THOR 24 is a unique big rig often referred to as “the most powerful big rig ever built” because of its horsepower rating (3,974 horsepower) reached through a 24-cylinder engine with 12 superchargers.

Can you imagine the god of thunder in truck form? Me neither, but builder Mike Harrah definitely could and the result is nothing short of insane. The 44-foot-long big rig is powered by two 852 cubic-inch V12 diesel engines and 12 superchargers and requires four drag parachutes to deploy out of the rear bumper to stop when it reaches its peak speed of 130 mph (209 km/h). It apparently took Harrah seven years and thousands of hours to build and cost over $7 million.

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Gambling addiction is a real thing, and in extreme cases, it can create some truly bizarre situations, like people running out of money and gambling themselves away.

An Indian man recently filed a bizarre petition with police in Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh, claiming that his wife and mother of two children had gambled away all their financial savings as well as herself. Apparently, the woman was addicted to a game called Ludo and often played with her landlord while her husband was away working as a migrant. He would send her money regularly, but instead of saving it or buying things for the family, she gambled with the landlord until she lost it all. One day, she became so desperate that she put herself on the line, and, after losing, moved in with the landlord as per their agreement, abandoning the children.

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The JCB Fastrac Two is a stripped-down and performance-enhanced JCB Fastrac tractor capable of reaching speeds of up to 247 km per hour (153.8 mph).

If you’ve ever driven behind a tractor, you probably already know that they are many things, but they certainly aren’t fast. Tractors are built for power, not speed, but what if someone wanted to make a tractor go really fast? Well, a few years ago, a team at English tractor manufacturer JCB set out to do just that and managed to set a new Guinness record for the world’s fastest tractor with a modified version of the company’s Fastrac tractor. Over two two-kilometer runs, it averaged a speed of 135 mph (217.6 km/h) and a peak speed of 153.771 mph (247 km/h).

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An Indian man has gained the admiration of millions of devotees after spending eight years carving over 400 stone steps to a hilltop Hindu temple using only a hammer and chisel.

The Baba Yogeshwar Nath temple in Bihar, Eastern India, was famous among devotees of Lord Shiva, but very difficult to reach because of its location at the top of a steep 1,500-foot hill. Able-bodied people spent hours climbing the hill every day, while the elderly, children and disabled people had virtually no way of reaching it without assistance. Trekking up and down the steep, rocky slopes was risky, and people often injured themselves trying to reach the holy temple. So one day, eight years ago, a local mason decided to make every devotee’s life a little easier by carving stone steps from the bottom of the hill all the way up to the temple.

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A young Chinese woman recently ended up in the hospital with multiple broken ribs after a coughing fit caused by eating spicy food.

If you’ve ever eaten something spicy, you already know that it can cause a bit of coughing. What you probably didn’t know is that in extreme cases, spicy food-induced coughing can actually cause bone fractures. Case in point a Chinese woman from Shanghai, who, because of being too skinny and having poorly-developed musculature, broke no less than four ribs while coughing because of spicy food.

The woman, surnamed Huang, told doctors in her native city of Shanghai that she was eating spicy food which, at one point, caused her to start coughing. During a particularly strained cough, the young woman allegedly heard a sharp crack from her chest area, and immediately began to experience pain when breathing and trying to speak.

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The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement has been trying to convince mankind to go gentle into that good night for over 30 years.

Founded in 1991 by Les U. Knight, an American environmental activist, Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEM) believes that humanity is “incompatible with the biosphere” and that human extinction is the best solution to some of the most pressing environmental issues plaguing our planet. There are already 8 billion of us, and at the rate we’re going, we’re going to render our species extinct anyway, but not before doing so to millions of other species of plants and animals. And if the outcome is going to be the same for us, why not at least save the other species that would actually thrive without us?

Many followers of the VHEM ideology believe that “the worst environmental crime any individual can commit is making more people”. And while that notion may sound preposterous, Les U. Knight and other like-minded people have some arguments to back it up. Apart from our destructive nature in relation to other species and our planet in general, there is also the issue of not being able to look after members of our own species.

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A young Chinese woman who lost an eye in a serious car accident dedicated her life to creating prosthetic eyes that glow different colors.

In 2013, Xia Tong lost one of her eyes in a car accident. She was only 18 at the time, and she had it replaced with a prosthetic eye. Instead of losing confidence in herself and shying away from people because of her appearance, the young woman decided to turn her situation to make herself stand out. After studying to become a prosthetic eye technician (ocularist), Xia Tong started making all sorts of unique prosthetics for herself, which she showed off on social media, slowly building up a loyal following.

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A New York man who bought 300 iPhones from the Apple flagship store on Fifth Avenue was reportedly robbed just moments after walking out of the store.

