A Connecticut mother was shocked to find that her 6-year-old boy used her credit card to spend a small fortune on his favorite smartphone game over a couple of months.

In July of this year, Jessica Johnson, a real-estate broker from Wilton, Connecticut, discovered that substantial sums of money were being deducted from her Chase account by Apple and PayPal. Thinking it was a mistake or fraud, the 41-year-old mother-of-one called the bank and ended up filing a fraud claim in July. By that time, her suspicious credit card charges had reached  a whopping $16,293.10, but it wasn’t until October that her bank told her that the charges were legit and she needed to contact Apple.

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A 24-year-old woman from Moscow, Russia, met her husband, Gideon, five years ago, at a hardware store, while shopping for photoshoot props. Gideon just looked irresistible, so she ended up buying “him”, and the rest is history. Gideon is a metallic briefcase…

Rain Gordon, who works as a nursery school teacher, claims that her fascination with inanimate objects began at a very young age. She has always believed that everything around her had a soul, and as time went by, her belief in animism only got stronger. In her early teenage years, she fell in love with a new shopping center that opened in her home city, but she knew people thought that was wrong, so she didn’t tell anyone. Rain is now opening up about her love story with Gideon the briefcase in order to break down the misconceptions and stigma surrounding romantic relationships with inanimate objects.

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A 65-year-old kung fu master is practicing an ancient technique known as “iron crotch”, which involves ramming a large wooden pole into his crotch to build-up the resistance of his private parts.

Wang Liutai is the curator of the Martial Arts Museum in Juntun Village, a small settlement on the outskirts of Luoyang, one of the four ancient capitals of China. He is also a kung fu master, but not the kind you’re used to seeing in old martial arts movies; Liutai specializes in a rare technique specific to Juntun known as “iron crotch”. It involves swinging a 2-meter-long, 40-kg-heavy wooden log with a steel plate cap straight into his crotch, while using qigong breathing techniques to steel himself.

A father-of-two, Wang has been practicing iron crotch for half a century and claims that if done correctly, the kung fu technique does not hurt and does not affect fertility. The technique is just one of many devised in Juntun to help practitioners resist pressure, pain or hits to various sensitive areas. Other similar techniques involve iron throat, iron head, iron chest, and iron back, but iron crotch is definitely the rarest, with just 5 practitioners still around in the village.

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If you’re an avid gamer who would rather freeze than risk overheating their PC while playing on Ultra graphics settings, you may want to check out this weird-looking electrically-heated gaming onesie.

Japanese company Bauhütte specializes in gaming accessories, from comfortable and ergonomic gaming chairs, to innovative gaming desks and cable management tools. But their most intriguing creation to date has to be the DAMEGI4GW “gaming blanket”, a wearable velour fleece onesie designed to keep video game fanatics warm and comfortable even in the most extreme conditions. It features built-in electrical heaters that can be powered by portable battery packs via USB, multiple heating levels, and even an emergency toilet system…

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Rory van Ulft, a 7-year-old Canadian gymnast, has been raising eyebrows with her weightlifting achievements, recently becoming the youngest under-11 and under-13s US Youth National Champion in history.

Rory took up weightlifting about two years ago, as a way of becoming stronger. She had started doing gymnastics but learned that she could get injured doing certain things, if she wasn’t strong enough. She started lifting weights in the the snatch and the clean and jerk styles, under the careful supervision of a trainer, and gradually developed her strength to the point that she now lifts weights that some adults would probably struggle with. She can snatch 32kg, clean and jerk 42kg, as well as squat 61kg, and deadlift 80kg using an Olympic women’s bar.

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The crew of a Auckland Westpac Rescue Helicopter flying over a forested region near Kaipara Falls, in New Zealand, spotted a bunch of trees planted in the shape of a heart, in the middle of a small forest.

Dubbed the “heart of the forest”, the unusual find went viral on social media last month, after a photo of it taken by helicopter crew chief Mark “Tinny” Cannell was shared on Facebook. This was the first time a Westpac Rescue team spotted the tree heart, so they didn’t have any story to share, but a number of comments on the original Facebook post claimed that it was the work of a certain Wayne Barnes, who also built a dwelling nearby, as a romantic gesture for his wife, Rosie.

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A 26-year-old woman from Zambia recently made international news for allegedly taking her boyfriend to court because he “wasted her time” by failing to propose after an eight-year relationship.

Tired of waiting for her partner to pop the big question, Gertrude Ngoma decided to take him to court, as a way of forcing his hand. The woman from Ndola, Zambia’s second largest city, claims Herbert Salaliki, 28, promised to marry her, and even paid the lobola (a traditional dowry) to her parents, as a sign that he will take care of her, but has since been putting it off. Despite having a baby together, the two have never even lived together, with Gertrude remaining in her parents’ house. Now she is demanding that Herbert make a decision about their future.

