You probably didn’t even know that a government-approved Vladimir Putin calendar actually existed, but even more surprising is the fact that it is incredibly popular in Japan, where hundreds of thousands of copies have been snatched up by fans of the Russian president, in the last few months.

The official 2017 Vladimir Putin Calendar is produced by a St. Petersburg company called Mednyi Vsadnik, with authorization from the Russian government. It features a manly photo of Putin for each month of the year, along with some of his most popular quotes. The calendar is written in eight languages, including English, and is obviously very popular in Russia. But while the calendar’s domestic success was to be expected, its massive popularity in Japan was certainly not.

Japanese chain franchise store Loft has been exclusively selling the 2017 Putin calendar since August last year, for around 90 cents apiece. News of the calendar being available at Loft stores apparently spread like wildfire on social media, with many fans of the Russian president scrambling to buy one for themselves or their friends. By October 2016, the Vladimir Putin Calendar, which comes in two sizes, was the the third and fourth most sold item out of some 3,500 different calendars.

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We’ve seen fire used as a way to cut hair before, but one hairstylist in Pakistan is literally setting his clients heads on fire just to make their hear easier to comb. It’s an impressive, albeit shocking, display, that has recently made him famous around the world.

Shafqat Rajput, was just another barber in the city of Bahawalpur, Pakistan’s Punjab province, but after a patron recorded a video of him practicing his unique fire treatment on a customer and posted it on Facebook, he instantly became an overnight internet celebrity. The short clip shows the young hairstylist sprinkling powder on the patron’s hair, followed by a healthy dose of an unknown flammable fluid before casually setting his head ablaze with a lighter. He proceeds to comb the hair while it’s burning, using a comb and brush. After putting the fire out with his fast brushing, Rajput repeats the procedure. All this time, the client sits calmly in the barber’s chair, looking at his burning hair in the mirror.

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A German company recently sparked controversy after launching a line of women’s underwear that it claims can protect the wearer against sexual assault. Called ‘Safe Shorts’ the underpants are made of a slash and tearing-resistant fabric and feature a combination lock and a loud alarm system that goes off when the pants are tampered with.

Sandra Seilz, the creator of the Short Pants, says that as a frequent jogger she has been thinking about creating a protective garment for women for a long time. She revealed that she was once attacked by a group of three men who tried to pull her pants off, while she was jogging, and that this attack, as well as the wave of sexual assaults against women in Cologne during the last New Year’s Eve celebration inspired to create the Short Pants.

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After waking up one day to find that her popular Facebook page had been taken down by Facebook, and after getting no reply to her messages, a young girl from Belgium eventually got on a plane to San Francisco to confront Facebook about the issue in person.

23-year-old Jamilla Baidou is somewhat of a celebrity in Belgium. She was a contender on the Belgian version of The Voice, in 2014, when she managed to impress both the judges and the nationwide audience with her musical talent. People wanted to see more of her even after she was eliminated from the popular TV show, so she kept them up to date with her projects on social media networks like Facebook and YouTube. Up until December 2016, she had amassed more than 157,000 fans and many of the videos she posted had over one million times. Vlogging had become her profession, and her Facebook page was the most important platform, but one day disaster struck – her page suddenly disappeared.

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If you’re a Trump supporter looking for a romantic partner that shares your political views there’s no best place to find them than Trump Singles, an online dating site catering exclusively to fans of the U.S. president-elect.

Trump Singles was founded by David Goss, a Trump supporter from California. He apparently came up with the idea for the site after hearing of a similar dating service for Democrats, and after seeing that his Republican friends were having a tough time on dates whenever politics came up, and particularly when talking about Donald Trump. So he decided that single fans of The Donald needed a safe space where they didn’t have to compromise on their views.

The offbeat dating site is not exactly new, having been launched on June 6, 2016, but it has been growing in popularity ever since Donald Trump won the presidential election. Goss says that he never imagined it would grow to its current level, claiming that he only envisioned it as a cool place for his Trump-supporting friends to mingle. So you could say he was shocked to find that 6,000 people had registered on the first day. Even so, 35-year-old Goss didn’t see Trump Singles going anywhere after November 8, as all the poles had Hilary Clinton as a clear winner of the presidential election, but things didn’t go according to plan. As we all know, the Republican nominee came back strong, won the race, and now Trump Singles has over 24,000 paying members and is growing fast.

