Vozrozhdeniya was once an isolated island in the Aral Sea. Today, it’s a wasteland infused with tonnes of anthrax, as well as other exotic and deadly diseases.

The Aral Sea was once the fourth-largest sea on planet Earth, but after the rivers that fed it were diverted by the Soviets to irrigate cotton fields, its waters receded and today it is nothing but a salty-sand wasteland where temperatures frequently reach 60 degrees Celsius and signs of life are scarce to non-existent. But you know what’s worse than a salt-covered wasteland – a salt-covered wasteland infused with anthrax and a plethora of other exotic diseases that the Soviet Union experimented with for years. That’s what makes Vozrozhdeniya one of the deadliest places in the world.

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Celebrity lookalikes are nothing new, but it’s rare to find one that resembles the original as closely as Brazilian Priscilla Beatrice resembles pop icon Rihanna.

Priscilla Beatrice may not be Rihanna’s only lookalike, but she’s definitely the most famous one. With over 450,000 followers on Instagram and 2.4 million followers on TikTok, you could say she is a social media sensation in her own right. She has made a name for herself impersonating the Barbadian superstar both online and in various cities around the world, with fans of Rihanna flocking to get an autograph or have their picture taken with her. And who could blame them? The resemblance is so uncanny, you’d be tempted to think she was Rihanna’s identical twin sister.

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A Buffalo couple is suing a fertility clinic that had allegedly promised to determine the sex of the embryo before it was implanted into the client’s womb, only to deliver the wrong sex.

Heather and Robin Wilhelm-Routenberg had decided to only have a baby if they could guarantee it was a girl, because of emotional trauma Heather had experienced earlier in her life. To that end, the two women approached the CNY fertility clinic in Latham, New York, which, they claim, guaranteed them that it could determine the sex of an embryo created using an egg from Robbie and donor sperm. However, 15 weeks into Heather’s pregnancy, the couple was shocked to learn that they were having a boy, despite specifically asking for a girl. The two women are now suing the clinic for malpractice and breach of contract, among other things.

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A team of welders from Mazda Motor Corporation in Japan recently showed off their skill by painstakingly welding the faces of a 1mm die.

Photos of a metallic die barely visible on a person’s fingertip and a magnified up-close photos showing the elegant welding keeping all six facets together recently went viral on Japanese social media, leaving a lot of people impressed. Although you’d be hard-pressed to use this type of die in a real-life situation, the fact that people are actually capable of this sort of impressive feat is incredible. It goes to show you that nothing is impossible, regardless of how hard it is.

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An English millionaire who notoriously built the “UK’s biggest man cave” in his backyard without planning permission, is now trying to prevent it from being torn down by buying up properties around it.

After an eight-year battle, millionaire businessman Graham Wildin was ordered to tear down the enormous man-cave complex on his property in Gloucestershire, but he has failed to do that. The 10,000sq/ft facility, which included a cinema, squash court, small casino and bowling alley, has now become the center of a fortress created by acquiring the properties around it, in an alleged attempt to stop the council from forcefully tearing it down. Although the deadline to level the luxurious man cave passed a month ago, the entire complex still stands.

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A Vietnamese man has become famous on social media for his drastic physical transformation with the help of plastic surgery which left him looking like a male K-Pop star.

The story of Tran Dang Phuoc Cuong’s transformation began in 2009, when, following a tragic car accident, which resulted in his father passing away and his mother fighting for her life in the hospital, the Da Nang native left to study in China. There, the 17-year-old student enrolled in a Chinese language course, so he could learn Chinese and increase his chances of finding a job to support himself. Then, he tried to find a part-time job and learned that his appearance was a hindrance as well, and that prompted him to go under the knife and drastically change his look.

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Douglas Smith, a gardener from Hertfordshire, UK recently set a new Guinness Record for most tomatoes grown on a single stem, 1,269.

Up until last summer, the record for most tomatoes grown on a single stem had stood unchallenged for over a decade. Then English farmer Douglas Smith set his sights on breaking it, thinking that he could grow more than 488 fruits on a single stem. And he proved that last year, when he managed to obliterate the old record by growing 839 tomatoes on a greenhouse-grown plant. It was quite the achievement, but he was only getting started, as only a few weeks later the Hertfordshire broke his own record by growing no less than 1,269 tomatoes on a single stem.

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A Japanese startup is trying to blur the line between reality and virtual reality with technology that allows the wearer to feel the pain experienced inside the metaverse in real life.

H2L Technologies, a Sony-backed technology company based in Tokyo, recently unveiled a wristband that dishes out small electric shocks whenever the wearer suffers pain-inducing damage in the much-hyped metaverse. The device is supposed to do a lot more than that, including mimicking a range of sensations from catching a ball to a bird pinching the wearer’s skin, as well as conveying weight and resistance. It’s all meant to make the metaverse this immersive experience that the people and companies involved in its creation have been pushing over the last year or so.

