The two founders of Scottish brewery BrewDog have both legally changed their names to ‘Elvis’ after being threatened with legal action by the Presley Estate over their grapefruit and blood orange IPA, called Elvis Juice.

Formerly known as James Watt and Martin Dickie, the two Elvises sought to prove that their new name is not exclusive, so they went ahead and got their birth names legally changed, by deed poll. In a witty response to the King of Rocks and Roll’s estate, the two write:  “We’re caught in a trap and suggest the grey-suited hound dogs at the Presley Estate recognise that the name Elvis is not exclusive. So in an effort to patch it up, we’ve changed our names to highlight our burning love for the best grapefruit IPA out there. From this point forward, Elvis Juice is named after us, the brewers formerly known as James and Martin. We may even file a case against Mr Presley for using our names on all his records without our written permission.”

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Andy Pope, a Police Community Support Officer for West Midlands Police, in the UK, has come to be known as memory cop, thanks to his incredible photographic memory, which has helped him successfully identify over 850 suspects in the last four years.

Every day,  PCSO Pope arrives at work half an hour early, logs on to his computer, and browses the pictures of suspects in the day’s internal police briefing. He has been doing it even since he joined the West Midlands Police, in 2008, and as his brain stores more faces year-on-year, his record of recognizing bad guys keeps getting better. His exceptional identification skills have made him somewhat of a secret weapon, and when detectives exhaust all other possible options trying to put a name to a suspect’s face, they turn to him.

 

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For the past five years, Akihiko Koseki, has been putting on his bright yellow spandex suit and trademark poo-shaped hat, and going out on the streets of Tokyo to put a smile on people’s faces and teach them to be happier by not giving a crap.

In the beginning, Poop Man was merely a cheap marketing tool. Akihiko Koseki is an experienced mobile game developer who a few years ago came up with an idea for a game called Poo Pride. He had no money to promote it and decided that turning himself into a walking billboard for his game was the cheapest and at the same time most effective way of raising awareness about his game. So he had a yellow spandex suit and poop-shaped hat made, plastered the Poo Pride logo on his chest and started walking around as Poop Man. He’s been doing it for the last five years.

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Cycling enthusiasts in Lidzbark Warminski, a small town in Northern Poland, have recently received a unique, awesome present from the local authorities – a brand new sun-powered bicycle path that glows bright blue all night long.

Scientists at Polish construction company TPA Instytut Badan Technicznych in Pruszkow created the innovative 100-meter bicycle path using luminophores, a synthetic material that lights up when charged with sunlight. According to TPA president Igor Ruttmar, “The material we used for the track gives light for over ten hours. That means the road can radiate throughout the whole night and reaccumulate light the following day”. Apparently, the new material can emit light in a variety of colors, but designers chose blue because it went well with the surroundings in Lidzbark Warminski.

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A man hiking through the woods in Huntington’s Berkeley Jackson County Park recently came across what he described as a creepy ‘shrine to missing persons’ made up of over a dozen missing persons flyers posted on trees, close to the remnants of a shelter.

James Rankin says that he was hiking through the woods in Long Island when he came across the disturbing display. Instead of freaking out, he took out his smartphone and recorded a video which he later posted on Facebook. The footage went viral very quickly, racking up over 230,000 views in less than 24 hours. In the video, Rankin shows all the different missing persons flyers, who appear to be of people from several U.S. states and keeps wondering who in their right mind would do something like this in the middle of the woods. He ends his creepy adventure by running for his life, saying he hears voices in the area.

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Lee Su Jin, a female dentist from South Korea, is a very strong contender for the title of world’s youngest-looking 48-year-old. Judging by the photos posted on her online social media accounts, you’d think she was a beautiful college girl, but the woman recently revealed that she was born in 1969 and has been practicing dentistry for 16 years.

Lee became an overnight celebrity after appearing on a Korean TV show called ‘Same Bed, Different Dreams’, alongside her daughter. The girls claimed that her mother had become addicted to taking selfies and posting them on Instagram, where she had amassed thousands of loyal followers. It was later revealed that the 48-year-old dentist had turned to the popular social network in her need for social interaction, because her daughter had stopped talking to her after starting middle school. She enjoyed all the attention she got from other people online, and kept posting more and more photos of herself.

