Chihuahua Julep, a cocktail bar that opened in central Helsinki, Finland, in August, has banned patrons from using smartphones inside the venue to encourage real-world social interaction.

Initially, the owners of  Chihuahua Julep only encouraged visitors to put their smartphones away so that the light from their screens wouldn’t ruin the bar’s ambience, but after seeing that those who followed the recommendation seemed more relaxed and at the same time more engaged in conversations with their friends, they decided to impose an outright ban on handhelds. Now, anyone wanting to enjoy a drink inside the venue must store their phone inside a box on arrival.

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A 29-year-old American man decided to leave the United States behind and move to a remote jungle village in India so he wouldn’t have to constantly worry about paying back his student loan.

Like many other Americans, Chad Haag had to rely on a student loan to pay for his college education, but he struggled to find a college-level job after graduating, and going back school to pursue a master’s degree in comparative literature didn’t really help in that regard. His first job had him unloading trucks and constructing toy rockets on a factory assembly line, then he worked as an adjunct professor, but with only one class assigned per semester, he could barely make a living, let alone pay back his $20,000 student loan. At one point, struggling to pay the $300 monthly instalments became too stressful, so he just packed his bags, said goodbye to his life in the US and moved to a small village in India.

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A Polish mountain climber who recently scaled his country’s highest peak was surprised to find a domestic cat waiting for him at the very top.

Wojciech Jabczynski couldn’t believe his eyes when he reached the top of the 2,500-meter-high Rysy mountain and spotted a ginger cat nonchalantly licking its paws. No one knows exactly how the feline got to the mountain top, or why, but Jabczynski suspects it may have climbed up from a small tourist hut under the peak. Surprised by its presence there, the experienced climber took out his phone and took some pictures and recorded a video, just to make sure people believed him when he told the story.

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A personal trainer on a quest to stop his 27-year-old obese client from “eating himself to death” has been distributing posters to local takeaway places instructing them not to serve him.

Every year, Mike Hind, a successful personal trainer from Middlesbrough, in the UK, takes on a client for free and tries to turn their life around in one year. Hind was named the best personal trainer in the UK last year, so he gets thousands of applications for his yearly giveaway, but this year he chose a 27-year-old man named Dibsy, after seeing him and his mom at his gym’s diner. He weighs 560 pounds (254 kg) and recently experienced heart problems that put him in the hospital for a week. The doctor’s verdict was very clear – ‘diet or die – and upon hearing his story, personal trainer Mike Hind decided to take him under his wing for a year. One of the first things the trainer did to help his new client was get him banned at local takeaway restaurants.

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A Chinese man swallowed an 8-inch metal spoon as a stupid stunt, a year ago. It got stuck in his esophagus, but seeing as he could eat and drink normally, he never sought medical assistance to have it removed. He claims that he only started experiencing chest pains a few days ago, after being punched in the chest.

The unnamed man from China’s Xinjiang autonomous region told doctors that he had swallowed a stainless steel spoon during a drunken bet. He told his friends that he could swallow the spoon and then pull it back up again by tying a string to its handle. It must of sounded like a good idea at the time, but things didn’t go according to plan, and the eating utensil got stuck in the man’s food pipe. Instead of going to the hospital immediately, the man waited to see if the spoon prevented him from eating and drinking normally. It didn’t, so he lived with it stuck in his esophagus for the last year.

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Follow JC Go! is a religious take on the popular mobile game Pokemon Go. Instead of using augmented reality to roam around in the real world and catch virtual Pokemon, you get to catch saints and other religious figures.

Developed by Fundación Ramón Pané, a Catholic organization with headquarters in Miami and Honduras, Follow JC Go! is an augmented reality video game that combines technology and evangelization to teach players of all ages about the Catholic faith. It features the same principles as the immensely popular Pokemon GO app, allowing users to roam around real-life locations and use the camera of their smartphones to find and catch virtual characters. Only instead of Pokemon like the adorable Pikachu, players will be looking for saints and other religious figures.

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A Chinese woman recently found herself unable to use the fingers on her right hand after spending her entire week-long vacation playing video games on her smartphone.

The unnamed woman from Changsha, in China’s Hunan province, reportedly took a week off from work and spent all that time playing on her smartphone. According to a Pear video documenting her bizarre case, the only time she put down her phone was when she slept. After a few days, she started experiencing severe pain her right hand, but she kept playing until her fingers became stuck in smartphone-holding position and she found herself unable to flex them at all.

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A group of six delinquents have been dubbed “the dumbest robbers in Belgium” after falling for a trick so simple that Dumb and Dumber could see through it.

The unbelievably stupid robbery attempt took place on Saturday, when a group of six armed men walked into an e-cigarette shop on the outskirts of the Belgian city of Charleroi. They asked the owner to empty the register and give them the money. It was the middle of the afternoon, so the quick-thinking salesman told them that he had barely sold anything, and that if they really wanted to to make some money, they should come back at closing time. He even tried to sweeten the deal by telling the robbers that they could probably walk away with 2,000 to 3,000 euros if they followed his advice. But what respectable criminals would fall for that stupid trick, right? Well, these guys did.

