15-year-old New Yorker Noa Mintz is one of the youngest people in the world to own a successful start-up. The teen entrepreneur is the founder of ‘Nannies by Noa’, a popular baby sitting agency that she started after a number of bad personal experiences with babysitters, but because she is still in school she needed someone to handle business for her. So she just hired a CEO.

Although Mintz agency was doing well, she simply couldn’t find time to handle the ‘excruciating hours’ and ‘hundreds of emails’ along with homework. So she decided to delegate the responsibility of running the business, and her decision has paid off. The agency now serves almost 200 clients in the tri-state area, providing them with baby sitters as well as full-time nannies.

It all started three years ago, when Mintz, a sixth-grader, spent the first half of her summer vacation interning at a nonprofit. Subsequently, she spent the second half brainstorming for her nanny agency. It stemmed from the fact that Mintz, the eldest of four, always found flaws with her own babysitters. She realized that there must be a better way of pairing families with the right caregivers. “For what you’re paying, your kids should be more stimulated,” she explained. “At seven, I would tell my mom, ‘You need to get more bang for your buck.’ It would drive me insane.” So Mintz accepted a challenge from her mother to find a better babysitter for their family, and succeeded. Soon, she started helping out her mother’s friends too.

Read More »

A couple of Australian men claim to possess the world’s oldest burger – a 20-year-old quarter pounder with cheese that still looks remarkably edible!

Eduard Neetz and Casey Dean purchased the burger from a McDonald’s outlet in Adelaide when they were 13 and 14 years old respectively. They were out buying food for a party, when they decided to pick up an extra burger for their friend Jono, who never showed up. “It started off as a joke, you know we told our friend we’d hold his burger for him but he never turned up and before we knew it six months had passed,” Casey said. “The months became years and now, 20 years later, it looks the same as the day we bought it, perfectly preserved in its original wrapping.”

Read More »

Kristen Alyce is an eco-conscious designer who converts all kinds of trash, like discarded drink cartons, leaflets and concert tickets, into fashionable outfits for women. Her quirky designs include all sorts of clothing – right from cocktail dresses to floor length gowns, made under her label ‘Garbage Gone Glam’.

Kristen said that she started dreaming about recycling garbage into garments when she was still in college, after realizing just how much trash we humans produce every single day. “I realized as a college student living with three girls, we created so much waste it was incredible,” she said. “So I started saving the mass amounts of plastic bags, magazines, boxes and packaging we went through on a daily basis.”

Read More »

Although the Angulo siblings grew up in New York, they had no idea what the city was like for almost 14 years. They spent their entire childhood confined to their parents’ four bedroom apartment, learning about the outside world solely through films. Their story is now the subject of The Wolfpack, a documentary made by filmmaker Crystal Moselle.

The siblings – Bhagavan, 23, twins Govinda and Narayana, 22, Mukunda, 20, Krisna, 18, Jagadesh, 17, and their sister Visnu – were kept indoors by their father Oscar, a Peruvian immigrant and Hare Krishna devotee. He was apparently convinced that the outside world would corrupt his children and kept the front door locked at all times. But after 14 long years, one of the brothers managed to escape, paving the way for his siblings to break free.

It was during one of those rare escapes in 2010 that Moselle spotted the six Angulo brothers on First Avenue – they were all walking in a ‘pack’, wearing sunglasses, inspired by their favorite film Reservoir Dogs. “It almost felt as if I had discovered a long lost tribe, except that it was not from the edges of the world but from the streets of Manhattan,” Moselle said.

Read More »

Lauren Singer is a sustainability-conscious entrepreneur who has produced almost no waste in the past two years, proving that a trash-free lifestyle is indeed possible.

Lauren majored in environmental science at NYU, and it was during her student years that she began working towards a ‘Zero Waste’ goal. Today, the New Yorker does several things on a daily basis to reduce waste, including making her own toothpaste, deodorant and laundry detergent. She also founded her own eco-friendly company, ‘The Simply Co’, through which she plans to sell her homemade products.

