A 35-year-old Russian influencer got a lot of backlash after announcing her upcoming marriage to the 20-year-old stepson she helped raise for 10 years.

Marina Balmasheva, who rose to fame in Russia for documenting her weight-loss adventure online, is getting a lot of attention these days, because of her controversial new romantic relationship. Shortly after divorcing her 45-year-old husband, to whom she had been married for 1o years, the Instagram influencer announced that she was romantically involved with her 20-year-old stepson, Vladimir. The couple reportedly plan on tying the knot in the near future and having children of their own…

Read More »

Lee Su Jin, a 51-year old dentist from South Korea, has amassed quite an impressive online following thanks to her incredibly youthful looks.

The first time we featured Lee Su Jin on Oddity Central was back in 2016, when photos of her went viral on Asian social media, along with the heart-to-believe information that she was 48-years-old. It turned out her age was correct, and we subsequently learned that she was already popular in her native South Korea, having already appeared on several television shows. She has since solidified her reputation as a “goddess of eternal youth”, as the years keep rolling by, but she simply refuses to age.

Read More »

Most of us have to trim our toenails as soon as they become even slightly uncomfortable, but for “long nail beauties” like Arinda Storm Weaver that’s not an option, as their nails are the objects of desire for thousands of people around the world, and a valuable source of income.

The 58-year-old from Ohio used to work as an account manager at a manufacturing plant, but she accidentally discovered the world of LNBs (long nail beauties) 14 years ago and she never looked back. Weaver was blogging about her journey battling breast cancer in 2006, when she noticed that some of her readers were paying a bit too much attention to her long fingernails. She had always liked to take good care of her talons, growing them as much as possible, but she had never realized that there was a full fledged community of long nail enthusiasts willing to pay for the chance to admire them freely. Arinda eventually quit her job in 2008 and has been making a living selling videos of her six-inch-long toenails ever since.

Read More »

Endemic to a very specific area on the Malaysian Peninsula, the Fire Snail – named after its bright red foot – is one of the rarest, most sought after snail species in the world.

Platymma tweediei was first discovered in 1938, in Telom Valley, Malaysia’s Cameron Highlands district. Since then, it has also been spotted Temenggor and Kelantan, but nowhere else. According to conservationist Junn Kitt Foot, from Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), the stunning-looking snail species can only be found in a 100km radius in the Cameron Highlands, as it only thrives in very specific conditions. Apparently fire snails can only live in very cool, humid environments, more specifically cloud forests – forests located high enough for clouds to form in (at least 1,000 meters above sea level).

Read More »

Medical face masks may lower the risk of contacting the novel coronavirus, but they apparently also make it easy for people to pull a fast one on authorities by faking their identities.

This past weekend, 28-year-old Quintin Henderson was set to be released from the Cook County jail for a narcotics charge, but he instead decided to give his personal information to another inmate, 21-year-old Jahquez Scott, in exchange for a promise of $1,000. As all inmates were required to wear face masks to prevent infection with the SarsCov-2 virus, jail staff say it was easy for Scott to use Henderson’s full name and personal information as his very own ‘get out of jail free card’.

Read More »

Andrea Emilova Ivanova, a 22-year-old woman from Sofia, in Bulgaria, has quadrupled the size of her puckers after undergoing her twentieth lip filler injection.

The young woman, dubbed a “real-life Barbie”, has already spent thousands of dollars on lip fillers, but claims she still wants to increase the size of her pout. She isn’t sure if hers are already the biggest lips in the world, but she admits that they must be among the biggest. Although she sometimes gets negative comments on social media because of her oversized lips, Andrea says she ignores the criticism, because hers is the only opinion that matters. And right now, she wants even bigger lips.

Read More »

While most standard restaurants and cafes around the world remain closed because of the Covid-19 pandemic, one Swedish eatery claims to offer one of the safest dining experiences by only serving one person at a time, in the middle of an empty field.

Claiming to operate one of the world’s safest restaurants during a pandemic is a bold statement to make, but the creators of Bord för en (literally “Table for one”) can back it up. Not only does this unique eatery consist of a simple wooden table and a single chair located in the middle of a barren field, near the Swedish rural town of Ransäter (population 114), but it also has a series of guidelines to minimize the patrons’ risk of infection with the new coronavirus. Bord för en has been described as a creative approach to a post-Covid-19 restaurant concept.

Read More »

Stunning-looking luminescent plants have become popular in science-fiction and fantasy films in recent years, but if the recent achievement of an international team of scientists is any indication, self-sustaining bioluminescent plants are already a reality.

In 2017, MIT researchers announced an important breakthrough in their quest to make plants that glow in the dark a reality, but their Plant Nanobionics only made watercress leaves dimly glow for about 3.5 hours. Late last month, a team of 27 scientists published a groundbreaking study documenting their ability to genetically tweak virtually any type of plant and make it sustainably luminescent throughout its entire life cycle. By inserting DNA obtained from bioluminescent mushrooms into the DNA sequence of plants, they managed to create plants that glow orders of magnitude brighter than previously possible.

