Wildlife experts in India are trying to make sens of the mysterious deaths of thousands of birds near the country’s largest inland lake. While the reported death toll is currently around 2,000, locals claimed that it could reach 5,000, as carcasses allegedly cover an area stretching from 12 to 15 km around the lake.

Sambhar Lake, 80km south-west of the city of Jaipur, is India’s largest inland lake and a popular gathering place for migratory birds like flamingos, storks, sandpipers, redshanks, black-winged stilts, among dozens of species. Last Sunday, however, locals alerted authorities that the lake shoreline had become an eerie graveyard for thousands of birds, with only a few dozen still left alive as far as the eye could see. There were reportedly so many bodies that when people first saw them, they mistook them for piles of cow dung, but it didn’t take them long to realize that they were really bird carcasses from more than 10 species.

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Government office workers in the Indian city of Banda, Uttar Pradesh state, recently drew a lot of attention online for wearing motorcycle helmets indoors to prevent head injuries in case the roof collapsed on them.

Photos of electricity department employees working at their office in Banda while wearing these large motorcycle helmets on their heads have been doing the round on social media ever since Indian news agency ANI shared them online. According to several sources, the government employees aren’t huge motorcycle fans, they’re just wearing the protective head gear in case the roof of the dilapidated building they work in starts to fall apart. They told reporters that they first reported the dangerous state of the office building several years ago, but no one did anything about it, so they decided to start wearing helmets.

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A 42-year-old man in India’s Uttar Pradesh state lost his life trying to eat 50 boiled eggs in one go, as part of a stupid bet he made with a friend.

On Monday, November 3rd, Subhash Yadav, 42, and a friend sat down to at get a bite to eat at the Bibiganj market in  the Jaunpur district. At one point, the pair began to argue and as their conflict escalated Yadav bet his friend 2,000 rupees (about $28) that he could eat 50 boiled eggs right then and there. His friend accepted, so they bought 50 eggs from a vendor and Yadav set out to down them one by one. Everything was going well and he was actually making good time, but as he popped the 42nd egg into his mouth, he suddenly fell unconscious.

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They say crows have great memory and never forget those who have wronged them, and the story of an Indian tractor driver who claims to have been constantly attacked by crows ever since they saw him pick up some of their hatchlings, a year and a half ago.

Mohanan, a tractor driver from Ambalavayal, a town in India’s Kerala state, has been carrying a stick and an umbrella to work every day, for over a year. It’s not that he fears getting attacked by dogs or that he hates rain, but that he needs to defend himself against the crows that always attack him whenever he approaches a bus station where he once picked up two crow hatchlings from under his tractor and placed them on the side of the road. As Mohan recalls, the following day, he and his colleagues found a small puppy covered in tar and washed it clean with kerosene, and he assumes the crow must have seen him and confused the puppy for the hatchlings that he had handled the previous day. The crows have been on his case ever since, harassing and attacking him whenever they see him.

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A private college in the Indian state of Karnataka has sparked controversy after photos of its students wearing cardboard boxes during a chemistry exam went viral on social media.

After photos of the students wearing cardboard boxes on their heads to prevent cheating started doing the rounds online, regional officials in Karnataka rushed to Bhagat Pre-University College to complain about the “inhumane” treatment of students. Different version of the story started circulating online, including one that claimed the college only turned to cardboard boxes after having repeatedly caught students cheating, despite multiple warnings.

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An Indian man recently shocked airport staff in Abu Dhabi, because his passport showed he was born in 1896, which would make him 123, the oldest human to have ever lived.

Swami Sivananda’s passport shows him to be a year older than France’s Jeanne Louise Calment , who holds the Guinness Record for the oldest verified person in history -122 – but the problem is that the only proof he has comes from an old temple register.  Mr Sivananda also looks decades younger than his alleged age, but he credits his youthful appearance and good health to leading a simple and balanced life, yoga, and a frugal, spice-free diet. His celibacy may have something to do with his longevity as well, he figures. He’s been trying to have his name included in the Guinness Book of Records for three years, but he has been having trouble proving his age.

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Looking at the gray-haired, frail looking man in the picture below, you’d never guess he was only 32. Well, don’t worry about it, his disguise managed to fool security at Delhi airport as well, and they’re paid to spot these things.

32-year-old Jayesh Patel was arrested at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport by India’s Central Industrial Security Force for attempting to board an airplane bound for the United States while wearing a disguise meant to make him look much older than his years. Wearing a white tunic, turban and pants, and faking disability by being pushed around in a wheelchair, the man managed to get past the airport’s initial security checks and even got his immigration cleared. His white beard and thick glasses seemed to match the age in his fake passport, 81, but his makeup artist neglected one crucial detail – the lack of wrinkles on his face.

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For the last three years, a man in India’s Madhya Pradesh state has been living a real-life daily nightmare inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Birds’. Every time he walks out of his house, he gets attacked by a murder of crows. The strange thing is the birds only target him.

