Bera, a small town in the Indian state of Rajasthan is famous for being the only place on Earth where humans and leopards live in perfect harmony.

India is one of the most densely-populated countries on Earth, and as humanity continues to encroach on the still-uninhabited woodlands and mountains, conflicts between leopards and humans are inevitable. In fact, with human expansion at peak levels and the number of leopards higher than they’ve been in decades, tensions between the two species are growing. But there’s one place where humans and leopards have allegedly been living in peace and harmony for at least a century. Known as “leopard country”, the town of Bera is said to contain the highest concentration of leopards on the planet.

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A Japanese woman has been compared to The Incredibles’ Elastigirl because of her ability to stretch her earlobes enough to wrap them around things like umbrellas or selfie sticks.

Ayumi Takada, a 37-year-old woman from Tokyo, first noticed that her earlobes were super-elastic when she was in elementary school. It was a rainy day, and her hands were full, so she tried holding the umbrella with her ear as a third hand and it worked. That was only the beginning, as the Japanese woman has since used her unusually stretchy ear lobes to hold selfie sticks, calligraphy brushes, cleaning appliances and others.

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Japanese smart eyewear company Vixion has been working on an innovative pair of eyeglasses that can adjust the focus of the lenses, thus helping wearers overcome both myopia and hyperopia.

Suffering from either shortsightedness or farsightedness is bad enough, but as we age, many of us have to deal with the symptoms of both conditions. That means trouble seeing details up-close and in the distance. Unfortunately, the only way to deal with this is to get two pairs of eyeglasses – one for reading and another for seeing distant things more clearly. Having two pairs of prescription glasses is not only expensive, but also cumbersome. You need to have both with you at all times and switch between as necessary. Luckily, a Japanese company is working on a pair of smart eyeglasses that can help you deal with both myopia and hyperopia.

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If you’re a millennial who misses the old rotary phone that was such a big part of your life growing up, the Rotary Un-Smartphone Kit may be just what you’ve been looking for.

Smartphones are cool if you like carrying a miniature computer everywhere with you, but if you only care about making calls and all the other stuff is just getting in the way, the mobile rotary phone designed by space engineer and brilliant inventor Justine Haupt is just perfect. Featuring the familiar plastic dial that most of us 90s kids grew up with, the Rotary Un-Smartphone is basically a barebone smartphone that only includes the absolute essentials that the average anti-smartphone user might like, but with a cool, retro look.

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Ever wish you had the deep voice of James Earl Jones? Well, maybe that’s an unattainable goal, but if you’re willing to go under the knife for a deeper or higher voice, there’s a surgeon in Turkey who can help.

Dr Kursat Yelken has been performing voice deepening surgeries for 15 years and claims that demand for the procedure has been increasing. He currently operates on 100 – 150 people a year, from executives wanting to sound more assertive, to transgender people looking to make their voice match their new gender. The Turkish doctor, who trained at Harvard Medical School, can tweak patients’ pitch and tone, giving them a deeper or higher voice, depending on their preferences.

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Despite failing the dreaded gaokao university entrance exam 25 times in a row, a 55-year-old man in China is still not giving up on his dream of attending college.

At age 55, Liang Shi is the owner of a successful building materials company in Chengdu, the capital of southwestern China’s Sichuan province. He has enough money to do whatever he wants, but he doesn’t fell completely fulfilled. That’s because he has been dreaming of getting into Sichuan University ever since he was a teenager, and he has yet to achieve his goal. At an age when most people are starting to think about retirement, Liang Shi is only focused on studying hard for this year’s gaokao university entrance exam. It will be his 26th attempt to pass it, and hopefully the last.

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If you’re the type of person who struggles with the classic Rubik’s Cube, you should stay far away from this “impossible” version that recently went on sale in Japan.

Designed by the wicked minds at Bandai Namco’s MegaHouse Co., the Rubik’s Cube Impossible is being marketed as the most challenging variant of the popular toy invented by Hungarian sculptor Ernő Rubik. The differences from the original are hard to identify at first glance, as the principle is exactly the same, the number of facets is identical, with the only different thing being the coloring. The difficulty of the Rubik’s Cube Impossible lies in the duality of the colors. Nearly all 54 facets are iridescent, meaning that they change color when looked at from different angles. That apparently makes it a lot harder to align all the colors, as the rules of the classic cube no longer apply.

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After losing her husband to a heart attack, an Indian woman spent 39 years pretending to be a man so she could raise her daughter alone in a patriarchal society.

