Spanish police have credited a recent Google Maps update for providing them with evidence crucial to solving a murder case that they had been investigating for over a year.

The tragic case of a 33-year-old Cuban man identified only by his initials, JLPO, whose remains were found on the outskirts of Tajueco, a town in the Spanish province of Castille and Leon may soon reach its conclusion thanks to a Google Maps update. JLPO had traveled from Cuba to Spain to visit his wife who was working in the European country, but soon after arriving in Spain, his relatives began receiving weird texts from him. He told his family that he had met a woman in Spain and planned to throw away his phone, so after they stopped hearing from him completely, JLPO’s relatives declared him missing. Parts of JLPO’s nobody were discovered near a Tajueco cemetery late last year, and investigators have been trying to solve his murder ever since.

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In a case that recently scandalized the Karnataka High Court, a woman filed a cruelty case against her husband, claiming that he cared more about their pet cat than about her.

An Indian woman was scolded by judges in Bengaluru for filing a frivolous cruelty complaint against her husband in which she mostly complained that the man pays more attention to their pet cat than to her. Justice M. Nagaprasanna observed that no specific allegations of cruelty or harassment were made in the complaint. Instead, the plaintiff focused on the husband caring for their feline more than for her, claiming that whenever she confronted him about his behavior, they ended up arguing and hurling insults at each other. The wife apparently also complained about the cat attacking and scratching her several times and the husband doing nothing about it.

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A Chinese man got so angry while tutoring and helping his teenage son with his homework that he suffered a heart attack and almost lost his life

Surnamed Zhang, the 40-something man from China’s Zhejiang province started experiencing shortness of breath and chest pain while helping his son prepare for senior secondary school entrance exams. Things got so tense between the two that Zhang was rushed to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with acute myocardial infarction. Doctors at the Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital performed emergency artery bypass surgery and managed to save Zhang’s life. The cause of the heart attack was attributed to premature coronary artery disease, a life-threatening condition often exacerbated by stress.

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Russian entrepreneurs looking to make a quick buck have started selling twigs online, marketing them as “perfect snowman arms” and asking for up to 5,300 rubles ($50) per pair.

Russian media recently reported that online classifieds platforms have been inundated with ads for snowman spare parts. Apart from the snow itself, you can buy pretty much anything online, from the hat and carrot nose to the coal eyes and buttons. Wooden twigs as arms have been particularly popular, with sellers asking from 500 rubles ($4.8) per pair to a whopping 5,300 rubles ($50), discounted from 5,900 rubles. Marketed as “long-lasting”, strong, reliable and unique – like snowflakes in winter – the wooden snowman arms are said to be the perfect purchase this holiday season.

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Dyer’s Burgers is a popular Memphis eatery that has been frying its meat patties in the same grease for over a century, claiming it is the secret to its delicious-tasting burgers.

Elmer “Doc” Dyer founded his now-famous burger joint in Memphis in 1912, betting on his secret mix of seasonings to make the patties irresistible. It worked, people loved Dyers’ burgers, but it wasn’t until one fateful night when one of the cooks forgot to change the grease in the pan that they became to-die-for. Kendall Robertson, the current owner of Dyer’s Burgers, claims that the next day, someone came in, had a burger and said ‘That’s the best burger I’ve ever had in my life’. That skillet of grease has never been changed since, so all the burgers are still cooked in the original grease that made the restaurant famous more than a century ago.

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The Scratcher Girls is an unconventional relaxation therapy studio that charges clients up to $130 per hour for back-scratching and tracing services so relaxing they can put people to sleep.

Over the years, we’ve featured our share of unusual services here on Oddity Central, from renting fat people by the hour to professional cuddling and human bed warmers, so we can’t really say we were shocked about the world’s first professional back-scratching service. Founded by 55-year-old Toni George, The Scratcher Girls is the world’s first back-scratching studio and it has been offering scratching and tracing services for years. George claims that she has always enjoyed getting back scratches and one day came to the realization that she may not be the only one, so she decided to start her own back-scratching service. She has been using the 3-inch-long manicured nails to scratch people’s backs ever since, charging up to $130 per hour.

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At an age when most people struggle to move around without a cane or a crutch, 88-year-old Ploutarchos Pourliakas just completed his 12th consecutive Athens Marathon (42.195km / 26.22 miles)

If you ever need a bit of extra motivation to get up off the couch and go for a jog, remember that an 88-year-old man finished the Athens Marathon, aka the Authentic Marathon, crossing the finish line in 6 hours and 31 minutes. Ploutarchos Pourliakas only took up running at the age of 73, after getting inspired by his son, an ultra-marathon runner, but he quickly became obsessed with it, running four to five kilometers daily and up to 20km on weekends. He has finished the Athens Marathon 12 times, and despite getting older, Pourliakas actually managed to improve on last year’s performance, 42.195km (26.22 miles) eighteen minutes faster.

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Hundreds of buildings located on the edge of a steep earthen cliff on the outskirts of El Alto, in Bolivia, have been dubbed “suicide homes” because of the high risk of a devastating landslide.

Located on Avenida Panorámica and in La Ceja, one of the busiest commercial areas of the city of El Alto, Bolivia’s suicide homes have been getting a lot of attention because of their precarious positioning, on the very edge of an earth cliff that has been deemed very susceptible to landslides. In recent weeks, rains have been wreaking havoc in Bolivia’s capital and its surrounding area, increasing the risk of a landslide even more. But that doesn’t seem to scare the inhabitants of these suicide homes one bit, as most of them refuse to move away. These buildings are inhabited by local shamans known as yatiri and merchants who don’t want to give up their place of business even if it means falling to their deaths one day.

