A 44-year-old married woman sparked controversy in Thailand after allegedly posting a job ad seeking “presentable and educated” women to fill the position of mistress for her husband.

Speaking out of her Bangkok apartment, the woman, identified as Pattheema Chamnan, recently said that she hasn’t been sleeping with her husband for a while, which makes her feel like a bad wife. To make up for it, she is looking to hire a mistress for him, one that can please him “physically”, but also have a pleasant personality and good communication skills. Chamnan offered the region’s minimum wage for the job $450), plus free meals and accommodation in the family home. As outrageous as the offer might seem to some, the Thai woman said that she has already shortlisted two candidates for the job.

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The hooded pitohui, a small bird endemic to Papua New Guinea, is the first and only scientifically-confirmed poisonous bird in the world.

The Melanesian people of Papua New Guinea have long known to keep their hands off of hooded pitohui, but to the western world, the bird’s toxic potential was only discovered by chance just over three decades ago. In 1990, ornithologist Jack Dumbacher was on the Pacific island looking for birds of paradise. He had set up delicate mist nets between the trees to catch them and ended up with some hooded pitohui birds in them as well. As he tried to grab the birds out of the traps, they scratched and bit his fingers, and he instinctively put his hands in his mouth to soothe the pain. Almost immediately, Dumbacher felt his lips and tongue go numb. They then started to burn and did so for hours. Later, suspecting that the symptoms were caused by the bird, he took a pitohui feather and put it in his mouth. The numbness and ensuing pain quickly returned. He had unknowingly discovered the world’s first poisonous bird.

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The Ladoum sheep, known as the “king of sheep” in Senegal, is considered a mark of prestige and a status symbol in the African country, with prices for top specimens exceeding $85,000.

A hybrid of the Mauritanian ‘Touabire’ breed and the Malian ‘Bali-bali’, the Ladoum was first bred outside Senegal’s capital of Dakar in the early 1970s. For such a young breed, the Ladoum is incredibly popular in the West-African nation, with well-off families and breeders spending small fortunes on a specimen, and those who can’t afford one dreaming of one day having enough money to buy it. To understand just how revered the Ladoum is, in a country where about 40 percent of the population lives on $1.90 per day, some people spend tens of thousands of dollars on a single sheep.

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A Japanese DIY prop enthusiast recently shared his latest creation – an otherworldly-looking magic book with glow-in-the dark text – along with instructions on how to do it yourself.

Last month, Twitter user @mikel_cresson, a steampunk and fantasy enthusiast from Japan, went viral on the popular social network with a very intriguing prop – a vintage-looking book featuring mysterious text that glowed a vivid green in the dark. He called it a magic book, and it certainly looked the part; so much so that people started asking how much he wanted to sell it for and if he took commissions. However, the young DIY master did something even better – he shared exactly how he did it using only simple stuff anyone can buy on Amazon.

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Estonia is home to the longest official ice road in Europe, a 25-km-long stretch of frozen ice along the country’s coast, where it’s illegal to wear a seatbelt and drive at medium speed.

It might seem a bit bizarre to be covering a topic like ice roads in the middle of a particularly hot month of August, but it’s a slow day, so we write ’em as we find ’em. Today we’re talking about the longest ice road in Europe, a frozen stretch of the Baltic Sea connecting the Estonian coastline to the island of Hiiumaa. Driving on this particular ice road in winter is said to be an “unforgettable experience,” but if you plan on adding it to your bucket list, you should know it has some rather unconventional driving rules. You can’t drive here after sunset, and wearing a seatbelt is illegal, as is driving at speeds between 25 and 40km/h (16-25mph).

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Classic bento box arrangement can be considered an art form in itself, but there are some artistically gifted people that can take it to a whole other level.

Bento box art, aka kyaraben, is a big deal in Japan, so big in fact that it has its own social media platform where professional and amateur artists alike can share their creations. But even on there, some talents stand out, and that is definitely the case with Riyu Yuda, a young mother-of-one who started making bento box art as a way to make her four-year-old son enjoy the healthy treats she made for him. She specializes in anime-inspired edible compositions, creating detailed edible portraits of popular characters.

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A Japanese robotics company has been getting a lot of attention for its unique heavy machinery – a humanoid industrial robot that can be remote controlled by a human.

With so much focus on artificial intelligence and concepts like ‘the singularity’, we sometimes forget that robots have been around for a long time and that they can be pretty valuable tools even without advanced machine learning or even the possibility to move around on their own. Think about the industrial robots in modern automated car factories, or those mine-clearing robots that help human lives, just to name a couple of examples. Now, one Japanese company is trying to bring attention back to these humble creations with an ingenious humanoid heavy-duty robot capable of performing all kinds of useful chores while also appealing to fans of mecha manga and anime.

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Dutch beer company Heineken recently teamed up with sneaker designer and customizer Dominic Ciambone, aka The Shoe Surgeon, to create a special sneaker with beer-filled soles.

