A Russian man was given a 3.5-year suspended prison sentence for tormenting his neighbors with loud horse neighing and stomping noises every night, for over two years.

47-year-old Yuri Kondratyev is famous in his home city of Nizhny Novgorod, after making national headlines for mentally torturing the neighbors in his apartment building for over two years. The unemployed man, who lives alone ever since his wife left him, started harassing his neighbors in 2018. Annoyed by the noises one of his neighbors’ kids were making during the day, Yuri started exacting his revenge on the whole building at night. At first, he started playing loud rock music for hours, and at one point switched to recordings of horse neighing and stomping.

Read More »

Having been running for the last 15 years, TV Asahi’s Zenryokuzaka is one of Japan’s most longstanding television shows, which is a bit strange considering its simple premise.

Every night at 1:20 a.m., Monday to Thursday, thousands of people tune in to TV Asahi to watch the latest episode of Zenryokuzaka, a bizarre show featuring women running up steep streets. Each episode lasts no more than six minute, including the opening and closing credits, and focuses solely on following the protagonist as she runs up the street. It’s an extremely simplistic concept, even for late-night TV, but one that has somehow remained popular in Japan for the last 15 years.

Read More »

On Valentine’s Day, a young Ukrainian couple made international news headlines after chaining their hands together for three months, as a last ditch effort to save their relationship. They lasted the three months, but split up as soon as the chain came off.

In February, Alexander Kudlay, a 33-year-old car salesman, and 29-year-old beautician Viktoria Pustovitova shocked the world when they filmed themselves getting chained together with an actual chain. The chain was welded shut under the supervision of a representative of the country’s national register of records, who also added a seal to the chain to make sure they don’t cheat. The plan was to go three months with their hands chained together, which meant sharing bathroom breaks and showers, not to mention planning their day so that both could get stuff done. Few thought they could last three months, but they proved everyone wrong. Well, sort of…

Read More »

The Aruka Shrine in Japan’s Ebina City is the oldest shrine in all of Sagami Province, but to the general public it’s known for a unique ceremony that involves a priest wearing a 2-meter-long headgear in the shape of a green onion.

Negi-san, the head priest at Aruka Shrine has been performing the green onion ceremony for about four years , but it only went viral last year, when photos of the priest wearing the bizarre headgear went viral on Japanese social media. It was a pretty weird thing to see, even by Japanese standards, but that only made it more interesting. Here was this masked priest wearing a green skirt and white shirt matching the green-and-white green onion on their head bending over to pass through a small circle wrapped in rope. It made no sense, and yet, everyone was intrigued.

Read More »

A new Japanese service is drawing attention for allowing both individuals and companies to rent out “fat people” for 2,000 yen ($18) per hour.

Renting people for various purposes isn’t anything new in Japan. From renting someone to befriend your cheating partner’s lover and convince them to back off, to renting middle-aged men for company, the offers vary a lot, and starting this month you can add another option to the list – renting fat people. Called “Debucari”, the new service allows virtually anyone to rent a fat person by the hour. Apparently, fat people – over 100 kilograms – are somewhat of a rarity in Japan, so the entrepreneur behind the service thought that making them available via an online service would be a great business opportunity.

Read More »

A tech-savvy Japanese youtuber recently unveiled a special grill that requires users to actually burn some calories to power up the device and cook the meat.

Japanese youtuber Bomb_tamio specializes in wacky inventions that put a smile on viewers faces, but his latest creations actually intrigued a lot of people, especially those looking for creative ways to lose weight. In a video posted last month, the young inventor can be seen preparing to cook strips of bacon on an electric grill, only instead of turning it on via its knob, he starts running in place with one foot over a yellow pad. It’s this fast movement that powers the grill, so the user needs to keep moving until the meat is cooked.

Read More »

An invisible sculpture created by Italian artist Salvatore Garau recently acquired by a private collector who paid a whopping 15,000 euros for it during an auction.

If you’re one of those people who just can’t understand how someone can pay large sums of money for digital assets like video game skins, accessories or increasingly popular non-fungible assets (NFTs), then the sale of Salvatore Garau’s immaterial sculpture is really going to do a number on your brain. Titled “I am” the invisible work of art basically represents a void, a technically empty space that is actually occupied by the energy of the sculpture. Sound like something you’d be interested in? No? Well, it’s too late anyway, as someone has already snatched it up by paying 12 thousand euros (15 thousand with auction rights) earlier this month.

Read More »

Most of us heard the word ‘covid’ last year, in reference to the coronavirus that caused the ongoing pandemic, but it’s actually the name of an Arizona company that has been operating for about four decades.

