Although stretch marks are a typical, albeit annoying, part of life, most people wish that they could make them permanently disappear. There is an entire industry built around creams, lotions, and even surgery to help conceal these imperfections, but a Brazilian tattoo artist has developed a much simpler, more effective solution.

Rodolpho Torres, of São Paulo, uses flesh colored ink to hide stretch marks as well as circles under the eye. His exact method is a closely guarded secret, but we know that it involves creating an optical illusion via tattoo shading. Anvisa (National Agency of Sanitary Surveillance) has approved his ink, and he personalizes each mixture to achieve a tone similar to that of the client’s skin. The ink blends into the stretch marks and dark circles, giving them the color of the skin. Once the tattoos have healed, the client’s skin appears smoother, and after sixty days they can sunbathe without the risk of spots developing.

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We’ve all got our physical flaws and learn to live with them. Well, some don’t, but that’s what plastic surgery is for. There is one person in Zimbabwe who not only relishes his ugliness but also get awards for it. William Masvinu from Epworth has been crowned Zimbabwe’s Mr Ugly 2017 and couldn’t be prouder! It’s his fourth title, and he’s fully convinced his claim is undisputed.

William was happy with the “recognition” in general but especially pleased to wrest back the title he lost to another contestant last year. Winning ugly contests apparently requires preparation, just as beauty pageants, and the 43-year-old unemployed man will now be prepping to wow the world in the Mr Ugly World competition set to take place next year in South Africa.

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An Indian driver has received the Manush Sanman award for not honking once in the past 18 years. It may seem a strange award, but India is well known for the chaos of its roads, and the typical driver’s almost constant use of the car horn. Dipak Das, a Kolkata-based driver, believes that India can change this and eventually achieve peaceful, quiet roads.

Honking is a huge part of the driving experience in India, as people pretty much use them as an alternative to side mirrors. Some cars don’t even have side mirrors, while others have them folded, as to extend them outward could lead to collisions with other vehicles. Instead, Indian motorists honk incessantly to avoid collisions on the road where traffic is chaotic and so dense that cars appear just about to bump into each other at all times. Drivers honk to indicate that they’re about to make a pass or to indicate that another driver is too close. This creates unbearable noise pollution that many consider hugely detrimental to Indian society.

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UK pharmacies will be selling Viagra over the counter as of spring 2018, but the men of Ringaskiddy in Ireland’s Cork County don’t need to pay for the erectile dysfunction drug. In fact, they don’t even have to pop the little blue pill: the fumes from a nearby Viagra manufacturing plant reportedly have an arousing effect on the male population. The villagers claim that even their dogs roam about in a state of arousal. Basically, it’s a case of “love is in the air,” but it may not be all fun and games.

Viagra is a cash cow for US-based pharma giant Pfizer, which has had this particular factory going for about two decades. According to a company statement, the stories are just an “amusing” myth. “Our manufacturing processes have always been highly sophisticated as well as highly regulated,” Pfizer said. Still, the stories have been circulating for years, and there are too many accounts to just brush aside the issue.

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Consider yourself a person of bold fashion choices AND have 210 pounds ($280) to spare? In that case, the tube scarf created by Bulgarian knitwear designer label Dukyana could be just the winter pick for you. Beware, though: this piece of woolen clothing has no arm holes and is really a beige mohair tube that covers the entire body from the neck down, folding over the shoulders. Lots of people have lots to say about this product, some declaring that it resembles a giant sock.

Dukyana is the trade name chosen by a Bulgarian woman called Milena Bunalova, who offers the clothes knitted by herself and her five-member team through third-party retailers and her own website. According to the label, the tube scarf (or sock dress or however you choose to describe it) is a fashion statement. Dukyana hopes the creation will become a hit this winter and sees it as an excellent solution for ladies who favor long walks out in the chilly air. The label also says that the fashion article does not stretch and hugs a woman’s body tightly.

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What was supposed to be a bit of fun turned into a crying game for Arran Maye, a 28-year-old plumber from Leicester. While vacationing with 20 friends in the Spanish city of Benidorm, the Briton invested 9 pounds ($12) in a henna tattoo that left him sporting a handlebar mustache and a chin beard. The idea was to get into the spirit of Benidorm Fiesta, a local fancy dress festival, but things went from bad to worse when Arran experienced an intense allergic reaction to the henna ink, which may leave him with permanent scars.

Adam Lewis, another member of the British partying bunch, got the same tattoos as Arran, but while his tattoos faded within a few days, Arran’s were much more problematic. On top of the excruciating pain he experienced, his face ballooned and started oozing puss. It tuned out that the henna used on Arran was an illegal variety called black henna, which contains the chemical PPD. It caused a severe allergic reaction and ultimately landed him in intensive care, with one of the consequences being potentially permanent scars in the shape of a handlebar mustache and a small beard.

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We all have our phobias. Some people run for their lives at the sight of insects or reptiles, others hate tight spaces like elevators, or stepping on the roof of a tall building. And while most people can live perfectly normal lives despite their phobias, there are also those who let the fear dominate their lives. A case in point is a doomsday-fearing octogenarian in the U.S. state of Utah, who dedicated more than three decades of his life to building bunkers and cabins on state and Government land and stuffing them with provisions and weapons.

The Iron County Sheriff’s Office, which is investigating the case along with the FBI and other law enforcement bodies, has so far declined to identify the man, revealing only that he resides in the town of Parowan. According to official information released so far, the man acted out of fear that the world might end or that society as we know it might somehow collapse. The structures he built are located in a forest bordering the ski town of Brian Head.

