Some people have strange ways of honoring their loved ones who have passed a way. Take Adriana Villarreal, an Argentine widow who sleeps in her late husband’s small mausoleum to keep him company, because she loves him so much.

43-year-old Adriana Villarreal, from Buenos Aires, recently made headlines in the Argentinian media after she confessed spending a few nights a year in her dead husband’s mausoleum. According to Gustavo Braganza, a police commissioner from the town of Dos de Mayo, his colleagues went to investigate what was going on in the San Lazaro cemetery, after reports of someone living there and playing loud music. When they knocked on the tomb door, Villarreal greeted them in her pijamas, and they could actually see she had been living next to a coffin and an embalmed body.

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Sue Warren decided she wasn’t going to sit around and wait for clients to call her house cleaning business. Instead, she took the initiative and started breaking into people’s houses, cleaning them and leaving the bill. You have to admit, it’s a pretty bold business plan.

According to the Westlake Police Department, the 53-year-old woman from Elyria, Ohio, was apprehended last week, after she broke into a house on Dover Center Road, did some light cleaning and left a bill for $75, on a napkin. Mallory Bush, 18, was actually asleep in her bedroom the whole time, and when she woke up and saw the place slightly cleaner and the bill on the table, she thought her parents had hired a cleaning person.  She called her mom, Sherri, to tell her the hired help did their job, but the woman had no idea what she was talking about, so they decided to give Sue a call, thinking she cleaned the wrong house. When they heard her answer, the Bushes’ jaws dropped to the ground.

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Mao Sugiyama, a young Japanese illustrator from Tokyo, recently made headlines after he decided to have his genitalia removed. To top it off, he offered to sell his organs as a cooked meal, for ¥100,000 ($1.250). Six people pre-ordered…

“Please retweet. I am offering my male genitals (full penis, testes, scrotum) as a meal for 100,000 yen…. I will prepare and cook as the buyer requests, at his chosen location.” This was the tweet that started it all. Sugiyama, who calls himself an ‘asexual’, is a 22-year-old illustrator who aspires to be so devoid of sexual features that he will be able to publicly wear transparent clothing. To achieve his goal, the young man decided to remove all his genitalia. For the sake of argument, let’s just say you could somehow understand his wish, but what comes next is even more shocking. At first, he considered consuming his own genitals, but later decided to offer them up on Twitter, for ¥100,000 to the first person or group interested. He got six orders…

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Growing up in India, I’ve heard several stories of yogis who would eat nothing, surviving on only sunlight. We never really tested out the theory, assuming it was only the stuff of legends. But a Swiss woman apparently did try it, and the results were not good. She ended up starving herself to death. Looks like she found out the hard way that sunlight isn’t really food unless you’re a plant.

The woman’s real name is unknown, but news reports refer to her as Anna Gut. She was in her early fifties when she first heard about the concept of living off sunlight in the documentary film “In the Beginning There was Light”. The two men portrayed in the film – anthroposophist Michael Werner, 62, and Indian yogi Prahlad Jani, 83, claimed they made use of spiritual practices and sunlight for their sustenance, rather than food. Inspired by the concept of ‘breatharianism’, Anna read a book on the same subject written by Australian Ellen Greve. She then began to follow the instructions provided by the book.

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47-year-old Debbie Stevens, a divorced mother of two from Long Island, donated her kidney to help out her boss. You’d think the least she could receive in return was some gratitude, but instead she was promptly fired. The behavior of the boss in question truly seems unfathomable. Stevens now contends that she was being set up and used by her 61-year-old boss, Jackie Brucia.

Stevens and Brucia met as co workers at the billion-dollar Atlantic Automotive Group. At the time, Stevens was a clerical worker, while Brucia was one of the company’s controllers. Later, Stevens left the company in June 2010 and moved to Florida, but she happened to meet Brucia again on a visit to Long Island. It was then that she came to know of Brucia’s illness and difficulty in finding a kidney donor. As a ‘naturally generous’ person, Stevens offered to donate her own kidney if the need arose. To which Brucia replied, “You never know, I may have to take you up on that offer.”

