You think obtaining an academic degree is a daunting task? Try 145. Professor VN Parthiban, who teaches in Chennai, India, has obtained 145 degrees over the last 30 years and has no plans to stop studying anytime soon.

Parthiban’s journey started after he struggled with his first degree. He was a disorganized student who would often mix up course work and study for the wrong test – leading him to flunk major exams and projects. After he finally graduated, Parthiban got a job working for the Judiciary Department, but the desire to study never completely went away. Enticed by all the amazing subjects and areas of study that were available to him in university, Parthiban decided to go back and seek a second degree. And then a third. And then 142 more.

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Applying bright pink poster paint all over your face can leave you with pink skin. At least that’s what everyone though after seeing the photos of a twitter user who recently did just that.

No one knows exactly why Twitter user @LeleTill decided to put bright pink poster paint all over her face, but she did, and also documented the experience in a series of photos posted on the popular social network. @LeleTill, whose real name is Leah, first drew people’s attention with a picture of herself covered in pink Palmer Washable Glitter Poster Paint. She followed that up with a couple of close-ups of the label on the bottom, which read “Washes off easily off skin and most fabrics”. However, her “after” photo clearly shows that you should never put your trust in labels, especially if you don’t plan on using the product as intended.

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Polygamy is illegal in Thailand, but that didn’t stop a modern-day Casanova from taking a whopping 120 wives and having 28 children with them. What’s even more unusual is that the women all know about each other and are fine with the arrangement.

Tambon Prasert, the head of Phromnee district, in Thailand’s Nakorn Nayok province, some 90 km  from Bangkok, was recently forced to admit that he had illegally taken over 100 wives, after reporters were tipped off about it by anonymous sources. The 58-year-old local politician and owner of a successful construction business, recently welcomed members of the media into his home to shed some light on his family life, after they traveled to Phromnee to confirm their leads. Asked if it was true that he had more than 100 wives all across the country, Prasert matter-of-factly said “I have 120 wives and 28 sons and daughters”.

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Lauren and Will Powers, of Ferndale, Michigan, don’t need to dust their home like the rest of us. Their cat, Cygnus, does it for them just by walking around the place and wagging his incredibly long and fluffy tail.

Cygnus Regulus Powers was recently featured in the 2018 Guinness Book of Records for having the “longest tail on a domestic cat”. The official measurement put his tail at a whopping 44.66 cm (17.58 inches) from the base of his butt to the end of the “meat” of his tail, but it must have been done a while ago, because in June of last year, his owner Will Powers told Love Meow that Cygnus’ tail already measured 18.4 inches (24 inches, if you count the fluff). And considering that the cute Main Coon was only about a year old at the time, his tail must be considerably longer now.

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It’s hard to believe that anyone could survive on just 45 cents a day, especially if they don’t even have a place to sleep, but Japanese comedian Kotani Makoto has been doing it for a while now, and claims that he’s happier and more successful than ever before.

But it’s not just that Kotani Makoto is doing better than ever on ¥50 (¢45) a day that’s intriguing, but also how he gets that money. Four years ago, soon after moving to Tokyo to make it as a solo comedian, Makoto found himself unable to afford his own place, so he moved in with a more established comedian called King Kong Nishino, for a reasonable ¥40,000 (~$400 USD) monthly rent. However, Nishino could only put up with his new roommate’s sloppy and messy lifestyle for a couple of months, after which he just shook his head and told him “”Starting today, you should become homeless. Your life will definitely be better that way.” Nishino took the advice to heart and claims it changed his life for the better.

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In order to better understand what his patients go through, Dr. Feng Zhuo, a deputy director of the Proctology Department at a Shanghai hospital, recently performed a 15-minute colonoscopy on himself.

Ask anyone who’s ever had a colonoscopy and they’ll tell you that it’s one of the most painful and uncomfortable things they’ve ever experienced. Despite sedation being used to relieve discomfort, having a flexible instrument about the diameter of an index finger inserted through your backside and poking around through your colon is not the most pleasant thing in the world, but it is the most effective way of detecting bowel diseases like colon cancer. No one in their right mind would ever undergo the invasive procedure unless their life literally depended on it, and yet one Chinese proctologist  performed it on himself, even though he didn’t need to.

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Saraswati Bai, a 75-year-old woman from India, claims that she hasn’t consumed a grain of rice, or any other solid food, for that matter, in the last 60 years. Apart from one banana a week – eaten only occasionally – she survives on water and tea alone.

Saraswati remembers that she used to have a normal diet until she got a Typhoid infection, right after her first son was born, 60 years ago. She couldn’t keep anything down and suffered severe stomach aches, so she gave up eating completely. As her condition improved, she started taking small sips of tea, but her appetite never returned. Concerned about both her well-being and that of their son, her husband Dwarka Prasad Patikar, tried convincing her to start eating, but she just couldn’t do it. She felt fine living on water and tea alone, and continues to do so today.

