Correction: A previous version of this article stated that the name of Maruyama’s boyfriend was Li Huayu, and that the girl still lost her memory every day, when in reality this only occurred only in the first two months after her accident.  

The touching love story between an amnesia sufferer whose memory was wiped clean every morning and the loyal boyfriend who makes her fall in love with him every day has touched the hearts of millions in Japan.

“50 First Dates”, a 2004 romantic comedy starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, tells the story of a young woman whose short term memory was affected by a car crash. Every morning, her memory resets to the day of the accident, but that doesn’t deter Sandler’s character from making their relationship work, even if it means making her fall in love with him every day. It’s one of the best romantic comedies of all times, in my opinion, but I never imagined that such a love story could exist in real life. Well, a Japanese couple reportedly lived their very own “50 First Dates” romance for to months.

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Most people would never use a tissue that someone else sneezed in, let alone pay $80 for one, but one Los Angeles startup claims to have already sold close to a thousand sneeze-filled tissues to people who want to catch a cold virus now so they don’t get sick with the same cold later. Does that make any sense?

Vaev bills itself a “wellness brand” although technically it’s helping people get sick by selling them tissues that complete strangers sick with the cold have allegedly sneezed into. But who in their right mind would pay $79.99 on a germ-contaminated used tissue? Well, that would be “open-minded people” who appreciate the luxury of being able to get sick “on their own terms”. Vaev founder Oliver Niessen, 34, claims that these expensive used tissues should be viewed as alternatives to conventional medicine, in that they allow you to purposely catch a cold whenever you want, in order to decrease the risk of catching that same cold at a later date. It’s basically all about choice and getting “sick on your own terms”.

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Unscooped dog poo is a problem in most urban communities around the world, but one company is offering an advanced scientific solution to crack down on offenders – testing the poo for DNA and comparing it against a database of registered community pets to track down their owners.

Lazy dog owners who don’t clean up after their pets are a bane on any community, but catching them in the act or finding proof that a certain person is to blame can be very difficult. Or at least it used to be until BioVet Laboratories launched their PooPrints service, which allows housing complexes to test unscooped poo and compare the results against a database of genetic material from dogs who live in that community. Offending owners are then tracked down and fined up to $250. BioVet Laboratories are currently working with over 3,000 housing complexes in the US, Canada and the UK.

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With her expressive eyes, flawless skin, luscious lips and perfect hair, it’s easy to see why people can’t stop gushing over Japanese model Imma. But one thing most people don’t realize is that she’s not a real person.

Imma, whose name is inspired by the Japanese word ima 今 (meaning “now”), is the product of some truly insane CG modeling, but that hasn’t stopped her from becoming an Instagram sensation. At the time of this writing, Imma had over 15,000 followers on the popular social network, more than double what she had just three days ago, when photos of her went viral on Japanese social media. Her bio description makes it very clear that Imma is a virtual model, but even so, she looks so real it’s hard to believe she’s not an actual person.

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A young Alabama vet student was recently arrested for allegedly pulling off one of the sickest scams imaginable. She took older horses from their owners, promising that they would live out the rest of their lives in a sanctuary, but later sold them to be slaughtered.

24-year-old Fallon Blackwood used her educational background as a veterinary student to gain the trust of horse owners who could no longer take care of their older animals. She told several of her victims that she owned an 18-acre farm in Boaz, Alabama, where she could look after the elderly horses, but only if they willingly placed them in her care, as she didn’t have the money to buy them. After taking the horses off their owners’ hands, Blackwood allegedly sold them to kill-buyers to be shipped to Mexican slaughterhouses. The third-year vet student is believed to be responsible for the disappearance of nearly 50 horses.

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Researchers at the University of South Australia claim to have discovered clay materials in a certain type of dirt, which, if consumed with an evening meal can help soak up fat droplets from the gut.

Obesity costs the global economy an estimated $2 trillion every year, and countries around the world spend even more trying to prevent it, but a recently-published Australian study suggests that finding a cure to this modern-day epidemic could be as easy as dirt, literally. Researchers led by PhD candidate Tahnee Dening were investigating how clay materials can improve drug delivery when they discovered that one of the materials she was testing had the remarkable ability to soak up fat droplets in the gut. The serendipitous discovery immediately signalled Denning that they were on to something big, maybe even a cure for obesity.

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A Chinese woman recently made the news after being diagnosed with a very rare form of hearing loss which leaves sufferers unable to hear low frequency sounds, like men’s voices.

The woman from Xiamen, on China’s east coast, knew something was wrong when she woke up one morning and realized that she couldn’t hear anything her boyfriend said. She had been suffering from nausea and ringing in her ears the night before, but figured that a good night sleep would make everything better, so she went to bed. But when she woke up the next morning, she was shocked by the realization that she couldn’t hear a word the man beside her was saying. The woman, known only as Ms. Chen, was rushed to a local hospital where an ear, nose and throat specialist diagnosed her with a rare condition known as reverse-slope hearing loss.

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Sixteen brave runners recently gathered in the Russian village of Oymyakon, also known as the world’s pole of cold,  to compete in the coldest official race in history.

