Durandal, a mythical sword that had been lodged in a rock wall in the French village of Rocamadour for the last 1,300 years, has suddenly disappeared, presumably stolen.

Durandal was often described as the French equivalent of the much more famous Excalibur, King Arthur’s legendary sword. Legend has it that an angel gave Durandal to the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, who in turn entrusted it to his faithful knight, Roland. It is mentioned in the 11th-century poem The Song of Roland, which claims that its magical power came from containing the tooth of St Peter, the blood of St Basil, and the hair of St Denis. Roland is said to have tried to break his trusty sword after being wounded at the battle of Roncevaux Pass, to keep it from falling into the hands of the Saracens. However, Durandal was indestructible, so instead he hurled it towards the sky, and the sword landed in a giant rock, where it allegedly remained ever since. Until recently, anyway…

Read More »

A 17-year-old Chinese student from a rural vocational school who shocked her country by ranking 12th among 802 participants in an elite math contest is now facing accusations of cheating.

Math contests are a big deal in China, but it’s very rare for such competitions to capture the attention of an entire country like this year’s Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition. Organized by Alibaba’s DAMO Academy and the Alibaba Foundation, the contest is free to enter for math enthusiasts from around the world, but it is usually dominated by math majors from prestigious institutions such as Harvard, Oxford, and MIT. However, this year, something extraordinary happened. Not only was 17-year-old Jiang Ping the only girl in the top 30 after the first round of the competition, but she was also the only one whose studies didn’t focus on math. The unlikely math genius studies fashion design at a rural vocational school in Jiangsu Province, and only studies advanced mathematics as a hobby.

  Read More »

A Japanese couple known for uploading wholesome family videos on YouTube sparked controversy after filming their 2-year-old daughter crying inside a locked car on a hot day for about 30 minutes instead of getting her out.

At the end of May,  ラウなのファミリー (“Rau-nano Family), a YouTube channel that documents the daily life of a Japanese couple with their three children, uploaded a video titled 炎天下の中…2歳娘が車に閉じ込められました (“Under the blazing sun… my 2-year-old daughter was locked in the car,”).  The shocking title hints at the couple’s goal of grabbing attention and boosting viewership, but while the video managed to do just that, they didn’t anticipate the criticism coming with their new-found fame. That is surprising, to say the least, as the controversial video shows the father of the family casually filming his 2-year-old daughter as she cries desperately for about 30 minutes after accidentally getting stuck in the family car on a hot summer day with no windows open.

The disturbing video, which has since been removed from the Rau-nano Family YouTube channel, shows the head of the family placing the older daughter, two-year-old Nanoka, in the backseat of the family’s Toyota, and preparing to do the same with her younger sister. It is at this moment that Nanoka, who is holding the car keys as her father handles the little sister, accidentally locks herself in the car.

  Read More »

An English foot fetish model has launched a limited-edition wine made by crushing grapes with her feet and selling it to her adoring fans for £100 ($128) per bottle.

30-year-old Emilie Rae claims she was contacted by London-based winery Renegade Urban Winery about a collaborative wine project because of her expertise in ‘foot work’. The self-described ‘foot fetish icon’, who makes a living uploading photos and videos of herself standing in baked beans or squashing birthday cake in between her toes for people who are into that kind of stuff, made her Simp Wine by mastering the ancient technique of stomping on grapes. Although she is convinced her fans will gladly pay £100 for a taste of her ‘perfect feet’, she claimed the wine is worth it because she risked her life to make it.

Read More »

At least five Srilankan fishermen have tragically lost their lives and three more are in critical condition after consuming the mysterious contents of bottles found floating in the open sea.

The Sri Lanka Navy recently reported that at least five fishermen have died after consuming an unknown liquid from bottles they found while at sea, around 320 nautical miles from Tangalle, a town on the southern coast of Sri Lanka. It’s unclear how many of these mysterious bottles were found floating out at sea, but a Navy spokesperson told journalists that they contained some sort of alcohol. The bottles were shared among the sailors of the fishing vessel named Devon, and before long, some of them started feeling sick. Despite receiving rudimentary assistance on the boat from Sri Lanka Navy medical personnel, at least five of the fishermen have died, and another is in critical condition. Unfortunately, the crew is believed to have shared the mysterious bottles with other fishing boats.

Read More »

A 90-year-old Chinese woman unknowingly used an old hand grenade to crack nuts and hammer nails for two decades after finding the unexploded ordinance in a field one day.

The woman, surnamed Qin, told Chinese reporters that she was working on her farm in Xiangyang, Hubei province when she found this strange “metal lump” with a wooden handle. Convinced it was a makeshift hammer, she took it home and used it to pound all kinds of tough objects, from nuts to metal nails. It was only last week when a team of men working on demolishing her old house noticed the hand grenade that the retired woman learned she had been gambling with her life every time she used it. And she used it a lot, as police reported that the grenade’s wooden handle had become smooth and glossy from years of use, while the metallic head was full of dents.

Read More »

A Missouri woman is facing multiple charges for allegedly spiking her husband’s Mountain Dew with Round Up herbicide because he was unappreciative of the birthday party she had thrown for him.

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” and one Missouri man learned that first-hand after incurring his wife’s wrath for not being appreciative enough of the 50th birthday party she organized for him. On June 24, the man, whose name has not been revealed for personal privacy reasons, notified the Laclede County Sheriff’s Office that he had reasons to believe his wife was trying to poison him. He had noticed that one of the bottles of Mountain Dew in the refrigerator had a bizarre taste, and after experiencing troubling symptoms like diarrhea and vomiting, he decided to check the surveillance system which showed his spouse tampering with his soda bottle and a container of Round Up weedkiller.

