‘Star Wash’, a small, family-owned car wash on the outskirts of Santiago de Chile, is being sued by LucasFilm, the company that owns the Star Wars brand, for allegedly plagiarizing its property.

Matias Jara, the owner of Star Wash, was in the process of registering his brand with the Chilean patent authority when he received a lawsuit from LucasFilm. The Disney-owned company reportedly wanted to stop the registration of the Star Wash name, arguing that the brand could be confused as being affiliated with Star Wars. However, Mr Jara is contesting the suit and claims that the name is different enough not to be confused with the LucasFilm property, adding that they are not selling movies of branded products. Apparently, the Star Wars copyright does not cover car cleaning services.

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A group of South Korean students recently sued the Government for millions of dollars in damages because their teachers ended a life-changing exam 90 seconds earlier than they should have.

The Suneung, South Korea’s college admission exam, is notoriously long and difficult, and its implications are literally life-changing. Not only do the results of the Suneung determine students’ college placements, but also their career options and relationships, so it’s no wonder that everyone, from the students and their families to the South Korean government takes the Suneung very seriously. During the 8-hour exam, South Korea closes its air space and delays the opening of the stock market to help students concentrate. So when a teacher recently ended the exam 90 seconds early, it was a very big deal with serious legal consequences.

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A prison in the Brazilian state of Santa Cantarina recently replaced its guard dogs with a flock of geese that supposedly make loud noises when they detect strange noises, like someone trying to escape.

In this day and age, prison complexes feature state-of-the-art detection systems that make it very difficult for inmates to escape undetected. Still, regardless of technological advancements, it’s always a good idea to have a backup analog detection system as well, in case the sophisticated stuff fails. Human guardians and guard dogs are usually the norm, but some prisons use some unlikely alternatives. For example, several prisons in Brazil have replaced guard dogs with geese, which they say are not only just as effective, if not more so, but also cheaper to maintain. Apparently, geese have very good hearing and will make loud noises whenever they detect strange noises, thus alerting the human guards.

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A Chinese company has replaced its year-end employee bonus program with another scheme designed to promote exercise – enticing financial rewards for employees who exercise on a daily basis.

Guangdong Dongpo Paper, a paper company in Guangdong Province, China, recently made international headlines for replacing its traditional performance-based employee bonus scheme with one based on athletic performance. To promote a healthy lifestyle among its 100 employees, management decided to reward them based on how much they exercise. For example, an employee will be eligible for a full monthly bonus if they run 50 km a month. They will get 60 percent of the bonus for running 40km, and 30 percent for 30km. Running enthusiasts stand to get a 30% bonus if they can prove they ran over 100 km in a single month.

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Book conservationists have launched an effort to locate thousands of 19th-century books containing ’emerald green’, a rare and coveted pigment created with the help of arsenic.

Before the industrial revolution, books were leather-bound artisanal creations that took a lot of time and effort to produce, but the invention of bookcloth changed everything. It was both cheaper and easier to make, but it also allowed for the use of pigments to make book covers more appealing. For example, one of the most popular bookcloth colors of the late 19th century was a vibrant green that came to be known as Paris green or emerald green. No other pigment even came close in terms of intensity, and although a series of arsenic poisoning accidents were reported during that time, the demand for it was so strong that manufacturers didn’t even consider canceling production. Tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of emerald green books were produced until the risk of arsenic poisoning became a big enough issue and the pigment was finally pulled from production, and thousands of them are still in libraries and private collections today.

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A South Korean woman made international news headlines for legally adopting her adult best friend after a medical emergency made her realize that they needed a stronger connection to take care of each other.

44-year-old Eun Seo-ran grew up in a stereotypical South Korean patriarchal family in which her father was the breadwinner and her mother was consigned to the role of homemaker, serving her husband’s family. She slaved for them her entire life, but never got so much as a bit of gratitude from her spouse, but she made sure that Seo-ran followed another path in life. She never even allowed her in the kitchen as a young girl and always told her to preserve her freedom. Eun Seo-ran vowed to never end up like her mother, and decided to not get married or have children. To this day, she believes that it would be irresponsible of her to get married, but she also understands that there are situations where family members are the only ones who can help…

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Colton Pifer currently holds the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest nasal septum flesh tunnel – a giant hole with a diameter of 2.6 centimeters.

Colton was 18 years old when he first decided to get his nasal septum pierced. It was a routine procedure that involved the use of a 16-gauge needle and forceps. It took about a week for the soreness to go away, and the Monroe, Michigan native pretty much left it alone for about five years. Then, at one point, he started stretching it to the point where he started noticing that no other piercing enthusiast had a septum flesh tunnel quite like his and that only encouraged him to stretch it even more. After researching the world’s largest nasal septum flesh tunnel, Colton Pifer realized he could beat it, especially since he was trying to stretch his nose hole even more anyway.

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In what has been described as a first-of-its-kind medical case, a man in his 30s ended up with a hole in his throat after pinching his nose and pressing his lips shut in order to surpress a sneeze.

