New York City is full of unusual plots of land left over from various construction projects, but none as small and emblematic as the Hess Triangle, a private property barely larger than a pizza slice.

The story of the Hess Triangle began in 1910 when the city of New York claimed eminent domain in order to expropriate and demolish 253 buildings, including the Voorhis, a 5-storey apartment building owned by David Hess. The businessman and his family fought the decision, but by 1913, they had exhausted all legal options and had to watch their property be demolished. However, in 1928, while checking property papers, Hess’s heirs discovered that the city had neglected to seize a tiny corned of Plot 55, and quickly filed a notice of possession for it. That’s how the Hess Triangle, the smallest piece of real estate in NYC came to be.

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The Trapp family in Esko, Minnesota is officially the tallest family in the world with an average height of 203.29 cm (6 ft 8.03 in).

Krissy Trapp loves saying that she is the shortest person in the world’s tallest family. At 191.2 cm (6 ft 3 in), she definitely qualifies as very tall, especially for a woman, but she is indeed the shortest of her immediate family. Her husband, Scott, is a towering 202.7 cm (6 ft 8 in), while her two daughters, Savanna and Molly, measure 203.6 cm (6 ft 8 in) and 197.26 cm (6 ft 6 in), respectively. The youngest member of the Trapp family, Adam Trapp, is also the tallest at 221.71 cm (7 ft 3 in). Together, they have a combined height equal to the length of half a tennis court!

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Every year, Yoro, a small town in northern Honduras, allegedly experiences a mysterious phenomenon known as “Lluvia de Peces”, a literal rain of fish.

The rain of fish phenomenon has been reported in many places around the world, but Honduras’ Yoro department is the only place where the bizarre rain reportedly occurs every year, sometimes several times per year. The now-famous Lluvia de Peces takes place sometime between May and June, usually after a very powerful storm. The weirdest thing about this unusual occurrence is that, despite it being a yearly event, no one has ever actually seen the fish fall from the sky. There is however photographic and video evidence of hundreds of fish covering entire areas following powerful storms, so it definitely can’t be dismissed as just a simple legend, and scientists have actually investigated the phenomenon in order to provide a plausible explanation.

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A ‘one of a kind’ 990-sq-ft apartment in Manchester, England has been getting a lot of attention for its all-black interior.

Apparently inspired by Batman’s Gotham City, every room in the two-bedroom apartment is painted black, with black furnishings, creating a controversial visual effect that some have described as ‘sexy’, and others consider bleak. Located in Piccadilly Basin in Manchester’s popular Northern Quarter, the unique apartment boasts two deluxe double bedrooms, a kitchen and living room space, and a custom-build bathroom complete with a walk-in rain shower. Except for the toilet, bathtub and sink, every surface in the 990-sq-ft pad, including the walls, floor and windows, is black.

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Japanese beverage maker Kirin Holdings teamed up with researchers at Meiji University in Tokyo to create smart chopsticks that reportedly make food taste more savory.

Meiji University professor Homei Miyashita has been researching electrical stimulation as a way to alter the way people experience food and flavor for years. In 2016, along with fellow researcher Hiromi Nakamura, he made international news headlines for developing a revolutionary electric fork that could make any food taste saltier than it actually was. And last year, he got even more attention for his Taste the TV (TTTV) project, a lickable TV screen that could imitate the taste of various foods. Now, he’s once again the talk of the interwebs thanks to his latest invention, a pair of smart chopsticks that can allegedly make food more savory.

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A Kentucky man won $450,000 in a lawsuit against his former employer who allegedly fired him for having a panic attack and leaving his own surprise birthday party.

Kevin Berling suffers from an anxiety disorder that causes him to suffer panic attacks whenever he is the center of attention in a large group of people. It was for this specific reason that he asked his bosses at Gravity Diagnostics in Covington, a Kentucky medical lab, not to throw him a surprise birthday party, in 2019. However, a manager at the company claims he forgot about Berling’s request, so they threw a birthday party for him anyway. That caused Kevin to have a panic attack and storm out of his own celebration, which later caused him to lose his job.

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Robbie Balenger, a vegan ultra-runner known for competing in unique races, recently went up against a Tesla Model 3 electric car in what was described as a modern take on the man-vs-horse concept.

Every year, hundreds of people show up in Llanwrtyd Wells, Wales to compete against real horses in the traditional Man vs. Horse Marathon, a 22-mile-long endurance race where speed matters little. Everyone knows horses are faster, but over long distances, humans actually have a shot, and we’ve actually won the race at least a couple of times in the last four and a half decades. It was the concept of Man vs. Horse that recently inspired famous ultra-marathon runner Robbie Balenger to compete against a Tesla Model 3 electric car in a man-vs-machine-type race.

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The Manuscript Writing Café in Tokyo, Japan only caters to writers working on tight deadlines, providing the motivation and assistance required to make sure they meet those deadlines.