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Simone Williams, a young woman from Brooklyn, New York, recently broke the Guinness record for world’s largest natural afro, with her impressive 4 ft. 10 in (1.48 m) hairdo.

Simone started growing her hair naturally 9 years ago, as a way to save money on hair salon visits, ut never imagined that she would one day break the record for the world’s largest female afro. She had been wearing her hair straight until then, and admits that the transition was pretty tough at first, as she didn’t know how to properly manage her natural hair texture. She eventually got used to it though, and actually started comments and compliments on her “voluminous natural afro”. After reading about the previous record holder, Aevin Dugas, Simone was inspired to attempt breaking the record, but she still couldn’t believe it when she got the news.

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For the past couple of months, residents of two small towns on the southern coast of Sweden have been experiencing a peculiar nighttime phenomenon – the sky turning a bright magenta.

The people Gislov and Trelleborg, two small Swedish towns located about 10 minutes apart, were originally alarmed by the bright purple sky above them, but their worries were quickly put to rest by the representatives of a nearby tomato farm, who explained that the unnatural night sky color was caused by a new energy-saving system they had installed. The large LED installation cast a purple light on the plants, stimulating growth, but also glowed upwards, illuminating low clouds from below and creating a sci-fi effect.

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Spanish artist Manel de Aguas doesn’t consider himself human, but something else. A founding member of the Trans-Species society, he uses technological implants to experience the world differently than the rest of humanity.

24-year-old Manel de Aguas first made international news headlines in August of 2017, when he built the first prototype of a device that allowed him to feel atmospheric vibrations. At the time, it was nothing more than an exposed circuit board that hung on a headband at the back of his head. The following year, he started attaching a pair of fins to the sides of his head, and announced his intention to have them implanted into his skull. Earlier this year, de Aguas did just that, turning those decorative fins into functional organs that perceive the temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure and send sounds to Manel’s brain via bone conduction.

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German footwear brand Adidas teamed up with high-end porcelain manufacturer Meissen to create a unique pair of sneakers that’s expected to be sold for over $1 million at auction.

As part of its A-ZX program, Adidas Originals plans to team up with selected partners around the world in order to create unique sneakers that qualify more as works of art than footwear meant to be worn. This month, Adidas unveiled a very colorful pair of sneakers that it has been working on with German porcelain brand Meissen for more than a year. Based on the iconic Adidas ZX8000 sneaker, this one-of-a-kind pair features dozens of Meissens’ hand-painted colorful designs, as well as various porcelain elements. It is being auctioned this week, by Sotheby’s, and it’s expected to fetch over $1 million.

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British comedian John Finnemore put his time in quarantine to good use, becoming only the third person to solve “Cain’s Jawbone”, a super-tough literary puzzle, in its near 90-year history.

Created in 1934, by Edward Powys Mathers, a pioneer of advanced cryptic crosswords, Cain’s Jawbone is one of the most difficult puzzles ever created. It consists of 100 cards, each containing the page of a murder mystery novel, and challenges you to put the cards in the right order and figure out who kills who in the book. It might not sound so hard, but only two people have been able to solve it in the last 86 years. Well, until recently, when British comedian John Finnemore managed to do it, after working on it, on and off, for about four months.

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Around 20 Spanish children ended up growing hair all over their bodies after being administered hair restoring medicine, instead of syrup for upset stomachs.

In a shocking incident first in the summer of 2019, almost two dozen children reportedly started exhibiting symptoms of hypertrichosis, aka “werewolf syndrome”. They started growing hair excessively all over their bodies, after being administered minoxidil, a drug that stimulates hair growth, instead of omeprazole, usually prescribed for gastric problems. The mix-up allegedly happened after mislabeled syrups were delivered to pharmacies in Granada and Valencia, which chemsist prescribed to treat the upset stomachs of little ones. Over a year since hypertrichosis symptoms were first reported, the families of affected children claim their hair is still growing excessively, but justice has not been served.

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An Italian man who went for a walk to cool off after getting into an argument with his wife was found 420 kilometers from his home, after walking for a whole week.

The 48-year-old man from Como, a city north of Milan, in Italy, reportedly got into a heated argument with his wife one day, late last month, and stormed out of the house to go for a walk and clear his head. Nothing out of the ordinary about that, only the protagonist of our story never actually stopped walking. He was only stopped a week later, by a police patrol car in Gimarra, on the Adriatic coast, 418 kilometers away from his home town.

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UK-based Anno Distillers recently launched what it calls the “world’s strongest gin”, a spirit so string that it comes with a small beaker for precise dosing, as well as clear mixing instructions.

With a 95% ABV, the Anno Extreme 95 gin is definitely not meant to be enjoyed straight up, not unless you want to feel what it’s like to set your mouth on fire. Instead, its creators recommend it served as a “light G&T,” using only 5ml of spirit, tonic water and a slice of grapefruit as garnish. To help you with those measurements, the new world’s strongest gin comes with a small measuring beaker.

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