With a nearly perfect 4.9/5.0 stars out of thousands of Google reviews, Gacek, an overweight black-and-white street cat, is the top-rated tourist attraction in the Polish city of Szczecin.

Szczecin, a medieval city in northwestern Poland, close to the border with Germany, has plenty to offer visitors. The Pomeranian Duke’s Castle and Kasprowicza Park are two of its most popular tourist attractions, but when it comes to online reviews, both pale in comparison with the city’s top-rated attraction, a fat cat named Gacek. The tuxedo cat rose to fame in 2020, after local news site wSzczecinie featured the feline in a video that subsequently went viral on social media, and people have been showering Gacek with positive reviews ever since.

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A Thai man surprised his wife by tattooing their marriage certificate on his forearm as a Valentine’s Day present.

A tattoo parlor in Kaeng Khoi, Central Thailand’s Saraburi province recently shared a photo of one of their latest projects, a lifesize copy of a marriage certificate tattooed on a person’s forearm. Apparently, the client wanted to surprise his wife with unique proof of his love for her, so he asked the tattoo artists to permanently ink his official marriage certificate on his arm.

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A Japanese garment company recently made international news headlines for its newest creation –  a wearable beanbag that allows you to comfortably sit or lay down anytime, anywhere.

When thinking about ultimate comfort, a giant beanbag that you can wear is probably not the first thing that comes to mind, but according to Takikou, a garment company based in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture, that’s exactly what its new wearable beanbag is about. The seemingly wacky invention was reportedly inspired by the concept of a “cushion that ruins people”, a rather popular idea among Japanese designers that basically revolves around offering consumers extreme levels of comfort that they don’t ever want to move, thus ruining their lives.

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A Chinese man who concelaed a lottery win of 10 million yuan ($1.5 million) from his then-wife for two years has been ordered by a court of law to compensate the woman.

In 2021, the man, surnamed Zhou, won a lottery prize of 10 million yuan. After paying the mandatory tax, he was left with 8.43 million ($1.23 million). That was still lifechanging money for him and his family, only instead of sharing the wonderful news with his wife, he reportedly kept acting like nothing happened. On the day that the lottery prize was wired to his bank account, Zhou transferred 2 million to his sister and another 700,000 yuan to his ex-wife, to help her buy an apartment. He didn’t mention the lottery win to his wife for two years.

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A company in Chengdu, China has been praised for asking both job applicants and recruiters to wear masks in order to avoid discrimination based on looks.

Chengdu Ant Logistics recently made news headlines after a video showing its recruitment process went viral on Chinese social media. Shot by one of the interviewees, the short clip shows several masked people waiting to be interviewed by a recruiter, who was reportedly also masked. The company has since put out a statement on the matter, claiming that the video was shot at its recent biannual recruitment fair and that the masked were introduced to eliminate bias based on looks.

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A Canadian startup claims to have come up with the technology to create a plant-based salmon filet that looks, feels, and tastes like real wild salmon.

Plant-based meat alternatives have been around for years now, with brands like Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods being among the most well-known in the burgeoning industry. But fish and seafood alternatives haven’t gotten nearly as much attention from the media as meat ones. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, or that they are in any way less technologically advanced. On the contrary, the progress in this niche has been nothing short of impressive, with one startup claiming to have created a raw plant-based salmon filet that looks, flakes, and tastes like wild salmon.

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Police in the Chinese city of Chongqing has begun using specially-trained squirrels in their war against drug traffickers.

The Police Dog Brigade of the Criminal Police Detachment in Hechuan District, Chongqing has successfully bred the first batch of drug-sniffing squirrels in China. The breakthrough was part of the country’s national key research and development project, which sought, among others, the creation of new training methods for anti-drug animals. Apparently, scientists have been aware of squirrels’ keen sense of smell for a long time, but rodent training methods were apparently not advanced enough until now.

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UK-born artist Jonny Hall is famous for being one of the first tattoo artists to introduce UV-reactive ink to the style of black-and-grey realism.

UVealism, a term coined by Hall himself, basically refers to the enhancement of already-impressive black-and-grey realist tattoos with the ethereal glow of UV-reactive ink. In plain light, UV tattoos are semi-invisible, but put them under an ultraviolet black-light bulb and you get to see a whole new dimension of the design. UV-reactive ink is a bit more difficult to work with than normal tattoo ink, because it’s a lot thinner, but when used correctly, the results are awe-inspiring.

