Emma Tapping, a mother-of-three from the Isle of Man, U.K, first made headlines last year, when she was accused of spoiling her children by getting them 87 Christmas presents each. That didn’t seem to bother her too much, as this year she bought even more gifts for them – 96 each.

After Emma posted a picture of her Christmas Tree buried in a mountain of presents, last year, it went viral and made the rounds online with the caption “Nearly time for all the materialistic parents to compete and broadcast how many presents their kids have on Facebook! Just remember there’s some children’ who don’t get much.” After being approached by various news sites and TV shows about her Christmas shopping habit and the effect it has on her kids, the woman said that she only spoils them on Christmas, because she loves seeing the joy on their faces when they’re opening presents.

“If you ask me if I spoil my kids, I say at Christmas yes I do but I don’t throughout the year. They get the necessities, the school uniform, the things they need but we don’t go on holidays abroad or big shopping sprees,” she said. “Anything they want, they get for Christmas.”

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Michael Andile Dlamini, a successful herbalist from Nongoma, South Africa, has become known as Mzimb’okhalimali (a body dripping with money) after he started wearing a suit made of real banknotes, to show off his wealth.

Dlamini started working as a healer three years ago, after finally listening to the voices of his ancestors. The 33-year-old claims that when he was 12, his ancestors spoke to him in his dreams, telling him which trees and plants to mix remedies out of, but he chose to ignore them. Then, in 2011, he started having these weird dreams again, where his ancestors would tell him to go into the forest to gather plants and roots for herbal remedies. He started filling ill, and had his house broken into, and after seeing a ‘sangoma’ (healer) who scolded him for not listening to his visions, Dlamini finally decided to become a herbalist.

It turned out to be the best thing he ever did, as his potions and creams became insanely popular from the very beginning. Dlamini claims he makes between R15,000 ($1,000) and R20,000 ($1,500) a day by selling herbal products, which include Pincode, a herbal concoction to boost sex drive, a “lucky soap” that removes pimples and stretchmarks, and “blessed water”.

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China’s incredible development over the last three decades has improved people’s quality of life, but today, loneliness and depression are the two biggest problems of the country’s rapidly aging population. This issues were recently brought to public attention by the heartbreaking plea of a 63-year-old woman looking for a young girl to accompany her on an all-expense paid vacation.

“I live alone in Zhengzhou… I’d like a warm-hearted girl between the ages of 19 and 24 years old to go with me to chat with and take photos,” Li Yanling wrote in a heartfelt post on WeChat. “I’d like to see the sea in Sanya this winter, but just fear the loneliness of traveling solo.” The recruitment ad also specified that the person would not have to pay for anything during the vacation, and would even receive a brand new iPhone 7, as a bonus.

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Makeup and beauty products are generally created with women in mind, but one company seems to think that there’s a niche for men’s makeup as well. Formen actually has a whole line of makeup and skincare designed to fix several issues that men often struggle with.

Formen is the brainchild of Andrew Grella, who first realized the need for men’s makeup on on the day of his high-school prom. Nobody wants to show up at the biggest party of their life with a face full of acne, but that was just what Grella was going to have to do, unless he could find a way to fix things, and fast.

“I went to my mom and she said, ‘Let me put some makeup on you,’ and I said she was crazy,” the young entrepreneur recalls. “So I left and went to Shoppers Drug Mart and Walmart, places I thought would maybe carry products aimed specifically for men that could fix my problem.” To his surprise, after checking all the aisles at these cosmetic shops, he couldn’t find a single men’s product, so he had to accept defeat, return home and let his mother use her own makeup arsenal on his face.

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Eli Fruchter, an aquarium enthusiast from Haifa, Israel, is one of the few people in the world who can swim in his living room surrounded by brightly-colored tropical fish. He is the owner of the largest home reef aquarium in Israel, and probably the world.

For as long as he can remember, Eli loved aquariums. When he was five or six year old, he lived in a tiny two meter by two meter room, but also made space for a small aquarium. He never really outgrew his passion, and about 10-12 years ago, he upgraded to a large 1,000-gallon fish tank, but sadly, it broke and flooded his old home. That was when he decided that he needed “to build another aquarium, and the house around it.” This time, he went all out, and the result is truly breathtaking.

