A man who lost his iPhone 10 months ago while canoeing on a river in England was shocked to have it returned in working order by someone who spotted it on the bottom of that same river.

Earlier this month, Miguel Pacheco was canoeing with his family on the River Wye, in Cinderford, Gloucestershire, when he spotted something blue in the water. It turned out to be an iPhone covered with mud and full of water, but instead of throwing it back in, Pacheco decided to take it with him and see if it still worked. Chances were low, considering where the phone had been found, but after using an air compressor to dry it out and placing it in the airing cupboard overnight, Miguel Pacheco was shocked to see the charging icon pop up on the screen when he plugged it in.

Read More »

A Japanese IT engineer has created a creepy nigh lamp that crawls on robotic spider legs and leads you to the toilet in the middle of the night.

Don’t you hate when you have to answer nature’s call in the middle of the night? It’s pitch dark, you don’t know where you’re going and you don’t want to disturb the whole family by turning on the lights. Wouldn’t it be nice if a smart night lamp could light up the way from your bed to the toilet? Well, be careful what you wish for, because some night lamps can be downright disturbing. Case in point, this robotic spider lamp created by a Japanese IT engineer as a side project that has been freaking out Twitter for the past couple of days.

Read More »

Inspired by the comfort of the classic dog bed, a couple of university students designed Plufl, the world’s first dog bed for humans.

If you’re thinking that the Plufl is just an oversized dog bed, you’re technically right, but according to its creators, University of British Columbia students Noah Silverman and Yuki Kinoshita, it’s also much more than that. Apparently, the Plufl was engineered “to provide the optimal napping experience” and “maximize comfort and foster a sense of security, delivering relief for those who have ADHD, stress, and anxiety-related issues.”

Read More »

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.

Read More »

Inspired by Harry Potter’s iconic invisibility cloak, these real-life invisibility shields can make anyone who hides behind them disappear into thin air.

Invisibility Shield Co. is a UK-based startup that has been working on an affordable invisibility mechanism for over two years. The company recently revealed a line of invisibility shields that rely on surprisingly simple technology to make users invisible to the naked eye. Apparently, the shield uses a “precision-engineered lens array” to deflect light from the subject sitting behind the shield away from the observer. The lenses are oriented vertically to allow light from the subject to diffuse when it passes through the shield. The light from the subject’s background is refracted towards the observer who cannot see the subject hiding behind the shield.

Read More »

A team of Japanese high-school students recently won a regional innovation competition with a high-tech device that divides cake and pizza into equal portions every single time.

It’s a problem as old as the world – cutting a round treat into more than two equal parts. You either end up with portions that are not exactly the same size, or you’re left with a smaller extra slice that everyone has their eye on. Well, thanks to the ingenuity of a group of Japanese students from Kundong High School in Japan’s Oita Prefecture, dividing a cake or a pizza into perfectly equal portions need no longer be an issue. They have created a high-tech device that calculates the angle at which the tasty treat needs to be cut, depending on the number of necessary slices.

Read More »

Known as ‘the poor man’s fireworks’, Dashuhua is a 500-year-old pyrotechnic ritual used in Nuanquan, China, to celebrate the Lunar New Year.

The small town of Nuanquan, in northwestern China’s Hebei province, is home to one of the world’s most dangerous yet mesmerizing fireworks displays. Although fireworks have been a part of Chinese celebrations since around the year 800 A.D., they haven’t always been as widely available and affordable as they are today. So about half of a millennia ago, local blacksmiths came up with a viable alternative that was cheaper, but just as impressive as conventional pyrotechnics – throwing molten iron at cold walls to produce a waterfall of bright sparks that are at the same time beautiful and dangerous.

Read More »

An elevator button factory in Japan allows visitors to test its vast collection of buttons by pressing no less than 1,000 of them on a specially designed display.

Shimada Denki Seisakusho is a specialized manufacturer of custom-made elevator buttons and arrival lights based in Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1933, the factory is a piece of Japanese industrial history and conducts guided tours for people interested in its early beginnings and the way it makes its vast array of elevator buttons. It’s a fascinating visit, I’m sure, but the highlight of the tour has to be the ‘1,000 Buttons’ display, which, as the name suggests, is made up of rows upon rows of different elevator buttons that light up when pressed.