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Every woman dreams of being the center of attention on her wedding day, but some go to extreme lengths to make sure that no one steals their thunder. Like this Australian woman who recently confessed to secretly fattening up her bridesmaids before the wedding in order to make them look ordinary.

Penny always knew that she was going to get “a little bridezilla-ish” while preparing her wedding, but not even she really knew the lengths she would be prepared go to in order to make sure that no one outshines her on her big day. The second of three sisters, Penny asked her siblings – Maggie and Charlie – to be her bridesmaids on the day she knew she was getting married, and they all started planning the celebration together. The three had always been very close and even lived in the same house along with Penny’s fiancé, Richie, but they had always been very competitive as well and the bride-to-be knew she had to find a way to outshine her attractive sisters on her wedding day.

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A Russian man who reportedly has the habit of scamming tattoo artists by refusing to pay for their work recently got “scammer” permanently tattooed on his forehead by his latest victim.

A photo of the smiling unnamed man showing off his unusual forehead tattoo was posted online last week by Russian tattoo artist Roman Bikeev, a.k.a. Mr Amsterdam. In the photo caption, Bikeev explained that the man had come in for a neck tattoo, but later said that he had no intention of paying for the artwork and nonchalantly admitted to pulling the same trick on other tattoo artist in Ufa, the capital city of the Republic of Baskortostan. So the tattoo artist decided to take his revenge by inking “Кидала” (Russian for ‘scammer) on the man’s forehead, along with his autograph.

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A 55-year-old Turkish man is facing up to five years in jail for “preventing public officials from performing their duty”. His crime – phoning the police 45,210 times in just one year.

Şeref Can, a divorced man from Istanbul’s Bayrampaşa district, allegedly called the police line well over 100 times per day between May 15, 2017 and May 15, 2018, but never once made any sort of complaint or asked police assistance. Instead, he only tried to make conversation with whoever picked up the phone. At one point, police staff became so irritated by Can’s unusual habit that they filed a complaint about him with Istanbul Police’s communications and electronics department. After confirming that Can had called the 115 emergency number a total of 45,210 times in a year, investigators charged him with “obstructing service of public institutions”.

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Tulips,  or flowers in general, are not exactly known as prime ingredients for strong spirits, but one small distillery in Holland (where else?) claims to have perfected a process that allows it to create a high quality vodka out of only two ingredients – tulip bulbs and water.

Dutch Tulip Vodka is the creation of 34-year-old Joris Putman, a filmmaker turned entrepreneur. Four years ago, he decided he was going to invent something, and although he didn’t know exactly what that something would be, he was sure it would involve his country’s national symbol, the tulip. Today, after years of hard work, countless experiments and trying to convince others that tulip vodka was actually a thing, Dutch Tulip Vodka is a big hit, and Michelin-star restaurants all over Europe are proud to have it on their menus.

All it took for Putman to come up with the idea of tulip vodka was a suggestion from his friends to make moonshine from grain. He wasn’t going to do something that others had been doing it for thousands of years, but the idea of making a strong spirit out of tulips sounded appealing.

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Social media promotion has become so important nowadays that businesses are offering freebies to anyone with a certain following on popular social networks. Case in point, this Milan-based restaurant that offers free sushi to people with a bit of clout on Instagram.

Matteo and Tomaso Pittarello, the owners of the “This Is Not a Sushibar” restaurant in Milan, are well aware of the potential of social networks like Instagram, and they’re more than willing to give away some sushi, if it means getting some exposure. At their restaurant, people have the classic payment options – cash or card – plus a novel one, paying in Instagram followers. The idea is pretty simple, the more followers you have, the more you can eat without having to spend a cent.

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The chairman of a private space contractor in Chengdu, China, recently revealed plans to launch an “artificial moon” satellite up to eight times as bright as the real moon and capable of replacing traditional streetlights.

The ambitious project was announced at a national mass innovation and entrepreneurship event held in Chengdu, a city of 14 million people in China’s southwestern province of Sichuan. Wu Chunfeng, the chairman of the private space contractor Chengdu Aerospace Science and Technology Microelectronics System Research Institute Co (Casc) revealed plans to launch an illumination satellite referred to as an “artificial moon” that would be eight times as bright as Earth’s natural satellite and capable of an area with a diameter of 10-80km.

The innovative satellite “designed to complement the moon at night” has apparently been in the works since for years, but thanks to the rapid advancement of technology it should be ready for launch in 2020. While the exact details of the satellite have yet to be revealed, some media outlets report that it will have a coating that can reflect light from the sun with solar panel-like wings which can be adjusted to allow the light to focus on precise locations.

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Xiao Lung Wang, a young man from China, set a new Guinness record for the “highest vocal note by a male”, with a truly ear-splitting performance.

Before playing the below video of Wang’s successful record attempt, I strongly advise that you turn down the volume, especially if you’re wearing headphones, and get your dog out of the room, because this guy’s voice is no joke. To be honest, it sounds more like a whistling kettle than a human voice, but according to experts that’s just the sound of an E in the 8th octave, an audio frequency of 5,243 hertz.

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