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The MEGA shopping center in Krasnoyarsk has become the first in Russia, and probably the world, to have its very own church, where busy shoppers can drop by and pray, take confession or simply get in touch with their spiritual side.

It all started in spring of this year, when the shopping center management reached out to Archpriest Georgy Kozgov, asking for “the spiritual nourishment of security guards and visitors.” To make his job easier, they even offered him a room within the shopping center where he would regularly perform Confession and Communion, or have spiritual conversations with guards and shoppers. But as more and more people learned about the Father Kozgov and asked to see him, it soon became clear that the small room he had been operating out of was just too small for the huge demand of spiritual guidance.

Vladimir Skvortsov, manager of the security guard firm under contract with the MEGA shopping center was the one who approached management about offering Archpriest Kozgov a bigger space where he could conduct even more religious services and cater to more people. And that’s how the unusual shopping center church of Krasnoyarsk was born. It is located on the fourth floor of the MEGA center and is equipped with just about anything a Christian Orthodox church needs, including a sanctuary, hand-painted icons, wooden benches for visitors, as well as church tools made by prison inmates.

“There are no churches in this area of the city, and in our team, as everywhere else, there are people in need of spiritual guidance,” said Vladimir Skvortsov, manager of the center’s security guard firm.

“There are many people in need of spiritual guidance. After all, where there is trade, there is always a lot of negativity,” Father Kozgov added. “And now there is a place where everyone can be cleansed spiritually.Everyone who has come to my church has been very pleased.”

Divine Liturgy is performed at the church every Saturday morning, if you happen to be in the area, and feel like taking a spiritual break from weekend shopping.

Sources: Varlamov, Primechanyia

48-year-old Mark Leigh, from Surrey, UK, is a self-confessed boring man who enjoys nothing more than to spend his days photographing lost gloves.

It all started around three years ago, when Mark found a lone glove on a stairwell at his workplace and thought it was strange. The very next day, he spotted another one in the street, and from then on, he just sort of had an eye for spotting them everywhere he went. “Once you’re aware of something, you see them everywhere,” he says. He soon started photographing his finds, and today he is proud owner of a collection of over 300 photos of lost gloves, the largest in Britain.

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Aleeda Rodriguez Pedrasa has one of the most unusual jobs in the world – she gets paid by the Cuban government to make sure that a statue of John Lennon in Havana always has a pair of glasses on when tourists come to take a picture with it.

In 1964, Fidel Castro declared a ban on Beatles’ music in Cuba, as part of his all-out war against capitalism, but the band was so popular that people steel smuggled copied of their records into the island nation. But when John Lennon became an outspoken political dissident, criticizing the United States for its involvement in foreign affairs, Castro openly embraced him, and in the year 2000, on the 20th anniversary of Lennon’s death on December 8th, he even unveiled a bronze statue of the legendary musician, in the Havana park that bears his name.

The statue of John Lennon sitting on a park bench quickly became a major tourist attraction, but also a target for thieves who loved nothing more than to steal the artist’s iconic round-lens glasses. In the beginning, the Government would replace the stolen accessories with new ones, but the new pair wouldn’t last long. It got really old really fast, and that’s when Aleeda Rodriguez Pedrasa came into the picture, as the guardian of the glasses.

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Who could have imagined that a treadmill on wheels would one day become a thing?!? Lopifit is an unusual means of transportation that allows you to power an electric bicycle by walking on a treadmill. It’s actually way cooler than it sounds.

Lopifit founder Bruin Bergmeester says it all started when he asked himself the question “How can I use a treadmill outdoor?” Why anyone would asked themselves that, I have no idea, but the point is that this guy spent the next few years figuring out a way to make it work. He eventually came up with an functional design, added an electric engine, and the Lopifit was born. It’s similar to an electric bicycle in that the motor only engages when the rider puts power in as well. Only while typical e-bikes give pedal assist, the Lopifit senses when you walk on the treadmill and uses the motor to turn a drive chain at the rear of the treadmill, helping you reach a top speed of 17 miles per hour.

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American department store Nordstrom recently made international headlines for selling good ol’ fashion stones partially wrapped in leather at the insane price of $85. But that’s not even the strangest part. For some reason, people apparently loved them so much that the bizarre item is now sold out.

