The ancient ruins of Baiae, near the modern city of Bacoli, in Italy are home to a botanical oddity known as the upside-down fig tree.

Looking at the tenacious tree growing out of the ceiling of an ancient Roman archway, it’s easy to see why it’s called the upside-down tree. It is literally inverted, growing toward the ground, which is quite rare. No one knows exactly how the fig tree ended up there, or how long it has been growing for, but one thing is for sure –  despite its bizarre location, the fig tree if Baia is growing stronger every year, and sometimes it even bears fruit.

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Kyawthuite is a transparent reddish-orange mineral of which only a single, tiny sample exists – an 0.3-gram gem – making it the rarest mineral in the world, by far.

There are around 6,000 minerals recognized by the International Mineralogical Association, and while many of them are classified as ‘rare’, none of them rival kyawthuite in terms of rarity. Named after Dr. Kyaw Thu, a Burmese mineralogist-petrologist-gemologist, this incredibly rare mineral was discovered in the bed of a stream in Myanmar’s Mogok region by sapphire hunters and recognized by the International Mineralogical Society in 2015. The only sample ever discovered weighs just 1.61 carats (0.3 grams) and is in the custody of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.

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A Russian man was recently arrested after allegedly being tricked into throwing a Molotov Cocktail in a Moscow bank by scammers who also relieved him of his life savings.

A few days ago, Moscow police arrested a 48-year-old man from Ruza, a town in the Moscow region of Russia, for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail in a Sberbank branch in the Russian capital. Bank employees were able to put out the flames before the firefighters arrived on the scene and police quickly identified and detained the perpetrator. But this was far from an open-shut case; the more the suspect tried to explain, the crazier his story got, and by the end, investigators didn’t know whether to throw the book at the guy or just feel sorry for him…

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A young dog believed to have been abandoned in the Nevada Desert as a puppy was recently rescued after spending at least six months as part of a coyote pack.

The people of Inspirada, a suburban neighborhood of Henderson, Nevada are used to seeing packs of coyotes running through the streets at night, but for the past couple of months, many of them have been reporting something strange. Apparently, a white dog was running with a pack of these wild predators, scavenging for food, playing in the moonlight and running away as soon as someone tried to approach him. Some called him the Coyote Dog, but he became more famous as Ghost, both for his white coat and his ability to disappear as soon as someone tried to catch him.

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Ethiopian-born artist Natnael Mekuria specializes in stunning celebrity portraits cracked into panes of glass using only a chisel and hammer.

22-year-old Natnael Mekuria discovered cracked glass art during the Covid-19 pandemic, but mastering the unusual art form took a lot of time and patience. In the beginning, he lacked the hand control necessary to keep the glass canvas from shattering, so he would spend hours chiseling at it only to have it break into pieces before finishing. But he didn’t give up, and today he is able to turn simple panes of laminated glass into beautiful works of art. He still spends hours on end painstakingly chiseling at the glass, but the end results are much different than when he first started.

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A former zoo director in the Mexican city of Chilpancingo has been officially accused of a series of wrongdoings during his time in office, including cooking pigmy goats for a staff party.

José Rubén Nava Noriega is probably a prime candidate for the title of the world’s worst zoo director. During his time managing the local zoo in the city of Chilpancingo, Noriega allegedly sold animals illegally, failed to properly record animal births and deaths, somehow lost several animals, and, probably most shocking of all, he slaughtered and cooked four out of the zoo’s ten pigmy goats for a New Year’s staff feast.

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MSCHF, an art collective specializing in unique and controversial products, has announced a new perfume inspired by the world’s most popular lubricant spray – WD40.

The versatility of WD40 is the stuff of legend. You can use it as a water displacer, to loosen nuts and bolts, fix squeaky hinges, prevent rust and keep mechanisms lubricated. The manufacturer of this legendary product lists over 2,000 applications for it, but body perfume is sadly not among them. In fact, the company specifically warns against applying their WD40 lubricant on the skin, but if you like the way it smells that much, you no longer need to risk your health, because the WD perfume is finally here!

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A Venezuelan artist and social media influencer recently generated controversy online by letting himself be permanently tattooed by a small monkey.

Funky Matas is no stranger to tattoos. In fact, he holds a Guinness Record for the most signatures tattooed on his back, over 220 of them, but his latest stunt can be described as unusual, even for him. News outlets across South America have been reporting that the Venezuelan-born influencer trained a small monkey to handle a tattoo gun and then let himself be tattooed by the animal in what is considered a first-of-its-kind experiment.

