The aptly-named R/P FLIP is an open ocean research platform that can flip between the horizontal and vertical position at the flip of a button and is often mistaken for a capsizing ship.

Owned by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the FLIP (short for ‘floating instrument platform’) is a 108-meter-long ocean research platform designed to partially flood and pitch backward 90°, leaving only the 17-meter end above water, in a vertical position, with the bulkheads acting as decks. Because most of the ballast for the platform is actually ocean water at depths below the influence of surface waves, the R/P FLIP behaves like a buoy, which means it is virtually immune to wave action. The platform’s hull is designed to resist twisting. After its mission is complete, compressed air is pushed into the large ballast tanks, causing the entire platform to flip back into a horizontal position.

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Sports equipment giant Wilson recently unveiled a 3D-printed basketball prototype that does not need to be inflated and features a see-through lattice design.

Basketball technology has come a long way since the early days of the sport when real stitched leather was used as the main material, but Wilson is trying to change the game completely with an intriguing concept that completely does away with pneumatic pressure. Instead, the Wilson Airless Prototype relies on the elasticity of its “research-grade” polymer material to produce the same bounce as traditional basketballs. This eliminates the need to inflate the ball to a certain pressure, as well as known problems like puncture risks, and air escaping through the inflation valve over long periods of time.

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Most people would go out of their way to avoid ending up behind bars, but one Utah man actually robbed a bank for only $1 just so he could get arrested and thrown into federal prison.

65-year-old Donald Santacroce just pulled off one of the most bizarre bank robberies in history. He reportedly walked into a Wells Fargo Bank near 300 South Main Street in Salt Lake City on Monday morning and handed over a note to one of the tellers. The piece of paper read “Please pardon me for doing this but this is a robbery. Please give me $1.00 Thank you.” The teller must have thought it was a joke, because they complied with Santacroce’s demand, but also asked him to leave with his $1. Only he told them that he had just robbed the bank and that they should probably call the police. He then sat down in the bank lobby and waited to be arrested…

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A mountainous river valley in China’s Hubei province is home to one of the Asian country’s most impressive pieces of infrastructure – a highway bridge that runs through the middle of a river.

Finalized in 2015, China’s ‘river highway’ is widely regarded as an infrastructural wonder.  Designed to link the town of Gufuzhen in Xingshan county to the main highway running between Shanghai and Chengdu in southwestern China, this unique suspended highway doesn’t make much sense at first glance. Why have a massive bridge built in the middle of the Xiangxi River, when you could just have it run alongside it, on land? In fact, there was already a road running along the river, which meant it could obviously be done, so why not build the highway that way? Well, apparently, Chinese engineers decided that a suspended highway running along the middle of the river was not only cheaper to build, but more efficient.

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A father who caught his young son playing video games on his phone at 1 am on a school night punished him by making him play on his phone until he could play no more.

Too much of a good thing becomes harmful or bothersome over a large period of time, and one Chinese boy from Shenzen found this out the hard way a couple of days ago, when his father caught him playing video games on his phone after midnight, despite knowing he had to get up for school the next morning. The parent told the Metropolis Times that he was furious when he found his son playing on his phone when he should have been sound asleep, but he didn’t know how to react at first. He wanted to teach the boy a lesson he wouldn’t easily forget, so instead of scolding the boy he just told him that he could play on his phone instead of sleeping, adding that he could even take a day off from school so he could play some more.

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Covering an area as big as five football fields and selling over 100,000 products in 25 different departments, Gekås Ullared is not only the largest department store in the world, but Sweden’s most popular tourist attraction by a large margin.

Ullared, a small, unassuming town in the south of Sweden is home to about 800 people, according to the country’s most recent census. It’s really not the most beautiful place to visit in the Scandinavian country, and yet thousands of people from all over the world flock to Ullared every single day. It’s all because of Gekås Ullared the world-famous department store founded in 1963 by entrepreneur Göran Karlsson, which currently holds the record for the largest department store in the world. It has a total of 2,000 employees and can accommodate up to 5,500 shoppers at the same time.

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In order to prevent his drunken son from getting behind the wheel of his BMW and possibly causing an accident, a Spanish man vandalized the vehicle, smashing the windows and denting its metallic body with a pickaxe.

A father’s love for his children is usually very strong but it can manifest in unusual ways. Take this story of a 60-year-old man from Logroño, Spain, who went to extreme lengths to make sure that his inebriated son doesn’t get behind the wheel of his black BMW and potentially cause a tragedy. Last week, local police received calls about a man vandalizing a vehicle parked on a public road in Logroño by smashing it with a pickaxe. A squad driving toward the reported location of the incident, noticed a white van fleeing the scene and managed to pull it over. Inside were an elderly man and a visibly drunk younger passenger.

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Balakrishnan Palayi, an Indian man from Kasaragod, claims to have eaten nothing but coconut for the last 28 years in order to treat his gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).

