An 85-year-old woman is set to end a self-imposed 30-year vow of silence that only allowed her to speak for an hour a day.

Saraswati Devi, fondly known as ‘Mauni Mata’, began her ‘maun vrat’ (vow of silence) in 1992. She devoted her life to Lord Ram after the death of her husband in 1986 and has spent most of her time on pilgrimages ever since. In 1992, she arrived in Ayodhya, where she met Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, head of Ram Janmabhoomi Trust, who ordered her to circle Kamtanath Mountain as a sign of devotion to Lord Ram. On December 6, the same day that the Babri Masjid was demolished in Ayodhya, Saraswati met Swami Nritya Gopal Das, the head of Ayodhya’s largest temple, the Mani Ram Das Ki Chavani, and was so inspired by him that she vowed to refrain from speaking until a new temple dedicated to Ram would be built in the city. Her vow will finally end later this month, with the inauguration of the Ram Mandir temple in Ayodhya.

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Carmen Dell’Orefice is known as the oldest working model in the fashion industry. She was discovered on a bus when she was only 13 years old, and she is still working today, at age 92.

Carmen Dell’Orefice’s first contact with the fashion world was a flop. After being approached by the wife of photographer Herman Landschoff while riding a bus to ballet class when she was only 13 years old, Dell’Orefice saw her test photos go nowhere fast. But she was destined for greatness, and just two years later, at age 15, she graced the cover of Vogue Magazine for the very first time, after becoming a favorite model of photographer Erwin Blumenfeld. Last year, at age 92, Carmen Dell’Orefice was featured on the cover of Vogue Czechoslovakia, this time as the oldest working model in the world.

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Colton Pifer currently holds the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest nasal septum flesh tunnel – a giant hole with a diameter of 2.6 centimeters.

Colton was 18 years old when he first decided to get his nasal septum pierced. It was a routine procedure that involved the use of a 16-gauge needle and forceps. It took about a week for the soreness to go away, and the Monroe, Michigan native pretty much left it alone for about five years. Then, at one point, he started stretching it to the point where he started noticing that no other piercing enthusiast had a septum flesh tunnel quite like his and that only encouraged him to stretch it even more. After researching the world’s largest nasal septum flesh tunnel, Colton Pifer realized he could beat it, especially since he was trying to stretch his nose hole even more anyway.

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Nicolas Puech, an heir to the legendary Hermès fashion house, recently stunned the world by announcing his intention to legally adopt his former gardener and leave him his $11 billion fortune.

81-year-old Puech, who is unmarried and without children, ranks among Switzerland’s wealthiest individuals with a net worth estimated between $10.3 billion and 11.4 billion. Despite a fallout with his famous family following the 2014 takeover of a substantial stake in Hermès by rival luxury conglomerate LVMH, Puech still owns a considerable share in the $220 billion company, and his move to leave it all to his former gardener and family man has sparked controversy. The unnamed gardener, who comes from a “modest Moroccan family”, is reportedly married to a woman from Spain and has two children of his own.

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6-year-old Cao Qixian set the new women’s world record for solving a 3x3x3 Rubik’s cube in 5.97 seconds (average) at the World Cube Association Rubik’s Cube International Open in Singapore.

Qixian, who hails from China’s Jiangsu Province, started playing with a Rubik’s cube when she was only three, inspired by a cousin who taught her the art of ‘speed-cubing’, solving the world-famous puzzle as quickly as possible. However, after about a year, the girl got so good at it that her cousin had nothing to teach her anymore and her parents got her a speed-cubing coach. She enjoyed speed-solving the Rubik’s cube so much that she practiced for two to three hours every day, and her time was getting better and better. However, there was a point where she hit a wall and needed all of her family’s help to overcome it.

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Every year, Germany hosts the Stapler Cup, a competitive event that sees hundreds of forklift drivers from around the world going head to head in a series of difficult challenges for the title of world’s best forklift operator.

Competitive forklift driving probably doesn’t sound like the most exciting competitive event in the world, but that’s probably because you’ve never heard of the Stapler Cup. This yearly event organized by Linde Materials and Handling (Linde MH) is not only regarded as the ultimate test for certified forklift operators but also as an entertaining event that draws tens of thousands of spectators. Thousands of forklift drivers attempt to qualify for the Stapler Cup in national events, so only the very best get to showcase their skills on the big stage in a series of tests aimed at pushing their talent, coordination, and reflexes to the limit.

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A 75-year-old Vietnamese woman claims she has not eaten any solid food in 50 years, instead surviving only on water and sugary soft drinks.

Ms. Bui Thi Loi, from Loc Ninh commune, in Vietnam’s Quang Binh Province, looks in great shape for her age, which only makes her diet that much more surprising. The elderly woman insists that she has lived on water and soft drinks for half a century and that she never craves solid foods. It all started in 1963 when she was struck by lightning while she and other women were climbing up a mountain to treat injured soldiers during the war. She was knocked unconscious and although she survived, she was never the same after that. She didn’t eat anything for days after coming to her senses, so her friends started giving her sweetened water.

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A young mother who went viral for recording herself impersonating her 13-year-old daughter at her school in order to prove a point was recently found guilty of criminal trespassing.