In a world where basically anything can be ordered online, a man decided to buy 300 iPhones at a physical Apple store in Manhattan at 1:45 in the morning and walk out with a few branded “Apple” bags like it was no big deal. What could go wrong? Well, as you’ve probably already guessed by reading the title, the man got robbed while making his way back to the car, losing 125 smartphones worth approximately $95,000.

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An Irish financial manager for Ireland’s national railway network claims that he gets paid almost $130,000 (€108,000) a year to eat lunch and read newspapers all day.

Getting paid to essentially do nothing doesn’t sound like something most people would complain about, but for Dermot Alastair Mills, an employee at Irish Rail, it’s discrimination. The financial manager claims that after turning whistleblower about the company’s accounting in 2014, he was gradually relieved of virtually all of his duties, to the point where he now spends most of his days eating lunch and reading newspapers. Despite all this, he still cashes his regular paycheck every month.

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If you’re the kind of person who likes to show off their wealth, head over to Art Basel Miami Beach and use their unique ATM machine to have your account balance featured on its leaderboard for everyone to see.

Developed by New York-based art collective MSCHF in collaboration with Perrotin Gallery, ATM Leaderboard is an artistic project inspired that, just as its name suggests, displays the cash balances of anyone who uses it like the high scores of a classic arcade game, depending on the size of their bank accounts. It was inspired by the wealth-flaunting trends of modern influencers who use their apparent wealth for fame and social media followers.

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‘I Am Jesus Christ’, a controversial video game that literally lets you play as the Messiah, from His birth to His crucifixion and subsequent resurrection, recently became playable on Steam.

We wrote about I Am Jesus Christ in 2019, back when it was first announced by indie developer SimulaM. The premise of the game was as bold as its title suggested – it put players in the shoes of the Son of God, from his birth to his resurrection, allowing them to perform all sorts of biblical miracles, meet Jesus’ disciples and other characters, and even battle Satan. It got a lot of people talking, either out of excitement or outrage, but apart from some pre-rendered content and a short teaser, we didn’t get anything for the next three years. Well, the wait is over, thanks to a playable prologue of I Am Jesus that recently became available on Steam.

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Cheetahs are famous for their speed, but they don’t even come close to the world’s faster animal, a falcon that swoops on its unsuspecting prey at speeds of over 300 km per hour.

The peregrine falcon is one of the most efficient predators on Earth, and it owes much of that efficiency to its unrivaled speed. During its characteristic dive, this majestic creature reaches an average speed of 320 km/h, but the highest measured speed of a peregrine falcon is actually 389 km/h (242 mph), which makes it faster than the vast majority of commercially available cars. And it’s obviously much faster than the cheetah’s 64 mph record.

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A Vietnamese man has become famous in his home province of An Giang for taking care of thousands of wild river fish who visit his house every day for food.

Muoi Phuc’s house in Long Kien, Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, is a popular attraction for both locals and tourists. People routinely stop by to watch the man feed a school of wild fish that visits him daily. When the 52-year-old man started feeding the fish, it was just a handful of pangasius, but over the last two years, their number grew at a steady pace, and now thousands of fish stop by his riverside home every day for a bite to eat. The fish are free to come and go as they please, and others have tried attracting them by throwing food into the river, but for some reason, they only stop at Muoi Phuc’s house.

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A Chinese woman recently sparked controversy online after claiming that she has spent the last 12 years of her life trying to raise enough money to ensure that her brother finds a bride.

It’s no secret that securing a bride in China is harder than in most other countries. One of the unexpected effects of the Asian country’s notorious one-child policy was gender inequality. For decades, many couples, especially in rural regions, aimed for boys, turning to sex-selective abortion and even infanticide to make sure that their only child was a boy. Males were strong enough to work and more likely to be successful enough to look after their elderly parents later on in life. Only that created a serious gender inequality in China, with more bachelors for every single woman, which makes it very difficult for men to secure a bride. So in some cases, their families offer them financial support, to increase their chances of finding a suitable bride.

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Epiphyllum Oxypetalum is a popular species of cactus famous for producing large, fragrant, white flowers only one night per year.

‘Queen of the Night’ is only a nickname, but one that fits Epiphyllum Oxypetalum perfectly. Unlike the several species commonly referred to as Night-Blooming Cereus which also bloom at night time, producing large, fragrant flowers over several weeks, Epiphyllum Oxypetalum only blooms one night a year, for a couple of hours, with its large, waxy flowers withering before sunrise. The bloom of a Queen of the Night is a rare event, one that draws crowds of flower enthusiasts to the jungles of Mexico, Central America and the Antilles for a chance to witness it in person.

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