Six months after catching the coronavirus, a 69-year-old Russian virologist and researcher exposed himself to patients infected with Covid-19 without any protection to see how his immune system would respond.

A former researcher at the Vector Centre of Virology and Biotechnology in Koltsovo, Novosibirsk, Alexander Chepurnov first caught Covid-19 at the end of February 2020. He was on a skiing holiday in  France when he started feeling unwell, with a high fever, sharp chest pain and a complete loss of his sense of smell. There was no way to get a coronavirus test in Europe at the time, so he returned home to Novosibirsk, where he was quickly diagnosed with double pneumonia. He was lucky enough to recover, and a month later an antibody test confirmed that he had been infected with the new virus.

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A popular Russian vlogger recently made international headlines after purposely burning his expensive Mercedes-AMG G63, because he was sick of it breaking down all the time.

Russian media reported that young vlogger Mikhail Litvin bought his brand new luxury car in December of 2019, for a whopping 13 million rubles, or around $170,000. For that kind of money one would expect both performance and durability, only Litvin claims that his Mercedes-AMG G63 was really short on the latter. Despite having allegedly driven it only 15,000 km (about 9,300 miles), he claims the car has been in and out of repair shops over the last 10 months. Exasperated by the constant need for repairs and the manufacturer’s reluctance to accept responsibility, the Russian vlogger decided that the best way to solve things was to simply burn the car down to a crisp.

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Winter temperatures in Russia’s northern region of Yakutia can drop under a staggering -70 degrees Celsius, making it impossible for humans to stay outside for long periods of time. But for the indigenous horses of this region, such extreme temperatures are comfortable enough to spend days and nights in the open.

Yakutian horses are only 140-145 centimeters tall, but can weigh up to half a tonne, because of a thick layer of fat and heavy, thick mane that can reach up to 10 centimeters long. Because of their stocky physique and long mane, some have referred to them as the equestrian version of wooly mammoths. There’s more to that comparison than looks, though, as these horses can withstand far lower temperatures than any other horse breeds anywhere in the world.

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A stonecutting workshop that set out to carry on the legacy of legendary Russian jeweler Peter Carl Fabergé has managed to raise the art of volumetric mosaic stone cutting to a level never reached before in all of human history.

Volumetric mosaic is one of the most complicated and technical hardstone carving techniques. It involves combining volumetric fragments of various colored semiprecious and ornamental stones to assemble impressive sculptural compositions. It has been practiced by Russian craftsmen and artisans for over a century, but Alexei Antonov’s stonecutting workshop in Yekaterinburg has elevated the art form to a whole new level, by incorporating precious metals in the detailed sculptures and using modern technology to make the artworks stunningly detailed.

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Looking back at the most significant battles and military operations in history, deception has always been an important strategy, and in modern-day Russia balloons are one of the most important tools of deception.

Bouncy castles aren’t known as the most effective tools of war, but in Russia, they are just as important as actual weapons worth millions of dollars. That’s because bouncy castles designed to mimic actual weapons cost a hundred times cheaper than the real thing, and can be deployed and moved a lot faster. And if your goal is to deceive the enemy, to appear stronger than you really are, drawing their fire, or simply buying time by forcing them to verify targets, this inflatable army is an important piece of your arsenal.

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Galina Chuvina, a retired woman from the small Russian town of Sasovo, took up knife throwing as a hobby and ended up becoming an eight time national champion, European champion and even world champion.

Chuvina was 56 years old when she discovered knife throwing, back in 2007. The pensioner had landed a simple job in the coat check section of the local pool, taking people’s clothes and handing out numbers. One day, two young people came by to discuss the possibility of opening a knife throwing club on the premises, and Galina became one of the first people to enroll for knife throwing training. Just a month and a half into her training, the pensioner learned that her home town would soon host a knife throwing competition with around 50 participants, including special forces soldiers, professional knife throwers, as well as amateurs like her. She signed up, and shocked the audience by wining first place.

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Developed during the 1980’s in Soviet Russia, the futuristic looking MD-160 Lun-class ekranoplan had been sitting unused at a Russian naval base since the late 1990’s, but has now been beached on the shores of the Caspian Sea, as part of a plan to turn it into an ocean-side tourist attraction.

Known as the Caspian Sea Monster, the giant ekranoplan was designed in 1975 by Rostislav Evgenievich Alexeyev, a prominent developer of of hydrofoil ships and ground effect vehicles. It used a cushion of air beneath its giant wings to hover at about 13 feet above water, making it hard to detect. It was built as part of the Soviet WIG program, which dated back to the 1960’s Cold War, and was the only Lun-class ekranoplan to ever be completed and equipped with supersonic missiles.

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Forget wish-granting goldfish and genies in a bottle, you can now own your very own magical cat and have all your wishes fulfilled for the modest price of 10 million rubles ($127,000).