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A German man loves dogs so much that he wants to build a museum dedicated to St. Bernard dogs. So what does he do to raise the money? Why rent out his face, of course. The idea seems so simple, I wonder why people don’t do it all the time. Maybe because no one wants to walk around with a bunch of advertisements TATTOOED on their face. But Uwe Troschel has no such qualms, so he’s perfectly happy to rent out sections of his face for companies to place their advertisements on.

Each section comes at a price of its own. So to put up an ad on Troschel’s forehead costs 50,000  euro, and each cheek, 20,000 euro. The nose is priced at 2,000, and if any company is interested in the entire face, it would set them back a whopping 100,000 euro. His intentions are commendable, but I’m not sure this is the right way to go about helping his four-legged friends. After all, when this is all said and done, they might not even recognize him…

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36-Year-Old Ashleigh Kirby is obsessed with her new-born baby, Finlay. Only, Finlay isn’t a real boy. In a story that strongly reminds us of Pinocchio, Ashleigh is emotionally attached to a realistic, life-size baby doll, even more than with her own daughter when she was born.

Ashleigh lives with her 12-year-old daughter Becky in Andover, Hampshire. She separated from her partner when Becky was just five. After trying several years, she lost hope that she would ever find a suitable man and have babies again. Describing herself as strongly maternal, she wanted to have a baby in the house at any cost. When Ashleigh came across the ‘reborn’ dolls online, she immediately placed an order for one, priced at £250. She has since spent hundreds of pounds on the doll, on clothing, nappies and more. She takes the doll out to the park for a walk in a stroller, cuddles with it and even takes it shopping, treating it just like a real baby. Sometimes other women come over to her to see the baby, mistaking it for a real one. Ashleigh says she just plays along.

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We’ve seen polygamy, same-sex marriages and even threesomes. But what about the polyamorous? Defined as the practice of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved, Jaiya Ma’s relationships are a perfect example of this.

This is the bizarre story of Jaiya, aged 34, and her two lovers – Jon Hanauer, 49, and Ian Ferguson, 44, along with – get this – the baby she’s had with Ian. Confused? Let’s start from the beginning. Jaiya and Jon met in 2000 and lived together for six years, when Jon suggested that she take a new lover… Incidentally, they had met at a Tantric Yoga class and fell in love when they were training to be teachers. At the time, Jaiya was engaged to another man, Tony, who wasn’t comfortable in an open relationship and called it quits. She then lived with Jon in an open relationship the whole time.

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In older times, it was “off with your head” if you spoke ill of the King. Now, you go to jail for posting your feelings on Facebook about the Thai monarchy, which many of the Thai folk actively do. In fact, over 10,000 pages of material was found on the social networking, containing images or text that is offensive to the royal family.

The Information Minister of Thailand, Anudith Nakornthap, warned the people of Thailand that if users on Facebook so much as even like or share any kind of information insulting the monarchy, the consequences would be severe. Such a person could be charged with violation of the lese majeste laws of the country, and could serve up to 15 years in prison. He also advised people to ‘unlike’ any pages and remove any comments made on similar lines. In a world where democracy and freedom of speech are taken for granted in most countries, this news might come across as quite surprising. I mean, we’ve lost count of the number of jokes made online at the expense of Bush, Palin and the likes. Thailand however, has always been strict in enforcing laws that protect the dignity of the sovereign.

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The holiday season is when most businesses tend to rake in the big bucks, thanks to promotional offers and discounts. A gun club in Arizona has apparently decided to make use of the season too, by offering its customers the chance of posing for photographs with Santa while holding military-style rifles and pistols.

According to Ron Kennedy, the general manager of the Scottsdale Gun Club, this is a fun way for people to express their holiday spirit, and also their passion for firearms. The photo event was held last weekend and about 500 people attended. He says that the photos are being uploaded to Facebook and also being used on Christmas holiday cards. It is interesting to note that kids were allowed to pose for the photographs too.

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While it might look like they are protesting against something or staging a gruesome mass suicide, the people of Rawa Buaya are actually looking to cure their illnesses by laying on the train tracks.