Covid.inc is a company based in Tempe, Arizona. It specializes in high-quality audiovisual wall plates and cables, and sells its products all over the world. It has been in business for decades, but it as only last year that it  started making news headlines, for obvious reasons. Covid.inc CEO, Norm Carson, recalls the first time he learned that they shared the name of the disease that caused the latest pandemic in human history. He and his team were at a big audiovisual show in Amsterdam in February 2020, on the day that the name Covid-19 was uttered for the first time, and Carson remembers posing for countless pictures in front of his company’s sign at their booth.

Read More »

Videos shot during a wedding in Pingdingshan, China’s Henan Province, have gone viral on social media, because of the three bridesmaids and their unusual gender.

The role of bridesmaid is traditionally reserved for women, but what happens if the bride doesn’t have any female friends, or if none of her friends can make it to the wedding? Desperate times call for desperate measures, and one woman in Pingdingshan, China, recently managed to surprise everyone in attendance at her wedding with three very unusual bridesmaids, all men. You couldn’t really tell at first glance, as they were all wearing pink sleeveless dresses, long-haired wigs and even makeup, but a closer look revealed clear manly features.

Read More »

Scientists the world over have been struggling to contain the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus for almost two years, but one Indian numerologist believes we can cure the world of this pandemic just with the help of bad spelling.

SV Annandd Rao, a stenographer and numerology hobbyist from Ananthapuram, in India’s Andrash Pradesh state, believes that simply spelling “covid” and “corona” the wrong way can cure not only his home district, but the entire world of coronavirus. Apparently the numbers corresponding to the letters in the current spelling of these words add up to a very dangerous number, which will bring the world to its knees. But if we could change that terrible number to something beneficial, by simply adding some letters, than all will be well…

Read More »

Mao Mao, a two-year-old British Shorthair from Chongqing, China, works as a professional cat model and earns between 5,000 yuan ($775) and 10,000 yuan (1,550) per appearance.

Mao Mao’s rise to fame was somewhat of an accident. Her owner, a man surnamed Zheng, works in the automotive industry, and during an auto show he had the brilliant idea of putting his pet cat into one of the cars. That immediately drew a crowd of people who couldn’t wait to snap a photo of the cute feline and share it on their social media pages. That meant more exposure for the car brands, so Zheng started promoting Mao Mao as a cat model to car brands looking for extra attention. Nowadays, the cat is a household name at auto shows and routinely lands a few appearances per month.

Read More »

An Indonesian man loves his workplace so much that he has named his son after it. His 5-month-old boy’s name is Statistical Information Communication Office…

Even before he got married, Samet Wahyudi knew that if he ever had a son, he wanted to name him after the department he worked in as a civil servant. He made that very clear to his fiancé before they got married, and she accepted his condition. Their first child was a girl, so Samet agreed on a more conventional name for her, but when his wife, Linda, gave birth to their second child, a boy, in December of last year, he knew exactly what his name would be – Statistical Information Communication Office.

Read More »

A young Vietnamese couple got their five minutes of online fame last month after photos of their unique Doraemon-themed engagement party went viral on social media.

Khanh Lam and Xuan Khanh are both big fans of Doraemon, the blue robotic cat beloved by millions of people all over the world, so while brainstorming ideas on how to make their engagement an event to remember, they decided to go with a Doraemon-themed party. Although they expected their families to disagree with their “childish” idea, they were surprised to receive a lot of support from everybody. About six months ago, they started collecting all sorts of Doraemon memorabilia and last month they finally put together their dream engagement party.

Read More »

2020 was a rough year for gym-goers, and 2021 isn’t shaping up to be much better in that regard. Luckily, you can now get the hot body you’ve always dreamed, without moving a muscle, thanks to these realistic muscular body suits.

Thanks to silicone body suits like those made by Chinese company Smitizen, you can now look incredibly ripped without even getting off the couch. Complete with realistic looking muscles, bulging veins and anatomically-correct positioning, the muscular body suits create the illusion of a perfectly-toned upper body, especially when worn under a tight shirt. Some even come with fake body hair… Apparently, these ultra-realistic body suits have become increasingly popular on Chinese ecommerce platforms like Taobao and Aliexpress.

Read More »

A Thai teenager recently got his five minutes of internet fame, after going online to buy a cheap iPhone, only to receive a coffee table shaped like the Apple smartphone.

Usually, when a luxury product is being sold for much cheaper than its market price, you owe it to yourself to check that everything is legit, but sometimes you just get carried away and push that ‘buy’ button to make sure someone doesn’t snatch it from under your noise. That’s exactly what this teenage Apple fan from Thailand did recently, in hope of getting a much-coveted handheld for cheap. Only he knew that something was definitely wrong when the package was delivered…

Read More »