Called simply a “Medium Leather Wrapped Stone”, Nordstrom’s latest hit product is just that – a simple rock around 3 inches by 4.5 inches by 2 inches partially wrapped in a vegetable-tanned leather pouch. Frankly, the only special thing about it seems to be the price, a whopping $85. Why someone would want to spend that kind of money on a rock is anyone’s guess, and Nordstrom seem to agree.

“A paperweight? A conversation piece? A work of art? It’s up to you, but this smooth Los Angeles-area stone—wrapped in rich, vegetable-tanned American leather secured by sturdy contrast whipstitching—is sure to draw attention wherever it rests,” the online product description states.

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A Slovakian luxury comb company is giving the phrase “luxurious hair” a whole new meaning with a limited edition solid gold comb priced at a whopping $9,700. Yes, you read that correctly!

If you’re the kind of person who only visits the best salons, uses only top quality shampoos and ultimately wants only the best for their hair, than you might be interested in this solid gold comb made by Tomas Veres.  The Slovakian company was built “on the passion to create extraordinary and exclusive objects for extraordinary people, who appreciate the finest things in life.” That basically means that they make outrageously expensive combs that most people can’t afford.

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A bankrupt Armenian dairy company that hasn’t paid employees and milk suppliers in months has announced that it will be settling debts in Roquefort blue mold cheese.

The Ashtarak Kat Company started producing large quantities of Roquefort blue mold cheese at its factory in Chambarak earlier this year. In 2015, it produced a trial lot under the brand “Molder Blue”, and market data showed that there was great demand for quality blue mold cheese, both from withing Armenia, but also abroad. Production was ramped up to full throttle in spring of this year, but Ashtarak struggled to find buyers for the cheese, and within just a few months it became unable to pay employees and local milk suppliers. Company debts reached 70 million Armenian dram, and it filed for bankruptcy.

With no cash to settle debts and its refrigerators stocked full of Roquefort cheese, Ashtarak decided that the best way to appease its angry workforce and local cattle farmers was to use the cheese as currency. The price per kilogram has been set at 2,000 dram, and all that remains is to split the cheese until the debts are settled. With around 60 tonnes of Roquefort in stock, the company has more than enough to pay off everyone and even cut some if its losses, but not everyone is happy with the solution.

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Ukrainian scientist Vladislav Kiselev claims that he has developed a type of battery that can power gadgets like smartphones and even cars for up to 12 years, without having to be recharged.

Kiselev, a senior researcher at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry and Petrochemistry in Kiev, and professor at Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences, unveiled his intriguing battery prototype during the 2016 edition of Sikorsky Challenge, a prestigious international competition for research projects. The matchbox-like device looks fairly unimpressive, but the Ukrainian scientist claims that it has been continuously powering electrical devices for a year and four months without a single recharge, and will continue to do so for the next 11 years. That’s because his “battery” produces energy instead of simply storing it.

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In an effort to combat plastic pollution, Indian startup EnviGreen has come up with a combination of natural starch and vegetable oils that looks and feels just like plastic, but is 100 percent organic, biodegradable and eco-friendly. You can even dispose of such a “plastic” bag by eating it.

EnviGreen founder Ashwath Hedge came up with the idea for these revolutionary bags after seeing people struggling to find alternatives to plastic bags, following bans imposed by several Indian cities. “People were concerned bout how they would carry products from the market now. Everyone cannot afford a bag worth Rs. 5 or Rs. 15 to carry a kilogram of sugar,” he told The Better India. So the 25-year-old decided to work on something that would solve this problem while being environment-friendly.

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Authorities in Ghana have recently shut down a fake United States embassy in the capital Accra that had been issuing illegally-obtained but authentic visas for the last 10 years. The fake institution was being run by members of organized crime from both Ghana and Turkey.

The real U.S. embassy in Acra is a large office building complete with security fencing and U.S. military guards, located in one of the city’s most expensive neighborhoods, while the fake one was just a rundown, pink two-storey building with a corrugated iron roof and a United States flag flown outside. There were no actual Americans working there, not even con artists. Instead the staff was made up of English-speaking Ghanian and Turkish citizens. And yet, for 10 years, the organized crime ring operating this fake embassy was able to convince people to pay thousands of dollars for visas and false identification documents. Maybe it was the portrait of Barrack Obama that police found inside that made the place seem legit.

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