On November 15, a jury sentenced Casey Garcia to six months of probation and ordered her to pay a fine of $700 in connection to a 2021 incident where she attended classes at San Elizario Middle School disguised as her teenage daughter, in order to show how easy it was for an adult to enter the school. The mother, who was 30 years old at the time, dyed her hair, put on skin tanner, and wore a hoodie and a face mask in order to pass for her 13-year-old daughter and gain access to the school. She recorded the controversial experiment and posted the video on social media where it got a lot of attention but ultimately led to her arrest.

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Himenii (ひめにぃ様) is a Japanese male influencer who rose to fame by cosplaying as a young, cute girl and then giving himself away by speaking in a deep voice.

Japan is home to many male cosplayers who choose to wear female clothes and fool everyone with their appearance, but Himenii is one of the few who uses this talent to create funny content for his online fans. Himenii’s cosplaying talent is superb, but he is actually famous for his funny videos, in which he either interacts with random people, speaking in a loud voice while disguised as a girl, or stages sketches while filmed by a friend.

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A new water fountain in the Austrian city of Vienna has been described as the ugliest in Europe, possibly the world, despite costing 1.8 million euros ($2 million).

Created by the avantgarde Viennese art group Gelitin, the Austrian capital’s newest water fountain was commissioned by local authorities to commemorate 150 years of Vienna’s modern water system which provided the city with fresh water from streams in the green forests of the Alps and helped eradicate plagues like cholera. The new landmark’s design apparently symbolizes the “communal responsibility for water” and while it did win over the jury that selected Gelitin as the winner, it hasn’t done so well with the general public, especially considering its astronomical price, $2 million.

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A California-based book club has recently finished its first reading of James Joyce’s ‘Finnegan’s Wake’, a notoriously difficult book that it started reading 28 years ago.

James Joyce once said that the demand he makes of his reader is that he “should devote his entire life to reading my works,” and some people actually took those words to heart. For example, the members of a California book club have spent the last 28 years of their lives decyphering Finnegan’s Wake page by page, in an attempt to figure out its many mysteries. This is a book so difficult to read that no one person can truly say they ‘get it’, which makes it perfect for community reading. It’s apparently written in a convoluted mix of reinvented words, puns, and allusions, referencing about 80 languages, and people can’t even agree on where the book is set or who the characters are.

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A Japanese man planted three banana trees in the median strip of a major road in Kurume City and watered them daily for two years before anyone noticed their existence.

A 50-something man from Kurume City, Fukuoka Prefecture, was recently ordered to remove three banana trees he had illegally planted and cared for in the median strip of a busy city road for a couple of years. It’s unclear why the man chose to plant the trees on public property, and in a median strip of all places, but they eventually got so big that they began affecting motorists’ field of view. It wasn’t difficult for authorities to identify the man responsible for the trees, as he had been watering the tropical plants at least twice a day for the last two years. He was ordered to remove the trees, or risk spending up to a year in jail or pay a fine of 500,000 yen ($3,350).

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A Colombian mother is being accused of staging her own toddler son’s kidnapping along with several accomplices in order to get ransom money from the boy’s father.

On Sunday evening, November 12th, the news of a young boy kidnapped in Caribe Verde, south of Barranquilla, Colombia, started spreading like wildfire. The 2-year-old had apparently been snatched right out of the arms of his helpless mother as she was walking on the street. Two helmet-wearing assailants approached the woman on motorcycles, intimidated her, and then rode away with her child. When police arrived on the scene, they started questioning the woman about what had gone down, and locating the minor became the biggest priority. It didn’t take long before someone reported the presence of a child fitting the kidnapping victim’s description in a Caribe Verde apartment. A police team burst into the apartment, only instead of masked assailants, they found the boy in the care of a friend of his mother’s…

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Every year, in late autumn, thousands of people flock to Bangye–ri, a village in Gyeongsang, South Korea, to witness the beauty of a majestic 860-year-old ginkgo biloba tree.

The secular Wonju Bangye-ri Ginkgo Tree is a national monument of South Korea famous for its impressive crown which currently covers a perimeter of around 17 meters. At around 32 meters tall (104ft), it is not even the Asian country’s tallest ginkgo tree, but the way its branches are spread out makes it one of the most visually impressive trees on Earth. In South Korea, the Bangye-ri Ginkgo Tree is often called the world’s most beautiful tree.

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Safety Shot, a new blood alcohol detox drink set to launch later this year, promises to reduce blood alcohol content in less than an hour after consumption and make hangovers a thing of the past.

The global market for hangover cures is growing faster than ever, with experts predicting that it will exceed $6 billion by 2030. A fast-growing market usually means cutthroat competition, and that is certainly the case here, with hundreds of startups fighting to establish themselves as major players. One of the most promising companies in the field is Safety Shot (formerly Jupiter Wellness), whose upcoming product, set to launch in Q4 of 2023, has been described as “the biggest disruption in the drink market” to date and “the epitome of beverage innovation”. Its patented formula is said to be able to slash a person’s blood alcohol content in half in just 30 minutes, giving them a general feeling of well-being and reducing the risk of alcohol poisoning and even hangovers.

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