The “Forest Man of Bangladesh” Has Been Planting a Tree Every Day for the Past 48 Years

They say that one man can’t make a difference, but Abdul Samad Sheikh, a 60-year-old rickshaw driver from Bangladesh, is living proof that small contributions over a long period of time can mean very much. He has planted at least one tree every day since he was 12-years-old, which means that he has so far planted a small forest of over 17,500 trees. Imagine if everyone followed his example.

Abdul Samad Sheikh, fondly known as “Tree Samad” in his native town of Faridpur, central Bangadesh, has worked as a rickshaw driver for most of his life. The modest job earns him about 100 taka ($1.25) per day, which is barely enough to put food on the table for his family, but he somehow manages to also buy at least one tree from the Faridpur Horticulture Centre, every day. He considers it his duty to the world, and claims he wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if he didn’t plant a tree that day.

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The Old Motorcycle Worshiped as a Deity in India

In the Indian state of Rajasthan, some 50 km from the city of Jodhpur, along National Highway 65, there is a temple. That, in itself, is not unusual, as temples are virtually everywhere in India, but what is strange is that the deities worshiped here are an old Royal Enfield 350cc motorcycle and its deceased owner.

The story of “Om Bana” or “Bullet Baba” temple dates back to an accident that occurred almost three decades ago.  On December 23rd, 1988, Om Singh Rathore, the 23-year-old son of a village elder in Chotila, Pali district, was riding home on his motorcycle when he lost control, hit a tree and was catapulted into a 20-foot, where he died on the spot. His body was discovered the next day, and the broken “Bullet” motorcycle was taken to the police station. And that’s where things start to get weird.

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Taiwanese Sisters and Their Mother Stun the World with Their Incredibly Youthful Looks

Lure Hsu, a 41-year-old interior designer and fashion blogger, had already been attracting lots of attention online for her incredibly youthful looks, but people recently discovered that eternal youth runs in her family. Lure’s two sisters, 36-year-old Sharon, and 40-year old FayFay, both look like they are in their early 20s, and their 63-year-old mother looks like their older sister.

Just when people were starting to come to terms with the fact that Lure Hsu is actually in her 40s, photos of her sisters and mother starting showing up in Taiwanese media, and everyone lost their minds once again. The four Hsu women are now being called “the family of frozen ages” by the media in their country, while some people claim that they must be descendants of vampires. Truth be told, they do all look suspiciously young for their age.

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Company Creates Virtually Indestructible Hoodie Designed to Last 100 Years

A hoodie isn’t really the kind of thing you ever consider passing on to your children and grandchildren, but then again, most hoodies aren’t made from Kevlar or designed to outlast their wearer.

Adventure clothing brand Vollebak has been in the business of creating “cutting edge adventure sports clothing using insights and discoveries from fields as diverse as neuroscience, physiology, material technology and space exploration” for years. Their previous products include a fabric that uses nanotechnology to camouflage things like sweat, salt, dirt and even blood, and an abrasion-resistant jacket able to scar rock and tolerate high-speed falls of up to 120 km/h. But their latest invention is easily the most impressive – an ultra-durable hoodie designed to outlive its wearer.

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Japanese Professor Claims That Crows Respect Written “Do Not Enter” Signs

When a friend and “crow expert” told Katsufumi Sato to hang some “do not enter signs” on the outside of a building to keep pesky crows a way, the Japanese professor thought he was only kidding, but after three years of employing the bizarre strategy, he says it works perfectly.

Sato, a professor of ethology, hanged his first “crows do not enter” signs at a university research center in Otsuchi, Japan’s Iwate Prefecture, in 2015, at the the advice of his friend, Tsutomu Takeda, who he regards as an expert on crows. The birds had been targeting the insulation material covering the building’s pipes, ripping it with their beaks and flying away with bits of it to use for their nests. He was desperate to keep them away, so even though he though the idea of hanging written signs for crows funny, he was willing to give it a try.