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Reaching stardom on popular social networks like Facebook or Instagram is relatively easy when you’re a successful artist or athlete, but you can also make it big if you’re simply a very attractive person, or if you’re obscenely rich. But how does a 20-year-old average girl from Warsaw, Poland who posts fairly unimpressive photos of her day to day life get over 100,000 followers on Instagram without even showing her face?

That’s the big misery surrounding Natalia Gutkiewicz’s success story. In the three years since she’s been on Instagram, Natalia has made just 443 posts – pretty low compared to other Instagram stars – which have however attracted 101,000 followers. So how did she do it? Well, the 20-year-old believes that it has to do with the fact that she has never shown her full face in any of her posts. Yes, you can sometimes see one of her eyes, her lips, the back of her head, but nobody actually knows what she looks like. She’s usually the one taking photos of her friends, as she considers herself a narrator, and her Instagram account a view of the world through her eyes, but in the few photos she appears in, you never get a good look at her face.

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Prophet Bongani Maseko of the Breath of Christ Ministries, in Daveyton, South Africa, has come under fire recently for asking congregates to drink motor oil if they want to be “saved, healed and delivered.” Many of them actually took him up on the bizarre offer.

Photos posted on the Facebook page of the Breath of Christ Ministries show Maseko serving mouthfuls of Havoline motor oil to parishioners who seem more than happy to drink the toxic concoction. People were obviously outraged by the bizarre practice, but some argued that it was probably a poorly chosen container for anointed water or wine. After all, who in their right mind would ask people to drink engine oil to be cured? Well, apparently Prophet Maseko would, and actually did. Contacted by various news outlets, he confirmed that the bottle in the photos did actually contain motor oil, but said that it was perfectly safe for consumption because he had prayed over it…

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Zarko Hrgic, a former steelworker from Bosnia, has been living in a small riverside cave near the town of Zenica for nearly a decade. He survives on food picked out of dumpsters and leftovers donated by kind souls as he waits to turn 65 and collect his due pension so he can hopefully turn his life around.

In his youth, Zarko worked as a steelworker in Zenica, but decided to try his luck in Germany after his marriage broke down 30 years ago. He worked odd jobs for many years, but 10 years ago he was deported back to Bosnia for staying and working in Germany illegally. Unfortunately, Zarko’s apartment had been destroyed during the Bosnian War (1992 – 1995) so he had no home to come back to. With no savings to buy a new place, and no one to turn to for help, Hrgic eventually ended up in a small mountainside cave on the bank of Babina River that had once been used by miners to store explosives. It was meant to be a temporary arrangement, but he has been living there for 10 years.

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In case you didn’t know, shooting guns goes really well with a hearty meal and cold drink. At least that’s what the owners of Modern Round, an innovative restaurant in Arizona seem to think, and judging by the success of their venue, they’re definitely on to something.

Before you go all ballistic, I should mention that the guns provided by Modern Round are not real firearms, but realistic laser replicas designed to feel like the real thing. Instead of gun range targets, patrons must shoot at virtual targets on a 16-foot-wide screen, and can choose from a variety of options, from zombie-themed games to live-action police and military scenarios. To make the experience feel as realistic as possible, the replicas are molded into the size, shape and weight of actual firearms, and some of the weapons even have a CO2 system that “provides realistic recoil and blowback.” So if you can’t stop thinking about guns even at the dinner table, this is probably the place for you.

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A cancer survivor forced to have her left foot amputated below the knee as a final solution decided to keep her foot after the operation, and even set up an Instagram account for it, where she posts funny photos of the bleached limb.  You can say that Kristi Loyall’s amputated foot is a lot more popular than she is. Its Instagram page @onefootwander currently has nearly 13,000 followers, while Kristi herself has yet to reach the 1,000 mark. But she’s not jealous, after all, she made it all happen.

Last year, 25-year-old Kristi Loyall, from El Reno, Oklahoma, was diagnosed with epithelioid sarcoma, a rare cancer that affects soft tissue, four years after baffling doctors with her symptoms. They told her that the only sure way to keep the cancer from spreading was amputate her foot. Despite being devastated by the news, her first reaction was to make a joke of it, asking doctors if she could keep the foot after the operation. She later realized that she actually did want her limb back, and a month after having her left foot amputated, she got it back in a biohazard bag.

“It was really peculiar. We went to pathology to pick it up and the first thing I did was move my toes,” Kristi said. “My mom was really grossed out by that. At that point I was emotionally separated from it, I had a lot of time to deal with it at home so at that moment I was excited about starting to make a joke out of the situation.”