Lauren regularly writes about her experiences of a Zero Waste life on her blog ‘Trash is for Tossers’. “There were two moments that brought me to a trash-free, waste-free lifestyle,” she revealed. “The first was my senior year of college when my professor Jeffrey Hollender emphasized the importance of living of living your values, and made me think about my own personal environmental impact.”

Read More »

In the the past 40 years, New Jersey resident Bill Bresnan has written over 10,000 love letters, notes and cards to his wife Kirsten – that’s almost one for each night of their marriage. The couple’s unique love story was recently covered by the media, and Bill and Kirsten, both 74, spoke about the secrets of their successful marriage.

The couple met when Bill was teaching a class back in 1974, and Kirsten happened to be his student. “She was this beautiful Northern European woman who struck me like a bolt of lightning,” Bill said in an interview with ABC News.

“Not long after meeting in class Kirsten and I began commuting to and from Long Island, together, on the Long Island Railroad.” And that’s when the practice of writing notes began. “We exchanged notes, drawings, and little scribblings on paper napkins over coffee on the train.”

Read More »

This little girl from Huzhu, China’s Sichuan Province, looks like an ordinary preschooler. Except she is actually 19 years old! Zeng Yushan apparently suffers from a rare medical condition that caused her to stop growing at the age of seven.

When she was seven years old, Zeng was diagnosed with a tumor on her pituitary gland, which caused a deficiency in growth hormones. While the condition is treatable, her parents unfortunately couldn’t afford it. Instead, they fought bitterly and divorced, leaving Zeng in the care of her father Yul Wei.

Shortly after the divorce, Yul was also diagnosed with a serious illness. Unable to pay for either of their medical bills, the father and daughter duo were forced to beg on the streets. They frequently traveled from their home to the cities of Zigong, Chengdu, and Guiyang, in the hope that Zeng’s unusual appearance would earn them some cash.

Read More »

A mysterious mummified monk found almost perfectly preserved in a lotus position last month is causing controversy after a well-known Buddhism expert claimed he isn’t actually dead but in a deep meditative trance.

Interestingly, the monk came to the attention of the authorities after a man was attempting to sell him on the black market in the Songinokhairkhan province of Mongolia. Mongolian police have arrested the man, and the mummy is now being guarded at the National Center of Forensic Expertise at Ulaanbaatar. They believe that the man might have stolen the mummy from another part of the country – a cave in the Kobdsk region – and then hid it in his home. Scientists are currently conducting forensic examinations on the 200-year-old mummy that was found wrapped in cattle skins. They are trying to determine how the body was so well-preserved, although they do suspect that the nation’s cold weather could have played a part. Read More »

With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, lots of single people are probably dreading an onrush of uncomfortable questions from parents and other nosy relatives. Thankfully, there’s a new app called the ‘Invisible Boyfriend’ that could help them get through the awkward situation with ease.

The genius app, which recently went from private to public beta, allows users to pay for “believable social proof” that they’re actually in a relationship. The app generates everything that would exist in a real-life relationship, like photos, text messages, and even voicemails – all fake, but realistic.  “It really helps people tell a better story about a relationship they’re not in,” said Matthew Homann, who created the app along with Kyle Tabor. 

He revealed that he first purchased the domains ‘invisibleboyfriend’ and ‘invisiblegirlfriend’ nine years ago, just after a divorce. He didn’t do much with them for a long time, but at a 2013 Startup Weekend in St. Louis, he decided to pitch the idea. Matthew and his team won first place, after which there was no looking back. 

Read More »

‘Instabreasts’ is a revolutionary new procedure that gives women the chance to temporarily experience the effects of breast augmentation before deciding whether to go for permanent implants. Offered by New York plastic surgeon Dr. Norman Rowe, the procedure involves injecting saline solution right into the breast.

“I don’t think there is any way currently available other than the Instabreast to give a patient an adequate representation of what a breast implant would feel inside of the body,” Dr. Rowe explained. The procedure is rather simple – he inserts a needle directly through the areola and injects about eight ounces of saline into each breast.

Read More »

If you’ve been complaining about having to drive long hours to and from work, wait till you hear about this Detroit worker’s commute. For the past 10 years, James Robertson has been walking 21 miles a day, just to get to work. What’s even more remarkable is that he hasn’t missed a single day of work so far.

