Nepalese eye doctor Sanduk Ruit is being hailed as a miracle worker – he has single-handedly managed to restore the eyesight of over 100,000 people across two continents. All it takes him is a simple, five-minute procedure!

According to WHO statistics, 90 percent of the world’s blind population live in low-income areas, and 80 percent suffer from easily treatable conditions. But because of poverty and limited access to public health services, they are unable to seek treatment. Sanduk Ruit, driven by a belief that the world’s poorest people deserve high-quality eye care, has made it his life’s mission to treat such people. So he devised a quick five-minute technique that enables large droves of patients to be treated in a short period of time.

His genius technique involves making a small incision in the patient’s eye through which the cloudy cataract impairing the vision is removed. He then replaces it with an inexpensive artificial lens. He offers this surgery to scores of poor patients all over the world, and also teaches it to countless eye surgeons in the hope of curing as many blind people as possible.

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Not many people working in the film industry are aware of a 1930’s Hollywood actor-turned-agent named Marty Martin, so it’s rather baffling that 10-year-old Ryan is familiar with the man’s life and work. In fact, Ryan is able to recount vivid and stunningly accurate descriptions of the actor and the era he lived in, even those that have never been documented. And he’s able to do so because he claims to be the incarnation of Martin himself!

Ryan, who lives in Muskogee, Oklahoma, was born to Baptist parents in 2005. When he was only four years old, he started having nightmares that his parents had no idea how to stop. He would often talk about his heart exploding, and of Hollywood, a place that is several thousands of miles away from Oklahoma. According to Ryan’s mom Cyndi, he would always talk in a matter-of-fact manner during these incidents.

After a year, Cyndi said that Ryan confided to her about his  reincarnation. “He said, ‘Mom, I have something I need to tell you. I used to be somebody else,’” she said. Being a Baptist, Cyndi’s first reaction was to deny everything and hide it from her husband, but she slowly became curious as Ryan revealed more details of his past life, especially because he would cry and beg for his mom to take him ‘home’. “His stories were so detailed and extensive, that it just wasn’t like a child could have made it up,” Cyndi said.

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Cheating at exams is an age-old phenomenon, but the practice literally scaled new heights last week in the eastern Indian state of Bihar. News reports showed how parents and relatives of 10th-grade students climbing the walls of a school building to hand cheat sheets to the students taking their year-end exams inside!

Photographs and videos of the stupefying event went viral in India, even as police officers stood watching helplessly. Some videos also showed inspectors slapping young students as they pulled out cheat sheets from under their tables. It seems that several students were able to smuggle textbooks and notes into the exam centers despite tight security.

Cheating is apparently common in rural areas of the state, where the competition is fierce and opportunities are few. Just last month, dozens of 12th-grade students were expelled and parents detained in cases of cheating. But the sight of parents risking their life and limb to help their kids has truly shocked the nation.

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If the claims of a group of Siberian entrepreneurs are to be believed, their new product might just give Viagra a run for its money. They aren’t selling another expensive pill, just a can of fresh air!

According to Vladimir Makuta, head of the local Tashtagol district, air from Azasskaya Cave and its surrounding area, which is where the fabled Yeti (a.k.a Bigfoot) was supposedly sighted on more than one occasion, is crystal-clear, full of goodness, and has a healing effect. It can apparently help strengthen immunity and positively impact mental state. But most importantly, it is said to works wonders for people who want to perform better in bed.

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For over four decades, Egyptian woman Sisa Abu Daooh was the sole breadwinner in her family, which is highly unusual for the patriarchal society she lives in. What’s more unusual is the way she did it – by dressing herself like a man! Now 64, Abu Daooh is being honored as the ‘ideal mother’ by the Social Solidarity Directorate of Luxor.

Sisa lost her husband when she 21 and pregnant. After the birth of her daughter, she was left with no money and no source of income, either. Since the local culture did not permit women at the workplace, she had no option but to dress like a man. Her disguise consisted of a  ‘jilbab’ – a loose, full-length robe with wide sleeves – along with a white turban, or a men’s hat called ‘Taqiyah’, and black shoes.