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Chinese Woman Faints After Accidentally Breaking $26,500 Jade Bracelet at Jewelry Market

A woman visiting a jewelry market in China’s Yunnan Province passed out after accidentally dropping a jade bracelet worth 180,000 yuan ($26,500) and splitting it in half.

The unwritten rule of “you break it, you buy it” is usually ignored by business owners when customers accidentally break beverage bottles, clothing items or other mundane products, but when it comes to trying out expensive jewelry, it’s generally a good idea to be extra cautious, because you’ll probably have to pay for it if you break it. A female tourist visiting the Ruili Jiegao Jade market on Tuesday found that out the hard way, after accidentally dropping a jadeite bracelet and splitting it in half. When she learned that the item in question had a 300,000 yuan ($44,100) price tag and that the seller wanted compensation, she passed out.

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The Sleeping Beauty Diet – Probably the Dumbest Weight-Loss Diet in History

If you’re sleeping, you’re not eating. That’s basically the main idea behind the Sleeping Beauty Diet, an increasingly popular weight loss method that encourages people to take sedatives in order to sleep for up to 20 hours a day and skip meals.

It’s hard to even consider the Sleeping Beauty Diet an actual diet, because it doesn’t prescribe the things you should eat those you should avoid. Instead, it just recommends a lot less eating and whole lot of sleeping. Advocates claim that apart from the obvious “benefit” of reducing calorie intake, this controversial weight-loss method also takes  advantage of our bodies’ ability to regulate our metabolism through sleep, which accelerates weight-loss even more. However, there isn’t a lot of science that supports this theory, and even if there were, the risks of undergoing such an extreme regimen still outweigh the benefits by quite a large margin.

 

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Five-Storey Building in China Has a Road on Its Roof

Photos of a five-storey building in the Chinese city of Chongqing have been going viral on social media, for the simple fact that the building in question has a flat roof that also doubles as a road that cars actually drive on.

Before we go into details about this particular architectural oddity, it’s worth mentioning that Chongqing has a reputation for unusual architecture and infrastructure. Its terrain is mainly made up of hill slopes, and this lack of flat building space has basically forced architects and urban planners to think outside the box in order to come up with feasible solutions. Some of their most famous creations include a sprawling road interchange with 15 ramps going in eight different directions, 13-storey-high pedestrian bridges and the world-famous apartment building that has a train passing straight through it.

 

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New App Lets You Date People Who Look Like Your Favorite Celebrities

Let’s face it, you’ll probably never get to go on a date with your celebrity crush, but, with Dating AI, a new dating app that uses advanced facial recognition technology, you can now find celebrity doppelgangers and ask them out on a date.

The Dating.ai app works by analyzing a reference a photo you upload or select from a list of popular celebrities provided within the app, and then scanning through thousands of profile photos from popular dating services like Tinder, Bumper or Plenty of Fish to find people who look very similar. The idea of finding everyday people who look like your favorite celebrity is just a selling point, because, in reality, Dating.ai can be used to find all kinds of people, from people who look like your ex, to versions of yourself of the opposite sex (if you want to date yourself). The possibilities are virtually endless.

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67-Year-Old Man Has the World’s Largest Collection of Hello Kitty Memorabilia

Hello Kitty was designed to appeal to young girls, but its biggest fan may just be an adult Japanese man. 67-year-old Masao Gunji has been collecting Hello Kitty memorabilia for the last 30 years, and he was recently acknowledged by Guinness Records as the owner of the largest Hello Kitty collection in the world.

Gunji, a retired police officer from Yotsukaido, in Japan’s Chiba Prefecture, bought his first Hello Kitty item over thee decades ago, at a sightseeing spot. He just thought it looked really cute, and it ended up making his stressful job a bit easier. Whenever he would take a look at the cute character, it put a smile on his face and helped him push through whatever hardships he faced. Masao soon became a Hello Kitty fan and started buying all kinds of items featuring Sanrio’s popular creation. But his obsession really kicked in after he retired from the police force.