Hil.ar.i.ous. omg. Can’t even rn #amputee #skeleton #foot #butcher #cemetery #onefootwander

A photo posted by cancer foot (@onefootwander) on Dec 2, 2016 at 9:50pm PST

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It’s hard to believe that a family with no construction experience could build a two-storey, five-bedroom house all by themselves, by watching tutorials on YouTube, but Cara Brookins and her four kids are living proof that it can be done. Their amazing story is now the subject of a book – ‘Rise, How a House Built a Family’.

In 2008, Cara Brookins took her four children (ages 7, 15, 11 and 2) and left her abusive husband in search of a better life. They moved into a tiny home outside of Little Rock, Arkansas, for a while, while they looked for place that could comfortably house her four kids. Her initial plan was to buy a house, but she quickly realized that they were either too expensive or too small for their needs. One day, they passed by a house ravaged by a tornado that had all of its inner workings exposed. It was this sight that inspired them to undertake a challenge that would change their lives.

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Mike Eze-Nwalie Nwogu, co-owner of a nightclub in Lagos, Nigeria, was recently arrested for dehumanizing young girls by putting collars around their necks and parading them on a leash in public.

Nwogu, who is known as “Pretty Mike” among the socialites of the African metropolis, has apparently been turning young girls into “human puppies” for at least a year. His first appearance as a human puppy handler was recorded last year, while attending a wedding, but the photos snapped at the event didn’t attract much attention. He must have gotten quite a lot of attention for his stunt, because he has been pulling it regularly ever since. But as his controversial appearances became more frequent, they started causing a stir on the internet, with many users complaining that nothing was being done about his degrading treatment of women. The last straw was a photo of Pretty Mike holding two girls on a leash under the eyes of five police officers who seemed to be laughing at the bizarre sight.

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In what can only be described as a heroic act, a golden retriever managed to save his owner’s life by lying on top of him for almost 24 hours to keep him from freezing to death after slipping on ice and breaking his neck.

On New Year’s Eve, 64-year-old Bob (who chose not to reveal his last name for privacy reasons), of Petoskey, Michigan, was watching the Fiesta Bowl between Clemson and Ohio State. It was around 10:30 pm when he decided to go outside and fetch some more wood for his fireplace wearing only long johns, slippers and a shirt. He had taken the short, 15-foot walk to the firewood shed thousands of times before, but this time his poor choice of footwear made him slip, and the fall left him unable to move. The man started screaming for help, but his closest neighbor’s house is a quarter of a mile away, and at that hour, there was no one around to help him. Luckily, his 5-year-old golden retriever came to help.

“I was screaming for help, but my nearest neighbor is about a quarter-mile away and it was 10:30 p.m., but my Kelsey came,” Bob recalls. “By morning my voice was gone and I couldn’t yell for help, but Kelsey didn’t stop barking. She kept barking for help, but never left my side. She kept me warm and alert. I knew I had to persevere through this and that was my choice to stay alive.”

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Some misguided people still consider heavy metal to be ‘”the devil’s music”, but a Church in Sao Paolo, Brazil is actually using it as a way to spread the word of God. Crash Church is an evangelical church attended by heavy metal fans looking to worship God through music.

Located in a large garage, Crash Church looks more like an underground rock concert venue than a Christian place of worship. The “parishioners” look just as unusual, dressed in dark colors and sporting tattoos and piercings. Pastor Antônio Carlos Batista doesn’t wear any religious garments, opting instead for jeans, t-shirts and sneakers. His arms are covered with colorful tattoos inspired by the Christian faith, and about a dozen piercings and earrings decorate his ears. He reads the Gospel from behind a medieval-looking pulpit, while the congregation follows along on their cellphones, on TV screen showing the passages being read, or on regular bibles. Batista uses everyday jargon to explain the religious texts, and performs heavy metal songs between sermons.

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Remember the Iranian real-life Hulk? Well, it seems neighboring Pakistan has its own version of the popular Marvel superhero. His name is Arbab Khizer Hayat, he weighs a whopping 436 kilograms, and claims to be the strongest man alive.

Hayat, who is popularly known as Khan Baba, hails from the city of Mardan, in northern Pakistan, has risen to internet fame thanks to his imposing physique and a number of impressive feats of strength, including preventing a tractor from backing up, by holding it with his bare hands, and doing the same thing with a car, but using only one hand. However, these are apparently not his greatest achievements. He recently told reporters in Pakistan, that in 2012, during a weightlifting contest held in Japan, he managed to lift 5,000 kilograms. “No one can break this record,” he boasted. And I’d have to agree, even the real Hulk might struggle a bit with this challenge.

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