A California teen became the subject of a recent medical paper after getting a metal coin vertically stuck between his vocal cords like in a slot machine.

In a medical report published in this month’s New England Journal of Medicine, a team of doctors detailed the bizarre case of a 14-year-old boy who showed up at the emergency room of a hospital with a hoarse throat and swallowing difficulties. He told the staff that he had accidentally swallowed a quarter, but reported no difficulties breathing and no drooling. However, after performing an X-ray scan of his chest and neck, doctors immediately recognized the severity of the situation, as the metal coin had become stuck in a vertical position between his vocal cords and could damage them if left there for too long.

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A former University of Iowa Hospital employee admitted to stealing another man’s identity and using it for the last 35 years, thus causing that person to be arrested and committed to a mental hospital.

On April 1st, 58-year-old Matthew David Keirans pleaded guilty to federal charges that he had stolen another man’s identity and used it for the last 35 years. At the time of his arrest, Keirans was working at the University of Iowa Hospital under the name William Donald Woods, an alias he had adopted in 1988, after working with the real Woods at a hot dog cart in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It’s unclear how the 58-year-old man was able to use Woods’ identity in every aspect of his life, but court documents revealed that in 1990 he was able to a fraudulent Colorado identification card with Woods’ name and birthday, and in 1991 he bought a car in Woods’ name with two checks that eventually bounced.

After driving the stolen car to Idaho, Keirans abandoned it and used all his money from the Colorado bank using an ATM to leave the state. An arrest was issued in Woods’ name for the car theft, but court documents don’t show whether it was actually enforced. Keirans went on with his adopted life, marrying a woman in 1994 and even fathering a child whose last name is Woods.

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An employee of the Pinakothek der Moderne art museum in Munich, Germany, reportedly hung up his own paintings next to works by Pablo Picasso or Franz Marc without asking anyone for permission.

The 51-year-old unnamed man was reportedly working in the museum technical department, which gave him access to the premises outside of visiting hours. He was thus able to casually drill holes into an empty wall and hang up his own paintings next to those of acclaimed painters from all over the world. It is unclear how long the paintings were up for between someone noticed that they weren’t supposed to be there, but according to a museum spokesperson, they couldn’t have been up for too long because “supervisors usually notice something like that immediately”. As for the man’s motivation, one can only assume that he believed showing his work in the museum would lead to future opportunities.

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A Kentucky man is facing several years behind bars for illegally accessing the online death registry system and faking his own death to avoid having to pay over $100,000 in child support to his ex-partner.

39-year-old Jesse Kipf admitted to accessing the death registry system in Hawaii using login details he had stolen from a doctor in the same state in January of last year. According to investigators, he created and assigned a file to himself in the system and impersonated the doctor to certify that he had died. Court documents show that Kipf also admitted to illegally accessing various websites run by the States of Arizona and Vermont, along with GuestTek Interactive Entertainment and Milestone, Inc., which led to him being listed as dead in several government databases. In a plea agreement, the defendant claimed that he committed these crimes, in part, to avoid paying outstanding child support to his former wife.

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A 40-year-old Italian man took a doctor and two medical clinics to court after paying for a penis enlargement procedure that he claims left him with “impotence and erectile dysfunction”.

The unnamed man from Tuscany, Italy, allegedly paid a cosmetic surgeon 5,000 euros ($5,400) for a penis enlargement procedure, but after about a month he ended up calling the doctor to complain about physical discomfort. This was only the beginning of a painful odyssey that saw the patient undergo a total of 12 procedures in an attempt to fix the initial botched surgery. According to court documents obtained by Italian news media, the man had two lipofilling operations, in which fat from various parts of his body was transferred to his penis in order to adjust its shape. Unfortunately, they did not have the desired effect, as the man’s genitals did not maintain the expected shape and volume.

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A 68-year-old French woman diagnosed with Noah’s Syndrome has been given a one-year suspended sentence for keeping 159 cats and 7 dogs in her 80sqm (861sqft) apartment.

The unnamed woman and her 52-year-old male partner got into a dispute with neighbors in their Nice apartment building because of the mess and filth caused by their dozens of pets. Police were eventually called and the state of the woman’s apartment shocked them. There was animal excrement everywhere, over 150 cats and seven dogs, as well as at least two dead cats and two dogs in the bathroom. Many of the animals were dehydrated, suffering from malnutrition, or infected with parasites, and some of them subsequently died because of their health problems. The elderly woman admitted that she had “screwed up” while trying to take care of her many pets, but described the animals as “the love of her life”.

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An Italian woman with no direct heirs left all her €5 million ($5.4 million) fortune to her Albanian caretaker, completely blindsiding the 10 nephews who were expecting the inheritance.

Maria Malfatti, a descendant of one of the most famous families in Rovereto, a town in Italy’s Trento province, died last November at the age of 80. A descendant of Valeriano Malfatti, a former mayor of Rovereto and vice-president of Vienna’s Parliament, the woman owned a number of valuable assets, including several apartments, a historic building in the town center, as well as significant sums of money kept in bank accounts. However, Maria Malfatti had never been married and had no children to leave the family fortune to, so her nephews stood to inherit everything. Only the woman apparently had other plans, as she decided to leave everything down to the last cent to the woman who had cared for her over the last few years, an Albanian national.