In western countries, most people think high levels of electric energy cause cancer, but to the inhabitants of Rawa Buaya, in Indonesia’s West Java, electricity is the ultimate cure. From young children to old folk, they all lie on train tracks passing through their settlement, hoping the electric energy from them will cure their various sicknesses. Not even the potentially lethal trains passing on opposite tracks don’t seem to be scaring these Indonesians away.

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A rabbinical court in Jerusalem recently sentenced a wandering dog to death by stoning, after they decided he was the reincarnation of a lawyer who offended the judges 20 years ago.

A few weeks ago, a large dog entered the Monetary Affairs Court, near the ultra orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim, scaring away visitors and refusing to leave, even after people tried to drive him away. One of the court’s judges remembered something that occurred 20 years ago – a secular lawyer who had offended the judges was cursed by them to reincarnate in the body of a dog (considered an impure animal by Halacha).

The lawyer in question passed away years ago, but one of the still-offended judges sentenced the poor dog to death by stoning, and ordered the task be carried out by the neighborhood’s children. Either the dog sensed the imminent danger and fled, or it was rescued by an animal lover, what’s important is he managed to escape before the sentence could be carried out.

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Tempestt Henderson, a 19-year-old girl from Florida, has a rather peculiar addiction – she can’t help eating soap bars and washing powder. There are worst things to be addicted to, but this has to be one of the strangest.

The young girl remembers she loved the smell of washing powder on her mother’s cardigan and on her bed sheets, and so do many other people, but that doesn’t make them want to stuff their face with the toxic substance. But that’s exactly what Tempestt felt when she first dipped her fingers in washing powder and licked it off. ‘I dabbed the powder onto my tongue and it tasted so sweet, and salty…it just felt so right. I was hooked straight away.’ says the young nursing student.

She new that stuff was hazardous to her health, but she loved it so much she couldn’t stay away from it. From the moment she woke up, she would give in to her washing powder craving, ignoring the warning labels. Before she knew it, Tempestt began licking off the soap bubbles of her skin in the shower, and popping tiny chunks of soap in her mouth and suck on them. Eating soap felt much cleaner than just washing with it, and the young girl claims that at one point she would go through five bars of soap in a week.

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Let’s hear it for Genghis Khan everyone, his bloody conquests just earned him the title of greenest invader in the history of man.

‘It’s a common misconception that the human impact on climate began with the large-scale burning of coal and oil in the industrial era. Actually, humans started to influence the environment thousands of years ago by changing the vegetation cover of the Earth’s landscapes when we cleared forests for agriculture.” said Julia Pongratz, who headed Carnegie Institution’s study that measured carbon impact of a number of historical events that involved a large number of deaths.

Apparently, the armies of Genghis Khan killed so many people that huge cultivated areas  were once again covered with thick forests that absorbed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. According to historical data, during the rule of this famous leader, the Mongol Empire was responsible for the deaths of over 40 million people, which in turn helped remove around 700 million tons of carbon dioxide from the Earth’s atmosphere.

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Jin Songhao and Chen Kecai, two of China’s most seasoned icemen, managed to beat the previous world record for the longest ice bath.

Wim Hof, the Dutch known as “Ice-Man” spent New-Year’s Eve covered with ice cubes, and claimed the title of the longest ice bath, with 115 minutes. But the previous record holder, Chen Kecai, wasn’t about to just sit by and watch his title get snatched right from under him. Together with fellow iceman Jin Songhao, they staged their own cold-enduring event, on January 3rd, in Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province.

The two daredevils immersed themselves in plastic boxes and were covered with ice cubes, up to their necks. Kecai started shivering after “just” 40 minutes, but he insisted the doctors let him see his challenge through to the end. Eventually, he managed to stay in the box for 118 minutes, thus beating his Dutch rival’s record. Unfortunately for him, Jin Songhao lasted 120 minutes and is the new holder of the record for the world’s longest ice bath. Well, at least Chen Kecai can take comfort in the fact that he lost to a fellow Chinaman.

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