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A California pest control company recently reported one of the most unusual cases it has ever worked on – a woodpecker filling the walls of a house with over 700 lbs (317 kg) of acorns.

Nick Castro of Nick’s Extreme Pest Control, a pest control company in California, thought he had seen it all in his 20+ years in the business, but even he was shocked by one of his most recent finds. Last month, Castro was commissioned by a California family to fix the “work” of a persistent woodpecker that kept pecking holes in the outer walls of their house and filling them with acorns. The woodpecker didn’t account for the empty space between the wall layers, so the acorns he kept bringing in didn’t stay put; instead, they fell to the bottom of the walls and eventually started coming out of various orifices inside. Nick knew he would find a few acorns if he searched well enough, but nowhere near the massive pile he ended up with…

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A 22-year-old assistant basketball coach lost her job with a Virginia high school after she reportedly impersonated a 13-year-old girl during an official game.

Arlisha Boykins, an assistant for the Churchland H.S. Truckers in Virginia, recently made international news headlines after it was reported that she impersonated a 13-year-old player who was out of time for another tournament in a league game. Footage that went viral last week shows 22-year-old Boykins driving the lane for a layup, blocking the other team’s players, and shooting free throws against Nansemond River in a Virginia High School League (VHSL) game. Both Boykins and the head coach, who allegedly “encouraged such behavior” have been fired.

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A Chinese man was shocked to find two human teeth embedded in his face days after accidentally colliding with another person during a basketball game.

The unnamed man was reportedly back in his home city of Dongguan, China’s Guangdong Province, for the Lunar New Year, when he was invited to a basketball game by some childhood friends. At one point while trying to recover a rebound, the man collided with another player; at first, he thought the man’s chin had hit the left side of his head, right above the eye, but then he saw the other guy bleeding from his mouth and saying that he had lost two of his teeth. While he went to wash the blood pouring from his wound, everyone else was busy looking for the other player’s teeth, but they were nowhere to be found…

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Begging is reportedly going digital in Indonesia, with street beggars posting clips on TikTok asking for virtual gifts instead of actually going out on the street.

TikTok begging has reportedly become such a widespread phenomenon in Indonesia that the Government has been forced to step in to reign it in. The Asian country’s social minister has asked her staff to increase efforts of preventing begging, both online and offline, and Muslim groups have appealed to the general public in an attempt to stop “begging and asking for free goods and money,” which they claim “demean human honor” and are forbidden in Islam. However, there is little they can do against the wave of beggars enticed by TikTok’s gift-offering features, which allow them to exchange virtual gifts for real money.

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A young German woman stands accused of premeditated murder after allegedly seeking out a doppelganger on social media and then brutally killing her in order to stage her own death.

When police in Ingolstadt, Germany’s Bavaria region, received calls about a dead woman in the car abandoned on the banks of the Danube river, they had no idea they were about to get involved in one of the most shocking murder cases in the country’s history. The body of a disfigured young woman was discovered on 16 August 2022 by an Iraqi-born couple who immediately believed it was their 23-year-old daughter, Sharaban. The body was found in their daughter’s Mercedes and despite the severe injuries to her face, she had the same general features and the same hair. However, a thorough autopsy soon proved that the body belonged to an Algerian beauty blogger, also 23, from the neighboring state of Baden-Württemberg…

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Nigerian artist Alex Peter Idoko uses fire, razorblades and sandpaper to create stunningly-realistic portraits that look more like sepia-toned photos.

Pyrography, or painting with fire, is an intriguing art form that involves the decoration of a wooden canvas with burn marks resulting from a controlled flame or heated instrument, like a poker. It’s a less forgiving art than traditional painting, as mistakes are much harder to fix or hide due to the destructive nature of fire. However, some artists control the unusual medium so well that they can create photo-quality artworks that are almost indistinguishable to the naked eye.

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A Taiwanese man was sentenced to two months in jail and fined 3.04 million New Taiwan dollars ($91,350) after his large parrot allegedly caused a jogger to fall and hurt himself.

The bizarre incident reportedly took place in Tainan, when a man surnamed Huang took his two pet macaws for a flight in a local park where people often go to exercise. One of the large birds allegedly landed on the back of a jogger and started flapping its wings vigorously, frightening the man and causing him to fall. The nasty fall caused the man to dislocate his hip joint and fracture his pelvis, both of which required hospitalization and a long recovery period. He ended up suing the parrot owner for damages.

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