In a heartwarming display of generosity and gratitude, French baker Michel Flamant recently sold his boulangerie to a homeless man for just €1. The man, Jerome Aucant, had previously saved Flamant from suffocating to death inside the bakery, during a fire. Flamant admits to being a rather “piggish character”, but he’s proven that his heart is in the right place. In fact, long before his brush with death, he would greet Aucant outside his establishment every morning and treat him to a cup of coffee and a croissant. And his kindness eventually paid off on that fateful day in December when he nearly died of carbon monoxide poisoning. “If Jerome wasn’t around that day, I would have been a goner,” said Flamant, 62, recalling that a defective oven had started leaking carbon monoxide that morning. He was asphyxiating from the odorless fumes when Aucant noticed Flamant staggering around the bakery and immediately called emergency services. It took 12 days in the hospital for Flamant to recover from the ordeal, but he survived. Read More »

This intricate, lacy wedding dress would make any bride feel beautiful on her big day, but surprisingly, it isn’t meant to be worn. That’s because it’s really a masterfully executed cake, and all the pretty frills and ruffles are actually white icing. But it’s so convincing, you can barely tell that it’s not real, even in close-up photographs. The remarkable dessert was created by award-winning cake sculptor Sylvia Elba, in collaboration with artist Ilinka Rnic, and Fun N Funky Cakes founder Yvette Marner. It took the talented trio over 300 hours to complete, but in the end, they all agreed that the 70-kg heavy, 170-cm tall hyperrealistic cake-dress was totally worth it. They’re now calling it the world’s first “Weddible Dress”. Read More »

Meet Liang Xiang, a 61-year-old age-defying grandpa with a perfectly chiseled body and six-pack abs. Looking at his photos, you’d think he spent his whole life working out, but Liang claims he only started hitting the gym 10 years ago.  The sexagenarian is now so obsessed with fitness that he spends several hours a day doing intense workout routines.

Liang spent most of his youth running a lighting business in China’s Yunnan province, and later used his earnings to pursue his love of driving. After a few races outside the country, he realised that his physical condition was holding him back from performing well. So he started working out and eventually got this chiseled body that sparks the envy of men half his age. Uncle Liang –  as he’s come to be known online – has been pumping iron around a decade now, and also follows a diet plan that includes seven small meals per day.

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For most people, running one or two full marathons a year is quite the feat,  but for 33-year-old Rob Young it’s merely a short warm-up. This British superhuman did the unthinkable last year, completing a whopping 370 marathons, which basically means he ran more than one marathon per day! It all started as a silly bet with his partner Joanna Hanasz on a Sunday morning, in April 2014, as they watched the TV coverage of the London Marathon. It was, in fact, Young who had insisted that he’d rather stay in and watch TV than go for a walk in the park with their son. He obviously wasn’t very interested in running at the time, and actually considered it ‘boring’. But something changed that morning, when Hanasz teased him that he couldn’t run marathons, even if he tried. Young jokingly replied that he would bet her ‘twenty pence’ that he could run 50, a challenge that he later took seriously. The very next morning he woke up at 3.30 am, printed out the route of the Richmond Marathon, and completed it before work. And he felt so good that he returned to it every day, running the equivalent of 10 marathons by the end of the week. Read More »

Challenging the idea that elderly ladies are slow is 81-year-old Michalina Borowczyk-Jędrzeje. The Polish grandmother is the proud owner of a 2016 Subaru WRX STI, a car that she enjoys taking out for a spin every single day. Photographs and video clips of her driving the cool sports car have gone viral online, much to the amusement of younger Polish residents.

Speaking to the media, Michalina revealed that she’s been passionate about fast cars since childhood. And now that she’s retired, she has plenty of time to drive around town in her favorite car. Some reports have suggested that the Subaru isn’t Michalina’s first car – she has apparently owned several Opels, a BMW, a Mazda, and a Honda before this. But Subaru has always been her favorite, and she saved up for 13 years before she could finally afford the €46,000 ($50,285) car. “I love the sound of its engine,” she said. “It purrs, it is a pleasure. This car has a soul, a heart, and unlike other cars, it got me hooked.”