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Korean Bamboo Salt is a luxury product that can cost over $100 per 8.5-ounce (240g) jar. The price is mostly dictated by the laborious process of making it, which involves roasting it 9 times in bamboo cylinders.

If you thought pink Himalayan salt was expensive, you probably haven’t heard of actual luxury salt varieties. There are actually a bunch of them, including soy salt and pitch-black Kilauea Onyx salt, but at the very top of the list is Amethyst Bamboo, a Korean variety made by filling bamboo cylinders with sea salt, capping them with Loess clay and roasting it nine times in a traditional kiln. It’s a complex process that takes an entire month to complete. Every step is done by hand, so it’s no wonder that the salt can sell for over $100 per jar.

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A 31-year-old woman was recently sentenced to 2 years in prison for impersonating a physician and then an ophthalmologist for years without any medical training.

It all started in 2018, when Sonia, a 31-year-old woman from Meaux, in northern France, decided to try her luck as a physician, without undergoing any medical training. Sonia had a bachelor’s degree in real estate management, but she didn’t let that get in the way of attaining a lucrative job as a general physician. The woman forged a bunch of diplomas from the Faculty of Strasbourg and a false certificate on the board of the Order of Physicians, and not only got the job, but saw patients for three years before anyone noticed she had no business being a doctor.

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An unnamed 61-year-old man in German reportedly got 90 doses of Covid-19 vaccine injected into his body so he could make money selling vaccination certificates to people who didn’t want to get vaccinated.

The man from the eastern German city of Magdeburg, whose name was not released, allegedly managed to receive up to 90 shots of Covid-19 vaccine at various vaccination centers in the eastern state of Saxony for months, before finally being caught earlier this month. He was finally discovered when he came to a vaccination center in Eilenburg, Saxony for the second day in a row, asking to get a Covid-19 jab. It turns out the man kept getting Covid-19 shots in order to sell forged vaccination cards with real vaccine batch numbers to people not wanting to get vaccinated themselves.

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The sand dunes behind Barril Beach on Portugal’s southern Algarve Coast are home to over 200 rusty anchors abandoned there almost 60 years ago by the local tuna fishing community.

O Cemitério das Âncoras (The Anchor Cemetery) is one of the most iconic Sights of the Algarve Coast, yet not many people know its history and meaning. This isn’t just a random place where old ships abandoned their anchors many years ago, but a memorial to a now-defunct trade going back hundreds of years. In 1964, the local community decided to commemorate the death of traditional Bluefin Tuna fishing by burying the anchors that once formed the backbone of the complex tuna traps known as armações. They’ve remained there ever since as a reminder of the effect of industrialization and over-fishing on the locals.

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The Metaura Pro claims to be the world’s first wearable air-conditioning device capable of constantly blowing cold air to keep the wearer cool.

Conventional wearable cooling systems only circulate ambient air, and thus don’t do a very good job of cooling people down. The Metaura Pro, on the other hand, allegedly relies on a portable cooling solution to produce genuinely cold air that is 7 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than that of the ambient, in fan mode, and up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than ambient air, in cooling mode. The device has a dedicated app and relies on artificial intelligence to regulate air temperature.

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Souq Waqif is a state-of-the-art hospital in Doha Qatar, where 150 patients are treated every day. Only patients here all have feathers, as Souq Waqif is a hospital for falcons.

To say that Qatar’s Souq Waqif Falcon Hospital is a medical facility unlike any other would be fairly accurate. But then again, few countries around the world have a falconry tradition as old as the small Arab nations. Keeping the birds in the best possible physical shape is considered an essential duty by those who choose to keep and train falconids, and many of them spare no expense doing it. So it’s really no wonder that Souq Waqif is better equipped and staffed than many human hospitals in some of the world’s most developed countries.

Founded in 2008, the Souq Waqif Falcon Hospital is located in one corner of the main square in Doha’s old city. Everything, from the shiny glass doors at the entrance to the comfortable sofas of the waiting room, lets you know that falcons are the most revered animals in Qatar.

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Vietnam’s latest cosmetic procedure trend has people injecting hyaluronic acid fillers into their ear lobes in order to achieve elongated lobes like those of Maitreya, aka Laughing Buddha, considered a good long charm.

Vietnamese media recently featured a beauty salon in Quang Ninh where an increasing number of people have been requesting ear lobe fillers in order to change their fortunes. They believe that by increasing the size of their ear lobes to emulate those of Maitreya, a symbol of wealth and good fortune, they will attract prosperity into their lives. Advertisements for this procedure have reportedly become very popular on social media as well, with many salons promising fast and painless procedures to superstitious customers.

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