Cats from the Selkirk Rex breed are known to be friendly, playful and even cuddly, but you really couldn’t tell by looking at Pompous Albert. His constantly frowned face makes him look like the angriest, most unfriendly cat in the world, but it’s also the source of his incredible online popularity.

Pompous Albert became an Instagram sensation shortly after his owners set up his own account, in 2014. Just a year later, he already had over 40,000 fans who couldn’t get enough of his permanent “resting bitch face”, and today, his fan count on the popular social network stands at an impressive 228,000. He’s been featured on hundreds of major internet platforms like BuzzFeed and People Magazine, landed commercial deals with Honda, and is richer and more famous than most humans. It’s actually hard to believe Pompous Albert started out as a rejected show cat…

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Eleven schools in the Chinese province of Guizhou have introduced micro-chipped uniforms that track and monitor the students even beyond school grounds.

Developed by local company Guizhou Guanyu Technology, the smart school uniforms feature two microchips embedded into the shoulder pads which allow both the school and the children’s parents to monitor their activity at all times. A GPS system tracks their movements and an alarm informs both teachers and parents whenever a student leaves the classroom or school grounds without permission, or if he falls asleep during classes. The smart uniforms also allow students’ parents to monitor their purchases at school and set spending limits via a mobile app.

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A California family recently notified police about a strange man who had expressed his love for their high-tech doorbell in an explicit manner, after security camera footage showed him licking the doorbell button for no logical reason.

The Dungan family had just returned to their Salinas home last Saturday morning when they decided to check the security footage. They had been automatically notified about unusual activity on the premises the night before, but they had been out of time. When they first started getting notifications from the security system, David Dungan thought it was just his stepson coming home from work. One thing’s for sure, the family weren’t expecting a strange man making out with their doorbell button. And yet, that’s exactly what the footage showed.

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30-year-old Melody Hames has been clipping horses for over two decades, and it shows. Today she is credited for turning horse clipping into an art form.

Hames started clipping horses when she was 9-years-old, and really got into it by clipping her pet Connermara pony who suffered from cushings disease, a condition that caused it to have a thick woolly coat that didn’t change in the warmer season. She did traditional clipping for a long time, but having always had a passion for the arts, and getting requests for custom artistic clipping from clients, Melody Hames started unleashing her creativity on the horses coats and soon became known as “The Horse Barber”.

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A German pastor thinks he may have found a an effective way to approach the men in his community and it involves one of his greatest passions, whisky.

53-year-old Thomas Eschenbacher, a Franconian pastor from Hammelburg, in Bavaria, has long been looking for ways to approach men and talk to them about God and the Christian faith. It’s not the easiest thing to do, especially in this day in age, but Eschenbacher thinks whisky may just be the solution to his problem. A big fan of the Scottish spirit, the pastor noticed how easy it was to start a conversation about whisky during a leisurely whiskey tasting evening with friends, and decided to use the same catalyst to get through to men in matters of religion. He  recently announced that he was organizing a “whisky retreat” for men and all the 30 available spots were sold out almost instantly.

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Xiao Wang was only 17 years old when he decided to sell one of his kidneys in order to buy the iPhone 4 he couldn’t otherwise afford. After the operation Wang was told he was going to have a normal life with just one kidney, but almost eight years on, the 24-year-old is permanently disabled and dependent on dialysis.

Back in 2011, the iPhone 4 was Apple’s flagship smartphone and a status symbol at Xiao Wang’s school in Chengzhou, China. However, he came from a poor family who couldn’t afford to buy him the trendy gadget, so he decided to sell one of his healthy organs in order to get his hands on enough money to buy the coveted device. With help from a middleman, Wang got in touch with shady characters who specialized in trading organs on the black market and agreed to sell one of his kidneys for 22,000 yuan ($3,200), more than enough to buy the iPhone 4 he so badly desired. Unfortunately, this foolish decision would completely ruin his life.

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A Chinese man wound up with two large “play” triangles shaved into his new hairdo after asking his hairstylist to use a paused video on his phone as inspiration for the haircut.

It’s not uncommon for people to show their barber photos of haircuts they’d like to try, but one man in China made the mistake of using a paused video on his phone as inspiration for his hairdo, and the detail-oriented hairstylist ended up incorporating the “play” symbol into the haircut as well. To be fair, the video had been paused at just the right moment and the large triangular icon on the screen looked like it was actually part of the hairdo. What are the odds of that happening, I wonder?

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Netherlands-based startup SpaceLife Origin wants to send a pregnant woman 250 miles above the Earth to give birth to the first extraterrestrial baby in history, in the name of science.

Should our planet ever become unable to sustain human life, our species’ only hope would be to leave and settle elsewhere, be it a haven floating through space or another planet. But in order for this exodus to be a success, we first have to learn how to reproduce in space, and the founders of SpaceLife Origin want to get the ball rolling by sending a pregnant woman into space and having her give birth in zero gravity conditions. It sounds like a crazy idea, especially since humanity is a long way from becoming a spacefaring species, but SpaceLife Origin believes that our long-term survival depends on it.

