54-year-old Abdul Aziz has a very peculiar job. He has been working as a living statue for over thee decades, standing perfectly still for six hours a day and resisting people’s attempts to make him move, smile or pretty much flinch a muscle, anything that proves he is a living person. Nobody has ever been able to do it.

Aziz, fondly known as “India’s Statue Man”, has been performing his daily routine ever since 1985, soon after getting a job as a security guard at the VGP Golden Beach Resort in Chennai, India. His boss had recently traveled to the UK, where he was so impressed by the statue-like members of the Royal Guard outside Buckingham Palace that he wanted to do something similar back home. So he had his security guards undergo three months of training, where they would sit perfectly still for around four hours. They weren’t allowed to talk or smile, eat, drink, or even shoo away a fly if it sat on their faces. In the end, Abdul proved the best of the group, so he got the strange job.

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72-year-old Irmela Mensah-Schram is a special kind of cleaning lady. For the last 31 years, she has been travelling across Germany, cleaning its streets of hateful messages, be they propaganda posters or graffiti. She has received death threats from neo-nazis and the police have fined her numerous times, but she continues her fight against racism, antisemitism and xenophobia.

Armed with a small scraper and a can of spray-paint, Irmela Mensah-Schram, a.k.a. Germany’s “Hate Destroyer” has been removing or covering up Nazi propaganda and other right-wing slogans across her country for over three decades. For many, she is a hero fighting against hate, while some consider her actions to be in violation of freedom of speech, and even state officials have mixed feelings about her. She has received several awards for her long-term efforts to keep hateful propaganda off the streets, but she has also been fined and even taken to court for damaging others’ property.

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Amirul Rizwan Musa, a 21-year-old entrepreneur from Malaysia, has recently come under fire in his home country for spending tens of thousands of dollars on plastic surgery that left him looking like a real-life anime character.

Amirul, better known by his online name, Miyyo Rizone, became the target of criticism from many of his countrymen, after photos showing his radical transformation went viral on social media, last weekend. The fact that some media outlets reported that he had undergone numerous cosmetic surgery procedures in order to become a living Ken doll, didn’t help things either, and now he’s asking people to stop condemning and dehumanizing him for his choices.

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Browsing through photos of Kina Shen, a young Chinese model with a massive following on Instagram, it’s often hard to tell if you’re looking at an actual human being, or just a life-size doll.

There are many girls out there trying their best to capture the living doll look, but few – if any – manage to do it as well as Kina Shen. The Shenzen-based Chinese model was blessed with perfect facial features, flawless porcelain-like skin and a talent for makeup, all of which apparently come in handy when you’re trying to pose as a doll or a mannequin.

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They say that one man can’t make a difference, but Abdul Samad Sheikh, a 60-year-old rickshaw driver from Bangladesh, is living proof that small contributions over a long period of time can mean very much. He has planted at least one tree every day since he was 12-years-old, which means that he has so far planted a small forest of over 17,500 trees. Imagine if everyone followed his example.

Abdul Samad Sheikh, fondly known as “Tree Samad” in his native town of Faridpur, central Bangadesh, has worked as a rickshaw driver for most of his life. The modest job earns him about 100 taka ($1.25) per day, which is barely enough to put food on the table for his family, but he somehow manages to also buy at least one tree from the Faridpur Horticulture Centre, every day. He considers it his duty to the world, and claims he wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if he didn’t plant a tree that day.

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Lure Hsu, a 41-year-old interior designer and fashion blogger, had already been attracting lots of attention online for her incredibly youthful looks, but people recently discovered that eternal youth runs in her family. Lure’s two sisters, 36-year-old Sharon, and 40-year old FayFay, both look like they are in their early 20s, and their 63-year-old mother looks like their older sister.

Just when people were starting to come to terms with the fact that Lure Hsu is actually in her 40s, photos of her sisters and mother starting showing up in Taiwanese media, and everyone lost their minds once again. The four Hsu women are now being called “the family of frozen ages” by the media in their country, while some people claim that they must be descendants of vampires. Truth be told, they do all look suspiciously young for their age.

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A lot of people look younger than their age, but 23-year-old Tomislav Jurčec, from Zagreb, Croatia, is an extreme case. Due to a fault in his pituitary gland, which controls growth and ageing, he remains stuck in the body of a 13-year-old kid.

Tomislav admits that looking 10 years younger than his actual age does have disadvantages. like having to produce an ID when buying restricted goods like cigarettes and alcohol, but he always prefers to look at the glass half full. And he has plenty of reasons to do so. For starters, his youthful looks and diminutive stature have helped him land an acting gig on HBO’s hit show Game of Thrones, where he worked as Peter Dinklage’s stand-in and as the uncredited “Hero Corps Child”.

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Lots of people love going to Disneyland, but few enjoy the experience as much as Jeff Reitz, a 44-year-old Air Force Veteran from Huntington Beach, California, who has been visiting Disney resorts every day, for the last 2,000 days. It has become sort of a daily ritual, and after over five years, he still can’t get enough of the Disney magic.

Reitz started his daily visits to the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim on Jan. 1, 2012, after receiving an annual pass as a gift, and hasn’t skipped a day since, according to company records. He was unemployed at the time, and visiting the parks gave him something to look forward to every day and kept his spirits up. Jeff managed to secure a stable job since then, but he still makes time for Disneyland, every evening.

