Mayor Olajide, a 19-year-old artist from Nigeria, has taken the hyperrealistic art world by storm with his photo-realistic charcoal pencil portraits.

We’ve featured some really gifted hyperrealism artists on Oddity Central over the years, true masters like Anna Halldin Maule, Hirothropologie, or Dru Blair, but it’s rare to see that kind of talent in someone as young as 19. And yet, here is Mayor Olajide, a 19-year-old Nigerian artist who has been attracting attention with his hyperrealistic pencil drawings for at least a couple of years now. He apparently started drawing when he was only 5 years old, and by age 15, he was already selling his art pieces and taking commissions to contribute to the family budget. Today, he is considered one of the world’s most promising hyperrealists.

Read More »

A Japanese restaurant in the city of Ota, Gunma Prefecture, has gone viral for selling a unique type of noodles with a complete Buddhist Sutra printed on them.

Nittanosho Kanzantei, a small eatery in Ota, has been getting a lot of attention for a product that is not even on the menu. Its so-called “sacred noodles” are only available as a souvenir, for cooking at home or giving away as a gift, but they’re so eye-catching that people can’t seem to stop talking about them. Cut into thick, rectangular sheets, these unique noodles feature large, caligraphy-like characters printed on them with edible ingredients that remain visible even after cooking. So you can actually read your food as you’re eating it!

Read More »

A Spanish woman was recently arrested on the Spanish island of Tenerife after conspiring with her boyfriend’s family to trick her mother into thinking she had been kidnapped and paying a sizeable ransom.

Earlier this week, Guardia Civil, one of Spain’s two national law enforcement agencies, released a disturbing video that appears to show a blindfolded woman with blood stains on her face, strapped to a chair, and with a large knife at her throat. The young woman is sobbing and telling her mother that she has been kidnapped and that she needs to pay a 50,000 ransom to the kidnappers if she ever wants to see her alive again. However, not everything is as it appears to be…

The ransom video described above is very real, but the kidnapping itself is not. According to Spanish police, the “victim” shown in the footage faked her own kidnapping with the help of her boyfriend’s family solely to trick her own mother into paying the 50,000 euro ransom.

Read More »

A 25-year-old woman from Madhya Pradesh, India, is being hailed a hero after she reportedly fought a tiger with her own hands in order to save her toddler son.

They say a mother’s love for her child is like nothing else, and Archana Choudhary a young woman from rural Madhya Pradesh, recently proved it when she risked her own life to save that of her 15-month-old son. The two were walking through a field on the outskirts of the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve on Sunday, when a full-grown tiger leaped out of the bushes, sunk its teeth into the boy’s head and started dragging him away into the jungle. Completely disregarding her own safety, Archana attacked the large feline with her bare hands in order to save her son.

Read More »

An Indian woman was recently arrested after allegedly spiking a soft drink and offering it to one of her daughter’s classmates as payback for performing better than her in school.

In a shocking case that recently rocked Indian society to its core, a 42-year-old woman is being accused of poisoning a 13-year-old boy purely out of jealousy that he was outperforming her in school. The disturbing events took place last Friday, after a rehearsal for an annual day function at a school in Karaikal, India’s Puducherry territory. Upon returning home at around 12.30 pm, the victim told his mother that he started feeling sick after drinking a soft-drink offered to him by the school guard. He said that he had assumed the drink came from her, but in reality, it had been given to the guard by the mother of a classmate and wasn’t really meant to quench his thirst…

Read More »

Chinese metaverse company NetDragon Websoft recently made history by appointing an AI-powered virtual humanoid robot as its CEO.

The new AI-powered CEO, known as ‘Ms Tang Yu’, will reportedly be at the forefront of  Fujian NetDragon Websoft’s “organizational and efficiency department”, overseeing operations at the technology company valued at almost $10 billion. The board of NetDragon Websoft apparently believes that artificial intelligence is the future of corporate management, and the appointment of Ms. Tang Yu is a symbolic commitment to embrace the use of AI and change the way the company does business.

Read More »

A Japanese beverage company launched a controversial dumpling-flavored soda that many are calling the worst soft drink ever created.

Gyoza traditional pan-fried dumplings are a staple of Japanese cuisine, but they are also the inspiration for one of the world’s most bizarre refreshments. “Gyoza cider”, or “Gyoza soda”, as some Japanese news outlets have been calling this abomination, is the creation of Nagai Garden, a refreshments company based in the city of Nikko, Japan’s Tochigi Prefecture. Originally launched in 2019, gyoza cider has been making news headlines and going viral on social media ever since, due to its unusually faithful dumpling taste.

