Roberto Gabriel Trigo, are tired football player from Paraguay, is probably the only man alive who can say that he shot down a small plane with a football.

The legend of the football kick that brought down a plane has been doing the rounds through the locker rooms of Paraguayan football clubs for six decades. Some say it happened during an official game, others that it was during a practice, but they all credit the same man – Roberto Gabriel Trigo. He was 17 years old at the time and playing as a right back for the now-defunct General Genes football club of Asuncion. Annoyed by a small plane flying low over the local football field, Trigo allegedly kicked the ball outwards, hitting the aircraft’s engine and causing it to crash in an open field, just 200 meters away.

Read More »

Family Mart, Japan’s second-largest convenience store chain, recently started using AI-powered robots to restock shelves, as a way to deal with the country’s fast-shrinking workforce.

The decline in labor population is one of the biggest threats to businesses operating in Japan, and some have already started looking for ways to replace human workers. Case in point, major convenience store chain Family Mart, a company has recently teamed up with Tokyo-based robotics company Telexistence to introduce AI-powered robots in hundreds of its stores across the country. The new “employees” will be in charge of replenishing drinks in refrigerators and are expected to make human workers’ jobs easier and, in some cases, replace them completely.

Read More »

Unable to access his own savings, a Lebanese man recently decided to hold bank staff at gunpoint until management agreed to at least give him enough money to pay his father’s medical bills.

Lebanon’s devastating financial crisis was brought into focus this month by a very unusual story. Bassam al-Sheikh Hussein, a 41-year-old man from Beirut, was recently hailed as a hero after entering a branch of the Federal Bank in the capital city’s Hamra district and taking the staff hostage in order to coerce them into letting him withdraw his own savings. The stand-off ended peacefully after seven hours, and Hussein was allowed to withdraw $35,000 of the $210,000 in his bank account, which he claimed to need to pay his father’s hospital bills.

Read More »

An elderly couple in Germany has taken their next-door neighbors to court over a very active rooster that allegedly crows about 200 times a day, making it impossible for them to rest.

76-year-old Friedrich-Wilhelm and his wife Jutta, a couple from Bad Salzuflen, in Western Germany, claim that they haven’t had a quiet day at home in a long time, all because of Magda, their neighbors’ rooster. The domestic bird allegedly starts crowing every day at around 8 am, and doesn’t stop until sundown, when the owners lock it up with their other chicken. After years of trying to reason with their neighbors about Magda, Friedrich and Jutta have taken them to court in order to resolve the matter.

Read More »

A young Chinese woman allegedly quit her job of five years after being disappointed that only one of the seventy coworkers she invited to her wedding actually attended.

Chinese news outlet ETtoday recently featured the unusual story of a young woman who took to social media to complain about being humiliated by her coworkers on the happiest day of her life. The unknown woman had reportedly been working for the same company for five years and felt that she had a good relationship with her coworkers. She had attended the weddings of a third of her 70 colleagues, so when she decided to tie the knot, she was convinced that most of them would want to be there on her big day…

Read More »

A South Korean civil court recently ordered a 31-year-old man to pay his ex-girlfriend 1.5 million won ($1,150) as damages for urinating in her designer handbag.

This bizarre story dates back to last October, when the defendant in this case, a 31-year-old man from Seoul, South Korea, whose identity has not been revealed, for privacy purposes, allegedly got into an argument with his girlfriend at the time. The two were at the girlfriend’s house in Gangnam-gu, and somehow started fighting about the amounts of money the woman was spending and the debts she was racking up. At one point, the man allegedly went into the bedroom, brought out one of his girlfriend’s Louis Vuitton handbags, unbuttoned his pants, and started urinating in it right there in front of her. She didn’t like that very much, so she filed a complaint against him with the police.

Read More »

A couple of septuagenarians from India’s Rajasthan state recently welcomed their first baby after 54 years of marriage, which makes them one of the oldest couples in history to ever have a baby.

75-year-old Gopichand and his 70-year-old wife Chandravati, had long been trying to have a baby, but their dream never came true. For years they visited countless hospitals and clinics, undergoing various treatments and procedures, but nothing worked. About a year and a half ago, the husband approached an in-vitro fertility clinic in Alwar about the possibility of his wife finally becoming pregnant. The woman’s advanced age was a concern, but there had been previous success stories, like that of Jivuben Valabhai Rabari, another 70-year-old woman from rural Gujarat, who last year made news headlines when she delivered a healthy baby. After two failed IVF procedures,  Chandravati finally became pregnant, and recently welcomed a healthy baby boy.

Read More »

Kubota Glass, an allegedly revolutionary pair of glasses capable of curing people of myopia, aka nearsightedness, has recently gone on sale in Japan for a whopping $5,700.