To celebrate the launch of Heineken’s newest product, Heineken Silver, the Dutch brewer commissioned The Shoe Surgeon to create a sneaker that embodied the identity of their smooth, easy-to-drink new beer, and he delivered. The so-called “Heinekicks” feature the company’s iconic color scheme – green, white and red – as well as the Heineken logo, and handy bottle openers built into the tongues. But what really sets them apart from any other sneakers is the liquid floating in their transparent soles – actual Heineken Silver beer.

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If you love karaoke, but can never hit the right notes of your favorite songs, don’t despair! Apparently, all you need to do is use a weird karaoke training device for just three minutes per day, and you’re all set.

Karaoke is really big in Japan. Few people know that the pastime enjoyed internationally by millions originated in the Asian country, so it’s really no surprise that so many people of all ages still love it here. But just because you love singing your favorite songs doesn’t mean you’re good at it, and that can be an issue, especially if you prefer doing it in public karaoke establishments, of which there are many in Japan. Sure, you can take singing lessons, but that requires time and money that most karaoke enthusiasts don’t have. Luckily, there is apparently a simple, albeit more bizarre alternative…

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History Supreme, a super-yacht commissioned by a mysterious Malaysian billionaire and designed by controversial artist Stuart Hughes, is considered the world’s most expensive yacht, but most don’t even believe it exists.

The story of History Supreme is one of the weirdest we’ve ever covered here on Oddity Central. It originally made news headlines over a decade ago, when luxury jeweler and designer Stuart Hughes announced that he had spent three years working on it, after being commissioned by a Malaysian businessman who preferred to remain anonymous. Hughes described his newest creation as the world’s most expensive yacht, priced at a staggering £3 million, or $4.8 billion. Photos of the vessel started doing the rounds online and news outlets covered the topic extensively, but no one has ever seen the History Supreme in person…

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A 60-year-old man in Thailand recently caused shockwaves throughout the island nation after he stole from a pharmacy so he would get arrested and go to jail because he was too poor to make ends meet.

The unusual incident reportedly happened in the afternoon of July 29, 2022 at a pharmacy in Chonburi province, south of Bangkok. The 60-year-old man, later identified as Phichit by the police, was caught stealing three bars of soap worth THB17 ($0.47) by the staff. The place had very clear warnings against shoplifting, with perpetrators risking fines of up to 30 times the value of the stolen goods and even jail time. However, in this case, the staff was willing to let the old man off the hook, and a bystander even offered to pay the fine for him. But he wouldn’t have it, insisting that the staff call the police on him…

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Yuki Tsuboshima, a metalworking artist from Japan, specializes in ingeniously-designed, mechanical sculptures that turn into different shapes, like little Transformers.

As a child, Yuki Tsuboshima was fascinated by puzzle-like toys with movable parts and intricate mechanisms, and he never really outgrew this passion. He majored in metalworking, specializing in uchidashi, a traditional Japanese metalworking technique used to manipulate metals like copper, brass and silver. He then completed a master’s course in industrial design at Musashino Art University Graduate School in Tokyo, where he learned to use software like 3DCAD to create all sorts of shapes and mechanical parts.

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Wang Zhenxi, a young woman from Luoyang, Henan Province, is known as one of China’s premier “mistress persuading teachers”, professionals who convince mistresses to end their affairs with married men.

Extramarital affairs are frowned upon in virtually all cultures around the world, but China is perhaps the only country in the world to have not one, but at least two professions that deal specifically with this type of relationship. One is the “mistress killer,” a type of detective/vigilante that helps scorned wives reveal their husbands’ infidelities and also exact revenge on the mistresses. The other is the “mistress persuading teacher” who relies on more diplomatic techniques to convince mistresses to end their affairs and allow their partners to return to their families. One such persuasion master was recently profiled by a major Chinese newspaper, after it became known that she had once managed to persuade over 800 mistresses in a single year.

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A New Zealand art gallery recently sparked controversy for displaying a controversial artwork consisting of a pickled cucumber slice stuck to the ceiling.

Titled ‘Pickle’, the thought-provoking artwork belongs to Australian artist Matthew Griffin and is currently on display at the Michael Lett Gallery in Auckland. It consists of a ketchup-smeared pickled cucumber slice out of a McDonald’s cheeseburger stuck to the ceiling of the art gallery it is exhibited in. The bizarre artwork is being described by the gallery as a deliberately “provocative gesture” designed to question what has value. Moore himself appears to think his creation has decent value, as it comes with a price tag of 10,000 New Zealand dollars ($6,200).

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To most of the world, the red-billed quelea is a cute, sparrow-like bird native to Sub-Saharan Africa, but to the farmers of the regions that this little creature calls home, it is a pest capable of wiping out their crops.

Biblical plagues mention insects like locusts, lice and flies, but to the people of African countries like  Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe, birds – one species in particular – are more dangerous than any of them. There is a very good reason why the red-billed quelea is popularly known as Africa’s feathered locust. This small, adorable bird eats about four grams of plant seeds per day, which doesn’t sound like much, but when you consider that it feeds in flocks of millions of individuals, the math starts to get pretty scary for farmers and those who depend on their crops.

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