A Novosibirsk woman recently posted a bizarre ad on Russian classified ad platform Avito, asking people to pay a small fortune for her pet cat, a Scottish Fold named Vincent I, or Vinsik, for short. The woman, known only as Elena, told Russian journalists that she discovered her cat’s wish-granting powers by accident, but has since tested its effectiveness three times, to impressive results. She now wants to share its magic with others, but is asking for a considerable fee as reward for her kindness.

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Anna Turaeva, a champion powerlifter from Russia, recently shared a shocking story of how she was stopped by airport security and asked private questions to prove that she really was a woman.

42-year-old Turaeva, a six-time world powerlifting champion and eight-time European powerlifting champion, described the experience of being prevented from boarding a plane from St Petersburg to her home city of Krasnodar as humiliating. The Russian athlete said that security staff believed she was actually a man posing as a woman and asked her all sorts of private and intimate question in order to establish her gender. Anna Turaeva’s appearance has indeed become very masculine after years of bodybuilding and powerlifting training, but she considers herself 100% female and tried explaining to the airline representative that they were wrong to ask her to prove her gender, especially since it was clearly stated on her passport.

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According to his birth certificate, Denis Vashurin was born in 1987, but looking at him you would swear he was still in his early teenage years.

Denis became one of the hottest topics on Russian social media after doing an interview with popular YouTube personality “Vasya na sene”. People can’t seem to get over how incredibly young he looks for a 32-year-old man, and Denis himself admits that whenever he reveals his age to people he doesn’t know he almost always gets reactions of disbelief. That’s why he prefers living in a small village in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk region, instead of moving to the city. Everybody knows him there, and he gets to spend time alone doing what he likes – hunting, fishing and spending time with his girlfriend.

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Inspired by the popular #gettychallenge a Russian woman has been using various household items and her own makeup skills to recreate over 100 classic paintings to great effect.

Back in late March, Saint Petersburg-based art lover Liza Yukhnyova accepted the Getty Museum’s #gettychallenge as a fun way to pass the time during quarantine, only she got so into it that she continued to recreate famous paintings long after the lockdown ended. While most people were content recreating just one famous artwork, Yukhnyova set a goal for herself to replicate a painting a day for 30 days, but she is currently on day 142 and has no plans to stop anytime soon.

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MDZhB is the name of a mysterious radio station that has been broadcasting for nearly four decades, but that no one has ever claimed to operate.

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week since 1982, MDZhB (pronounced ‘MJB’) has been broadcasting a dull, monotonous tone followed by a second, foghorn-like sound every few seconds. But every once in a while, about once or twice a week, someone will also utter some random phrase in Russian, like “dinghy” or “farming specialist”, and the the droning sound returns. The mystery of MDZhB has fascinated radio enthusiasts around the world for centuries, and theories regarding its purpose range from nuclear war triggering device, to communicating with aliens. But, so far, no one has been able to crack the mystery of this radio station.

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A gaping, funnel-like hole estimated to be at least 50-meters-deep has been discovered in a remote area of the arctic, on the Yamal Peninsula, in Siberia.

Discovered accidentally from the air by a Vesti Yamal television crew en route from an unrelated assignment, the mysterious crater is the latest to be spotted in northern Siberia since the phenomenon was originally documented, in 2014. Chunks of soil and ice were thrown hundreds of metres around the funnel, which strengthens scientists’ theory that such craters are the result of methane gas buildups in pockets of thawing permafrost under the surface of the Earth. As pressure increases, the “lid” of the pocket is blown off and the methane gas is released.

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Villages on the east coast of the Kamchatka peninsula, in the Russian Far-East are experiencing scenes that seem taken out of an Alfred Hitchkok movie. Only instead of birds invading their community, it’s billions of mosquitoes swirling into visible “tornadoes”.

Villages like Ust-Kamchatsk are used to being invaded by large number of mosquitoes every summer, it’s normal for this insects to swarm near bodies of water, but this year it’s much worse than usual. Because of an unusually hot summer, the number of mosquitoes is much larger, making them an even bigger nuisance than they usually are. Window and door nets do little to keep the pesky buzzers out of people’s homes, as they seem to get in through the smallest of cracks, and going outside means dealing with large swarms of mosquitoes that seem to reach the sky when seen from afar.

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A Russian man is taking a bank to court for forcing him to pay interest on a loan he never asked for, after fraudsters used his stolen smartphone to take out the pre-approved loan in his name.

Vladimir Volokhovich, from Moscow, has been making news headlines in his home country of Russia after finding himself right in the middle of an unusual scandal. Volokhovich is being asked by the Russian branch of Alpha Bank to pay up a pre-approved loan taken up by fraudsters in his name, using his stolen mobile phone. Not only did the scammers manage to transfer part of the funds to their accounts, but the interest on the loan Vladimir never asked for is adding up every day. The bank, however, refuses to cancel the loan, claiming that Vladimir should have reported his smartphone as stolen sooner.

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