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Hotel owners, beware: sometimes respectable-looking, well-behaved guests are after your room fixtures! An Indian man actually made a career of it, taking off with more than 120 TV sets from hotels over a period of four months.

Vasudev Nanaiah, 37, was arrested last month and charged with 21 counts of theft after wreaking havoc among budget hotels in southern India by stealing an impressive number of TV sets from the rooms he booked. The TV pilferer would reserve the rooms by telephone and always make a small advance payment, informing the staff that he would be staying there for several days, in order to avoid suspicion. Nanaiah always arrived with bulky suitcases in tow, and in case they proved too small for the targeted TVs, he would simply go out and buy new ones.

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Sahar Tabar, a 19-year-old woman from Iran, has been the talk of the internet over the last couple of days due to her zombie-like appearance, which is a apparently the result of dozens of cosmetic procedures meant to make her look like Angelina Jolie.

We live in a world where super fans often go under the knife to make themselves look like their idols, but whereas most end up with doll-like features, Teheran-based Sahar Tabar looks like a real-life character out of a Tim Burton animation. She has in fact been compared to the “Corpse Bride”, and looking at some of her Instagram photos, you can see that the comparison actually makes sense. It’s obvious that the 19-year-old uses makeup and creepy contact lenses to enhance her undead look, but those prominent cheekbones, inflated lips and plastic-like nose seem to be her real features.

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Imagine waking up one day and finding that your beautiful local beach is no more – gone, its fine white sand swept away by a freak storm. You go about your daily business for 12 long years and then suddenly the beach is back, all its glory restored by another storm. This is what happened on the island of Achill, off the coast of Ireland, where the inhabitants are celebrating the return of the beautiful Ashleam Bay beach that was taken from them in 2005.

That in itself is remarkable enough, but the story gets even better! You see, another beach in Achill did a disappearing act once, but took much longer to return. The beach at Doonagh, located only six miles (10km) away from Ashleam Bay, was restored earlier this year after waves created by spring storms had swept away all the sand in 1984, leaving just rock pools behind.

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Mysterious boom sounds have baffled people all over the planet throughout the past year. There have been 64 recorded incidents within the last 12 months, with the majority heard on the east coast of the USA, but also reported everywhere from the Middle East to Australia. Experts have no clear answer as to the cause of these sounds, but theories range from Leonid shower meteorites exploding in the atmosphere to supersonic aircrafts.

The most recent bang resounded over the US state of Alabama on November 14. Dubbed “Bama boom,” the noise shook houses and terrified locals. Residents notified authorities of a suspicious sound that rattled windows and seemed to originate on the northwest side of Lochbuie, Alabama. They could not figure out the source of the noise, however, and have ruled out an explosion as they could not find flames or an odor indicating one.

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There is a piece of Estonian land where men are a very rare sight. The island of Kihnu, located in the Baltic Sea, seven miles off the country’s west coast, is a domain ruled by women. This quaint place of pastoral tranquility and just 400 inhabitants is one of the world’s last matriarchal societies.

It’s not that the women of Kihnu have anything against men; it’s just that they have no choice but hold the social and administrative reins. That’s because the male population is away for months on end, providing for the small community by fishing. This leaves the ladies responsible for running things and they have been doing so for centuries – raising the kids, working in the fields, and handling matters of governance.

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The German town of Staufen is falling apart at the seams. The town of 8,100 residents, located on the edge of the Black Forest, decided to invest in geothermal energy back in 2007, aiming for a green energy future. Unfortunately, the decision backfired when the underground drilling went wrong causing hundreds of buildings to begin cracking apart.

The town rests on a layer of soft anhydrite, below which is a layer of groundwater confined to an aquifer. It was this combination which proved to be fatal for the Baden Württenburg hamlet. When the drills hit the groundwater, it poured into the anhydrate, which soon formed gypsum and expanded by about 50 percent. Over 270 buildings have suffered fractures in the ten years since and things don’t appear to be getting any better.

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What comes to mind when you think of Siberia? Maybe vast expanses of snow-covered land, teeth-chattering cold, Lake Baikal, and the Tunguska meteorite mystery. How about gun-totting brown bears? One such animal recently gave a hunter quite the fright, but more importantly, took off with the man’s bag, which happened to contain two firearms.

The incident took place in the Irkutsk region of Siberia, where an unnamed 57-year-old hunter stopped at a cabin in the woods, miles away from the nearest human settlement. He left his belongings there and went to get some water, only to find a brown bear prowling around the cabin. The man panicked and ran into the woods, leaving his guns behind. He only notified the local police about the incident after several days of searching for the weapons to no avail. For all we know, the furry offender may now be roaming the taiga with a Vepr carbine and an IZH shotgun in tow.

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There’s strange eating habits and then there’s crazy eating habits. Sometimes the latter can be life-threatening, as in the case of 35-year-old Maksud Khan. The Indian man was recently admitted into hospital on suspicions of having severe food poisoning, but as it turned out, his three months of stomach pains were the result of having seven kilos (15.4 pounds) of foreign objects in his belly, including 263 metal coins.

The doctors who took Khan’s case got a massive shock when an endoscopy revealed that food poisoning had nothing to do with the problem. The surgeons at Satna’s Sanjay Gandhi Hospital in the state of Madhya Pradesh rushed Khan to the operating room and proceeded to extract 263 coins, 100 nails, a hefty piece of rusted iron shackle, dozens of razor blades, glass shards, and stones from his stomach.

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