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The ancient ruins of Baiae, near the modern city of Bacoli, in Italy are home to a botanical oddity known as the upside-down fig tree.

Looking at the tenacious tree growing out of the ceiling of an ancient Roman archway, it’s easy to see why it’s called the upside-down tree. It is literally inverted, growing toward the ground, which is quite rare. No one knows exactly how the fig tree ended up there, or how long it has been growing for, but one thing is for sure –  despite its bizarre location, the fig tree if Baia is growing stronger every year, and sometimes it even bears fruit.

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Kyawthuite is a transparent reddish-orange mineral of which only a single, tiny sample exists – an 0.3-gram gem – making it the rarest mineral in the world, by far.

There are around 6,000 minerals recognized by the International Mineralogical Association, and while many of them are classified as ‘rare’, none of them rival kyawthuite in terms of rarity. Named after Dr. Kyaw Thu, a Burmese mineralogist-petrologist-gemologist, this incredibly rare mineral was discovered in the bed of a stream in Myanmar’s Mogok region by sapphire hunters and recognized by the International Mineralogical Society in 2015. The only sample ever discovered weighs just 1.61 carats (0.3 grams) and is in the custody of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.

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A Russian man was recently arrested after allegedly being tricked into throwing a Molotov Cocktail in a Moscow bank by scammers who also relieved him of his life savings.

A few days ago, Moscow police arrested a 48-year-old man from Ruza, a town in the Moscow region of Russia, for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail in a Sberbank branch in the Russian capital. Bank employees were able to put out the flames before the firefighters arrived on the scene and police quickly identified and detained the perpetrator. But this was far from an open-shut case; the more the suspect tried to explain, the crazier his story got, and by the end, investigators didn’t know whether to throw the book at the guy or just feel sorry for him…

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A young dog believed to have been abandoned in the Nevada Desert as a puppy was recently rescued after spending at least six months as part of a coyote pack.

The people of Inspirada, a suburban neighborhood of Henderson, Nevada are used to seeing packs of coyotes running through the streets at night, but for the past couple of months, many of them have been reporting something strange. Apparently, a white dog was running with a pack of these wild predators, scavenging for food, playing in the moonlight and running away as soon as someone tried to approach him. Some called him the Coyote Dog, but he became more famous as Ghost, both for his white coat and his ability to disappear as soon as someone tried to catch him.

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Ethiopian-born artist Natnael Mekuria specializes in stunning celebrity portraits cracked into panes of glass using only a chisel and hammer.

22-year-old Natnael Mekuria discovered cracked glass art during the Covid-19 pandemic, but mastering the unusual art form took a lot of time and patience. In the beginning, he lacked the hand control necessary to keep the glass canvas from shattering, so he would spend hours chiseling at it only to have it break into pieces before finishing. But he didn’t give up, and today he is able to turn simple panes of laminated glass into beautiful works of art. He still spends hours on end painstakingly chiseling at the glass, but the end results are much different than when he first started.

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A former zoo director in the Mexican city of Chilpancingo has been officially accused of a series of wrongdoings during his time in office, including cooking pigmy goats for a staff party.

José Rubén Nava Noriega is probably a prime candidate for the title of the world’s worst zoo director. During his time managing the local zoo in the city of Chilpancingo, Noriega allegedly sold animals illegally, failed to properly record animal births and deaths, somehow lost several animals, and, probably most shocking of all, he slaughtered and cooked four out of the zoo’s ten pigmy goats for a New Year’s staff feast.

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MSCHF, an art collective specializing in unique and controversial products, has announced a new perfume inspired by the world’s most popular lubricant spray – WD40.

The versatility of WD40 is the stuff of legend. You can use it as a water displacer, to loosen nuts and bolts, fix squeaky hinges, prevent rust and keep mechanisms lubricated. The manufacturer of this legendary product lists over 2,000 applications for it, but body perfume is sadly not among them. In fact, the company specifically warns against applying their WD40 lubricant on the skin, but if you like the way it smells that much, you no longer need to risk your health, because the WD perfume is finally here!

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