For five days a week, 56-year-old Robertson walks from his home in Detroit to the factory where he works in Rochester Hills, Michigan. He began the arduous commute ever since his 1988 Honda Accord conked out over 10 years ago. He claims that his $10.55-an-hour wage is not sufficient for him to buy another car, and there’s no decent bus service either. So he just covers the 21-mile round trip to and from work on foot.

“I set our attendance standard by this man,” said Robertson’s boss Todd Wilson, a plant manager at Schain Mold & Engineering. “I say, if this man can get here, walking all those miles through snow and rain, well, I’ll tell you, I have people in Pontiac 10 minutes away and they say they can’t get here. He’s never missed. I’ve seen him come in here wringing wet.”

Read More »

While a lot of women resort to expensive plastic surgery to get rid of wrinkles, this woman just decided to nip the problem in the bud by not smiling. Believe it or not, 50-year-old Tess Christian claims she hasn’t smiled, laughed or giggled in the past 40 years!

Although Tess insists that she has a sense of humor, she said that she made a conscious decision not to laugh or smile – not even when her daughter was born – in order to maintain her youthful appearance. Admittedly, the technique seems to have worked in her favor.

“I don’t have wrinkles because I have trained myself to control my facial muscles,” she said. “Everyone asks if I’ve had Botox, but I haven’t, and I know that it’s thanks to the fact that I haven’t laughed or smiled since I was a teenager. My dedication has paid off, I don’t have a single line on my face.”

Read More »

When 27-year-old business school graduate Mason Wartman quit his Wall Street job to sell $1 pizza slices, to many of his friends it seemed like the anticlimax of a brilliant career. But the man was simply trying to achieve a different sort of greatness with his no-frills pizza shop, Rosa’s Fresh Pizza, in Philadelphia’s Center City. In the past one year, the shop has served 8,500 free slices of pizza to homeless people, by harnessing the generosity of its patrons.

The shop operates by a ‘pay it forward’ system – customers who walk in to buy pizza can also sponsor a slice for a homeless person. In this way, about 30 to 40 homeless people are able to eat for free at Rosa’s every single day.

Even before the pay-it-forward scheme was implemented, Rosa’s Pizza, which is located on an almost vacant block, used to always give away free slices to hungry homeless people in the neighborhood. But one day last March, a customer asked if he could pay for the next homeless person who walked in. Wartman immediately agreed, and then put up a sticky note on the wall, just to keep track of the pre-paid slice.

Read More »

Most of the 200-odd residents of the Alaskan town of Whittier all live in the same 14-story condominium – Begich Towers – located on the edge of town. The former Army barracks is often described as a ‘vertical town’ with walls so thin that keeping secrets is simply out of the question.

Apart from residential apartments, the one-of-a-kind settlement also houses a police station, a health clinic, a convenience store, a laundromat, and a church in the basement. It really is inconceivable how missionaries, bartenders, city council members, policemen, and even drug dealers can co-exist in the same building, share the same facilities, and ride in the same elevator.

As eccentric as this living arrangement sounds, it really does seem to work out for the residents of Whittier, mainly because of its size and the weather conditions. The town is rather inaccessible – you can only get there by sea, or take a long, one-lane tunnel through the mountains, which only runs one way at any given time. At night, the tunnel is closed completely.

Read More »

An employee of India’s Central Public Works Department (CPWD) has been found guilty of ‘wilful absence of duty’ – believe it or not – for the past 24 years! Assistant executive engineer A.K. Verma went off sick from work one morning in 1990, and he simply never returned.

“He went on seeking extension of leave, which was not sanctioned, and defied directions to report to work,” the department told the media last Thursday. Verma is said to have joined the CPWD in 1980, and risen to the rank of executive engineer in 1990.

Although he came under investigation in 1992, he was only fired this month. Formal proceedings to dismiss him did not start until 2007, and it took seven more years for the department to actually reach a decision to sack him. Ultimately, Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu ordered his dismissal, in order to ‘streamline the functioning of the CPWD and to ensure accountability’.

Read More »