Read More »

Muhamed Kahrimanovic, a martial arts master from Germany, has been dubbed ‘Hammer Hands” for his ability to smash anything from coconuts to baseball bats with his bare hands.

Bosnian-born Kahrimanovic was a teenager when he moved to Germany with his family. He had been studying taekwondo since early childhood and continued his training in his adoptive country, eventually becoming an instructor himself. But Kahrimanovic would end up attracting international attention and setting several Guinness records thanks to this incredibly strong hands, which earned him the reputation of a real-life superhuman and the nickname “Hammer Hands”.

Read More »

Dozens of students at an Indian school are suspected of tying a math teacher and a school clerk to a tree and beating them, after a number of them received poor grades on an exam.

In a shocking incident that took place last Monday, students of the Scheduled Tribe Residential School in Dumka, India’s Jharkhand state, lured their math teacher and a school clerk to the school campus under the pretext of discussing their grades on a recent Class-9 examination only to tie them to a tree and allegedly beat them. Photos and videos doing the rounds on social media show three men tied to a tree with red rope and dozens of male students roaming around them and carrying thick wooden sticks.

Read More »

METEOR BLASTER is a mobile space shooting video game designed to gauge users’ field of vision and help detect glaucoma, a serious condition that can lead to blindness.

Scientists at Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine teamed up with Japanese television company Sendai Broadcasting Co., Ltd. to create a special video game that they say can help improve users’ vision. METEOR BLASTER doesn’t have some miraculous effect on their eyesight like these special myopia-curing eyeglasses, but it can detect early symptoms of glaucoma and thus help prevent potential blindness. And all you need to do is play it for at least five minutes.

Read More »

After a botched eyebrow tattoo procedure in Thailand, a young woman has had to walk around with two pairs of eyebrows on her face for over a year.

Eyebrow tattoos are pretty popular all over the world. When done correctly, they look great and don’t require much maintenance, but sadly that wasn’t the experience of one 32-year-old woman from Thailand, who has been living a nightmare because of a botched tattoo job. About a year ago, Nipapron Meeking paid 1,500 THB ($41) at a tiny hole-in-the-wall beauty clinic in Rayong province, eastern Thailand, hoping to walk out with a thick, well-defined pair of eyebrows. She got what she paid for, only the fake eyebrows didn’t cover her real ones, they stood above them…

Read More »

Wang Yekun is an exceptionally patient artist who spends hours trying to balance all sorts of objects that have no business sitting on top of each other as if supported by an invisible force.

An electrician by training,  Wang Yekun spends hours on end trying to balance various objects on top of each other. From vintage sewing machines on top of upright glass beer bottles, to large gas cylinders balancing precariously on top of slender metal wrenches, it seems like there is nothing Wang Yekun can’t use for his awe-inspiring balancing acts.

Read More »

A 54-year-old Thai woman who accidentally locked herself in the bathroom awaited her inevitable demise after screaming for help for three days.

Living on your own certainly has its benefits, especially for people who enjoy their privacy, but it also some downsides, as one woman recently discovered. The Bangkok-based lady, whose name has not been revealed by Thai news outlets, went into her home bathroom on August 22 not knowing that she would spend the next three days stuck there. As soon as she closed the door, a faulty door knob turned the restroom into a prison for the woman, who hadn’t even bothered to take her phone with her, not to mention food or drinks. She resorted to banging on the door and screaming for help, but no one came to her rescue…

Read More »

Osaka-based artist Mito Nishikura painstakingly recycles plastic bottle caps into tiny artworks by painstakingly painting detailed landscapes on them.

We’ve seen bottle caps being used as mosaic pieces in the past, but Japanese artist Mito Nishikura has a different way of using them for artistic purposes. At first glance, plastic bottle caps don’t really make the best pointing canvases – at least not individually – because of their very limited surface, but the talented Japanese illustrator has found a way to create detailed works of art on these tiny bits of plastic.

Read More »

The ancient village of Khunzakh, in Dagestan, is literally perched on the edge of a deep canyon, making it one of the most awe-inspiring human settlements in the world.

Before Khabib Nurmagomedov took the MMA world by storm and became the undisputed champion of the UFC Lightweight Division, most people hadn’t even heard of Dagestan. Today, it’s almost associated with the legendary mixed martial arts master, but the Russian autonomous republic is actually home to a number of wonders that the world has yet to discover. Today, we’re featuring Khunzakh, a very old village with a very unique location – right on the edge of a 100-meter-deep canyon.

Read More »