Imagine eating only one thing for over two decades. As a foodie with access to so many delicious treats, the mere thought of restricting one’s diet to a single food for a month, let alone 28 years, sounds almost impossible, but one Indian man claims that it has kept him healthy and fit. Balakrishnan Palayi, a man from Chandera in Kasaragod, was diagnosed with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), a condition that caused him to lose all his strength to the point where he could hardly move around. As part of his treatment, he started eating coconut, and he felt so much better that he soon decided it was the only thing he was going to eat moving forward.

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A Spanish court recently ordered a Malaga businessman to pay his ex-wife 204,000 euros “as compensation for unpaid domestic work done in the home” during the 25 years they were married.

A woman who dedicated 25 years of her life to supporting her entrepreneur husband and taking care of their two daughters was recently granted 204,000 ($215,000) in compensation for all her unpaid work. The couple married in June of 1995, when they were in their twenties, and signed a separation of assets the very next month. The document basically stated that each spouse retained exclusive ownership of property acquired during the marriage. This turned out to be a lot more beneficial to the husband, who started multiple businesses, while the wife took care of their two young daughters and did all the domestic work.

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The town of Herringen, in central Germany, is home to a heap of sodium chloride (table salt) so massive that it has come to be known as Monte Kali. It is the world’s largest artificial salt mountain.

The origin of Monte Kali can be traced back to the year 1976, when potash salt started being extracted from mines around the town of Hessen. Back then, potash was used to make products like soap and glass, but today it is an important ingredient in several fertilizers, synthetic rubber, and even some medicines, so extraction intensified over the last few decades. The problem with potash is that mining it generates a lot of sodium chloride as a byproduct, so you need somewhere to store it. The company operating the mines started dumping all this salt a few miles from Herringen, and over the years it created a giant salt mountain locals named Monte Kali or Kalimanjaro (puns for Kalisalz, the German word for ‘potash’).

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An Argentinian teacher must have had the shock of her life when coming to school for the opening day to find a large banner accusing her of sleeping with the married father of one of her students.

The first day of school is usually one full of joy and excitement for both students, teachers and parents, but that was not the case at one Buenos Aires school where the general feeling was one of shock. Parents taking their kids to school and faculty coming to greet them were treated to a rather bizarre sight – large handwritten banner hanging outside the school gates accusing a certain member of the faculty of ‘ruining a family’ by sleeping with one of her student’s father despite knowing that he was married.

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An Indian man recently made national news headlines after filing a police complaint against his own father, accusing him of seducing his wife and eventually eloping with her.

They say all is fair in love and war, and that love is blind, but there is also such a thing as forbidden love. Pawan Vairagi, a worker from India’s Rajasthan state, is accusing his own father of falling in love with his wife and luring her away from him. Vairagi, who hails from a village called Silor, told authorities that he had been spending a lot of time away from his family because of work, which allegedly gave his father the opportunity to spend more time with his wife and seduce her. The pair recently eloped, leaving Pawan’s six-month-old daughter behind.

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The Bodi tribe of southern Ethiopia holds a yearly festival in which the man with the biggest belly is honored and celebrated. To prepare for this big event, the men go on a grueling six-month fattening journey.

Obesity and big bellies are usually seen as banes of modern life that not only have a negative impact on health, but are also considered generally inesthetic. However, in a remote area of Omo Valley, southern Ethiopia, big bellies in men are considered impressive, even attractive. The Bodi, a tribe of agriculturists and cattle herders, celebrate their love of big bellies during a yearly festival called Ka’el, in which the man with the biggest belly is crowned ‘fat man of the year’ and earns the respect of the entire tribe for life. But in order to earn this honor, the men must go on a fattening diet of cow’s milk or yogurt, raw blood, and honey for several months before the festival.

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The Japanese town of Tsuruta is famous for hosting a unique annual competition – a popular game of tug of war in which bald men attach suction cups to their heads and pull in opposite directions.

The Covid-19 pandemic threw a wrench in all aspects of Japanese society, but it’s fair to say that social gatherings and events were among the most impacted. Tsuruta, a town in Japan’s Aomori Prefecture, recently held its annual “Suction Cup Tug-of-War” tournament for the first time in three years, and it was just as fun as people remembered. Thought up by the Tsuruta Hagemasu Association as a way of shedding a positive light on baldness, suction cup tug-of-war is a fun game in which two people sitting opposite from each other attach suction cups connected through a string to their heads and pull. The person whose suction cup detaches first loses.

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They say real life is stranger than fiction and this bizarre Indian love square proves it. After his wife eloped with another man, a scorned husband decided to marry the lover’s wife.

Neeraj and Rubi Devi, both from India’s Bihar state, tied the knot in 2009 and had four children together. At one point, Neeraj learned that his wife was having an affair with another man, named Mukesh, and despite his attempts to have Rubi cut ties with her lover, she ended up eloping with Mukesh last year and later marrying him. Neeraj turned to the elders in his Khagaria District village to hold a ‘panchayat’ (special assembly) and resolve the matter, but Mukesh and Rubi declined to attempt and they have been on the run ever since. But the story doesn’t end here…

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