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For the past 13 years, Natalie Adler, of Melbourne Australia, has been battling a strange medical condition that causes her eyelids to close for up to three days at a time, rendering her completely blind. After countless tests and procedures, doctors still don’t have a proper diagnosis.

Natalie’s life changed dramatically one seemingly normal Sunday, when she was 17-years-old. She just woke up with extremely swollen eyelids and her eyes soon started closing intermittently for various periods of time. In a few weeks time, they were closing for three days, followed by three normal days, and she found herself having to get used to the unusual routine, because doctors could not figure out what was wrong.

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Paying $840 for an original Hermes item seems like a great deal, but in this particular case we’re talking about a paperweight consisting of a rock and a calf leather strap. How do you even sell something like that?

Well, the French luxury brand found a way – they are marketing the “galet pebbles” (rocks) as unique, which means no one else in the world has the exact same item. But I’m pretty sure you can say the same thing about any river stone. The odds of finding another with the exact same shape and pattern are probably astronomical, and you don’t have to pay anything for that. Sure, it doesn’t come with a fancy calf leather strap, but still…

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Cricket fighting has been popular in China for thousands of years, and with the country in full economic boom, fans of the “sport” are investing more money into it than ever before. One town in particular has built an entire industry around the genetically-superior crickets living in the surrounding fields, and for good reason, as the best specimens can reportedly sell for up to 50,000 yuan ($7,661).

The tradition of cricket fighting can be traced back to the Tang dynasty (618-904), and the crickets found in the fields around the town of Sidian, in China’s Shandong province, have long been renowned for their large size and aggressiveness, both very important features among enthusiasts of the sport. It is said that several of China’s emperors favored Sidian’s crickets for their high win rate, and today’s rich spend absurd amounts of money for exceptional specimens that can give them an edge against their rivals.

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Having trouble deciding between white wine and beer? Thanks to artisan wine maker in Belgium, you can now have both in the same bottle.

49-year-old Filip Decroix, an experienced winemaker from Ypres, has spent the last year trying to perfect the formula for his “Steenstraetse Hoppewijn”, a sparkling white wine with a beer-like bitterness created by combining Chardonnay with Belgian hops. Decroix claims that he set out to create a wine that Belgians, known mostly for their beer, would appreciate and after having it tested by expert sommeliers, he is sure it will be a big hit.

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A family of migrant workers from Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, recently returned to their native village of Zavod after a month of work to find their house partially demolished and an asphalt road passing through their property.

The Udalov family spend most of their time away from home, working in the nearby city of Nizhny Novgorod, but they always look forward to spending their short vacations at their quaint property in Zavod. Unfortunately, they no longer have a house to come back to, after authorities took the liberty to tear down part of it in order to make room for an asphalt road. No one contacted them about the project, so they just came back after a month to a partially demolished house and their belongings spread on the side of the new road traversing their yard.

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Most people could probably spend a whole year just looking at IKEA’s 2018 catalogue and still not remember all the details in its 328 pages. But then again, Yaanja Wintersoul is not most people, she is a two-time World Memory Champion so she only needed one week to accomplish the seemingly impossible task.

23-years-old Yaanja Wintersoul says that there’s no such thing as a photographic memory, and that it’s all about training your brain to memorize tiny details that most of us forget almost instantly. She knows what she’s talking about, too. Not only has she won the World Memory Championship twice, set a the world record for the the largest number of names and faces ever memorized by a person, but she’s also become IKEA’s “human catalogue”, memorizing most of the details in the company’s 328-page 2018 catalogue in only a week.

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Alejandro Ramos Martínez, a seafood diver from Pisco, Peru, recently made international headlines after a terrible accident left him looking like a human balloon. He apparently rose from a depth of 30 meters too fast, which caused the nitrogen in his blood to form giant bubbles that adhered to his muscles, leaving him looking deformed.

Martínez’s unusual case was featured on Peruvian TV show “Cuarto Poder”, where doctors were left stunned by the horrifying effect of the nitrogen pods on the man’s physical appearance. Decompression sickness, also known as ‘the bends’, causes nitrogen to come out of solution and form bubbles in the blood and tissues. In mild cases, symptoms include unusual fatigue, dizziness, nausea and joint pain, but in rare cases it can also cause paralysis or even death. The deforming effects it has had on this Peruvian diver are believed to be unique

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Nutritionists claim that portion size control is one of the keys to losing weight and staying in shape. Using smaller dishes is probably the most popular way to control the size of your meals, but a couple of London-based art students may have come up with an even more effective one – using mirrors to make tableware look twice as full.

Saki Maruyama and Daniel Coppen, collectively known as Studio Playfool, have come up with an ingenious tableware design that relies on mirrors to trick your eyes into seeing more food than is actually available. Named Half/Full, their recently unveiled tableware set was apparently inspired by the threat of future food shortages on a global scale, and is therefore designed to “future proof appetites”.

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