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Dr. Sri Ganapathy Sachchidananda Swamiji has recently been recognized by Guinness Book of Records for housing the most bird species under a single roof, 468. He is not a collector who takes pleasure in depriving exotic birds of their freedom, but simply a compassionate man who rescues endangered, injured and abandoned birds from around the world and offers sanctuary in his aviary.

Swamiji, the founder of Avadhoota Datta Peetham ashram, in Mysuru, India, has been passionate about birds for as long as he can remember. Growing up in Mekedattu woods, on the shores of the Cauvery river, he remembers spending much of his time watching many species of birds as they took shelter in the trees outside his house. But it was an accident in 2011 that made him understand his purpose in life – to save as many endangered and abandoned birds as possible – and build his 21-acre aviary in the forests of Mysuru.

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Aílton Manuel da Silva is not your usual waiter. He dresses as one, carries himself as one and even sports a tray full of cold drinks and snacks, but instead of a restaurant or a cafe, he works in the streets, braving the hot sun and incoming traffic to provide for his family. He is the “traffic waiter” of Recife, and probably the world’s most elegant street vendor.

Every morning at 5 a.m., 43-year-old Aílton Manuel da Silva wakes up, puts on his creased pants, white shirt, bow tie and lacquered shoes and leaves for work. He arrives at the busy intersection of Avenida Almirante Dias Fernandes and Rua Emiliano Ribeiro at around 5:30 and gets ready for a long day of waiting through traffic. He prepares his bottles of cold water, cans of soda and snacks like popcorn and chips, sets them neatly on his metal tray, and at 7 in the morning he steps into traffic to offer motorists his assortment of refreshments.

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Radomir Novakovic Cakan is a successful businessman from Montenegro, who has earned himself nicknames like “the best boss in the Balkans” and “Brother” by being incredibly generous to his employees.

Cakan, who owns “Cakan Sports”, the largest sporting goods store chain in Montenegro, and recently went into politics, has been making news headlines in Balkan countries for years, but not for his professional success. He is best known for the generosity he shows his loyal and hard-working employees, and the close relationship he has with them. The businessman firmly believes that his company can only thrive if he keeps his employees happy, and to that end, he has offered the best of them some pretty unbelievable presents.

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Retirement usually involves slowing down, taking it easy for a change, but not for 81-year-old Wang Deshun. For him, it’s all about commercial photo shoots, parading bare-chested on fashion runways and brushing shoulders with Chinese superstars. He is “China’s hottest grandpa” and the man praised for changing the country’s traditional view of old age.

Wang Deshun’s life changed one march evening, two years ago, when he got the chance to walk on the runway at the China Fashion Week in Beijing. With his chiseled physique, hipster beard, long silver hair and youthful attitude, the 79-year-old made quite an impression, and things just kept getting better for him after that. But how he ended up on the stage of an international fashion festival is quite a story in itself.

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Bas de Groot has always been a big fan of milk, drinking 3 to 4 liters of it every day, but he truly became fascinated with it after tasting raw farm milk for the first time. The strong, layered flavors inundated his senses and left him wondering what milk from different regions of the Netherlands tastes like. As the world’s only milk sommelier, Bas now travels the globe, tasting raw milk, and educating people about its special properties and benefits.

Up until just a week ago, I though the word “sommelier” only referred to wine, but then I read about Martin Riese, America’s first and only water sommelier, and today I learned there is also such a thing as a milk sommelier. Bas de Groot is the only person in the world to hold such a title, and while, unlike the best wine sommeliers, he is not yet able to recognize certain milks by flavor alone, he can detect certain differentiating notes based on the cows’ diet and the soil they feed off of.

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Thumb sucking is a perfectly normal habit for babies and young children, but while most grow out of it by age five, some never do. You’ve probably never seen an adult suck their thumb, but that’s only because the vast majority of adult thumb-suckers avoid doing it in public for fear of being laughed at or labeled as “weirdos”. Some experts believe that adult thumb sucking is quite common, with around 1 in 10 adults secretly engaging in the habit for comfort.

Thumb sucking is said to start in the uterus, even before we come into this world. It is considered a comforting gesture that mimics the endorphin rush babies get when breastfeeding, and is most common in children coping with mild anxiety. The same is true for adult thumb-suckers. While they are no longer breastfed, sucking their thumb is an effective way of dealing with anxiety or just completely relaxing at bedtime. Some have relied on their thumb to sooth them for as long as they can remember, and it has just become a normal part of everyday life.

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Ibrahim Mukunga Wachira, a 27-year-old marathon runner from Kenya, became an overnight sensation in the small Baltic country of Estonia, after winning the 35th annual Tartu Half-Marathon, a 23-kilometer race he ran in his socks.

Just last week, we wrote about the monumental achievement of María Lorena Ramírez, a native Rarámuri woman from Mexico, who won a 50-kilometer ultramarathon in rubber sandals made from used car tires and wearing a long traditional skirt. Today, we cover the amazing story of a man who not only won a 23-kilometer marathon in Estonia, but also set a new speed record, after running with no shoes on. It’s definitely an incredible time for sports, and running in particular.

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