Read More »

British millionaire and pro golfer Francis McGuirk narrowly avoided jail time for reportedly setting fire to his family home just so his wife couldn’t have it following their breakup.

In a trial that recently ended and saw Francis McGuirk barely avoiding prison time, the 50-year-old golf pro was accused of setting fire to the £900,000 ($1.4 million) house in Sandwich, Kent last year, just to spite his life partner. On June 25 last year, knowing that there was no one home, the father-of-three entered the house he owned with his soon-to-be-ex-wife Sarah, locked himself inside, and snapped the keys inside the locks before texting his partner to let her know that he was about to set the place on fire. He proceeded to do just that, and it was only thanks to the neighbors calling emergency services that the house suffered only minor damage.

Read More »

Designed and built by eight Dutch engineers, the world’s longest rideable bicycle is 180 feet long (55.16 meters), roughly the same length as four double-decker buses.

39-year-old Ivan Schalk had been thinking about building the world’s longest bicycle since reading about it in a Guinness Book of Records when he was a child, but he only embarked upon this project in 2018, as a way to fill up his free time. He knew it wasn’t the kind of thing he could build himself, so he sought the help of like-minded people in his home village of Prinsenbeek, which is apparently well-known in the Netherlands for its tech-savvy residents. Together, they spent about four years –  not counting the two years of interruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic – working on the world’s longest bicycle, a metal behemoth that needs at least two riders.

Read More »

A Southern collegiate baseball team has been getting a lot of attention for hosting “cosmic baseball” games played at night, under black lights, with players using UV-reactive uniforms, balls, and bats.

With balls flying toward players at breakneck speeds, baseball isn’t the kind of game that can be played in less-than-perfect lighting conditions, but one Southern collegiate baseball team has found a way to make it playable in the dark. Using massive black light installations and UV-reactive uniforms, balls, bats, and bases, the Tri-City Chili Peppers have been putting together ‘cosmic baseball’ games that look like something out of a Tron movie. Despite the seemingly pitch-black atmosphere, players claim that after a bit of practice, playing under UV lights becomes second nature, as does seeing the ball, no matter how hard it’s hit or thrown.

Read More »

45-year-old Yoshiharu Watanabe can rightfully consider himself the world’s luckiest man after setting a new Guinness Record by growing a clover with 63 individual leaves.

What is luckier than a four-leaf clover? Well, a five-leaf clover, of course. By that logic, the more leaves a clover has, the more luck it brings, so Yoshiharu Watanabe may just be the luckiest man alive because he is the first to ever grow a clover with 63 leaves. His amazing story began in 2009 when he started picking up clovers with more than three leaves and planting them in his home garden. The little plant is pretty resilient, so all he had to do was cross-pollinate to obtain exceptional specimens with up to 20 leaves. It was at this moment that he started dreaming about setting a new world record, but he never dreamed of doing so with a 63-leaf clover.

Read More »

A New Zealand woman attempted to take her former boyfriend to court for failing to take her to the airport as he had promised, which resulted in her losing her flight and incurring additional costs.

According to legal documents released by New Zealand’s Disputes Tribunal, which deals with small claims up to NZ$30,000 ($18,384), the woman had asked her boyfriend of six and a half years to drive her to the airport ahead of a concert she was to attend with some friends. The man had also agreed to stay at her place while she was gone and look after her dogs, but he ultimately failed to do all the things he had verbally agreed to, which caused her to miss her plane, and incur unplanned financial costs, such as taking a shuttle to the airport and paying a dog kennel to keep her pets. She filed a complaint with the Tribunal hoping to be reimbursed by her now-former partner.

Read More »

A French man is being accused of painting his Porsche sports car another color to avoid hefty penalties after being caught speeding and failing to stop despite being signaled to do so by police.

On June 2nd, French police used a speed radar to catch a motorist driving at a speed of 188 km/h on a road limited to 80 km/h near Cournonsec, southwest of Montpellier. They notified a gendarmerie unit near the Poussan motorway to stop the offender, but when they signaled the car to pull over, it just flew past them with no intention of stopping. Surprised by the car’s vehicle, the gendarmes were unable to chase down the offender or even get its license plate. However, they wrote down in their report that the car was a bright green Porsche 911 sports car, which made it relatively easy to identify. However, when the only person in the area known to drive a green Porsche turned up at the police station, officers were shocked to find that his sports car was now grey.

Read More »

Amateur MMA fighter Lukasz Bukovac recently went 0-2 in one night despite having fought just one opponent after getting his marriage proposal brutally rejected by his girlfriend in front of 20,000 people.

They say you should never kick someone while they’re down, but some would say Lukasz Bukovac brought it upon himself when he decided to propose to his girlfriend inside the octagon, after losing an MMA fight. Even if he had won, there was no guarantee the girl would say yes, but getting rejected in front of 20,000 spectators is so much more painful after a loss. Unfortunately, Bukovac had to just stand there on one knee and hear his visibly embarrassed girlfriend shoot down his marriage proposal for alleged infidelity, in front of tens of thousands of people. To make it worse, the whole thing was filmed and the video is now going viral around the world.

Read More »

A 20-year-old Indian man claims to have been subjected to a sex change operation without his consent by another man who planned to marry him for his family’s land.

Mujahid, a 20-year-old man from Sanjak Village in Uttar Pradesh, has become the talk of an entire country after claiming that a male rival tricked him into going to the Begrajpur Medical College in Mansoorpur where a team of doctors sedated him and performed a gender change operation on him without his consent. The victim told authorities that a man named Omprakash deceived him into believing that he was suffering from a serious medical condition and then offered to take him to Mansoorpur to be treated. Mujahid claims that shortly after arriving at the hospital, he was sedated and then operated on by a team of doctors who had colluded with Omprakash. When he woke up the next day, he was told he was no longer a man, but a woman.

Read More »