Doctors at a hospital in Iraq recently conducted a complicated operation to extract a mysterious foreign body from the coccyx of a woman who had been paraplegic for two years.

Iraqi media recently reported the intriguing case of a 50-year-old woman who had been paraplegic for two years and recently found out that she had a mysterious foreign object lodged in her coccyx. Doctors from the Internal Medicine Department for Women at Al-Khalis General Hospital, in Al-Khalis conducted a series of tests, including X-rays, on the unnamed woman and noticed something odd in the coccyx area. There was a long foreign body that seemed to have penetrated her spine, so she was scheduled for emergency surgery.

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A 25-year-old man wound up in the emergency room with a collapsed lung after straining himself while singing karaoke at a friend’s birthday party.

Chinese media recently reported the bizarre case of a young man from Changsha, in China’s Hunan Province, who suffered a serious lung injury by trying to reach the high-pitch tones during a karaoke session. The man, known as Wang Zhe, reportedly attended a friend’s birthday party and decided to show off his voice by singing “New Drunken Concubine”, a song famous for the high-pitched tones it demands. When he reached the high-pitched part for the song, the 25-year-old man really gave it his all, only to feel a sharp pain in his chest which made him cut his act short. The pain was bearable, though, so he didn’t pay too much attention to it until the next day, when he found that he could barely breathe.

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Roberto Cazzaniga, a well-known Italian volleyball player, was scammed out of over $800,000 over 15 years by a scammer who posed as his online girlfriend and used photos of famous Brazilian supermodel Alessandra Ambrosio.

The current captain of the Gioia Del Colle volleyball club was introduced to his online girlfriend by a mutual friend, Manuela, who turned out to be the one behind this unbelievable scam. Using the fictional name ‘Maya’, the woman started sending Cazzaniga photos of Brazilian supermodel and Victoria’s Secret angel, Alessandra Ambrosio. The Italian athlete fell for her immediately and became involved in a very expensive 15-year-long online relationship with the scammer.

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Russian robotics company Promobot recently announced plans to buy the rights to use someone’s face and voice on its robots forever for the price of $200,000.

Known for producing hyper-realistic, humanlike robots, Promobot is currently developing “a humanoid robot-assistant which will work in hotels, shopping malls and other crowded places,” and is in the market for a “kind and friendly” face to use on it. To that end, the Russian startup has announced that it is ready to pay $200,000 to anyone willing to transfer the rights to their face to Promobot forever. The company clarified that it will accept applications from people of all races and genders, with the ‘age 25 and over’ being the only requirement mentioned.

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Three popular influencers were recently sentenced to over three years in a Russian penal colony for pranking the driver of a ride-sharing company by pretending to steal his car.

In March of 2021, the three bloggers decided to pull another one of their popular pranks and then post the footage on social media. They called an Uber-type taxi, and two of them got in the car and asked the driver to help their friend load some baggage in the trunk. When the driver got out of the vehicle, one of them got behind the wheel and drove off. The whole thing was caught on camera by one of their accomplices, who was filming from a few meters away, only to the driver, this seemed like an actual car theft, so by the time the vloggers brought the car back and explained that it had all been a joke, the police had already been notified. And they didn’t find the prank funny at all.

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Photos and videos of eggs with black yolks that were reportedly laid by a grey goose have been doing the rounds on social media and leaving experts scratching their heads.

The intriguing photos and videos of the black eggs were posted on Sina Weibo last week by a man surnamed Zhu from Hangzhou City, in China’s Zhejiang Province. He claimed that the eggs came from a friend of his who kept many grey geese on his farm, and who had gifted him batches of normal goose eggs before. Only this time, what looked like ordinary eggs of standard size and white color turned out to be somewhat of an oddity. When cracked, the eggs revealed a clear egg-white, but a dark grey, almost black yolk, instead of the normal yellow or light orange.

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In a unique gesture of appreciation and love, an Indian man built a scaled-down replica of the iconic Taj Mahal as a “monument of love” for his wife of 27 years.

The original Taj Mahal, the most famous building in all of India, was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died while giving birth to their 14th child. It’s one of the world’s most iconic symbols of love, so one businessman from Madhya Pradesh decided that it was the perfect inspiration for his own tribute to his spouse. He paid a reported 20 million rupees ($260,000) to have a construction team build a four-bedroom replica of the Taj Mahal, complete with intricate latticework, minarets, and a luxurious interior fit for a queen.

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In what can be described as one of the weirdest accidents of the year, a Filipino man was seriously hurt by a crocodile after climbing down into a pool to take a selfie with it, thinking it was just a realistic plastic model.