Read More »

Blaze, an outgoing Labrador Retriever from Finland became an overnight internet sensation after photos showing his color change from black to white went viral on social media.

Blaze was born with a pure black fur and stayed that way for most of his life, but last year, his human master, Santeri, noticed a small white patch on his ear. He didn’t think too much of it, but the patch kept getting bigger, and before long it spread to the 10-year-old pooch’s face and torso, gradually turning his black coat, white. A photo showing Blaze’s transformation over the last year was recently posted on the Facebook group Dogspotting Society, where it received over 32,000 likes and nearly 3,000 comments from people all over the world.

Read More »

Archivist Studio, a small clothing brand based in Berlin, Germany has been getting a lot of attention for its designer white shirts, which are made from used linens discarded by luxury hotels.

Ever wonder what happens to those wonderfully soft and expensive cotton linens that luxury hotels are famous for? Well, Dutch designer Eugenie Haitsma has and asked a friend working at a luxury hotel in London’s Mayfair about it. She learned that perfectly good bed sheets and pillow covers routinely get thrown out for the smallest of tears, holes or stains. We’re talking amazing quality Egyptian cotton that’s really soft and in pristine condition, except for some small defects, so the Berlin based designer started thinking of ways the fabric could be repurposed instead of discarded.

Read More »

An elderly couple from China’s Henan province took legal action against their own son for neglecting his duty of financially supporting them.

Filial piety isn’t that important of a notion in the Western world, but in China it’s a big deal. Failing to take care of your elderly parents is actually considered a legal offense both in China and in other countries with large Chinese communities, like Singapore or Taiwan. It’s actually not uncommon for parents to sue their offspring for neglecting them in their old age, and while most reconcile their differences before having punitive measures enforced, some don’t and police, revenue service and banks have to get involved. Such was the case of an elderly couple whose son flat out refused to support them even after being ordered to by a judge.

Read More »

A Taiwanese female model spent years battling online harassment after an innocent photo she shot for a photo agency was used for a completely unrelated news report and later turned into a meme.

In 2012, international media (OC included) featured the story of a Chinese businessman who had allegedly sued his wife for misleading him into thinking that she was naturally beautiful. The man claimed that his wife’s good looks were the result of plastic surgery and that he had only learned about it after confronting the woman, because their daughter didn’t seem to have inherited either of their good looks. In terms of wow factor, it wasn’t the best story we’ve ever featured, but it was funny and crazy enough to go viral. At the time, no one imagined that the photo used by Chinese media for illustration purposes only would one day end up ruining the female protagonist’s life…

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last eight years, you’ve probably seen this photo online at least once. It shows a ridiculously good-looking couple with three not so good-looking children. This was the photo used in the original Chinese news article and the one that Taiwanese model Heidi Yeh claims ruined her professional modelling career and caused personal issues as well.

Read More »

South Korean media recently reported the disturbing case of a high-school teacher who scolded and humiliated a student in front of the class, causing him to take his life that same day.

On April 26th, 2020 ethics professor at Youngshin Middle School in Pohang City referred to only as “A”, for personal privacy reasons, was convicted of child abuse and sentenced to 10 months in prison and had his teaching license suspended for 5 years. His crime: shaming a 9th grade student in front of the whole class after catching him reading a light manga novel, and causing him to end his own life, because of the humiliation. The teacher’s sentencing sent shock waves through South Korean social media, with some users accusing the teacher of bullying, and other expressing fears that the case set a precedent that will put fear into other teachers, preventing them from being strict when they need to be.

Read More »

China’s cosmetic surgery market was estimated to be worth around $31 billion in 2018, with double digit growth per year, and at the forefront of it is a 30-year-old self-confessed cosmetic procedure addict who had her first work done when she was only 14.

Wu Xiaochen, or Abby, as she is known on social media, is perhaps China’s most popular plastic surgery crusader. Her perfect features fascinate and inspire millions of young women who either dream of making it in the competitive entertainment industry, or simply want to correct certain defects so they can regain their self-esteem. She has millions of followers on various social media platforms, owns two cosmetic surgery clinics in Beijing and has worked with some of the biggest brands in China. But Abby’s success didn’t happen overnight. She has been obsessed with plastic surgery for the past 16 years, and has gone under the knife or the needle hundreds of times during that time to make sure that her appearance is impeccable.

Read More »

After three failed IVF attempts, a 68-year-old Nigerian woman and her 74-year-old husband fulfilled their dream of having their own children this month, by giving birth to healthy twins.

Margaret Adenuga is thought to be the oldest first-time mother in Africa, after she welcomed a pair of twins at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, almost two weeks ago. It was reported that she and her husband, 77-year-old Noah Adenuga first tried having children soon after getting married in 1974, but despite spending their life savings and travelling to a number of places both in Africa and in Europe, they couldn’t conceive for 46 years. Still, they never lost hope, and last week, their prayers were answered.

Read More »