A 24-year-old Indian man was recently hospitalized after he allegedly cut off his tongue as an offering to the Hindu goddess Kali Mata, to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

From putting quarantine offenders in haunted houses to people locking spouses in the bathroom, we’ve seen people do some pretty extreme things to stop the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, but Vivek Sharma, a young stone sculptor working in Suigam, India’s Gujarat state, takes the cake. Frustrated about not being able to return to his home town in Madhya Pradesh, because of nationwide lockdowns, Sharma reportedly chopped off his own tongue at a temple, as an offering to Hindu goddess Kali Mata, to stop the spread of the virus. So far his sacrifice has proven to be in vain…

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Four years ago, Rita Gaviola was a 13-year-old street beggar in the Filipino town of Lucban. Since then she has worked with some of the world’s hottest brands as a fashion model, starred on hit reality TV shows and gained over 100,000 Instagram followers. And it was all thanks to a random photo…

Rita Gaviola’s incredible ‘rags to riches’ story began in 2016. Back then, she was asking for alms on the streets of Lucban, to help her family make ends meet. Her father worked as a garbage collector and her mother stayed home to look after her and her five siblings. None of the children attended school at the time and the family barely managed to put food on the table, so Rita often went out to beg for change or food donations. That’s how she was spotted by Filipino photographer Topher Quinto Burgos, who happened to be attending the Pahiyas Festival in Lucban, in May 2016. He was attracted by her natural beauty and posted the photos of her on the internet, changing the girl’s life completely with a single click of the ‘upload’ button.

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Although health experts around the world strongly advise people to isolate themselves in order to minimize the chances of getting infected with the novel coronavirus, one German mayor did just the opposite, deliberately contacting the virus so he could then be immune to it.

Berlin District Mayor Stephan von Dassel sparked controversy in German last week after admitting to consciously contacting the novel coronavirus from his partner in order to self-immunize and be able to work while others were off sick. Even though his decision went against the general consensus of public health experts, most of whom strongly recommend social-distancing to avoid catching the virus, von Dassel claims that he saw his deliberate infection as a “contribution” toward the long-term goal of flattening the curve of the infection. He did admit that he underestimated the virus, though.

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40-year-old Pepper Apollo has been fascinated with snails ever since she saw some outside her workplace, 10 years ago. Today she is a self-described “crazy snail lady” with 150 shelled gastropods in her care.

When I first saw a short video documentary on Pepper Apollo and her pet snails, I though it was just a gimmick to promote her online presence. Yes, that kind of thing happens quite a lot these days, and it usually involves wannabe Instagram influencers looking to grow their following, but it’s definitely not Pepper’s case. The UK-based woman is genuinely fascinated with snails and that becomes obvious when browsing her social media profiles. Her Facebook profile picture is a doctored version of the Mona Lisa where the protagonist’s head was replaced with that of a snail, her handle is always some variation of “crazy snail lady”, and she seems to only post about snails.

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A popular Japanese cosplayer known for transforming herself into real-life versions of hot female anime characters, recently came out as a man who uses makeup, wigs and various accessories to achieve a shockingly feminine look.

With over 65,000 followers on Twitter, and several other thousands on Instagram, Rei Dunois can safely be described as a fairly popular female cosplayer. But appearances can be deceiving. Despite having made a name for herself by transforming into various female anime characters over the last couple of years, Rei recently left her fans with their mouths wide open by revealing that she was actually a “he”. After keeping the appearances up for so long, the talented cosplayer apparently decided to reveal the truth and convince people that they shouldn’t believe everything they see on the internet.

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Nina Krinitsina, a pensioner from the Russian village of Makarye, around 850 kilometers east of Moscow, has been decorating her modest house with colorful bottle cap mosaics for the last seven years.

The amateur artist, who currently has over thirty plastic mosaics nailed to the walls of her house – some numbering over 1,000 bottle caps – was originally encouraged by her nephew. He would provide her with grid designs downloaded from the internet, and she would piece them together. She used peas at first, but quickly switched to a more suitable material – plastic bottle caps. She obviously needed quite a stock of caps of various colors to create all the designs, and she didn’t shy away from visiting the local landfill in search of them.

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Men usually show off their affection to their better halves by buying them flowers, complimenting them or showering them with gifts, but one Vietnamese man decided to show off his love for his fiancee in a rather unusual way – by tattoing a large portrait of her on his back.

22-year-old Truong Van Lam allegedly spent nearly 24 hours having his girlfriend’s portrait inked on his back, in three separate sessions. The first one, which lasted eight hours, was in November of last year, and sine then he went under the needle two more times, one for over six hours, and the other nine hours. The result is a permanent portrait of his 20-year-old girlfriend, Luong Kha Tran, a tattooed version of a photograph of her.

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A Chinese migrant worker who lost his memory in 1990 due to brain injuries recently remembered his hometown while watching a news report about the coronavirus outbreak.

