You Can Now Relax by Cuddling a Cow for $75 an Hour

Cow cuddling has been around in Europe for a while, but now a farm in upstate New York is giving Americans the chance to unwind by getting up close and personal with peaceful bovines for just $75 and hour.

Mountain House Farm, a beautiful 33-acre retreat in New York, has been offering wellness sessions with horses to guests for the past nine years, but recently added cow cuddling on the menu as well. Suzanne Vullers, a Netherlands native who runs the farm with her husband, brought two cows back with her from a visit to her home country, after learning about the hearing about the health benefits of cuddling with cows. The practice has really taken off as a form of stress relief therapy in European countries like Switzerland and the Netherlands, and Vullers was surprised that it was relatively unknown in the US. So she brought Bonnie and Bella to join their friendly horses and help visitors relax as part of what Mountain House Farm calls the “Horse & Cow experience”.

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This Famous Vietnamese Villa Has a Tomb in the Middle of the Living Room

From the outside, the famous “Tomb Villa” in the Vietnamese province of Ben Tre looks like an ordinary household, but step foot through the front door and you’ll notice that instead of the usual dining table there is a creepy marble tomb complete with a shrine to the person buried in it.

Living in a mansion with a tomb in the middle of the living room sounds like the plot of a horror movie, but for the inhabitants of the so-called Tomb Villa of Tan Thac Commune it’s everyday life. It sounds unbelievable, and many people still don’t believe it, especially since Vietnamese law clearly states that burials can only be carried out in cemeteries or on the holy ground of churches and temples, but the story of this unique villa has been documented online for over a decade now. It’s an inhabited house with an occupied tomb in the middle of the living room…

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Polish Village Where Boys Are Rarely Born Offers to Reward First Couple to Have a Son

Miejsce Odrzańskie, a small village in southern Poland, near the border with the Czech Republic, is offering to reward the first local family to give birth to a son. None have been born there in the last nine years, and the youngest one that still lives in the village is 12-years-old.

No one knows why, but couples in Miejsce Odrzańskie rarely have boys. Most of the 300 or so inhabitants are women, and locals say it’s been this way for as long as they can remember. Mayor Rajmund Frischko recently told Polish reporters that after checking historical records and reviewing registered birth certificates he can confirmed that rare male births are not just a recent anomaly. He has also pledged to reward the first couple to give birth to a boy.

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Belgian Bar Takes Patrons’ Shoes as Collateral to Prevent Beer Glass Theft

Stealing elaborate beer glasses has become an increasingly popular trend among patrons of Belgian beer bars, so much so that in recent years owners of such establishments have started implementing all sorts of safety measures. For example, one bar in Ghent asks visitors to hand over one of their shoes as collateral.

Belgian beer is famous the world over, so it’s no surprise that tourists flock to beer bars when visiting the European country, but lately many of them have developed a habit of leaving with a souvenir. Philip Maes, owner of The Beer Wall bar in Bruges, said that he loses over 4,000 beer glasses a year, which can get pretty expensive, as many of these glasses are elaborate works of art custom made for his establishment. A beer glass can cost up to 50 euros ($55) so having thousands of them stolen adds up to a significant financial loss. So Maes and other bar owners have implemented security measures to discourage beer glass thefts.

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Thai Restaurant Has Been Serving the Same Batch of Soup for 45 Years

Wattana Panich is a one of the most popular restaurants in Bangkok’s Ekkamai neighborhood, with hundreds of hungry patrons coming in to feast on its selection of delicious soups and stews every day. But the secret of the flavorsome dishes served at this Thai eatery may put a lot of Westerners off.

One of the most popular dishes at Wattana Panich is the rich beef noodle soup, made with stewed and raw beef, tripe, meatballs, internal organs and spices. But the most important ingredient is the broth, which, believe it or not, has been simmering for 45 years. It sounds  strange, but it’s true. Instead of throwing away the leftover broth every night, the owners of Wattana Panich carefully strain it and store it to be used as the base for next day’s batch of soup. They’ve been doing this every day for over four decades and credit it as the main secret to their delicious dishes.