S Petchiammal had only been married for 15 days when her husband succumbed to a massive heart attack. She was 20 years old at the time and pregnant with her daughter. Soon after giving birth, she started working various jobs to make ends meet, but raising a child as a single mother in Tamil Nadu’s Katunayakkanpatti village, a dominant patriarchal society, was tough. The young woman worked jobs at construction sites, hotels, and tea shops, but she faced harassment and sexual taunts every day, so one day she decided that she needed to make a big change.

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A 75-kilometer stretch of mountain road in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has been dubbed a car sick person’s worst nightmare for its hundreds of hairpin turns.

Known as Pamir Plateau Sky road or the Panlong Ancient Road, the winding road traversing the Kunlun Mountains of  Xinjiang is one of the most visually impressive roads in the world. Seen from above, it looks like a giant grey dragon slithering through the Kashgar region of the Uygur Autonomous Region in China. It officially opened in July of 2019 to facilitate the passage through the Kunlun Mountains for the region’s farmers, but soon became a tourist attraction for driving enthusiasts wanting to test their skills. With an alleged 600 hairpin turns, this road isn’t for the faint of heart or for the car sick.

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Clive Wearing, once an accomplished musicologist and orchestra conductor, is now known as the man with the 30-second memory, and for having one of the worst cases of amnesia ever recorded.

Can you imagine being unable to remember most of your life or to make any kind of new memories? Most of us can’t even begin to understand what it must be like to do something or meet someone and then forget the entire experience in a matter of seconds. The most mundane things, like eating, waking up, or seeing a family member all melt like snow every 7 to 30 seconds, leaving a blank canvas that is wiped clean again at short intervals. It’s impossible to even imagine, and yet that has been the life of Clive Wearing, a former musicologist, conductor, tenor, and keyboardist, for nearly four decades now.

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A young Florida fashion designer and tattoo-loving mother-of-one has been getting a lot of the online for covering her one-year-old son in hyperrealistic temporary tattoos.

29-year-old Shamekia Morris, a fashion designer from West Palm Beach, started putting temporary tattoos on her son Treylin when he was only six months old, and it has since become a habit that she shares with thousands of fans on social media. Although the effect is admittedly quite striking, not everyone is a fan of Shamekia’s idea, with some going as far as calling her irresponsible or a bad mother. Still, the mother-of-one, who herself is covered in tattoos, said that she won’t let the criticism stop her from living a lifestyle that both she and her son enjoy.

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Esther Aular, a talented makeup artist from Bogota, Colombia, has been attracting a lot of attention on social media because of her impressive optical illusions.

The 29-year-old influencer, who goes by ‘Nekita’ on TikTok and Instagram, has been posting photos and videos of her transforming herself into various pop-icons and fantastic creatures using only her makeup skills and rudimentary props. From characters of popular cartoons like The Simpsons or Naruto, to brain-twisting illusions that leave viewers scratching their heads about how she did them, Nekita always finds ways of leaving her tens of thousands of fans in awe.

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A South African man recently sparked controversy in his home country for proposing to his girlfriend during her father’s funeral.

When it comes to marriage proposals, location and timing are everything, and it’s fair to say that funerals aren’t exactly the perfect place to pop the big question. But that didn’t stop one South African man from staging one of the most awkward proposals in history, asking his grieving girlfriend’s hand in marriage right at her father’s funeral, with his casket in the background. The shocking scene was filmed by another attendant who subsequently posted it on TikTok, where it immediately went viral, sparking a heated debate among users of the popular video-sharing platform.

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A couple in the Indian state of Uttarakhand has taken their son to court, asking him to either pay back the $650,000 they claim to have invested in him or give them a grandchild within a year.

Sanjeev and Sadhana Prasad filed a highly unusual lawsuit against their own son on the grounds of “mental harassment”. They claim to have invested substantial sums of money into his education and professional training over the years, helped him financially when he couldn’t find a job, and arranged and paid for his wedding in 2016. In return, they were expecting a “grandchild to play with” during their retirement years, only their son didn’t deliver as expected, so now the couple is taking legal action against him.

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Designer brand Balenciaga recently unveiled a new limited-edition line of footwear so damaged and dirty that most people wouldn’t be caught wearing it in public.

There’s such a thing as “distressed clothing” and it can actually look pretty nice, but sometimes designers go too far and we end up with some really weird products. Now, when it comes to pushing the envelope, Balenciaga is right up there with some of the most daring fashion brands, but being cutting edge comes with a high risk of looking ridiculous. Remember that Balenciaga skirt designed to look like a car mat? Not the fashion house’s best garment, but even that pales in comparison with its line of $1,450 destroyed sweaters. But if you happen to have bought one such extremely distressed sweater, at least you now have some banged-up sneakers to pair them with.

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