 

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Woman with Two Skin Tones, Two Immune Systems Is a Living, Breathing Medical Oddity

Taylor Muhl, a model and singer from California, often says that she is her own twin, and as strange as that sounds, she means it quite literally. The 33-year-old was diagnosed with genetic Chimerism, an extremely rare condition explained as “an organism composed of cells from different zygotes”.

As a child, Taylor was obsessed with twins, constantly asking her mother if she had a twin sibling, and playing twins with her girlfriends, but little did she know that she actually was her own twin. Doctors say that the model absorbed her fraternal twin while in the womb, and parts of its DNA now exist in her body, making her a Chimera, of which there are only 100 known cases in the whole world. But even as a human Chimera, Taylor’s case is a rare and fascinating one, because while most Chimeras only display the symptoms internally or have very small skin marks, Muhl’s stomach is split down the middle into two skin tones.

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Meet Eclipse, Seattle’s Famous Solo Bus Riding Canine

Eclipse, a black Labrador-bull mastiff mix from Seattle, really loves going to the park. So much so that when her owner is too busy to take, or when he’s taking too long, she just leaves the house by herself, gets on the bus and goes to the park by herself.

It all started one day, four years ago, when Eclipse and her master, Jeff Young, were waiting for the D-Line bus at the bus station. The dog knew they were going to the park and she was impatient, so when the public transportation vehicle pulled up and the doors opened, she just jumped right in. Jeff was smoking a cigarette and decided to just wait for the next bus, but Eclipse wouldn’t hear of it, so she ignored his commands to come down. So she just rode the bus by herself and Young caught up with her later, at the park. While impressed with his pet, Jeff Young had no idea that this would eventually become a habit, one that would turn Eclipse into a local celebrity.

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Breatharian Couple Claim They Haven’t Had a Proper Meal in 9 Years, Survive on Cosmic Energy

Scientific evidence shows that fasting for brief periods of time can have positive effects on our health, but one California couple say they haven’t eaten any real food in 9 years, as they live off “the universe’s energy” instead.

36-year-old Akahy Ricardo and his wife, Camilla Costello, 34, had their last real meal in 2008, before becoming “bretharians” and embracing a food-free lifestyle. They both claim that humans can easily live a healthy life without food, as long as they are connected to “the energy that exists in all things and through breathing.” Furthermore, Costello claims that this lifestyle is considerably cheaper, allowing her and her husband to spend money on travelling rather than groceries.

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Italian Man Lives Life of Luxury, Brushes Shoulders with Celebrities for Years by Posing as “Prince of Montenegro”

A 57-year-old Italian conman was recently arrested and charged with fraud and document forgery, after its was revealed that he had been posing as a member of the Montenegro Royal Family for years. His con was so elaborate that he had even managed to fool many real royals and celebrities.

The man, whose real identity has not yet been revealed, called himself “His Imperial and Royal Highness Stefan Cernetic, Hereditary Prince of Montenegro, Serbia and Albania”, and claimed to be a descendant of the Roman emperor Constantine, and the head of the Montenegrin royal family. He travelled all around Europe in a black Mercedes sporting Montenegrin flags and fake royal insignia, and stayed in luxury hotels, free of charge. To make his claims even more believable, Cernetic set up a website and several social media accounts, where he regularly posted photos of him alongside known royals, like Prince Albert of Monaco, and members of famous aristocratic families, like Savoy, Hapsburg and Hohenzollern.

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UK Couple Looking for Nanny Willing to Work in a Haunted House

A family of four from Scotland is offering a £50,000 ($64,000) to a professional nanny willing to work in a haunted house and put up with supernatural occurrences that have so far driven away five other nannies in the last year alone. This may be just a clever hoax, but even so, it’s a very entertaining story.

According to the ad posted on a popular childcare job site, the “friendly family of four with 2 children ages 5 and 7 living in a small village in the Scottish Borders” have been having trouble finding a stable nanny to look after their young ones. They apparently live in a “lovely, spacious, historic property” that offers “spectacular views” of the surrounding countryside, but that hasn’t been enough to keep previous nannies working there long-term. That might have something to do with the place being haunted, the person who posted the ad says.

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