We originally wrote about Kubota Glass in January of 2021, when Kubota Pharmaceutical first announced that it had come up with a non-invasive way of reversing the effects of an ophthalmological condition expected to affect half of the world’s population by 2050. Myopia, or nearsightedness, is an eye disorder where light focuses in front of, instead of on, the retina, making objects in the distance appear blurry, while close ones appear normal. Apart from genetic factors, myopia has been associated with environmental causes, such as the lack of exposure to normal visual stimuli normally found outdoors, in daylight conditions. With so many of us spending more and more time indoors in front of our TVs, monitors and computer screens, it’s no wonder that myopia cases are increasing at an alarming rate.

Read More »

A 15-year-old girl in India allegedly came up with a bizarre way of proving her love to her HIV-positive boyfriend – injecting herself with his blood.

Ah, the things we do for love… Are sometimes pretty darn stupid and dangerous. Take this bizarre story for a teenage girl from India’s Assam state, who apparently decided to show her boyfriend how much she loved him by injecting herself with his blood, knowing full well that he was HIV-positive. News of this unusual show of affection shocked not only the 15-year-old’s family, but the entire nation, with articles going viral on social media over the last week.

Read More »

A Chinese woman recently took a work colleague to court, after they allegedly broke three of her ribs by hugging her too hard.

This bizarre story started back in May of 2021, when the plaintiff, a woman from Yueyang city, in China’s Hunan province, was chatting with a colleague at her workplace. At one point, a male co-worker came over and greeted her with a hug, which allegedly caused her to scream in pain. The man had apparently hugged her so hard that she continued feeling pain in her chest even after leaving work, but she didn’t seek medical help right away preferring to rub some hot oil on her chest and go to bed instead.

Read More »

Mohamed Buya Turay, a striker for Swedish football club Malmö FC couldn’t attend his own wedding in Sierra Leone because of a match, so he asked his brother to stand in for him on the big day.

Last month, 26-year-old footballer Mohamed Buya Turay decided leave the Chinese league and sign with major Swedish club Malmö FC.  After announcing the deal on July 22, the club notified Toray that they were expecting him to join the team as quickly as possible to begin preparations for an important match. There was just one problem – the African striker had already planned his wedding, and there was no backing out of it. But he couldn’t make a bad first impression on his new club either, so he decided to do both. Since his brother couldn’t play football in his place, Mohamed asked him to take his place at the wedding.

Read More »

A 44-year-old married woman sparked controversy in Thailand after allegedly posting a job ad seeking “presentable and educated” women to fill the position of mistress for her husband.

Speaking out of her Bangkok apartment, the woman, identified as Pattheema Chamnan, recently said that she hasn’t been sleeping with her husband for a while, which makes her feel like a bad wife. To make up for it, she is looking to hire a mistress for him, one that can please him “physically”, but also have a pleasant personality and good communication skills. Chamnan offered the region’s minimum wage for the job $450), plus free meals and accommodation in the family home. As outrageous as the offer might seem to some, the Thai woman said that she has already shortlisted two candidates for the job.

Read More »

Dutch beer company Heineken recently teamed up with sneaker designer and customizer Dominic Ciambone, aka The Shoe Surgeon, to create a special sneaker with beer-filled soles.

To celebrate the launch of Heineken’s newest product, Heineken Silver, the Dutch brewer commissioned The Shoe Surgeon to create a sneaker that embodied the identity of their smooth, easy-to-drink new beer, and he delivered. The so-called “Heinekicks” feature the company’s iconic color scheme – green, white and red – as well as the Heineken logo, and handy bottle openers built into the tongues. But what really sets them apart from any other sneakers is the liquid floating in their transparent soles – actual Heineken Silver beer.

Read More »

If you love karaoke, but can never hit the right notes of your favorite songs, don’t despair! Apparently, all you need to do is use a weird karaoke training device for just three minutes per day, and you’re all set.

Karaoke is really big in Japan. Few people know that the pastime enjoyed internationally by millions originated in the Asian country, so it’s really no surprise that so many people of all ages still love it here. But just because you love singing your favorite songs doesn’t mean you’re good at it, and that can be an issue, especially if you prefer doing it in public karaoke establishments, of which there are many in Japan. Sure, you can take singing lessons, but that requires time and money that most karaoke enthusiasts don’t have. Luckily, there is apparently a simple, albeit more bizarre alternative…

Read More »

History Supreme, a super-yacht commissioned by a mysterious Malaysian billionaire and designed by controversial artist Stuart Hughes, is considered the world’s most expensive yacht, but most don’t even believe it exists.

The story of History Supreme is one of the weirdest we’ve ever covered here on Oddity Central. It originally made news headlines over a decade ago, when luxury jeweler and designer Stuart Hughes announced that he had spent three years working on it, after being commissioned by a Malaysian businessman who preferred to remain anonymous. Hughes described his newest creation as the world’s most expensive yacht, priced at a staggering £3 million, or $4.8 billion. Photos of the vessel started doing the rounds online and news outlets covered the topic extensively, but no one has ever seen the History Supreme in person…

Read More »