A 24-year-old Indian man was recently hospitalized after he allegedly cut off his tongue as an offering to the Hindu goddess Kali Mata, to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

From putting quarantine offenders in haunted houses to people locking spouses in the bathroom, we’ve seen people do some pretty extreme things to stop the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, but Vivek Sharma, a young stone sculptor working in Suigam, India’s Gujarat state, takes the cake. Frustrated about not being able to return to his home town in Madhya Pradesh, because of nationwide lockdowns, Sharma reportedly chopped off his own tongue at a temple, as an offering to Hindu goddess Kali Mata, to stop the spread of the virus. So far his sacrifice has proven to be in vain…

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Remember those bra-cup face mask memes doing the rounds on social media not too long ago? Well, a Japanese company decided to make them a reality, and they sold out almost instantly.

Getting your hands on a proper medicinal face mask in Japan is pretty hard these days, but clothing companies around the country are trying to alleviate the shortage by producing reusable cloth masks. Atsumi Fashion, an apparel manufacturer in the city of Himi, Toyama Prefecture, is one such company, only it’s going about things a bit differently. You see, Atsumi specializes in women’s underwear garments, and its management decided that applying the same design to face masks wouldn’t be such a bad idea. They were right!

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Fed up with people constantly neglecting self-isolation and quarantine rules, a local politician on Indonesia’s Java Island decided to lock rule breakers in a haunted house to set an example for others.

Kusdinar Untung Yuni Sukowati, the head of Sragen regency came up with the idea of taping into the locals’ fear of ghosts as a way to deal with an influx of newcomers in the area. Because of lockdowns in the capital Jakarta and other major cities, Sragen has started seeing quite a lot of people coming in, many of whom completely disregard the rule to self-isolate themselves for 14 days, in case they are infected with the novel coronavirus. To make sure people started respecting the rules, Kusdinar started putting offenders in abandoned houses locals believe are haunted.

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Chinese media recently reported the case of two doctors who got infected with the novel coronavirus while treating patients and suffered a drastic change in skin pigmentation, going from white to dark brown.

Dr. Yi Fan and Dr. Hu Weifeng, both 42, became infected with the coronavirus in January, while treating patients at the Wuhan Central Hospital. They were colleagues of Dr. Li Wenliang, the late whistle-blower who first sounded the alarm about the dangerous new virus and was originally reprimanded by the Chinese Government. They both would have shared his tragic fate too, if not for the valiant efforts of their fellow doctors to keep them alive. The two doctors spent more than a month on life-support and only regained consciousness this month, when they also learned that their appearances had changed drastically…

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Honey, dubbed by activists and animal lovers ‘the world’s loneliest dolphin’, died last month, after almost two years spent by herself in a small pool at an abandoned aquarium in Japan.

We originally featured Honey’s tragic story back in October 2018, when footage shot by Japanese animal rights activists showing a single bottlenose dolphin floating in what appeared like an abandoned pool went viral online. It turned out that the video had been shot with a drone at the Inubosaki Marine Park Aquarium in Choshi, Chiba Prefecture, months after it had closed down. The dolphin, named Honey, and some penguins had remained behind and were being fed by an employee every few days. Still, the dolphin suffered from skin burns under the hot summer sun, as well as stress and loneliness. The story made international headlines at the time, but that did nothing to change Honey’s fate. After almost two years spent in that pool alone, she died last month…

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A Vietnamese social media influencer and minor TV personality claims to has suffered severe muscle atrophy in one of her legs after getting filler injections to remove mosquito bite marks.

Instagram “hot girl” Mai Sương recently took to the internet to denounce a beauty salon for having caused her serious harm by injecting Botox filler into her leg to supposedly help remove bruise-like mosquito bites. The young influencer told her Instagram followers that she had started noticing the skin color changing to blue, then concave gaps forming around the injected mosquito bite mark, and finally one of the legs becoming weaker than the other. Concerned about her health, Mai went to the hospital and was shocked to learn that she was suffering from severe muscle atrophy because of the filler injections.

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As countries around the world struggle to come up with ways of keeping people from going outside and slow down the spread of the novel coronavirus, Indonesian settlements are trying an unconventional solution – volunteer ghosts.

In Kepuh village, Central Java, people brave enough to venture outside their homes at night risk coming face to face with ‘pocong’ or shrouded ghosts, legendary figures believed to be represent the souls of dead people trapped in their funeral shrouds. The pocong monitor guests coming into the village and make sure that residents stay indoors as much as possible, to prevent them from spreading the potentially deadly coronavirus. Quite unusual for ghosts known as scary and creepy in Indonesian folklore, but then again, these aren’t your usual pocong.

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Indonesian soap opera actor Galih Ginanjar was recently sentenced to 2 years and four months in prison for humiliating his ex-wife by claiming that her genitalia smelled like “salted fish”.