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If you found our post about bodybuilders consuming breast milk hard to stomach, wait till you hear what this woman in England puts in her smoothies. Kathryn Beale makes controversial birth placenta smoothies in her own kitchen and sells them to new mothers for £25 ($38) each.

The 41-year-old from Wiltshire county, in South West England, got involved in placentophagy – the consumption of birth placenta – a couple of years ago, after meeting the founder of the Independent Placenta Encapsulation Network. Her most popular product is a placenta capsule, priced at £150 ($224) per batch, but her most talked-about creation is a smoothie that contain a fist-sized chunk of chilled placenta blended with berries and bananas.

Kathryn insists that these products are perfectly safe and have several health benefits. “Most species of mammal eat their own placenta straight after birth, raw – it is normal in the animal kingdom,” she explained. “We are unusual in that we don’t routinely do it. It is full of iron, stem cells and hormones, and is reputed to help with milk production and post-natal depression.” The placenta products aren’t meant for everyone, though – just new mothers. “Women who want to use their placentas are tested during pregnancy, and if we know the placenta carries any blood-pathogens we will not use it,” she explained. “After the birth it then stays with the mum in cold bags with ice packs. I collect them very quickly, usually within 24 hours.”

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It’s good to get  in touch with your inner child from time to time, and apparently some people are willing to pay big money for the chance to do so in a proper environment. A Brooklyn-based preschool for adults is charging clients between $333 and $999 for the chance to act like a kid again.

At ‘Preschool Mastermind’,in New York, adults get to participate in show-and-tell, arts-and-crafts such as finger painting, games like musical chairs, and even take naps! The month-long course also has class picture day where the adults are expected to dress to their ‘four-year-old best’, a field trip, and a parent day when students get to bring two adults of their choice.

30-year-old Michelle Joni Lapidos, the brains behind the adult preschool, studied childhood education and has always wanted to be a preschool teacher. She’s always on the lookout for new ways to get people in touch with the freedom of childhood – she had started a skipping club in Brooklyn in 2013, but a friend encouraged her to start the mastermind course instead.

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Shopping for groceries can be dreary, but a group of Dutch entrepreneurs is trying to change that. They’ve come up with a unique concept called ‘Disco Boodschappen’ (Disco Shopping) which basically involves throwing a disco dance party at an otherwise boring supermarket.

The organisers said they came up with the plan after they saw a tweet with a similar idea. “A friend of mine posted a tweet with a picture of a note from a supermarket where a student is proposing an hour of disco shopping,” said entrepreneur Joost Aarsten. “I thought, ‘Wow, we gotta do that!’”

So he got together with a few friends to formulate a simple event that would make shopping for food seem like a celebration. With a high quality sound system, a few decorations, and a DJ, they plan to convert the most mundane supermarkets into a hip place for a few hours.

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The semi-nomadic Moken people, living along the coasts of Burma and Thailand, are hunter-gatherers who for centuries have harvested the sea’s bounty. They use traditional diving methods to this day, instead of modern masks or scuba gear. And their underwater vision is so evolved that they are able to gather tiny shellfish and other food from the ocean floor at depths as low as 75 feet!

Diving for food sounds like a difficult way to survive, but scientists have discovered that young Moken children have underwater vision that’s twice as good as European children of the same age. Scientist Anna Gislén, of Sweden’s Lund University, studied the children’s unique vision after hearing about them from a colleague.

“Another scientist, Erika Schagatay, was in the south of China working with sea nomads and their diving response,” she said. “She noticed that the children were picking out small brown clams from among brown stones. To her, this was incomprehensible, as she could hardly see them with her goggles, and the children used no such thing. It was not her area of science, so eventually it ended up on my desk.”

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A Chinese man was recently presented with the ultimate test of love – he was forced to choose between saving his current and ex girlfriends! The two love-struck women jumped into a river to see which one he would save.

The poor man in question is 21-year-old Wu Hsia, who recently broke up with his long-time girlfriend Jun Tang, 20, after falling in love with 22-year-old  Rong Tsao. The ex-girlfriend took the split rather badly and began to harass Wu in the hope that he would leave Rong and come back to her.

