A 71-year-old man in the UK reportedly spent almost 30,000 pounds ($37,000) fighting a 100-pound speeding fine over several years, but in the end sill lost the case.

Retired engineer Richard Keedwell’s troubles began in November of 2016, when during a day trip to Worcester, he was clocked by police doing 35mph in a 30mph zone. Only he didn’t agree, and recalls having his day ruined by the notice of intended prosecution (NIP) he got in the mail a few days later. He was convinced he couldn’t have been speeding, so he put down “no case to answer” on the document where he was supposed to write how he pleaded to the charges. Furthermore, he hired a video and electronics expert to prove that there must have been something wrong with the police speed camera. Little did he know this was the beginning of a long and expensive legal battle.

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Up until four years ago, Monet’s Pond, a small body of water just outside Seki City, in Japan’s Gifu Prefecture, didn’t even have a name, but thanks to social media and a catchy nickname, it has become one of the most popular tourist destination in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Before it became known as Monet’s Pond, this hidden gem was called Namonaki, or “Nameless Pond”, and what’s even more interesting is that it was never meant to be a tourist attraction. It was originally designed as an irrigation reservoir, but after it fell into disrepair during the 1990s, the owner of the neighboring  Itadori Flower Park took it upon himself to clear the overgrown weeds and clean it up. With the help of the neighborhood council, the man filled the lake with clean water from Mt. Koga, and planted beautiful water lilies. Later, Japanese carp were donated by local owners who could no longer care for them. But it would take over a decade and a half for this pristine body of water to reach its full potential as a tourist attraction.

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For the last three years, a man in India’s Madhya Pradesh state has been living a real-life daily nightmare inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Birds’. Every time he walks out of his house, he gets attacked by a murder of crows. The strange thing is the birds only target him.

Shiva Kewat, a daily wage labourer from Sumela village, says his troubles with crows began three years ago, due to a misunderstanding. One day, as he was walking on the street he noticed a crow chick stuck in iron netting, but despite his efforts to help the small bird escape, it died in his hands. Some of the rows must have seen the scene and assumed that he killed their young, because they’ve been attacking him ever since. Sometimes they come for him in groups, otherwise it’s just a single bird, but Kewat always carries a stick with him to fend off their sharp beaks and talons.

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Did you grow up wishing the school you went to every day looked more like a fairy-tale palace? No? Well this Russian billionaire sure did and when he became rich enough to afford it, he actually turned his old school into a flamboyant palace, complete with gilded walls, marble floors and even a water fountain.

Walking into the 106 Secondary School in Yekaterinburg after its recent renovation you couldn’t be blamed for thinking you had been magically transported to a French Baroque palace like Versailles. With golden chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, gilded decorations covering the walls and luxurious marble floors, it certainly looks nothing like a Soviet-era school dating back to the 1940s. That’s thanks to the generous donation of a former student named Andrei Simanovsky who grew up to become a successful businessman and decided to fulfill his childhood dream of turning his school into a palace.

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Most roller coasters rely on speed, tight turns and steep slopes to get riders’ adrenaline levels up, but SkyCycle, a pedal-powered coaster ride in the Japanese city of Okayama is proof that roller coasters can be even more terrifying at low speeds.

Located on a greenery-covered hill at the Washuzan Highland amusement park in Okayama, SkyCycle is probably the world’s slowest roller coaster ride. That’s because it’s pedal-powered so it goes as fast as the rider can pedal. It doesn’t have any steep slopes or spectacular drops either, but it still manages to get your heart racing by constantly conveying an uneasy sense of danger and uncertainty. It may look like a quaint ride for people who are too scared to go on conventional roller coasters, but once you get on one of those flimsy carts and realize there’s nothing but a loose safety belt keeping you from falling to your doom, your pulse goes up instantly.

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Instagram models are a dime a dozen these days, but few have the visually striking appearance of Maria Oz, a young Ukrainian visual artist and model with unusually large eyes.

Most of Maria’s 117,000 Instagram followers are convinced that she has the world’s largest eyes. To be honest, they do look unnaturally big, at least in some of her photos, which is why some people are sure that she uses editing software to alter her appearance. That makes sense, considering Maria Oz is a self-described visual artist who sometimes posts edited photos of herself, either with an extremely long neck or with differently colored eyes. However, when it comes to her eyes, she reportedly claims they really are that large in real life.

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NASA is said to be investigating a claim that one of its astronauts accessed the bank account of her estranged spouse while on board the International Space Station, in what may be the first crime committed in space.

Astronaut Anne McClain and Summer Worden, an Air Force intelligence officer, married in 2014 and split in 2018, when Ms. Worden filed for divorce. The pair have been involved in a custody battle over Worden’s young son for the past year, but things git even more complicated recently after Worden accused her ex-spouse of illegally accessing her bank account from aboard the ISS. McCain admitted logging into the bank account from outer space, but denied any wrong-doing, claiming that she was just keeping an eye on the family finances to make sure their son was well taken care of.

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A 36-year-old Australian woman in Melbourne’s Frankston suburb was charged with criminal damage, wilful damage, among others, after covering several public spaces with graffiti messages to a certain “Chris”, the alleged father of her unborn baby.