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A Chinese woman is being accused of trying to terminate a co-worker’s pregnancy by poisoning her water to prevent her from taking maternity leave and thus avoiding a higher workload.

In one of the most shocking cases of work-related incidents reported in China, a worker at a government-affiliated institution in Hubei Province allegedly tried to terminate a co-worker’s pregnancy by repeatedly poisoning her water in order to avoid the higher workload caused by her maternity leave. The nefarious plan reportedly came to light when the victim noticed that her water kept tasting strange, regardless of its source. At first, she was convinced that it was the office’s water supply, but the taste persisted even after she switched to bottled water. That’s when she decided to investigate further.

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A dangerous Venezuelan criminal recently managed to escape prison by disguising himself as a woman and simply walking out at the end of visiting hours.

Manuel Lorenzo Ávila Alvarado, a 25-year-old man imprisoned for homicide and aggravated robbery managed to escape El Libertador Prison in Tocuyito, Venezuela’s Carabobo state on March 13, following a conjugal visit. According to local newspaper El Carabobeño, the incident occurred around 2:00 in the afternoon, at the end of visiting hours. Despite having a dark skin tone, Alvarado managed to trick several prison guards that he was a blond woman by putting on a wig and female clothes, most likely brought in by his girlfriend.

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A Tennessee man has been diagnosed with prosopometamorphopsia, or PMO, an extremely rare neurological disorder that makes other people’s faces appear severely distorted.

Imagine waking up one day and looking at the faces of your loved one only to discover that their ears, noses, and mouths are stretched back and deep grooves have appeared on their foreheads, cheeks, and chins. Then you go outside and see that everyone has this goblin-like look on their faces and you start to freak out. It sounds like a nightmare, but it’s one that 59-year-old Victor Sharrah has been experiencing since one November morning in 2020. He was only recently diagnosed with prosopometamorphopsia, or PMO, an extremely rare disorder that causes faces to appear distorted in shape, size and color.

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Three boys, ages 11, 12 and 16, and dubbed the “Little Rascals,” were recently arrested after being turned in by their parents for robbing a Houston bank.

Most kids spend their spring break from school playing video games, watching TV, or hanging on with their friends, but three Houston juveniles decided to put their free time to better use by robbing a local bank. Police claim that the three boys walked into a Wells Fargo bank in the Greenspoint area of north Houston on March 14, passed a threatening note to a teller, and managed to get away on foot with an undisclosed amount of money. When police arrived and checked the surveillance footage, they were shocked to see that the bank robbers were incredibly young.

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Samuel Davalos Pasillas, a 47-year-old California pastor, was recently arrested for allegedly paying to men to kill his daughter’s boyfriend.

Last week, Riverside police arrested Samuel Pasillas after gathering enough evidence that he had ordered the attempted murder of the man dating his own daughter. The hit took place on October 21, 2023, in Riverside. The victim was sitting in his car when he was shot multiple times from a vehicle that pulled up alongside his. The shooters quickly drove away, but the victim survived by driving himself to a nearby hospital. He couldn’t provide investigators with too much information about his would-be killers, but five months later, police concluded that the incident was a “murder-for-hire shooting” orchestrated by his girlfriend’s father, Pastor Pasillas.

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Vietnamese doctors recently saved a young man’s life by removing a live 30-cm-long eel from his abdomen, where it had caused intestinal perforations.

On March 20, a 34-year-old man was admitted to the Hai Ha District Medical Center in Quang Ninh Province, Vietnam, with severe abdominal cramps. Since the patient was in too much pain to be questioned about his symptoms, the hospital staff conducted an X-ray and an ultrasound which revealed a foreign body in his abdomen, as well as intestinal perforation and peritonitis. Doctors decided that the best course of action was to conduct surgery, remove the suspicious object, and try to mitigate the damage to the man’s intestines. Upon opening up the patient’s abdomen, doctors were surprised to find that the foreign object was a 30 cm live eel.

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A couple of Taiwanese university students are being accused of faking frostbite injuries that eventually warranted a double amputation to defraud insurance companies.

Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau has accused a university student surnamed Chang of conspiring with a former high-school colleague named Liao to orchestrate a bizarre insurance fraud in January of last year. Evidence presented to prosecutors shows that in early January of last year, Chang took out policies covering disabilities, injuries, health, and travel safety from at least five insurers. On the night of January 26, both Chang and Liao rode their motorcycles through Taipei, to make it seem like one of them suffered frostbite because of the cold weather. In reality, the frostbite was self-inflicted and caused by a bucket of dry ice.

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A provincial court in Pontevedra, Spain, recently ruled that a man must pay his ex-wife 88,025 euros ($95,898) as compensation for her work as a housewife during 26 years of marriage.

The unnamed couple married in 1996, and until their separation in 2022, the wife only worked outside the family home for a total of 205 days spread across several years, dedicating herself to raising their only daughter and keeping the household in order. After their separation, the husband remained in the family home that had long been paid for, while she had to go out and rent her own place. She had to find a job immediately in order to support herself, but because she spent 26 years of her life as a housewife, she will likely be entitled to a very small pension, unlike her husband who dedicated his life to his professional career. Now, the woman is seeking compensation for all her years of housework.

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