Thirty years ago, Zhu Jiaming, a young man from Guizhou Province in south-western China, left his home to work construction in the central province of Hubei. Unfortunately, that same year he suffered a serious work accident that left him with brain injuries and long-term amnesia. Too make matters worse, the migrant worker also lost his ID and ended up living on the streets until a kindhearted couple offered to let him live with them. Despite trying very hard to remember his past life, he could not remember much, including anything about his home and family.

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A young Canadian man who tattooed most of his body, including his face, hands and legs bright blue, claims that the “whimsical element” has really helped him enjoy his life way more than before.

Donnie Snider, a former forklift driver from Scarborough, in Canada’s Ontario region, started permanently coloring his body blue three years ago, and is now almost completely Smurf-like in color. It all started when he asked his sister to tattoo a part of his leg and foot with the bright blue hue; he liked it so much that he kept on turning part of his body blue, partly because of the psychological impact he experienced. If before he felt  trapped by conformity and had a “lack of confidence”, the permanent makeover really gave him a big boost.

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Tatyana Dvazhdova, a 22-year-old female boxer from Russia doesn’t consider herself weaker than a man, and to prove this point she spent years hiding her gender and fighting male boxers under the fake name “Vladimir”.

During a conference called “International Women’s Day – Feminism, Socialism, Sexism”, Tatyana Dvazhdova revealed that a few years ago she posed as a male boxer in order to fight against other men and prove that she was their equal. The muscular woman cut her hair short, let her body hair grow and did everything she could to conceal her female traits. She even got a fake ID and fought under the name Vladimir Ermolaev , winning 9 out of her 17 boxing matches. Tatyana proved her point, that women can compete against men in boxing, but as soon as she revealed her true identity, she was banned from competing against men.

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Indian doctors recently reported the curious case of a young woman who underwent a double hand transplant almost three years ago and whose hands have changed color to match her skin tone.

21-year-old Shreya Siddanagowder lost both her hands in a freak road accident in 2016, when travelling from her hometown in Pune to her college in Karnataka. Doctors had no choice but to amputate both her hand and forearms, and she needed about a year to recover. As soon as she did, she visited the Amrita Institute to register for a double hand transplant, and doctors there miraculously managed to find a donor for her on that same day, August 9, 2017. There were almost 200 other people on the waiting list, some from foreign countries like Afghanistan or Bangladesh, but she was lucky enough to be compatible with the donor. Doctors called her at the hotel after her visit, and the transplant was carried out that same day.

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Lhouraii Li, a makeup and nail artist from Bradford, in the UK, has been getting a lot of attention on social media sites like Instagram due to her unique look; for the past two years, Lhouraii has been painting her face blue almost every day.

To be fair, the 28-year-old makeup artist has always sported an unconventional appearance. Back in 2013, she made news headlines around the world, with major tabloids like Daily Mail and The Mirror calling her a “real-life Barbie” due to her doll-like looks. She says that it was all just a misunderstanding, that her Japanese-inspired “Gyaru” style was mistaken for a doll imitation. Two years ago, however, Lhouraii Li decided that a bright blue skin complexion fitted her personality much better, so she started dying her face and hands blue almost every day.

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A Liverpool man has been penning letters complaining about various things and sending them to the Liverpool Echo newspaper every day for the last 42 years.

70-year-old Bernie Carroll can’t even remember what he complained to the local council about in his very first letter, back in 1978. That’s unsurprising, considering that it was the first of over 15,000 letters he sent over the years; it first started as a way to vent about the actions of the “militant council of the 1970s and 80s” in Liverpool, but once that was over with, he continued sending in letters complaining or offering suggestions about pretty much anything. For example, his most recent letters to the Liverpool Echo newspaper were about his frustrations at the constant fireworks in his neighborhood and dog poo bags being left on park railings.

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It’s not uncommon for Mexican parents to give their children unique, extravagant names, but even by these standards, the name Zero Zero Three stood out like a sore thumb, making its bearer an overnight internet celebrity.

It all started when Casera Pizza, a well-known pizzeria based in Merida, the capital of Mexico’s Yucatan State, announced a contest for weird names, with the winner eligible to benefit from of its enticing promotions. People named Vercingetoriz, Nivea, or Bahtzibadi all made the final list, but none could hope to win against a young man named “Cero Cero Tres”, Spanish for ‘Zero Zero Three”. He won the coveted prize – two large pepperoni pizzas for just 49 pesos – and became an instant online sensation.

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An 83-year-old woman from Ukraine was pronounced dead at her home by both paramedics and police, last week, but 10 hours later, after her family started making preparations for her funeral, she showed signs of life and has since made a full recovery.

Paramedics first consulted Ksenia Didukh, an 83-year-old retired nurse from the Ukrainian town of Stryzhavka, at her home at around 6am, on February 17. This was to be one of three visits they paid the woman that Sunday, a day they’ll likely never forget. After that first visit, they concluded that the octogenarian was agonizing and basically on death’s threshold, so they so no point in taking her to the hospital. The family agreed, and later that day, the doctors’ prognostic was confirmed. Ksenia stopped breathing, and paramedics were once again called, along with police, to confirm the woman’s death.

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