Read More »

Boji, a stray dog from Istanbul, Turkey has become so familiar with the local public transportation system that he casually uses several means of transportation (bus, subway, train, and even the ferry) every day.

Dogs using public transportation is not unheard of. Back in 2011, we wrote about Moscow’s impressive subway-riding dogs, and three years ago we featured Eclipse, Seattle’s famous bus-riding canine. But in both cases, the animals used a specific means of transportation that they had become familiarized with. Boji the stray, on the other hand, is comfortable using several types of public transportation every day, including the ferry, to get around the ancient Turkish city and even travel between continents…

Read More »

Are you stuck in quarantine? Do you miss staring out the window at the clouds below while flying to your next vacation destination? Apparently, there’s a lamp for that!

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted all facets of daily life, but traveling has been particularly hard hit. For globetrotters used to frequent flying from destination to destination, the last year has been nothing short of a depression-inducing nightmare, but luckily, there are ways to treat your wanderlust. One solution, this clever lamp that perfectly imitates an airplane window and the view from above the clouds.

Read More »

LumiLor is the world first and only patented electroluminescent paint, which can light up virtually any solid surface when an electrical current passes through it.

Luminescent paint has been around for decades, but it has never looked as cool as the ingenious invention that is LumiLor. Fluorescent and phosphorescent paints only maintain their glow for a short duration after being exposed to long-wave ultraviolet (UV) radiation while radioluminescent paint contains a small amount of a radioactive isotope mixed with a radioluminescent phosphor chemical. Lumilor, the world’s first electroluminscents coating, only requires an electrical current to achieve its glowing effect, and can be used to create awe-inspiring light-shows at the flip of a switch.

Read More »

Photos of an unusually-tall cactus growing on the side of a three-storey building in Tokyo, Japan, have been doing the rounds on social media, raising the question: ‘is this the world’s tallest cactus?’

Last Wednesday, Japanese Twitter user =Yang= (@0okome0) posted a bunch of intriguing photos of a building he had spotted in Takinogawa, Tokyo Metropolitan Area. It wasn’t the building that drew people’s attention, but a green pole on the side of it. =Yang= himself admitted that at first he thought it was simply a green-painted utility pole, but the deformed top, which stretched onto the roof of the building, told him otherwise. As he approached the strange sight, he realized that it was actually a thick cactus stretching from the bottom all the way to the roof of the three-storey residential building. He snapped some pics and posted them on Twitter, where they quickly went viral.

Read More »

Robin Lachhein, 31, and Judith Schneider, 30, a couple from, Germany, have a very interesting hobby – they travel around the world to recreate iconic movie scenes in the exact same locations they were filmed at.

Robin and Judith met at a friend’s party 10 years ago, and they’ve been visiting famous film locations for the last six years. At first it was just a personal hobby they kept for themselves, only posting photos they took around their home, but then friends started noticing them when they came over and praising their talent for recreating iconic scenes. Instagram had been gaining popularity, so they started their very own page, aptly named ‘Secret Famous Places’, which has gained tens of thousands of followers.

Read More »

Even you’re not the kind of person who keeps their business cards in a bespoke holder, heck, even if you don’t have business cards, you’re going to fall in love with this awesome steampunk card holder.

Looking at this crazy contraption created by Japanese design company SMD Factory, you’re tempted to think it’s some kind of futuristic device from back in the 1930’s. It’s all metallic, but features decorative elements like a small osciloscope and an astrolab, as well as interconnected gears and latches. It’s as steampunk a device as you can imagine, but it’s really just a card holder, a really cool card holder.

Read More »

A photo of a tattooed man’s hand with the top layer if skin damaged by a minor kitchen burn sparked a heated debate on social media site Reddit last week. That’s because the section where the skin was burned off revealed a tattoo so bright you could swear it was just inked.

The photo, posted by Reddit user uhmodijia, reportedly shows the hand of a “friend of a friend” who had just suffered a minor burn which only affected the top layer of his skin, exposing the dermis. The man had a blue rose tattooed on his skin a while ago, and like all tattoos do in time, it had started to fade. However, the patch of burned skin that had peeled off because of the burn revealed a much more vibrant copy of the same tattoo on his dermis. Apparently, tattoo guns reach deep into the skin, and while the tattoos on the first layer begin to fade just months after they’ve been inked due to multiple factors, they remain vibrant under this first layer of protective skin.

Read More »