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30 years of dedicated service have finally paid off for Kifleab Tekle, a retiring security guard at an elite all-girl’s school in Dallas. While most people in his position would retire quietly, he’s going out with a bang – a $185,000 check gifted to him by members of the school’s alumnae. When they first got to know of Tekle’s retirement, many of the staff members and former students of Hockaday School started reminiscing over his unwavering service to the school and a few members of the class of 2005 even decided to raise $2,000 for him as a small token of their appreciation. So they started a GoFundMe campaign, which got so popular that it surpassed the original goal in no time at all. “We know how much Kief means to everyone!” the campaign page reads. “It wasn’t an April fools joke, he is really retiring. We would love to collect money for a retirement gift for him. We are so excited that alumnae, current students, and parents are all donating.” The original plan was to hold a private meeting with Kief in the school grounds on Monday, April 11, and present him with whatever money they had managed to raise. But the amount turned out to exceed everyone’s expectations – a whopping $185,000. Kief was obviously beside himself, not only because of the generous gift, but also the fact that over 200 people turned up on Monday to wish him well. “I was not expecting such a big farewell,” he said, in a statement. “It means stability for my family.” Read More »

Death doesn’t put an end to the luxurious lifestyles of some of Manila’s wealthy Chinese residents. They are buried by their loved ones in a mammoth graveyard known as the Chinese Cemetery of Manila. This place is a small neighborhood in it’s own right, with many tombs reaching the size of mansions with all the modern amenities included! The ginormous mausoleums lining either side of two-way streets within the cemetery are equipped with state-of-the-art facilities that many living people can only dream of. They have fully-functioning kitchens and bathrooms with luxury fittings, and plush bedrooms for visiting relatives. Some of these places even have full-time residents who don’t seem to mind sharing their living space with the dead. Read More »

British micro-engraver Graham Short is famous for creating detailed carvings that are so unbelievably tiny that they cannot be seen with the naked eye. On a never-ending quest to push his limits and create the tiniest engraving possible, Short has engraved specks of gold small enough to fit in the eye of a needle and even the edge of a razor blade. His secret – working between heartbeats. To produce his tiny masterpieces, Graham works in complete silence, because even the slightest sound could produce vibrations that might ruin his work. He steadies his right arm by securing it with a strap attached to a piece of heavy machinery. His mobile is switched off, and he mostly works at night to avoid the vibrations of vehicles passing in the street. Starting at midnight, he works through the night until five or six in the morning, and continues for three to four nights in a row, until he gets too tired and his body clock needs readjustment. As much as he tries to eliminate distractions, there is one vibration that Graham cannot silence – his own heartbeat. But he’s come up with a ingenius technique to work around that as well. Graham tapes a stethoscope to his chest and places the earpieces in his ears, keenly listening to his own heartbeat. With his carving tool in hand, he waits motionless, for as long as 20 minutes, until his heart rate is at its lowest. Then, listening intently, he only makes a carving at his stillest moments – in between heartbeats. Read More »

The Alaskan wilderness is home to many natural wonders but also an unusual man-made structure that appears to have jumped right out of the pages of a Dr. Seuss book. Located over 130 kilometers away from Anchorage city, the quirky 185-ft edifice known as Goose Creek Tower looks like a bunch of houses built on top of each other.  This strange tourist attraction was built after a forest fire created a natural clearing among the trees, midway between Willow and Talkeetna. This particular spot apparently offers a beautiful view of Denali – North America’s highest mountain peak – and it’s this detail that explains, at least in part, the strange design of Goose Creek Tower. It started off as a single-storey house, but as the forest started growing back after the fire, owner Phil Weidner began adding additional floors just so he could enjoy the picturesque view from the windows, over the canopy. The completed structure is so reminiscent of the illustrated Dr. Seuss stories by Theodore LeSieg, that locals fondly refer to it as the ‘Dr. Seuss House’. Read More »

Problems in identifying identical twins makes for excellent comedy, but in real life it can be quite frustrating, especially if you have two pairs of identical twins married to each other. That’s why these newlywed twins from China have decided to get plastic surgery in a bid to make themselves less identical and thus avoid the undesirable complications that could arise from failing to tell each other apart. Zhao Xin and his twin brother Zhao Xun, from Yuncheng in China’s Shanxi Province, have been confounding relatives and friends ever since they started dating twin sisters Yun Fei and Yun Yang from a neighboring village. Although they went to the same high school in Shanxi, they only got together last year after being introduced by a matchmaker. A month later, the four of them were engaged. Both pairs of identical twins look so alike that it’s apparently impossible to tell them apart, even by their voices.  On their wedding day, their guests and even their own parents had a tough time identifying them, checking and double checking that they weren’t marrying the wrong partners. Read More »

Giving Mary Poppins’s magic umbrella some serious competition is the all new high-tech ‘Oombrella’ – not only can it predict the weather, it’s also impossible to lose. The smart umbrella syncs with a smartphone app, sending users updates about weather conditions 30 minutes in advance, and reminders if they happen to leave the device behind. And here’s the added bonus – it won’t ever flip inside-out.