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A 12-year-old boy from Spain who dreamed of becoming a popular YouTube entertainer and making lots of money online, signed up for Google’s Adwords promotion program instead of its Adsense revenue program and racked up €100,000 in debt.

Jose Javier, from the town of Torrevieja, in Spain’s Alicante province, dreamed of becoming rich and famous, like his favorite youtubers, so in August, he decided to set up his own YouTube account and register for Google’s lucrative revenue generation program. Only it appears he didn’t know anything about this digital tool, or even its exact name, because instead of opening an account with Adsense, he registered for Adwords, which instead of paying users ad revenue generated by traffic on their webpage or YouTube channel, charges them for promoting products or webpages on the internet. So instead of making money, he was spending it, and fast.

In order to register for Adwords, the wannabe youtuber used a bank account that his parents had set up for him to encourage him to save money. Because of the way that the advertising campaigns were set up in Adwords, advertising fees started piling up very fast, and the €2,000 originally available in the bank account evaporated in a matter of days. When the balance started showing up in the red, bank employees called Javier’s parents and told them that Google was attempting to charge the account for tens of thousands of dollars. The boy’s mother, Inma Quesada, told bank employees to block the transactions, but because Javier’s Adwords account was still active, his debt kept rising.

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For the past five years, 44-year-old Finish-Syrian Rami Adham has dedicated his life to helping the children of Aleppo cope with the horrors of war by smuggling toys into the besieged city.

Rami Adhman was born in Aleppo, but moved to Finland with his family in 1989. When the Syrian civil war started, in 2012, he decided he had to help the children of his native city in any way he could. In the beginning, he never planned on taking toys, thinking that food, medicine, and drinking water were the things that mattered most. However, on one occasion of crossing the border, his daughter told him she wanted to donate her toys to the kids of Aleppo. He took the girl up on her offer, and upon seeing the joy on the Syrian children’s faces when he took the toys out of his backpack, he decided to make them a priority on his subsequent runs.

Adham soon became known as the “toy smuggler” and the “Santa of Syria”. He has so far made the journey from Helsinki to Aleppo 28 times, and doesn’t plan on stopping until the war ends. Until two years ago, he crossed into Syria through the border with Turkey, but after it closed down, he started crossing into the war-torn country illegally, carrying an 80kg bag of toys on his back all the way to Aleppo. It’s a dangerous trip that he has to make by foot, because it’s dangerous to drive through rebel-held and government-held districts. But those aren’t the only forces he has to avoid, as he claims that his humanitarian efforts have also made him a wanted man by ISIS and Shia militias in Syria.

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Twelve South, an American company that specializes in Apple product accessories, recently launched a scented candle that it claims captures the specific smell of a newly-opened Apple computer.

Called “New Mac”, the unique scented candle has notes of mint, peach, basil, lavender, mandarin and sage, which combined closely mimic the smell of a fresh new Apple product. It is made entirely of soy wax “hand poured” in South Carolina, where Twelve South is based. New Mac will burn for 45-55 hours, constantly filling the room with its special scent, which the company claims is longer than the small of an actual new Mac lasts. And, best of all, you can simply pay $24 for a new one, instead of hundreds or thousands of dollars for a new Apple computer.

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Convinced that women have more job opportunities than men, a 30-year-old Chinese man decided to get breast implants to increase his odds of finding employment.

The man, surnamed Ho, had been struggling to find a job for months, when he became convinced that looking more like a woman would make things a lot easier for him. News reports kept mentioning that women had better career opportunities than men, so he somehow got it in his head that getting breast implants that would make him appear more feminine would convince employers to give him a chance, despite his limited work experience.

Unable to afford the breast enlargement surgery, Ho borrowed over 39,000 Yuan ($5,850) in August and traveled from his home city of Zhuzhou to the Ruilan Medical Cosmetic Hospital, in Changsha, for the operation. Everything went according to plan until he came back home with his new pair of perky breasts. He hadn’t told his family about his intentions, and when they laid eyes on his chest for the first time, they got the shock of their lives. Read More »

A dog lover from the Pudong district of Shanghai, recently melted millions of hearts after it was revealed that he has been living on the streets of the Chinese metropolis for a decade, so he could take care of stray canines.