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Fillico Jewelry Water is a Japanese company known for selling one of the most expensive bottled waters in the world, with exclusive limited editions selling for up to $10,000 per bottle.

Water is one of the most basic human needs, so marketing and selling it as an ultra-luxury product is a pretty big challenge, even among the snobbiest of snobs, but a Japanese company proved it can be done successfully. Launched in 2005, Fillico Water set out to create a complete luxury experience that would make people reach for their wallets and pay obscene amounts of money to have it. Using some of the purest mineral water in Japan wasn’t nearly enough, so they put a lot of work into the design of the packaging, which was marketed as a work of art in itself. Somehow, they made it work, and today Fillico Jewelry Water is one of the most sought-after ultra-luxury bottled water brands in the world, with prices surpassing $1,000 per liter and even several thousand for limited edition offerings.

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An Austrian couple who married and divorced each other a total of 12 times in the last 43 years is currently under investigation for financial fraud.

Police in Vienna, Austria, are currently investigating the bizarre case of a couple who got married and then divorced 12 times over a period of 43 years in order to take advantage of a legal loophole that allowed them to receive substantial amounts of money. The elderly couple is suspected of having arranged every divorce strictly on paper so the wife could receive the 27,000 euro ($28,300) severance pay she was awarded after her first husband’s death in 1981. They took advantage of a loophole in Austrian legislation that allowed widows to retain the severance pay as long as she wasn’t married. Every two and a half years, she was to receive 2.5 times her annual widow’s pension, so every three years or so she and her second husband would divorce so she could receive the money, and then they would remarry.

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A 21-year-old student from Taizhou, China, managed to extort over 60 different hotels for free stays and financial compensation by creating fake hygiene problems and promising to take actions against them.

Jiang, a resident of Taizhou City, in China’s Zhejiang Province, came up with a particularly gross way of funding his traveling habit when he became short on funds. In September of last year, after deciding to put off university enrollment in favor of using the tuition to travel around China, the 21-year-old man quickly saw his funds diminish, which forced him to come up with an alternative way of covering his expenses. After analyzing his expenditures, Jiang realized that hotels were particularly hard on his wallet, so he came up with a creatively devious way of blackmailing hotel staff into giving him accommodation for free.

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A 22-year-old man spent three days trapped at the bottom of a 12-meter-deep well because villagers who heard his cries for help thought he was a wailing ghost and wouldn’t approach the well.

It’s unclear what Liu Chuanyi, a young Chinese national, was doing in the forest on the border between Thailand and Myanmar, but he somehow fell into an abandoned well on the outskirts of a small village. Authorities believe he was trekking through the woods when he fell into the 12-meter-deep hole, sustaining serious injuries, like a fractured wrist and cerebral concussion. At first, he started shouting for help as loudly as he could, but as the hours passed, he realized he would exhaust himself quickly and diminish his chances of being rescued. He was right, he spent the next three days and three nights at the bottom of the well, with no food or water, and had he not saved his energy, he would have probably died there.

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The whole of Thailand was shaken by the death of a young singer as a result of getting a neck-twisting massage that left her with a herniated spine disk in her neck.

Doctors in Thailand started issuing warnings against getting neck-twisting massages after the tragic death of Phing Chyada, a young woman from Udon Thani who reportedly died from complications related to neck massage sessions she underwent at a studio in her home city. According to Chyada’s mother, she started experiencing shoulder pain a couple of months ago, and instead of going to a hospital, she opted to visit a local massage studio. She had always loved massages, so she thought it would be a good way to relieve pain. Only two days after the neck-twisting massage session, the young woman started feeling pain in her neck as well, and things only got worse from there.

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A Japanese man was recently admitted to trespassing onto other people’s properties over 1,000 times as a hobby because he found it thrilling and exhilarating.

A couple of weeks ago, Fukuoka Prefectural Police arrested a 37-year-old man on suspicion of trespassing onto a couple’s property in the city of Daizafu. Little did the police know that this had hardly been an isolated incident and the man was a serial trespasser who had done it countless times for his personal enjoyment. During questioning, the man, identified as Yuta Sugawara, not only admitted to trespassing onto the couple’s property when he thought they were away but casually told investigators that this was a hobby of his and that he had trespassed onto other people’s properties over 1,000 times. Sugawara was apprehended by the victims of his latest trespassing attempt, who saw him on their land and chased after him when he ran. The man managed to immobilize the culprit while his wife called the police.

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Viral videos shared on Chinese social media show human law enforcement patrolling the streets alongside AI-powered spherical robots capable of detecting and stopping crime.

A couple of months ago, Chinese robotics company Logon Technology unveiled the RT-G  autonomous spherical robot, a “technological breakthrough” designed to assist and even replace humans in dangerous environments and situations. Capable of operating both on land and in water, the spherical robot can allegedly reach speeds of up to 35km/h and withstand impact damage of up to 4 tons. In a promotional video, the RT-G can be seen operating in water, rough terrain, and mud, but what really caught people’s attention was its urban use, that of a sort of patrol robot capable of identifying criminals and immobilizing them thanks to its suites of advanced AI-powered software. It all seemed like a marketing stunt, but less than two months since the clip went viral, RT-G robots have been spotted patrolling alongside human law enforcement.

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