Japan is no stranger to offbeat cafes that sometimes inspire worldwide trends. Remember cat cafes? That popular trend originated in the Asian country, as did, maid cafes, owl cafes, reptile cafes, and even a cafe dedicated to female thighs. And those are just a handful of examples; in reality, Japan has come up with a plethora of intriguing cafe concepts, and somehow keeps coming up with new ones. The latest example is the Manuscript Writing Café in Tokyo’s Koenji neighborhood, a venue that only welcomes writers struggling to meet their deadlines.

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A 28-year-old man from Pakistan has become known as the Tarzan of Karachi after spending the last eight years of his life living in a makeshift treehouse in the city.

Farman Ali became somewhat of an overnight social media sensation after footage of his unusual home went viral on social media a few weeks ago. People were fascinated by the young man who managed to live in a modest treehouse for over eight years, but as he keeps telling everyone who asks, he didn’t do it by choice. After losing both his parents, Ali was simply too poor to afford any kind of conventional housing, and after living on the streets for a while, he decided to build his own home in the only place where no one would bother him or drive him away – in a tree on public property.

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With a height-to-width ratio of 24:1, Steinway Tower, an 84-story luxury apartment building in Manhattan, is officially the world’s thinnest skyscraper.

Steinway Tower is an impressive architectural achievement. Not only is it the third-tallest building in the Western Hemisphere – after One World Trade Center (1,776 feet) and Central Park Tower (1,550 feet) – but it’s actually the most slender skyscraper in the world. Despite standing a dizzying 1,428-feet-tall, Steinway Tower is just 60 feet wide. It’s so thin that The Guardian newspaper has dubbed it “the coffee stirrer”. For comparison, Steinway Tower is as wide as a bowling alley is long.

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Of the more than 1,200 varieties of watermelon grown around the world, none is more expensive or more sought-after than the famous Densuke black watermelon.

Grown only on the northern island of Hokkaido, in small quantities that rarely exceed 100 units per year, Densuke is regarded as one of the rarest watermelons in the world. It’s not the type of fruit you expect to find at a market or a grocer. Instead, the few fruits available every year are auctioned off to the highest bidder in highly anticipated events, for hundreds, and even thousands of dollars. The most expensive Densuke watermelon in history was auctioned off in 2019, for a whopping 750,000 Japanese yen ($6,000). Prices have dropped in the last two years, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but the black watermelon remains the most expensive variety in the world, by far.

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Taylor A. Humphrey, a 33-year-old woman from New York, works as a professional baby name, charging people thousands of dollars for helping them pick out the perfect names for their offspring.

It’s hard to believe that someone could make a living helping expecting parents select a suitable name for their child, but Taylor A. Humphrey is living proof that it can be done. She has been a full-time baby name for years, charging clients between $1,500 and $10,000 for providing suitable baby names based on a variety of factors. Her services range from a simple phone call and a list of bespoke names based on the answers to a questionnaire, to a $10,000 option that involves genealogical investigations and selecting a name on-brand with the family business.

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A colonial house in Virginia has become the talk of the internet after going on sale for $800,000 with a serious catch – a basement dweller or two who won’t be required to pay rent.

Located in Fairfax, Virginia, the 3,548-square-foot five-bedroom, four-bathroom house apparently needs some serious work. According to the Zillow listing, the original windows have some rot, one of the toilets leaks and has been shut off, the flooring needs to be replaced, as does the carpet on the lower level, and some of the appliances don’t work. But that’s nothing compared to the surprise waiting in the basement. While the house itself can be fixed, it’s unclear what the potential buyer should do about the basement dweller or dwellers that it comes with, who don’t pay rent and can’t be evicted…

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The Opuses restaurant at The Royal Park Hotel in Ginza, Tokyo recently got a lot of attention because of an intriguing dessert shaped like pieces of wall plaster.

On the list of least appetizing things in the world, wall plaster ranks pretty highly, so most people wouldn’t call it the most inspired choice for designing a dessert. Still, that’s exactly what the chefs at Opuses, a high-class restaurant in Tokyo, Japan seem to have done. Photos of this dubious-looking dish were recently posted on Twitter by user @mimimimimitsu32 and ended up getting over 200,000 likes, 26,000 retweets and hundreds of comments. The general sentiment was that the dessert looked remarkably like plaster.

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The gumboot chiton, a marine mollusk also known as the Wondering Meatloaf, has teeth made of the hardest biological material known to man.

Magnetite is a geologic mineral commonly found in the earth’s crust, but it’s also somehow produced by the gumboot chiton and synthesized into rows of small teeth hard enough to scrape algae off of rocks. The top of these teeth is layered with magnetite, which makes them literally as strong as steel, but the root is also incredibly tough, thanks to another iron-like material that has never been observed in living creatures before – santabarbaraite. This unique combination makes the chiton’s teeth the hardest biological material in the world.

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