Every day, 83-year-old Joao Silvestrini has the most unusual visitor – a hummingbird! It flies in and out of the kitchen window of his Brazil home several times a day, stopping for a chirpy chat and a drink of sugar water.

The story of the unusual friendship between man and bird has become popular on Facebook, after Joao filmed the bird and posted the video online, last month. The footage shows the tiny bird flying around Joao’s head and waiting patiently until he offers it the daily dose of sugar sweetened water.

Joao is a bachelor and a retired ornithologist; he wakes up at 5.30 every morning to open the kitchen window and wait for his little friend. Before long, the bird arrives in search of water and continues the routine several times during the day. “When he wants water, he is flying around me, he will not let me use the computer,” Joao laughed.

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You can say Chinese artist Han Xiaoming has great ‘taste’ in art – he actually uses his tongue as a brush to create paintings! Luckily, he doesn’t use oil paints or acrylic, just sweetened food dye.

Han, 35, claims he came up with the technique while trying his hand at traditional Chinese sugar painting. The ancient art form involves the use of melted sugar to create figures such as dragons, monkeys, fish, dogs, birds and flowers. Halfway through his work, however, sweet-toothed Han got hungry and decided to take a sip of the sugary paints used to paint the sugar artworks. He loved the taste so much that he finally ended up abandoning the paintbrush and continued to paint with his tongue. Eventually, he completely switched to using his tongue as a tool for his art.

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Believe it or not, the most happening party club in St. Petersburg is a bus! Well, not just any bus. The Barbus Maxi is a one-of-a-kind vehicle that’s been completely transformed to resemble a nightclub. It is Russia’s largest and most expensive party-bus, complete with a dance floor, lounge, fully stocked bar, and even a toilet.

In its previous life, Barbus was just an old Ikarus 280 public transportation vehicle. A few Russian entrepreneurs decided to give it a new lease of life – they completely took it apart, leaving only the frame intact. Then they proceeded to cover the exterior with a film of black-and-white images of pin-up models and urban landscapes of London and New York. The interiors were designed with a pop-art theme.

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Comfort eating is said to help in coping with emotional distress, but this Chinese woman might have taken it a bit too far. Recently dumped by her boyfriend, 26-year-old Tan Shen actually stayed inside a KFC for an entire week, gorging on chicken wings the whole time. When she finally came out, she said she did it because she just ‘needed time to think’.

Clearly hit hard by the breakup, Shen stepped into a KFC last week, near a train station in the area where she lives. “I was walking around feeling miserable and decided to stop off at the KFC at the train station,” she said. “I hadn’t planned on staying there long, I just wanted some chicken wings. But once I got in there and started eating I decided I needed time to think. I didn’t want to go back to my apartment because it was full of memories of him. So I stayed.”

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Unlike most other taxi services, the Japanese Turtle Taxi caters to people who aren’t really in a hurry and prefer a leisurely ride. Surprisingly, there are many who enjoy a service that is deliberately slow – the unique taxi has been steadily growing in popularity ever since it started in December 2013.

The taxi service was created by the Sanwa Kotsu Group – they’ve designated 10 of their 500 cabs in Yokohama as ‘turtle taxis’, and specifically trained cab drivers to accelerate and decelerate as gently as possible. They’ve also been told to manage the ‘centrifugal forces’, to avoid making sharp turns.

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If you believe a zombie apocalypse is imminent, then you probably should be doing everything you can to protect yourself. Luckily, a British firm called Tiger Log Cabins has just the product for you. They’ve created the world’s first zombie-proof log cabin, designed to withstand the worst zombie attacks imaginable.

The cabin is called ZFC-1 (ZFC stands for Zombie Fortification Cabin), and it is guaranteed to protect you from the walking dead for at least 10 years. It is surrounded by barbed wire and is equipped with an escape hatch, a storage unit for weaponry, and an upper deck with a 360-degree vantage point to keep an eye out for approaching zombies.

The ZFC-1 consists of three sections, all of which are independent from each other with two lockable doors securing each area. So if a zombie were to breach the main large section, it would have to get through three very securely locked doors. The material used to build the cabin are supposed to be of the highest quality, with glazing that is factory siliconed and internally beaded to all doors and windows. Zombies wouldn’t even be able to climb on to the roof, thanks to the square cut logs at the edges of the cabin.

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Beggars in China are stooping to new lows in order to gain sympathy (and money) from impressionable passers-by. Horrific pictures show deliberately mutilated camels that are being used to beg for donations. Apparently, the trick has worked wonders so far – the beggars’ collections have increased because people are quite sympathetic and end up donating generously to help the poor animals.

The latest case was discovered in Fuzhou city, China’s Fujian Province, where two men in ragged clothes were spotted kneeling down and begging, while holding the reins of a camel. When the police approached them, they found that the camel had no hooves, and the wounds indicated that they had been deliberately cut off.

In another incident, Fuzhou Evening News reported the case of a camel found by the roadside. It had been led through the streets by a beggar, and then abandoned. News reports suggest that beggars have been spotted with injured camels in several other cities such as Shenzhen, Wenzhou, Shaoxing, Xiamen, Guangzhou, and Hefei. Read More »

A young tuhao (Chinese nouveau riche) from Shaoxing city, China, is making the news for his uncharacteristic behavior. A few nights ago, he was spotted getting out of his swanky new Porsche, only to set up a makeshift roadside stall on the pavement to sell scarves to passers-by. He was accompanied by a lady friend, who assisted him with sales.