The unnamed man was taken to Ninewells Hospital, in Dundee, Scotland, in severe pain, after trying to stifle a sneeze by pinching his nose and closing his mouth shut while driving. Apparently, when you do something like that, the pressure in the upper airways can increase by about 20 times, which can lead to serious injuries including ruptured eardrums, aneurysms, and even broken ribs. However, in this particular case, the unnamed patient ended up with a 2mm tear in their windpipe, which caused excruciating pain. A throat tear, known medically as a “spontaneous tracheal perforation” is a rare and potentially life-threatening injury that had not been associated with sneeze stifling before.

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A 20-year-old woman from Taiwan recently underwent surgery to have no less than 300 small stones removed from her right kidney.

The young woman, identified as Xiao Yu by Taiwanese media, was admitted to a hospital in the city of Tainan earlier this month, after complaining of severe pain in her lower back. She also had a fever and a blood test showed an unusually high white blood cell count. Doctors ordered a CT scan which showed that Yu’s right kidney was full of fluid and virtually full of kidney stones. The first order of business was to put the young woman on antibiotics, then drain the fluid from her kidney, and finally perform minimally invasive surgery to remove the hundreds of stones.

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Nicolas Puech, an heir to the legendary Hermès fashion house, recently stunned the world by announcing his intention to legally adopt his former gardener and leave him his $11 billion fortune.

81-year-old Puech, who is unmarried and without children, ranks among Switzerland’s wealthiest individuals with a net worth estimated between $10.3 billion and 11.4 billion. Despite a fallout with his famous family following the 2014 takeover of a substantial stake in Hermès by rival luxury conglomerate LVMH, Puech still owns a considerable share in the $220 billion company, and his move to leave it all to his former gardener and family man has sparked controversy. The unnamed gardener, who comes from a “modest Moroccan family”, is reportedly married to a woman from Spain and has two children of his own.

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A Kenyan man has been arrested in Connecticut for trying to have his estranged wife killed by asking a random Uber driver to help him find a hitman willing to do the dirty deed.

Leonard Thuo Mwithiga, 52, a former high-flying executive at Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) is facing a lengthy prison sentence for attempting to hire a hitman to kill the woman he had been married to for 22 years. According to a report by the Connecticut State Police, Mwithiga had followed his estranged spouse, who had run away in September of last year because of his abusive behavior, to the United States in an attempt to convince her to return home. Having failed to do that, the man decided that the woman had to die. After getting into an Uber, he reportedly started talking to the driver, telling him that he was “very, very mad” and that he needed a hitman.

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Russian hydrologist Alexander Tsvetkov was detained in February 2023, after an AI system determined that his face was a 55% match to the sketch of a murderer drawn 20 years ago by a witness.

Alexander Tsvetkov, a scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Inland Water Biology, has been living a nightmare for the past 10 months. He was removed from an airplane in February, following a work trip to Krasnoyarsk, and informed that he had been identified as the author of a series of murders over 20 years ago. Investigators claimed that he and his alleged accomplice killed at least two people in Moscow and the Moscow region in August 2002, ignoring the testimonies of multiple scientists that Tsvetkov had been with them at the time of the murders. The state’s smoking gun? An AI-powered system that found a 55% match between Tsvetkov and a sketch drawn by a witness over two decades ago…

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The Willtex ‘Willcook’ microwave bag looks like a stylish laptop bag but is actually made out of conductive fabric that allows the user to heat the inside all the way up to 250 degrees Celsius.

Say what you will, but there’s nothing more comforting than a nice hot meal on a cold winter day, especially when you’re out and about. But what if you have no way of heating your lunch or ordering a hot meal? That’s where the world’s first microwave bag comes into place. Made out of an innovative fabric developed by Japanese company Sanki Consys Co. Ltd., the Willtex ‘Willcook’ bag looks like your average laptop bag, but it can heat up whatever you have stored inside to a temperature of 80 degrees Celsius in just 5 minutes. The bag itself weighs just 160 grams, while the rechargeable battery pack powering it weighs an extra 120 grams.

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Norwegian death diver Ken Stornes just became the first person to perform a ‘death dive’ from over 40 meters, jumping from a rock wall into the icy water below.

Invented by guitar player Erling Bruno Hovden at Frognerbadet during the summer of 1972, death diving or ‘Dødsing‘ is a form of extreme freestyle high diving with stretched arms and belly first. Jumps are usually performed from a platform positioned between 10 to 15 meters above the water, but the bravest of death divers plunge from much higher, with the current record in the men’s classic category sitting at 40.5 meters. It was set earlier this month by Ken Stornes, a Norwegian former MMA fighter turned extreme athlete, who plunged into the icy waters of Nordfjord from a platform on the side of a tall cliff.

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Located 2,400 meters under the Earth’s surface, the Deep Underground and Ultra-low Radiation Background Facility for Frontier Physics Experiments (DURF) is the world’s deepest underground laboratory.

In December 2020, Tsinghua University and Yalong River Hydropower Development Company, Ltd. began work on a daring project under Jinping Mountain in Sichuan’s Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture. Designed to facilitate China’s research in relevant frontier fields, such as particle physics, nuclear astrophysics, and life sciences, the DURF reportedly provides the cleanest space on Earth to study the invisible substance known as dark matter, as the extreme depth it is located at (2,400 meters underground) helps block most of the cosmic rays that usually interfere with the observation of dark matter.

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