The alleged vandalism reportedly occurred between July 29 and 30 when graffiti started popping up in recreational areas around Frankston, urging a person named Chris to “call before the baby is born”. Confused residents started posting photos of the bizarre graffiti message to The Frankston Community Noticeboard Facebook page, where they quickly went viral. The same message – Chris u need 2 talk 2 me b4 baby is born, or dont bother after – was photographed on various public spaces, barbecues, public toilet doors, footpaths and walls, and prompted users to ask Chris to call the author before it’s too late.

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A zoo in southeastern France recently condemned the “stupidity” of some of its visitors after shocking photos of a 35-year-old female rhino with the names “Camille” and “Julien” scratched on its back went viral on social media.

La Palmyre Zoo, in the French city of Royan, allows visitors to touch some of the animals in its care when they approach the fence of their enclosure. It is designed to be a “moving” experience that allows visitors to appreciate the “beauty and diversity of nature”, but for some it’s simply an opportunity to display their ignorance and cruelty. Case in point, the people who shockingly used their fingernails to scratch their names onto the back of a female rhino when it approached the fence of its pen. Photos of the “signed” animal went viral online last week, sparking outrage all over the world.

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The German city of Bielefeld, in the north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, has announced that it is offering a €1 million prize to anyone who can prove that it doesn’t exist.

To have any hope of understanding this bizarre offer, you have to go back to 1993 when the famous “Bielefeld? There’s No Such Thing!” conspiracy theory appeared on the internet. Formulated by a computer student named Achim Held, it basically claimed that Bielefeld – a city of around 330,000 inhabitants, which has historically been around for around 800 years – didn’t actually exist, because, unlike other German cities, it wasn’t really known for anything in particular. The hilarious conspiracy theory spread online and gained a life of its own, with many proponents postulated that a group called “SIE,” or “THEY” in German, created an imaginary illusion of the city, or that it had a secret city center where “dead” celebrities like Elvis Presley and Kurt Cobain had been taken away to.

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Several Swiss prisons have painted their jail cells in a color called “Cool Down Pink” as a way to curb prisoners’ aggressive behavior and even though the measure was adopted by other European countries in recent years, there are those who find the measure degrading and manipulative.

It’s a known fact that colors have a significant influence on our mood. It is said that red can stimulate our appetite, which is why you’re more likely to see it used in restaurants, as opposed to blue, which apparently suppresses the appetite. Every color is associated with various emotions which as a whole can influence our moods. For example, pink is usually associated with happiness and compassion, but also weakness and femininity. And that’s what makes it so controversial. Psychologists have long argued that it can have a calming effect on people, but using it in the penal system has also been described as humiliating, gender stereotyping and manipulative.

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When it comes to recreating the characters of Japanese horror manga artist Junji Ito in real life, there’s no one better for the job than dedicated fan Mamakiteru.

Mamakiteru’s Twitter bio reads “I want to live in the world of Junji Ito”, and since living in the artist’s manga is impossible, she decided to do the next best thing – bring Ito’s characters into the real world, using face paint and a bit of digital editing. Most of her work involves expertly applying makeup to turn herself into almost perfect renditions of Junji Ito manga characters, with digital editing only being used to recreate surreal images which could not otherwise exist in our world. She’s been at it for four years now, and has amassed quite a following on social media.

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A 29-year-old woman in Kazakhstan stunned doctors after she gave birth to her twin babies no less than 11 weeks apart, an extremely rare abnormality with one in 50 million odds of occurring.

When Liliya Konovalova, from the town of Uralsk in northern Kazakhstan, walked into the maternity clinic to see the doctors about her second pregnancy, they already knew that she suffered from a rare condition known as uterus didelphys, which basically means she has a double uterus. Doctors had noticed this seven years ago, during her first pregnancy, which had gone smoothly and resulted in the birth of a healthy daughter. This time around the pregnancy was more difficult as she had twins, each of which developed in separate wombs.

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Owning a vacation home in West Palm Beach’s Ibis Golf and Country Club is a dream come true for most people, but for a couple of residents that dream quickly turned into a nightmare after their properties were taken over by dozens of black vultures.

Earlier this year, New Yorkers Anthony and Siobhan Casimano bought a vacation home in the Ibis Golf and Country Club for 702,000 dollar, but when they decided to vacation there, they were shocked to find it had actually been taken over by dozens, if not hundreds of black vultures. They were practically living in the pool area, had destroyed the property’s screened enclosures and did not appear too happy to share the place with its human owners. They pecked at their car, and vomited when they got too close, as a means of self defense. Despite their best efforts to have the issue resolved, the Casimanos remain unable to drive the vultures away and reclaim their expensive property.

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Portuguese street artist Odeith is widely considered the pioneer of anamorphic graffiti, and looking at his latest works, many would say he is still ahead of the curve.

Seen from all but the perfect angle, Odeith’s anamorphic masterpieces look strange and distorted, but when properly aligned with the artwork viewers are treated to larger-than-life creations that seem ready to leap off of their concrete canvas. Take the artist’s latest project, a realistic-looking wrecked bus spray-painted on a giant concrete block. Unless you saw the “before” photo, you could swear that was a real bus.

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