A Brazilian man tragically lost his life by plunging down a deep shaft he had dug in his kitchen after dreaming that there was gold buried deep under his house.

71-year-old João Pimenta da Silva’s dream of enrichment ended as a nightmare that claimed his life. His lifeless body was found at the bottom of an exceptionally deep well he and his neighbors had dug under his kitchen in Ipatinga, a municipality in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state. The man had reportedly dreamt that there was gold deep under his home, and that all he had to do was dig to get to it. He even told his neighbor about his dream and even though he was laughed at in the beginning, da Silva was actually able to convince the man to assist him with the digging. Unfortunately, the treasure hunt ended in disaster when the 71-year-old plunged to his death while trying to exit the 40-meter-deep hole.

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Ghanaian personality Afua Asantewaa Owusu Aduonum recently attempted to get her name into the Guinness Book of Records by attempting to sing continuously for 126 hours and 52 minutes.

Last month, women’s rights advocate, journalist, and event organizer Afua Asantewaa Owusu Aduonum tried to beat a world record that had been standing for over a decade. In 2012, Indian singer Sunil Waghmare sang non-stop for 105 hours, an incredible feat that required resilience, concentration, and mountains of energy. However, the Ghanaian woman claims to have beaten the old record by over 20 hours and is now waiting for confirmation from Guinness Records that her attempt was valid. She told journalists that she was hopeful of a favorable response in the coming days.

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Carmen Dell’Orefice is known as the oldest working model in the fashion industry. She was discovered on a bus when she was only 13 years old, and she is still working today, at age 92.

Carmen Dell’Orefice’s first contact with the fashion world was a flop. After being approached by the wife of photographer Herman Landschoff while riding a bus to ballet class when she was only 13 years old, Dell’Orefice saw her test photos go nowhere fast. But she was destined for greatness, and just two years later, at age 15, she graced the cover of Vogue Magazine for the very first time, after becoming a favorite model of photographer Erwin Blumenfeld. Last year, at age 92, Carmen Dell’Orefice was featured on the cover of Vogue Czechoslovakia, this time as the oldest working model in the world.

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A Japanese company that has been developing crow repellants for 15 years claims that its Crow Buster, a translucent piece of yellow plastic, is more effective than any scarecrow.

Crows are auspicious omens in Japanese culture, but in day-to-day life, they can be quite pesky pests. Notoriously intelligent and highly adapted to both rural and urban environments, crows have been known to cause serious damage to fruit and vegetable farms, rummage through garbage in search of food, and attack smaller birds, animals, or even humans, if they perceive them as threats. Because of their higher-than-average bird intellect and excellent memory, crows can be very tough to deal with, so even the most realistic of scarecrows may prove ineffective. However, one Japanese company claims that all you need to keep crows at pay is its surprisingly simple Crow Buster.

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Researchers at MIT created a high-tech pill that starts to vibrate once it makes contact with gastric fluid in the user’s stomach in order to stimulate receptors in the stomach and create the sensation of fullness.

VIBES, short for Vibrating Ingestible BioElectronic Stimulator, was only recently unveiled in a study published in the Science Journal, but it is already being touted by the media as the future of weight loss. Although it has yet to be tested on humans, trials on pigs have yielded very promising results. After about 30 minutes of VIBES activity, pigs consumed on average almost 40 percent less food in the next half hour than they did without the smart pill. Apparently, the revolutionary device works by activating stretch receptors in the stomach, simulating the presence of food. This in turn signals the hypothalamus to increase the levels of hormones that make us feel full.

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Japanese media recently reported the controversial story of a 35-year-old Japanese man who allegedly has four wives and three small children but hasn’t worked in over a decade.

35-year-old Ryuta Watanabe of Sapporo, on Japan’s Hokkaido Island, has become an overnight sensation in his home country due to an unconventional lifestyle. Watanabe reportedly lives with three of his four wives – who get along great with each other – and relies on them for most of the family’s financial needs, as he hasn’t had a job in the last 10 years. The polygamous family’s daily life was recently featured on Japan’s AbemaTV news program Abema Prime and sparked quite a heated debate in Japan, a country where polygamy is officially banned. To bypass Japan’s polygamy law, Ryuta’s four wives are currently in what is known as a ‘common-law relationship’ with him, but they plan to register their marriages and then divorce him, one at a time, so they can take the surname ‘Watanabe’ and pass it on to their children.

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Emily Pellegrini has only been on Instagram for four months, but she already has nearly 150,000 fans showering her with compliments and date invitations. Only she’s not a real person…

AI-generated social media influencers are on a tear these days. A couple of months ago, we featured Aitana Lopez, aka Fit Aitana, a Spanish model who had amassed a following of around 110,000 people on Instagram in four months despite only existing in the digital world. She was the creation of a communication agency, but she looked just like a real person. It turns out that she was only one of many hyperrealistic digital avatars taking social media by storm and making their creators fortunes in advertising, sponsorships and paid personalized content. Emily Pellegrini, a digital model based on the guidelines of ChatGPT, has been getting a lot of attention in the media recently, sparking controversy in the process.

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Every year, Japanese pesticide company Earth Corporation holds a ‘transcendence ceremony’ at the Myodoji Temple in Ako City to honor insects that sacrificed their lives for research purposes.

Earth Corporation prides itself on being the ‘no. 1 preferred household insecticide company in Japan’, a status it has achieved over decades of research and trial & error. In order to test the efficacy of its products, the company uses them on various species of insects at a proprietary research facility in Ako City, and some of those bugs inevitably die in the process. The company breeds the bugs it uses for testing, but that doesn’t make their sacrifice meaningless, and to show that it doesn’t take the tiny creatures for granted, Earth Corporation holds an honorary ceremony at the Myodoji Temple in Ako City.

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A Minnesota woman is suing her dentist for allegedly putting her through hell for over five hours by conducting 32 different procedures in a single, agonizing session.

Having to endure one root canal is traumatizing enough, but imagine having to sit through four root canal procedures, eight dental crowns, and no less than 20 fillings in a single session. It sounds like a nightmare and Kathleen Wilson, a Minnesota woman with severe dental problems, can attest that it truly was. In a span of just over 5 hours, her dentist, Dr. Kevin Molldrem, allegedly used about double the recommended dose of anesthetic, in an attempt to fix all her teeth in a single session. His efforts allegedly left the woman disfigured and distressed, and she is now asking for at least $50,000 in damages.

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‘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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