Tired of the bickering women, Wu decided to meet with both of them and make his intentions clear. “I was sick of being nagged from both sides,” he said. “Rong was moaning about Jun and Jun was moaning about her and it all got too much.” Unfortunately, the meeting turned out to be a bad idea. Jun and Rong got into an argument, which ended with Jun throwing herself into the river. Rong quickly followed suit.

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When the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant went into meltdown, after the devastating tsunami in 2011, most of the locals fled to overcrowded temporary shelters. So did Naoto Matsumura, but the brave man soon decided return to his home town of Tomioka, just to take care of the many animals left behind! And even though the radiation levels are dangerously high (17 times higher than normal) in this area, Matsumura says he isn’t going anywhere.

He now spends most of his time running a charity along with a few supporters, taking care of animals left behind in the evacuation zone. “I have two cats, one dog, one ostrich, one horse, 31 cows and four wild boars,” Matsumura proudly declared.

He started off by taking into his care the animals that were abandoned in his hometown. He described how most of the pets were still tied up, because locals had believed they would be back home soon. Matsumura took it upon himself to feed the animals every day. “They couldn’t stand the wait, so they’d all gather around barking up a storm as soon as they heard my truck,” he recalled. “Everywhere I went there was always barking. Like, “we’re thirsty” or, “we don’t have any food.”

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Wang Weibu is one of the few remaining Chinese hairdressers practicing the ancient hair-cutting art of ‘Dahoujia’. The rather extreme technique involves the use of a pair of red hot metal tongs to burn hair off, instead of cutting it!

Weibu, 72, starts by heating the clamp in a wooden fire until it is red hot, and cooling it slightly in water. He then uses it like scissors to chop of the hair to the desired length. Later, he slides the hot metal all over the remaining hair. The technique is rather baffling – after all, who would want to walk around with a head of scorched hair? But surprisingly, the final effect is rather nice – sort of like a perm – and lasts for about three months.

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Jia Haixa and Jia Wenqi are the most unlikely pair of environmentalists we’ve ever come across. The former is blind, while the latter is a double-amputee. Yet, they’ve managed to use their symbiotic relationship to plant over 10,000 trees in the past decade.

Haixa and Wenqi began their beautiful partnership when they were unable to get jobs due to their impairments. They have now become each other’s eyes and hands, and taken on the task of transforming a three-hectare stretch of riverbank in Yeli village, in north China’s Hebei Province.

“I am his hands,” said Haixia. “He is my eyes. We are good partners.” The 53-year-old was born with congenital cataracts that blinded his left eye. Then, in 2000, he lost sight in his right eye as well after a work-related accident. Wenqi, on the other hand, lost both arms in an accident when he was only three years old.

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If you thought belly dancing was exclusive to women, you’re in for a surprise. Believe it or not, male belly dancing is a real thing in Turkey, and it’s totally in vogue. Sporting designer stubbles and dressed in skirts decorated with coins and shimmering tassels, the dancers jerk their hips to Turkish tunes, enthralling their audience with their exotic moves.

Interestingly, these male performers are not a recent phenomenon. Known as ‘zennes’, they used to be a regular feature at the courts of Ottoman Sultans, because Muslim women were not permitted to perform on stage at the time. But as the 600-year Empire declined and society modernized, women took on more public roles. The number of female belly dancers rose, and the number of zennes slowly declined.

Although they haven’t made an appearance for decades, interest in the ancient art form is now at a new peak. It all started with the Islamic-rooted Turkish government’s attempt to revive the nation’s conservative Ottoman past. Apart from the government’s attempts, the enthusiasm among the nation’s population for the Ottoman-era culture has helped improve the popularity of male belly dancing.

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Seven-year-old Kautilya Pandit is what you would call a walking, talking encyclopedia, with the capacity to absorb information ranging from geography to biology and current affairs. He also dabbles in economic statistics, politics and pretty much any other subject you can think of. Within three months, the little kid managed to memorize information about 213 countries, their population, GDP, source of income, currency, religion, culture and heritage.

Kautilya, a resident of Kohand Village in Haryana, India, is now a national celebrity – he regularly travels to schools across India, answering live questions from other kids, on stage. In one of his latest appearances, he was asked unusual questions like the total surface area of Vatican City, the GDP of the UK and more. He was able to answer them all with ease.

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