In June 2019, Galih appeared as a guest on a popular YouTube show hosted by TV personality Rey Utami, where he answered all kind of questions about his personal life.When asked about his marriage to Indonesian actress Fairuz A Rafiq, which ended in 2015, the young soap opera didn’t shy away from vulgar language to describe intimate details. Among other things, he said that intercourse between them usually lasted about 15 minutes, and that her privates smelled like “salted fish”. This made the host burst into uncontrollable laughter, but enraged Fairuz, who quickly filed a police report for “immoral content”.

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A 76-year-old man from rural China can consider himself lucky to be alive after he had a four-inch-long rusty knife surgically removed from his brain, 26 years after being stabbed in the head.

The case of Duorijie, an old farmer from the rural county of Haiyan in China’s north-western Qinghai Province, can be considered nothing short of a miracle. Stabbed in the head in 1994, during a violent mugging, Duorijie had reportedly been living with a long knife blade stuck in his brain ever since. Lucky to have survived the attack, the farmer had been experiencing all kinds of troublesome symptoms because of the knife blade in his brain, like lost vision in his right eye and chronic headaches. Now, thanks to a team of doctors, he is finally able to enjoy a pain-free life.

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Japanese men mastering the art of makeup and photo-manipulation to pose as girls seems to be a current trend in the land of the rising sun these days…

Puutan, whose real name is reportedly “Tatsuya”, is a Japanese 18-year-old boy who has been posing as a schoolgirl online and messing with people’s minds. You see, looking at Puutan’s Instagram profile, it’s virtually impossible to tell that he is a man. He genuinely looks like an Asian schoolgirl, and no matter how much you squint at the photos, you’re not going to spot any clues of his real gender. But click on his YouTube link and you’ll be shocked to find another person entirely. He still has girly clothes on as well as long hair , but you can sort of tell that he’s just a guy in drag.

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A luckless Chinese man who reportedly spent almost two months in his home after being quarantined three times in a row became a trending topic on Chinese social media this week.

Mr Xiong, from the city of Jining, in East China’s Shandong Province, spent almost the whole month of February and half of March cooped up in his home in an unlucky triple quarantine that the media hilariously dubbed “buy one, get two free”. The first time Xiong was confined to his apartment was when Jining went into lockdown on February 8th, two days after returning from the Philippines. He was forbidden from leaving his home for 14 days, which was tough, but not as tough as spending 50 days inside…

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In March of 2018, an 11-year-old girl accidentally dropped an apple from the balcony of her family’s 24th floor apartment in Dongguan, China. This simple act ended up costing a toddler its future and the girl’s parents a fortune in compensation…

On March 9, 2018, the unnamed girl was reportedly trying to feed the family dog while holding an apple on the balcony of their apartment, when she accidentally dropped the fruit. At the same exact time, 3-month-old Tongtong was in the arms of her grandmother, taking a walk around that same apartment building in Dongguan. As fate would have it, the dropped apple plummeted down and landed straight on the toddler’s head, rendering her unconscious. She was rushed to the hospital, where doctors notified her family that she had suffered severe head trauma, skull fractures, ruptured blood vessels in the skull, and traumatic shock. Tongtong underwent surgery to stop the bleeding in her brain, but she remained in a coma.

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Four years ago, Rita Gaviola was a 13-year-old street beggar in the Filipino town of Lucban. Since then she has worked with some of the world’s hottest brands as a fashion model, starred on hit reality TV shows and gained over 100,000 Instagram followers. And it was all thanks to a random photo…

Rita Gaviola’s incredible ‘rags to riches’ story began in 2016. Back then, she was asking for alms on the streets of Lucban, to help her family make ends meet. Her father worked as a garbage collector and her mother stayed home to look after her and her five siblings. None of the children attended school at the time and the family barely managed to put food on the table, so Rita often went out to beg for change or food donations. That’s how she was spotted by Filipino photographer Topher Quinto Burgos, who happened to be attending the Pahiyas Festival in Lucban, in May 2016. He was attracted by her natural beauty and posted the photos of her on the internet, changing the girl’s life completely with a single click of the ‘upload’ button.

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They say you can buy just about anything on China’s leading online shopping platform, Taobao. Well, you can now add “commercial rocket launch” to that list as well.

In what was originally deemed an April 1st joke, Chinese media recently reported that an anonymous online shopper paid 40 million yuan ($5.6 million) for his very own rocket launch. The unique online auction was hosted by Chinese celebrity sales anchor Wei Ya and over two million people tuned in to watch the sale live on Taobao. Bidder swere told that winning the auction would allow them to paint the body of the commercial rocket and the launch platform, as well as the chance to visit the launch site and control the launch.

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Japan’s “Class of Life” is a controversial school project that aims to teach students about valuing their food and the environment by having them raise and then eat animals like fish and chicken.

We first featured the Class of Life a couple of years ago, when a video showcasing its implementation at an agricultural high-school in Japan’s Shimano Prefecture went viral on Chinese social media, leaving most viewers in a state of shock. The footage showed students preparing chicken eggs for hatching, raising the chicks for several months, and finally killing, cooking and eating the chickens. The Class of Life has been a part of Japanese curriculum at certain schools for over six decades, so most Japanese people are familiar with it, but even they were stunned recently when they saw elementary school children taking part in the class.

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