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These Russian Blue Cats Have the Most Mesmerizing Eyes

Xafi and Auri are two feline sisters taking Instagram with their contrasting neat, silver coats and mesmerizing ocean eyes.

Instagram has no shortage of animal superstars, from the angry-looking Pompous Albert, to Ghost, the singing samoyed, but when it comes to the most beautiful turquoise eyes to get lost in, there’s no competing with Xafi and Auri. The so-called “American Type” Russian Blue Cats share the most beautiful eyes you’ve ever seen, rivaled only by those of fellow Instagram stars Iris and Abyss.

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Father Pulls Son Out of School So He Can Focus on Video Games Full Time

In a time when parents around the world are becoming increasingly concerned about how much time their children are spending in front of the computer screen playing popular video games like Fortnite, one Canadian father is sparking controversy for supporting his son’s eSports career, going as far as pulling him out of school so he could dedicate more time to video games.

Dave Herzog, a 49-year-old entrepreneur from Sudbury, Canada, has been “breeding” his son, Jordan, for an eSports career for over a decade. A longtime gamer himself, Dave claims that he put a gaming controller in his son’s hands when he was just three years old, and it didn’t take long for him to show that he had a true gift for gaming. By age 7, he was already a skilled Halo player, and at age 10 he was already dominating local gamers that Dave himself had put him in contact with. But it was when Jordan won his first Halo tournament, which earned him $2,000 worth of gaming apparel, that Dave Herzog realized his son could make a career out of it.

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Ireland’s Most Prolific Petty Criminal Racks Up Conviction Number 648

Jennifer Armstrong, a 44-year-old woman from Ireland, is considered by many the country’s most prolific petty criminal, with a record of 648 convictions.

Armstrong recently made headlines in her home country, after showing up in front of a judge for trying to steal a bottle of wine while intoxicated just two days after being released from a 16-month prison sentence. Among her many past offences, the 44-year-old was convicted for crimes like stealing from and harassing people around Dublin city center, assault and public intoxication. During her latest visit in court, the serial thief asked the judge for “one last chance”, and managed to leave with a suspended six-month sentence.

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Restaurant in Japan Bans Japanese Customers, Only Serves Foreigners

A restaurant owner on Ishigakijima Island, Japan, has had enough of his countrymen’s bad banners, so he banned all Japanese customers, serving only overseas tourists instead.

Yaeyama Style, a small ramen restaurant in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture should be packed this time of year, but owner Akio Arima says he only serves a couple of bowls of ramen on some days. But it’s not that people don’t want eat there, but rather that Arima doesn’t want to serve them, even if it means losing money. Starting this month, he posted a recent notice on the front door of his restaurant letting would-be Japanese patrons know that they are no longer welcome at Yaeyama Style due to their bad manners.

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Tourists Play with Tiny But Deadly Octopus With Enough Venom to Kill 26 People

Two British backpackers fishing in Australia can consider themselves lucky to be alive after stupidly playing with a tiny blue-ringed octopus, whose painless bite can kill up to 26 adults in minutes.

A viral video posted on a Facebook group for backpackers shows daredevils Ross Saunders and Johnpaul Lennon dangling a blue-ringed octopus and letting it touch their skin, completely oblivious to the fact that a single bite could result in a painful death. The two adventurers had been fishing in Australia when they caught the yellow and blue spotted octopus, only instead of keeping it as far away as possible, they decided to play chicken with it, dangling the creature against their bare arms while laughing.

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Company Creates Beanless Coffee with the Full Flavor of the Real Thing, Minus the Bitterness

Most coffee drinkers use cream, milk or sugar to mask the bitterns of the popular morning booster, but one Seattle-based company claims it has engineered a type of “beanless, molecular coffee” that retains  the full flavor of the real thing, but none of its characteristic bitterness.

