the CameraCubeChip® is based on the tiny OVM6948 sensor, which claimed the Guinness Record for the world’s smallest commercially available image sensor. It can be mounted on various medical instruments, including disposable guidewires, endoscopes, and catheters with diameters as small as 1.0 mm. Its impressively small size makes it perfect for use within the body’s narrowest blood vessels for neuro, ophthalmic, ENT, cardiac, spinal, urology, gynecology, and arthroscopy procedures.

  Read More »

An Australian man tried to sue a Melbourne hospital claiming that he was ‘permitted’ and even ‘encouraged’ to attend his wife’s C-section, which caused the onset of a mental illness.

In January of 2018, Anil Koppula’s wife gave birth to a healthy baby via cesarean section at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne. He was allowed in the operating room during the procedure, and seeing his wife’s organs and blood allegedly caused the onset of a psychotic illness. Now, years later, he is trying to sue the hospital for AU$ 1 billion in psychological damages. Koppula, who represented himself during the legal proceedings, claimed that the hospital breached its duty of care it owed to him, adding that the psychotic illness caused the breakdown of his marriage.

Read More »

A Ghanaian man living in Belgium became so frustrated with constantly failing the theoretical part of the driving test that he paid a lookalike to take the test in his place.

Serge, a Ghanaian immigrant living in Grammont, Belgium, had been struggling to pass his driving license exam for over a year. The man had already obtained a license in his home country, but he couldn’t use it to drive a car in Belgium, and the theoretical part of the exam had been giving him some serious headaches. Serge had tried and failed the test 12 times, but he couldn’t just give up, as having a driver’s license opened up some very lucrative options for him in Belgium. In the end, he decided that cheating was his best bet, so he started looking for someone with similar looks to take the test on his behalf.

Read More »

The shopping mall is considered a symbol of American consumerism and the US is indeed home to over 100,000 shopping malls, but the title of world’s biggest shopping mall actually belongs to one of America’s biggest rivals, Iran.

Located northeast of Teheran, the humongous Iran Mall shopping mall covers an area of 31 square meters and consists of seven floors, but its entire infrastructure area measures a whopping 1.35 million square meters and is set to expand to 1.60 million square meters. Since 2014, over 1,200 contractors and around 25,000 workers worked around the clock to make the world’s largest shopping mall a reality. In 2018, the first phase of construction was completed, and 267,000 square meters of gross leasable area and 708 retail units were opened on 1 May 2018. That same year, Iran Mall set a Guinness record for the world’s longest continuous pour of concrete, with tons of concrete pouring continuously for 6 consecutive days.

Read More »

A Chinese woman recently filed a lawsuit requesting a divorce from her husband of less than a year, claiming that he blackmailed her into the marriage with some sensitive photos.

According to Li Song Song’s lawsuit, she and her husband, Tan Dan, met in May of 2022, at a party. She didn’t pay too much attention to him, but he apparently became obsessed with her, even going to the salon where she worked every day. Because he didn’t give him the attention he craved, Tan allegedly started finding ways of chasing clients away from the salon, just so he could be alone with his love interest. However, Song was less than impressed with his tactics and refused to give in to his advances. In the lawsuit, the woman claims that she saw him as an unreliable and conniving person.

Read More »

Lino Tomasén, a 32-year-old street performer known as the ‘Cuban Ironman’, has allegedly been conditioning his body of iron by hitting himself with a heavy hammer around 1,000 times per day.

The so-called Cuban Ironman first garnered media attention in 2020 when a video showing him banging his fists and elbows against concrete walls went viral. Since then, his strongman reputation has been steadily growing. These days, he has an Instagram following of over 100,000 people and makes a living by putting on street performances in which he showcases his incredible strength. Most of the time he does pushups on his wrists with another person on his back, and uses a large hammer to hit his wrists, fists, and shins, or has someone else do it to prove it’s not fake.

Read More »

The Zhuhai Chimelong Marine Science Park in Zhuhai, China, is famous both for its impressive offering of rare marine wildlife from all over the world and its sci-fi-inspired design.

Announced in 2015, the Zhuhai Chimelong Marine Science Park immediately captured people’s imaginations with its futuristic design reminiscent of alien motherships depicted in sci-fi flicks and video games. Described as the largest indoor marine science park in the world, with more than 100,000 marine animals of around 300 species, as well as 100 kinds of living coral split into 10 themed areas. Originally scheduled to open in 2021, after ten years of planning and just over 5 years of actual construction, the giant marine science park only opened its gates to the public this month.

Read More »