Onlookers were so bewildered by this that they couldn’t help asking him what on earth he was doing. That’s when he explained: “I sell scarves here just to earn money to buy gas for my car.” He told reporters that while his parents had gifted him an expensive car, he didn’t think it was right to ask for gas money as well. The girl added that they were also interested in gaining experience in entrepreneurship and business, along with making some pocket money.

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On the advice of her shrink, 22-year-old Londoner Georgia Horrocks is trying to declutter her mind by selling her imaginary friend on eBay!

“I have recently come to the decision that it is time to sell my imaginary friend Bernard who was created during a time of emotional instability,” Georgia wrote in the eBay listing.

“My psychiatrist recommended that I say goodbye to Bernard, and although I would like some financial compensation, it is more important that he finds a good home.” She added that he has an ‘active’ and ‘mischievous personality’.

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Imagine your worst nightmares, the scariest movies you’ve ever seen, and the most horrifying haunted houses you’ve been to. Put them all together, and you’re still not going to come close to the experience at McKamey Manor in San Diego, California. The place is so gut-wrenchingly terrifying that it can make the toughest of people cry out for their mommies.

The official McKamey Manor website describes the place as the ‘world’s only true interactive 4 to 7 hour extreme haunt experience’. “Be warned, this is not your standard haunted house,” the site reads. “This is an audience participation event in which (YOU) will live your own horror movie. This is a rough, intense and truly frightening experience.” And the entire experience is filmed, giving you a chance to star in your very own horror movie. Read More »

Meet Adam, a rescued black labrador that was recently diagnosed with the most bizarre condition – he’s allergic to humans!

For several months, Adam had suffered from unexplained hair fall and skin inflammation. He was blistered and balding with wounds where he’d bitten and scratched himself. Robin Herman, who chose to rescue Adam despite his condition, tried everything to fix his illness. But she and the rest of the staff at Lucky Dog Retreat Rescue were totally perplexed about his condition, they just couldn’t figure out what was wrong.

“We fed him the best possible food, got him flea free, gave him baths twice a week, special baths from the vet,” she said. Although Adam started to look better with all the care, his skin condition wasn’t going away.

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Massachusetts residents can now make a modest living out of their own bodily functions – by donating a sample of their poo. An independent non-profit stool bank called OpenBiome is willing to offer volunteers $40 per deposit, and what’s more, it’s all for a good cause. The stool samples will be used for fecal transplants, to fight the deadly superbug C. difficile, which affects more than 500,000 and kills 14,000 Americans per year.

If you’re wondering about fecal transplants, you can read all about the life-saving procedure in this feature we did a couple of years ago. At the time, there was only one doctor in the UK to have ever performed the transplant. Now, it seems that the treatment has become more popular and people are being invited to generously donate their poo at the OpenBiome stool bank.

Stool transplants are being praised by many doctors as a miracle cure for C. difficile, a bacterial infection that most commonly affects hospital patients. It causes fever, painful cramps, severe diarrhoea, and in some cases, life-threatening complications such as severe swelling of the bowel. Patients with recurring episodes are ill for several months, and only have a 75 percent chance of survival.

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A special project in the town of Essen, Germany, is designed to engage alcoholics and drug addicts in cleaning up the city’s streets, giving them a chance to pick themselves up and rejoin society. The project is called ‘Pick-Up’, and it pays the participants with a small hourly wage, along with free beer!

Although the beer is meant to be an incentive, the amount given away is small, so it won’t really cause a lot of damage. “The beer is distributed on the individual needs of the participants,” read a fact sheet from the organisation that manages the project. “Not everyone gets beer. Only the participants who aren’t able to do their work without it.”

The statement also mentioned that “Pick-UP isn’t about just cleaning the streets. The project has nothing to do with exploiting people. The idea is to allow participants, who are not forced to take part, to contribute to society in a way they otherwise wouldn’t.”

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Lucia Pittalis, an Italian makeup artist and portrait painter, is a master of disguise – she can give herself a whole new identity with just a few strokes of makeup. All she needs are a few cosmetics, makeup tools, and wigs. The 43-year-old mostly chooses to turn herself into famous musicians, actors and fictional characters – both male and female.

Some of Lucia’s most epic transformations have been into iconic figures such as Marlon Brando, Walter White, and Bette Davis. She has also morphed into pop icons like Iggy Azalea, and movie characters like Rambo, Rocky, and Don Vito Corleone.

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When 57-year-old Shen Ailan got drunk on two whole bottles of baijiu – a type of Chinese vodka – she decided that a dip in the river was just what she needed to ‘clear her head’. So she dived into the waters of the Yangtze River at Huangshi city, Hubei Province, and passed out soon after. When she finally opened her eyes, she found herself in Ruichang City, Jiangxi province – roughly 75 kilometers away from where she had went into water!

“I decided a dip in the water would clear my head and I remember wading into the water,” she said. “It was the middle of the day and the next thing I knew was everything had gone black.”

Having blacked out in the water, it’s a real miracle that she survived. She was found suffering from acute hypothermia, and the medics who treated her speculated that she might have become semi-conscious after going into the cold water. They added that her body must have acted automatically to keep her head above water as the river’s current swept her downstream.

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