Shiva Kewat, a daily wage labourer from Sumela village, says his troubles with crows began three years ago, due to a misunderstanding. One day, as he was walking on the street he noticed a crow chick stuck in iron netting, but despite his efforts to help the small bird escape, it died in his hands. Some of the rows must have seen the scene and assumed that he killed their young, because they’ve been attacking him ever since. Sometimes they come for him in groups, otherwise it’s just a single bird, but Kewat always carries a stick with him to fend off their sharp beaks and talons.

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Mangayamma, a 74-year-old woman in India’s Anthar Pradesh state, recently became the oldest woman in history to give birth, after successfully delivering twin baby girls following an IVF procedure.

The Indian woman had married Yaramati Sitarama Rajarao, a farmer from Nelaparthipudi village, back in 1962, but despite visiting countless doctors and temples, the couple were unable to bear children for 54 years of their marriage. Mangayamma remembers people looking at her as if she had committed some kind of sin, and some calling her cursed, but luckily her husband stuck by her and gave her the strength to move on. Even after reaching menopause some 25 years ago, the woman still had a strong desire to give birth, and last year, after seeing a 55-year-old neighbor become pregnant via in-vitro fertilisation, she and her husband decided to undergo the procedure as well.

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An Indian artist has come up with an ingenious and hilarious way of showcasing the poor state of roads in the city of Bangalore – he put on a realistic astronaut costume and filmed himself walking trough the craters that made a local road look like the surface of the moon.

Baadal Nanjundaswamy is well known for flagging civic issues like the poor condition of roads and large potholes through his stunning street art, but his latest project was by far his most popular one yet. To raise awareness about the pothole-filled Tunganagar Main Road in North Bangalore, the Indian artist dressed as an astronaut and had someone film him as he “moonwalked” through the large craters, while cars and rickshaws drove by. He then posted the hilarious video on social media, where it quickly went viral.

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An Indian woman recently made national news headlines for seeking divorce from her husband on grounds that he is so busy studying for the nationwide UPSC examination that he spends almost no time with her.

The unnamed woman, who hails from the city of Bhopal,  has alleged in family court that her husband spends all day preparing for the difficult UPSC (Union Public Service Commission) exam, never has time to go out with her, and sometimes doesn’t speak a word to her. She also told a counselor at the District Legal Service Authority in Bhopal that her husband is always too busy studying to take her out shopping or to watch a movie, and doesn’t even visit his relatives. After a while, it all got too much to bear, so she decided to get a divorce.

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An Indian youth allegedly expected to receive a Jaguar sports car as a birthday present from his parents only to receive a brand new BMW instead, was so angry with his present that he decided to throw in in a river.

The name and age of the angry teen who couldn’t come to terms with receiving the wrong brand of luxury car are not known, but several Indian sources have reported that he hails from the Yamuna Nagar in Haryana and is the son of a local landlord. Luxury cars like Jaguar, Audi, BMW or Mercedes-Benz have become a common sight in Haryana, with many land owners buying them with money received from the government in exchange for land to be used for various infrastructure projects. Such cars are often abandoned shortly after being acquired, due to high maintenance costs, but in this case, the owner simply didn’t like the brand.

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Dentists at a hospital in Chennai, India, were shocked to find over 520 teeth growing in the mouth of a seven-year-old boy who occasionally complained of toothaches.

7-year-old P. Ravindran was taken to Saveetha Dental College and Hospital in Chennai to have a swelling on his lower right jaw looked at. Dentists ordered an X-Ray and CT-Scan, which revealed that the abscess-like swelling was actually a  sac full of what looked like hundreds of teeth of various sizes. The growth, known as compound composite odontoma, is a benign tumour composed of dental tissue, but this was a particularly large one, made up of a total of 526 teeth.

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A 16-year-old Indian girl is haplessly awaiting her death after suffering acute kidney failure, because her parents refuse to donate one of their kidneys to her because she is a girl.

Kanchan Kumari, from Avgil village, in Sheikhpura, fell seriously ill two months ago and was rushed to the hospital after complaining of intense pain in her midriff and back. After running a series of tests, doctors there issued a terrible verdict – acute kidney failure, and told her family that she urgently needed a kidney transplant to increase her chances of survival. Unfortunately, neither of her parents expressed any interest in donating one of their organs to 16-year-old Kanchan, because she is a girl, which apparently means she is not worth the trouble.

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A 63-year-old man in India who hasn’t cut or washed his hair in over 40 years has to keep his tangled 6-foot-long locks wrapped in a head cloth just to walk around without stepping on them.

Sakal Dev Tuddu, a resident of Mandada village, in Eastern India’s Bihar state, claims he has been growing his hair long since he was 22. For some reason, he didn’t cut his hair for a whole year, and when he woke up one day he noticed his locks had become tangled into a ‘jatta’ (dreadlock). He considered it a blessing from the Hindu god Shiva, so from that day on he never cut or washed his hair again. Today, his impressive jatta measures around 6 feet and reaches all the way to the ground and trails behind him. To keep his hair from becoming even dirtier, Sakal keeps it wrapped in a white cloth on top of his head whenever he goes out.

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