Atomo is the brainchild of experienced food scientist Jarret Stopforth and entrepreneur Andy Kleitsch. They started out with the idea of optimizing coffee and spent four months in a garage-turned-brewing-lab running green beans, roasted beans and brewed coffee through gas and liquid chromatography in order to identify over 1,000 components in coffee, all the way to molecular level. After analyzing all the essential compounds that gave coffee its natural aroma and flavor, they were able to design their own version, which didn’t include the stuff that gives natural coffee its bitterness.

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Monte Neme – Spain’s Very Own Toxic Maldives

During the same time that a turquoise but toxic lake near the Russian city of Novosibirsk is making international headlines as the “Siberian Maldives“, a similarly dangerous attraction is gaining notoriety in Spain.

During the first and second World Wars, Monte Neme was a prized tungsten mine that supplied the material necessary for making light bulbs and hardening steel. Today, the mine is no longer accessible, but it remains popular, albeit for a totally different reason. Galician influencers have discovered that the turquoise lake that now covers the flooded mine is the ideal location for spectacular selfies. Despite knowing that the alluring water contains a high concentration of chemicals that give it its unusual color, they flock to Monte Neme to take photos, and some even bathe in the toxic water.

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The Siberian Maldives – An Alluring But Dangerous Tourist Attraction

Russian Instagram users in search of the perfect selfie have been flocking to a lake near the Siberian city of Novosibirsk that boasts turquoise water and white sandy beaches similar to those in the Maldives. But unlike the popular Indian Ocean archipelago, there is nothing natural about its beauty.

Dubbed the “Siberian Maldives” or “Novosibirsk Maldives”, the gorgeous lake is actually a man-made toxic dump used to dump ash from a nearby coal plant. The water apparently gets its bright turquoise color from its depth and the calcium salts and other metal oxides dissolved in it. Alluring as it may seem at first glance, the Siberian Generating Company (SGC) warns that its ash-dumping pond has a high pH of more than 8 and cause an allergic allergic reaction in contact with human skin. That hasn’t stopped people from posing for photos on the lake’s beaches and even venturing on the water on paddle boards and inflatable unicorns.

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Teen Decides He Wants a Lemur for a Pet, Steals One from Zoo

It’s not unusual for zoo visitors to leave with a stuffed animal as a souvenir, but one Los Angeles teen decided he wanted something better than that, so he stole North America’s oldest-living ring-tailed lemur.

After committing almost three dozen burglaries in the last few years, it’s safe to say that 19-year-old Aquinas Kasbar was used to just taking things that didn’t belong to him. So when he laid eyes on Isaac, a 32-year-old endangered lemur at the Santa Ana Zoo last year and decided he wanted it for a pet, he knew exactly what he had to do. On July 27, 2018 Kasbar reportedly snuck into the zoo after hours and used bolt cutters to cut a hole in the enclosure for lemurs and Capuchin monkeys to get to his prize. Several animals escaped in the chaos, but the teen managed to capture and run away with Isaac.

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World’s Hottest Gummy Bear Is 900 Times Hotter Than a Jalapeno Pepper

It may be cute and tiny, but Lil’ Nitro is no joke. Sporting a Scoville rating reashing well into the millions of units, this chewy treat is 900 times hotter than a Jalapeno, making it the world’s hottest gummy bear.

After the world’s hottest lollipop and world’s hottest candy, the devious minds at Flamethrower Candy have created the world’s hottest gummy bear. Don’t be deceived by its cute and appealing appearance, as this little guy is holding a dynamite stick for a reason. It’s made with a special chili pepper extract that’s 900 times hotter than a Jalapeno pepper, and several times hotter than the Carolina Reaper, Dragon’s Breath and Pepper X, which are generally regarded as the hottest peppers on the planet.

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