68-year-old Nehemias Chipada was visiting the Amaya View amusement park in Cagayan de Oro City, the Philippines, on November 10 when he spotted what he thought was a life-like model of a crocodile. It looked eerily realistic, so the Filipino man, who was celebrating his birthday with his family at the amusement park, climbed down to take a selfie with the cold-blooded reptile and even tapped it on the head. The thought that the 12-meter “model” could actually be a real crocodile never crossed his mind, at least until he got dangerously close to it and the reptile sank its teeth into his left arm…

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Keshav and Anjali Kumar, two young siblings from Jharkhand, India suffer from two rare conditions known as Cutis Laxa and Progeria, which make them look incredibly old for their age.

The Indian brother and sister originally made news headlines as the “Benjamin Button siblings” in 2016. Anjali was 7 at the time, and her younger brother was only 18-months-old, but they both already looked like octogenarians. And not only was their skin unusually wrinkly and saggy, but they both suffered from joint pain associated with old age. This paradoxical situation earned them the nickname ‘Benjamin Button siblings,’ after the fictional character in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story. Keshav and Anjali Kumar were diagnosed with progeria and cutis laxa, two exceptionally rare conditions that are, unfortunately, incurable.

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When it comes to telling when someone is lying, we currently have very few options, but a team of Israeli researchers claims to have come up with something better than anything we’ve seen before.

Using stickers printed on soft surfaces containing electrodes that monitor and measure the activity of muscles and nerves, a team of researchers led by Prof. Dino Levy from Tel Aviv University, discovered that some people involuntarily activate muscles in their cheeks and eyebrows when they lie. No sensors had been able to measure these subtle muscle contractions before, but the innovative ones invented by Prof. Yael Hanein and sold by Israeli company X-trodes proved sensitive enough. Tests revealed a 73% success rate of lie identification, better than any existing technology.

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Unable to find the medicine his two-year-old son desperately needs in China or even import it from abroad, a loving father set up his own laboratory and synthesized the drug himself.

Two-year-old Haoyang suffers from Menkes Syndrome, an ultra-rare genetic disorder that affects how copper is processed and absorbed in the body. The boy cannot move or speak and experts claim he only has months left to live but his father refuses to give up on him. As long as he draws breath, he is determined to do everything he can for his son, even if it means teaching himself chemistry and producing the medicine Chinese authorities have been unable to provide. Xu Wei, a desperate father from southwestern Kunming, has touched millions with his determination and unwavering devotion to his ailing son.

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A Michigan woman who turned to a bogus rent-a-hitman website to have an assassin kill her ex-husband was recently convicted for solicitation of murder.

The internet is amazing. You can find just about any kind of information or service if you put in the work and do some research, but when it comes to hiring someone to be your hitman, you may want to skip the obvious options. Wendy Wein, a 52-year-old woman from Michigan who wanted her ex-husband dead, failed to do just that. She found the website RentAHitman.com and assumed that it was a legitimate business where vengeful people like her could find professionals to do their dirty work for them. It won’t surprise anyone that this wasn’t the case and that she is now facing at least nine years behind bars.

RentAHitman.com promises confidentiality, boasts about complying with HIPPA, which apparently stands for the non-existent “Hitman Information Privacy & Protection Act of 1964,” features testimonies from satisfied customers, including women who caught their husbands cheating, and offers access to a network of over 17,000 “field operatives”. And that’s apparently more than enough for people to put in an order for a hitman…

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California-based startup SpinLaunch has been making news headlines for its innovative approach to space flight – using a vacuum-sealed centrifuge to hurl rockets into space.

SpinLaunch has been working on a launch system that uses kinetic energy as its primary method. It relies on a complex mechanism that includes a vacuum-sealed centrifuge to spin the space rocket at several times the speed of sound before launching it upwards through a chute. If successful, SpinLaunch’s system could prove to be the most cost-effective and most reliable way of getting objects into outer space. The company has already had a successful launch in October, using its SpacePort suborbital accelerator in New Mexico to get a prototype vehicle tens of thousands of feet into the atmosphere.

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A Chinese man was banned from an all-you-can-eat buffet in Changsha for eating kilograms of pork and prawns on every visit, causing the business to lose too much money.

A food streamer known only as Kang told local reporters that he was banned from the Handadi Seafood BBQ Buffet in Changsha city simply because he can eat more than the average patron. He admitted that he ate around 1.5kg of pork trotters during his first visit to the restaurant and 3.5kg to 4kg of prawns on his second visit before getting banned, but considers that he is being discriminated against because of his healthy appetite. The owner of the restaurant obviously disagrees.

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Sumomomomomomomomo, a Japanese racehorse that recently claimed its maiden win, was dubbed “the horse that makes commentators cry” because of its tongue-twister name.

The three-year-old mare claimed victory at Tokyo’s Oi racecourse a couple of weeks ago and has since become somewhat of a celebrity on Japanese social media. Its name, which is based on a Japanese tongue-twister that means “plums and peaches are both peaches,” captured people’s imagination, and now everyone is rooting for her to win, just so they can hear race commentators struggling to say ‘Sumomomomomomomomo’. Just listen to NHK announcer Izumi Tanaka commentate the horse’s recent victory, and you’ll understand why people want to hear more of it.

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