Designed by French company Wezzoo, the rainbow-colored Oombrella comes in two versions – classic and modern. The classic is 3.1-ft long with a curved handle, while the modern version is 0.8-ft long with a straight handle. The company describes the device as a ‘portable weather station’, made of a reflective surface with built in sensors that record real-time data such as light, humidity, pressure, and temperature. The Oombrella collects and processes this data as well as information from a social media community before sending out alerts about when it’s going to start raining.

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Former gambler and businessman M.C. Davis placed the biggest bet of his life about 20 years ago when he decided to spend a considerable chunk of his fortune on nature. Over the past two decades, he spent $90 million purchasing thousands of acres of land all over Florida. And the risk paid off – he managed to revive forests and swamps across the state, saving several wildlife species in the process. Although he tried to do his conservation work without attracting too much attention, the positive effects of Davis’ efforts could not go unnoticed forever. Last year, he was featured in Smithsonian Magazine and on the National Public Radio website, and his story went viral. Having grown up in a cramped trailer on a dirt road in the Florida Panhandle, Davis set out to make a fortune at a very young age, becoming a self-proclaimed gambler and hustler. He made hundreds of millions of dollars, but it took a simple traffic jam to bring about the epiphanic moment that would change the course of his life forever. “It’s drizzling rain, and I was just sort of frantic with exasperation,” he told NPR. “Stuck in traffic, and I looked up, and I saw on the marquee of the high school, ‘Black Bear Presentation’. Intrigued, he decided to pull over and attend the event. At the time, Davis didn’t even know that Florida had black bears, but the lecture made by two women of the Defenders of Wildlife piqued his interest – the very next day he donated enough money to keep the Defenders campaign alive for two years. He also began to read more books written by environmentalists, and kept in touch with Laurice MacDonald, one of the Defenders that had oipened his eyes. “He had the steepest learning curve,” MacDonald later said. “We would begin with little debates. They were a little testy but fascinating.”   Read More »

Velikaya Kopanya village is better known as Ukraine’s ‘Land of the Twins’ because of its record-breaking 61 pairs of twins among the less than 4,000 inhabitants. The village is soon expected to be included in the Guinness Book of World Records, having already made its way into Ukraine’s record book. According to locals, the number of twins born in the village is higher than anywhere else in the country. “The ultimate baby boom came in the year 2004,” said local councillor Maryana Savka. “But ever since then we are having at least between two and three sets of twins born every year.” Maria Chorba, the town’s oldest twin with three pairs of twins among her own grandchildren, said the town’s twin-phenomenon is not a recent one. “When we were growing up we had some friends who were twins, so we are definitely not the first ones here,” she said, recalling her twin sister Anna who died in 2007. “No one could tell us apart. Later Anna moved to live far away and we met only once a year. But if she would get sick I would know that straight away. And then I felt that something really bad had happened to her – at the very moment she died.” Read More »

Tokyo is now home to the world’s first hedgehog cafe, the latest in a long list of animal-themed establishments in the city. Located in the Roppongi entertainment district, the cafe is named ‘Harry’ – a play on the Japanese word for hedgehog. Hedgehogs aren’t native to Japan, but they’ve long since been sold as pets in the nation that’s crazy for all things cute. At Harry, 1,000 yen ($9) can buy animal lovers an hour in the company of the prickly yet adorable creatures. The cafe is home to 20 to 30 friendly hedgehogs of different breeds that you can spend time with and even take home. A chalk-written blackboard lists all the available hedgehog breeds available for purchase and their prices by sex. So if customers find it hard to part with the adorable rodents once their hour is up, they have the option to give them a forever home. Read More »

When they hear about someone living out of their car, most people assume they’re either homeless or having domestic problems. But 26-year-old Edward Mjelde doesn’t have financial problems nor is he married. The high-earning regional sales manager has been living out of his 2014 Ford Escape for the past 12 months simply because he enjoys the minimalist lifestyle. Edward used to live in a conventional home up until two years ago, when he wento on a 5,000-mile backpacking adventure across America. He loved the new-found freedom so much that he decided to keep on living on the open road. So he moved out of his old home and into his SUV. He kept his new minimalist lifestyle a secret for the past year, but recently took to Reddit to post some photos of his humble abode and show other like-minded people that living out of a car was not only doable, but quite practical as well. Read More »