58-year-old Cui Hengyi started caring for injured and abandoned dogs in his city 28 years ago. He wasn’t homeless at the time, so he started bringing them into his home, and claims that at one point, in 2006, he had a whopping pooches living with him. The constant noise and the fear of disease didn’t sit too well with his neighbors, who soon started filing complaints against him. Pressured by the authorities to get rid of the animals or risk getting evicted, Cui decided that having a home wasn’t worth giving up on his furry friends, so he decided to leave his house and family behind and live in the streets to take care of stray dogs.

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Vets in Chennai, India, were recently stunned to discover two “miracle puppies” that had survived a 25-day, 3,000-kilometer journey from China to India, sealed in a shipping container without food or water.

When workers at the Salcomp electronics factory in Sriperumbudur opened a sealed container on Friday, they found an unexpected surprise – a couple of frightened puppies hiding behind the spare parts that they had ordered from China. Seeing that the animals were in bad shape -dehydrated famished and sick – and realizing that the container had been sealed in China on September 5th, security at Nokia telecom park quickly contacted a local animal shelter.

The puppies ended up at The Blue Cross of India animal shelter, where it was determined that they were about three months old. They both had fever and required serious medical attention. However, everyone agreed that the mere fact that they were still alive after their long journey was a miracle. Upon searching the container the puppies arrived in, workers and animal activists found no trace of food or water, which makes their survival a medical impossibility, especially at such a young age.

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Abner Browns barbershop, on Rathgar Road, Dublin, is considered one of the most interesting places to visit in all of Ireland. The old-school barbershop charm plays a role in its insane popularity, but what really sets it apart from any other barbershop in the world is the fact that it doubles as a live music bar.

Abner Browns has been in business for 17 years, but its incredible transformation occurred three years ago, when owner Dave Judge decided to work in the barbershop full-time, after losing a lot of money he had invested in property during the financial crash of 2007-2008. While redecorating the place, he bought an old leather couch for about €30, and after setting it next to some guitars and music posters that served as decorations, he told his wife that it would be cool to get someone to play on it. A few days later, Canadian singer/songwriter Blair Packhem walked into Abner Browns for a haircut and Judge asked him if he would play a few songs on his new couch. Patrons loved the idea, and as news of the spontaneous gig spread around the city, Tim Fernley, a friend of Judge’s and member in a number of local bands, asked if he could play in the barbershop. And it just snowballed from there.

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The Elysium chair relies on a carbon-fiber skeleton and a combination of electronic joints and bearings to create a sensation of weightlessness for the person sitting in it. This marvel of engineering is being hailed as the ultimate office chair, but it also comes with a hefty price tag of $26,000. Bearing the price tag of a decent car, the Elysium chair seems like the mother of all gimmicks, but if it actually works as described in a recently released promotional video and you really value comfort I’d say it might actually be worth it.

Elysium is the creation of Dr. David Wicket, a British inventor and furniture designer who also carries a PhD in bioengineering. During 10 years of research, he was able to develop an equation that defines posture and gravitational force, which later became the backbone of this innovative chair. According to the chair’s official website, there is a spot between lying and sitting up when your weight is evenly distributed and your body passes through zero gravity. “This results in sensory attenuation which is the principle of flotation therapy,” the website claims, which means it is the most comfortable point and puts the least strain on your back.

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Chacho’s Taco, a Tex-Mex eatery in Corpus Christi, Texas, has been challenging people to finish a spectacular 4-pound All-Mighty Taco in under 10 minutes ever since its inception, 18 years ago. During that time, only 5 really hungry people have managed to do it.

The next-to-impossible eating challenge posed by Chacho’s Taco recently went viral on social media, after Norma Jean Toro, a Corpus Christi local, posted a photo of her struggling to eat the 4-pound behemoth made with a giant homemade tortilla and lots of beans, cheese, carne guisada, egg, potatoes and bacon. She failed to finish the taco, but won the admiration of the internet instead. Her post has been doing the round on social media around South Texas after receiving thousands of shares on Facebook.

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