Oymyakon is the coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth, with temperatures constantly dropping to under -50 degrees Celsius in winter time. This place is so cold that a person’s unprotected face can suffer frostbite in a matter of seconds, and sometimes the mercury in thermometers freezes. Oymyakon can barely be called inhabitable, let alone suitable for a marathon, and yet at the beginning of this year, 16 runners gathered here to take part in a series of extreme races.

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A German pastor thinks he may have found a an effective way to approach the men in his community and it involves one of his greatest passions, whisky.

53-year-old Thomas Eschenbacher, a Franconian pastor from Hammelburg, in Bavaria, has long been looking for ways to approach men and talk to them about God and the Christian faith. It’s not the easiest thing to do, especially in this day in age, but Eschenbacher thinks whisky may just be the solution to his problem. A big fan of the Scottish spirit, the pastor noticed how easy it was to start a conversation about whisky during a leisurely whiskey tasting evening with friends, and decided to use the same catalyst to get through to men in matters of religion. He  recently announced that he was organizing a “whisky retreat” for men and all the 30 available spots were sold out almost instantly.

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Netherlands-based startup SpaceLife Origin wants to send a pregnant woman 250 miles above the Earth to give birth to the first extraterrestrial baby in history, in the name of science.

Should our planet ever become unable to sustain human life, our species’ only hope would be to leave and settle elsewhere, be it a haven floating through space or another planet. But in order for this exodus to be a success, we first have to learn how to reproduce in space, and the founders of SpaceLife Origin want to get the ball rolling by sending a pregnant woman into space and having her give birth in zero gravity conditions. It sounds like a crazy idea, especially since humanity is a long way from becoming a spacefaring species, but SpaceLife Origin believes that our long-term survival depends on it.

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How long do you reckon you could last in solitary confinement and total darkness? How about for a prize of $100,000? One daring poker player bet his friend that he could spend at least 30 days in such extreme conditions and underwent a high stakes 30-day experiment to prove it.

It all started last fall, as a friendly discussion between friends. Australian poker player Rory Young asked his buddy and fellow poker enthusiast Rich Alati how long he thought he could last in a small, dark room without any human interaction. Alati’s answer of 30 days seemed unrealistic to Young, and from there the stage for an unusual “prop bet” was set. Prop bets are designed to test the mental toughness of card players away from the poker table, and usually have very high stakes. This one was no different, with both players depositing $100,000 of their own money in an escrow account and agreeing to pay the other side if they lost the bet. Alati stood to win $100,000 if he managed to spend a full month isolated in a small, dark room, and Young would pocket the same amount if his friend quit before the deadline. The game was on!

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S Legend, a red and white Koi Carp bred in Japan became the most expensive live fish ever sold, after fetching a mind-blowing price of 203 million yen ($1.8 million), more than $1.3 million more than the previous record.

The 101cm-long Koi Carp from the highly-regarded Kohaku variety was bought by a collector from Japan after a fierce bidding war  at the Saki Fish farm in the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The female carp won first prize at the prestigious All Japan Koi Show last year, and is expected to bag her second title this year, which greatly increased collectors’ interest. Fans and collectors of Koi carp are now expected to travel from all over the world to catch a glimpse of the most expensive fish ever sold.

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You know you have a serious pollution problem when you have to paint the snow white just to hide the soot and ash covering it. Authorities in Mysky, a town in the Siberian region of Kemerovo, have come under fire after covering a children’s snow slide in white paint to make the coal dust from the nearby quarries less noticeable.

Russian media started reporting about the painted snow situation in Mysky a couple of days ago, after a local resident posted video evidence on YouTube. In the now viral video, Svetlana Zelenina demonstrates how merely touching the snow slide with her hands leaves her fingers covered in a sticky white substance, which she believes to be water-based paint. She adds that parents whose children had used the slide reported that it left them looking like “Indians wearing war paint”.

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Doctors at Dell Children’s Medical Center in Austin have been stunned by the unexpected recovery of an 11-year-old girl whose inoperable brain tumor miraculously disappeared.

Earlier this year, Roxli Doss was diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), a rare and extremely aggressive brain tumor with a very low survival rate. It was well-incorporated into her brain stem, making it impossible to remove surgically, so the doctors told the girld’s parents to make the most of the time they had left with her. However, they also decided to try radiation therapy, as it had been shown to extend a patient’s life by three to six months. Radiation isn’t a cure; in fact DIPG is an incurable condition , so therefore the diagnostic is considered terminal. But in Roxli’s case, the treatment literally worked wonders. After six weeks of radiation, an MRI showed almost no signs that the tumor ever existed.

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It turns out that smelling your own socks is not only gross but potentially deadly. A Chinese man was recently hospitalized with a severe pulmonary fungal infection, which he allegedly developed by constantly sniffing his used socks.

When he was brought in to the No 909 Hospital in Zhangzhou, China’s Fujian Province, the 37-year-old man, surnamed Peng, complained of chest pain and frequent coughing. An X-ray showed that he was suffering from a severe lung infection, and subsequent tests revealed that it had been caused by a bacteria typically found in used footwear. After being questioned by his doctors, Peng admitted that he had long developed a habit of sniffing his dirty socks every day after coming home from work, before throwing them in the laundry basket.

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