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How long do you reckon you could last in solitary confinement and total darkness? How about for a prize of $100,000? One daring poker player bet his friend that he could spend at least 30 days in such extreme conditions and underwent a high stakes 30-day experiment to prove it.

It all started last fall, as a friendly discussion between friends. Australian poker player Rory Young asked his buddy and fellow poker enthusiast Rich Alati how long he thought he could last in a small, dark room without any human interaction. Alati’s answer of 30 days seemed unrealistic to Young, and from there the stage for an unusual “prop bet” was set. Prop bets are designed to test the mental toughness of card players away from the poker table, and usually have very high stakes. This one was no different, with both players depositing $100,000 of their own money in an escrow account and agreeing to pay the other side if they lost the bet. Alati stood to win $100,000 if he managed to spend a full month isolated in a small, dark room, and Young would pocket the same amount if his friend quit before the deadline. The game was on!

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If you mess up in your marriage, trying to earn back your partner’s trust with an apologetic chest tattoos full of typos is probably not the best idea. A cheating husband learned that the hard way after a photo of his chest tattoo went viral on social media.

A man named Jose L. Torres, presumed to be from Houston, Texas, allegedly wanted to prove to his wife that he was seriously committed to changing his ways, and decided that the best way to do that was to get a statement permanently inked on his chest. In the apology/confession inked nipple to nipple and all the way down to his belly button, the husband starts off by emphasizing that he is the tattoo voluntarily, and then goes on to say that he is doing it as a way to earn back his wife’s trust after causing pain and suffering in their marriage. He then confesses to being a ‘liar’, ‘cheater’ and ‘manipulator’, among other things.

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A 19-year-old volunteer firefighter from western Pennsylvania was recently charged with arson, criminal mischief and risking catastrophe after allegedly setting two houses on fire out of boredom.

Last month, police in Munhall, a community located about 8 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, arrested Ryan Laubham, a local volunteer firefighter, for allegedly setting fire to a pair of occupied homes on December 3 and 10. After interviewing witnesses and checking CCTV footage, authorities identified Laubham as the prime suspect in both cases, and he himself admitted to the crimes, saying that he had set the houses on fire because he was bored.

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Horse races are usually all about speed, but in Ban’ei, a form of horse racing unique to the Japanese island of Hokkaidō, it’s strength and stamina that matter most.

Ban’ei race horses, also known as ‘banba’, are very different from the fast thoroughbreds we associate with horse racing. They can weigh up to 1,200 kilograms and are more than twice the size of the small dosanko horses native to Hokkaidō. These horses are crossbred descendants of workhorses imported from France and Belgium at the end of the 19th century to help farmers work their land, and are now considered a Japanese breed in their own right. Depending on their size, these strong animals can pull up to a ton of weight, and that’s exactly the kind of strength required to win the world’s slowest horse race.

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A restaurant in the Italian town of Castelfranco Veneto has come up with an ingenious way to get a leg up on the competition – treating guests to a unique dish called “fried air”.

Nicola Dinato, the head chef at Feva Restaurant wanted to capture the essence of being outdoors and breathing fresh air in an dish aptly called “aria fritta” or “fried air”. The name is a tad misleading, as the crispy treats are actually made of tapioca skin that’s first baked and then deep fried. However, there’s some air involved in the cooking process as well, or at least a component of it – ozone. After the tapioca skin is baked and fried, it is infused with ozone for 10 minutes, which gives the treats a special perfume. After the special infusion, the crispy fried air is placed on a bed of cotton candy, which Dinato hopes will remind patrons of clouds.

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Luca Luce is a talented makeup artist who uses his expert skills to turn his own head into mind-boggling 3D optical illusions.

40-year-old Luce has been working as a television makeup artist in Italy for over 18 years, but only started using his body as a canvas for optical illusions in 2014. He first made a name for himself online in 2015, when photos of his hand-painted optical illusions went viral on social networks like Instagram and Facebook. He’s come a long way since then, moving from his hands to his own head, which he now “carves”, “pierces” and “distorts” using only makeup supplies and mountains of talent.

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A Peruvian football fan recently showed his love for his favorite club by getting their jersey tattooed straight on his body. The tattoo took a total of 60 hours to complete, and has been getting mixed reactions on social media.

The unnamed man’s giant tattoo has been getting a lot of attention online since last month, when Jean Pierre Salinas, a tattoo artist at the Lima 13 tattoo studio started posting videos of the making-of process on Facebook. But while some appreciated the fan’s dedication to his beloved club, Alianza Lima, others said that he went too far and even mocked the man, claiming that while the team’s colors were white and blue, his darker skin tone created a brown and blue combination instead.

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