A Japanese mother-of-three who took up food art as a way to entertain her daughters struck gold on Instagram after specializing in cute fried egg artworks.

Etoni Mama is often described as a master of kyaraben (or Charaben), the Japanese art of arranging various foods as elaborate, eye-catching designs, but it was her fried egg ideas that really helped her made a name for herself on popular social networks like Instagram and Twitter. Using fried eggs as the main element of her artistic kyaraben pieces, and various other edible ingredients as accessories, the Japanese mom creates all kinds of edible renditions of popular cartoon characters, iconic scenes and cute animals.

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I imagine that having to split you time and attention between two families is hard enough, but things really become complicated when you’re forbidden to go outside. Which family do you quarantine with and how do you visit your second family?

Those are just two of the questions Kuwaiti polygamists, which make up about 8 percent of the Arab country’s population, are struggling with these days. Kuwait has imposed some of the strictest rules to stop the spread of the SARS-Cov2 virus in the Middle East, including a nationwide, lockdown until May 30, suspending all but essential private and public sector activities, and enforcing a curfew which only allows people to go out for groceries once every six days. The strict measures are expected to slow the spread of the coronavirus, but they are also making life much harder for polygamists.

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Chinese media recently reported the bizarre case of a heartbroken young woman who took revenge on her cheating boyfriend by sending a tonne of onions to his doorstep so he could cry as much as she did over his treason.

For most young Chinese couples, May 20 is a very special day, the equivalent of the western Valentine’s Day, but for one heartbroken woman who recently caught her boyfriend cheating, the day will only make her suffering worse. Known only as Miss Zhao from Zibo, in Shandong province, the young woman reportedly went through her boyfriend’s phone a few days ago and was shocked to see that he had been texting other girls and had already cheated on her. Unable to cope with the pain, she ended the relationship and cried her heart out for three days after that. Meanwhile, her ex was out having the time of his life, which only made her more angry…

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Crysomallon squamiferum, commonly known as scaly foot gastropod is a fascinating sea snail that inhabits one of the most inhospitable environments on the planet and has evolved a natural iron armor in order to do so.

“Scaly foot gastropod” has to be one of the most boring names ever picked for one of the coolest creatures on Earth – a sea snail living 2.78 kilometers (1.7 miles) underneath the surface of the Indian Ocean, around hydrothermal vents are spewing out water around 350°C (660°F). Not to mention that this badass snail is the only known creature to have developed a natural metallic armor that is unlike any other known natural or synthetically engineered armor. Did I mention that it doesn’t even need to eat, as a bacteria in its gut produces all the nutrients it needs to survive? Surely such a creature deserved a cooler name…

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At just 27 years old, Li Jiaqi is already one of the most successful online personalities in China. He specializes in selling makeup, particularly luxury brand lipsticks, which has earned him crazy nicknames “King of Lipstick” or “Iron Lips”.

With over 40 million fans on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, and millions others on various other social networks, Li Jiaqi is perhaps the most sought after beauty vlogger in all of China. Whatever product he chooses to promote turns into an instant hit, and companies are desperate to work with him, but he remains mostly focused on makeup, lipstick in particular. It’s not really the kind of career you would expect a young man to venture into, especially in a traditionalist country like China, but his success is proof that unconventionality can be an advantage. That’s how Li Jiaqi looks at it, anyway. He says that most people doubted him at first, saying that he could never sell to a female audience, but he had always been confident that he had an advantage over female beauty vloggers – stamina.

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Last month, South Korean television featured the bizarre case of a shoe repairman from Seoul who has been conditioning his body by banging his body and his head against a tree for the last five years.

Would you ever pick on a man after seeing him violently banging his forehead against a full-grown tree trunk? I myself would, steer away immediately, which is just what the hero of our story is betting on. Back in April, South Korean TV show X SBS WOW featured a shoe repairman from Seoul’s Sinchon neighborhood famous for banging his head and body against a tree every day. You’d think they had made up such a preposterous story, but this man has the forehead callus to prove that he has been doing a lot of head banging for quite some time.

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Chicago-based Jim Bachor is one of those rare street artists’ whose works can be classified as both art pieces and a public service. The man specializes in fixing up pot holes by filling them up with his beautiful and durable mosaics.

In fact Jim’s career as a pothole artist began with a trip to the ancient city of Pompeii, in Italy, where he learned just how durable mosaics really were. The tour guide pointed at a 2,000-year-old artwork and said that although it had been set in mortar, the marble and glass pieces had not faded. The realization of the artwork’s staying power blew him away, and a few months later he was in Italy learning the secrets of ancient mosaic art. He pursued it as a hobby for a few years, but then he started doing commission works and in May of 2013 he got the idea of applying his skill to fixing a pesky pothole in his neighborhood.

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If, like me, you spent a fair bit of your childhood on a farm, or if you’re simply fascinated by domestic birds, you’ve probably seen a crested duck at least once in your life. Their fluffy headgear is a adorable to look at, but it comes with some severe side-effects.

First of all, the funny-looking plumage on the heads of crested ducks is just a genetic defect, and one that has some serious health implications. The fluffy hairdo actually grows out of a section of fatty tissue that covers a gap in the duck’s skull. Not only does this defect make it dangerous for a female crested duck to mate – especially with a particularly aggressive drake – but it has also been linked to seizures, neurological problems and early death. Unfortunately, the photos of cute crested ducks circulating on social media these days don’t come with information about these issues, which only makes the ducks sought after as pets. That leads to another serious problem, breading…

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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…

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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’.

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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.

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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.

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