The Resistencia Sport Club, a small football club in Paraguay’s second division, is the first in the world to make a tree growing in the stands of its stadium an official supporter, even offering it a membership card and complimentary jersey.

Resistencia’s evergreen supporter is as old as the club, so both the team and its human supporters consider it part of their history. It was around back when the stadium was a mere football field in the middle of a wasteland, so 20-years ago, when the club decided to built concrete stands for its fans, it never even considered the possibility of cutting down their oldest supporters. Instead, they asked the architects and engineers in charge of the project to come up with a solution that would allow it to thrive. So they built the stands around it, allowing human fans to watch home games in its shade. A couple of years ago, when Resistencia celebrated its 100th anniversary, management decided to honor the tree by making it an official member of the club, complete with its own member card and jersey.

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Solothurn is a picturesque town in the north-west of Switzerland known primarily for its special affinity for the number 11. It seems like everything in this place was designed around this magical number, from the fact that there are precisely 11 churches and chapels, as well as eleven historical fountains, eleven museums and eleven towers in Solothurn, to the rather bizarre clock in the town square that features an 11-hour dial and the number 12 missing.

Although virtually everyone in Solothurn knows about the town’s obsession with the number 11, its origin is shrouded in mystery. Some say it was inspired by a folk legend about magical elves coming down from the nearby Weissenstein mountain to hearten the people of Solothurn, who worked hard but never prospered. The grateful inhabitants started incorporating the number 11, or ‘elf’ in German, as a tribute for the creatures’ aid. But there are also those who claim that the number 11 has biblical connotations, deeming it holy and prophetic. One thing’s for sure, though, Solothurn’s obsession with this number can be traced back centuries.

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A small batch honey producer in Oita Prefecture, Japan, recently sparked controversy online after it was reported that it sells a product aptly called Honey with Hornets, which actually contain a giant dead hornet suspended in the sweet liquid.

While the decision to put a dead hornet inside a jar of honey can definitely be called questionable, even more so is the fact that the giant Japanese hornets are actually placed inside the jar while still alive and left to drown in the viscous liquid. According to an article on SoraNews24, the hornets, which are known natural enemies of bees, are captured alive by beekeepers while trying to encroach on the bees’ territory to be used as macabre decorations for the company’s jars of honey.

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Looking at the edible masterpieces of culinary artist and Instagram sensation mikyoui00, it’s hard to believe his journey into the world of food art began as a way of getting his son interested in cooking.

mikyoui00 never had any professional art or design training, but he was always passionate about food preparation and plating, and wanted to instill that same kind of love in his son. But getting a young boy interested in cooking isn’t the easiest thing in the world, and his father quickly realized he needed to think outside the box to make it happen. In the summer of 2017, he started working with fish and teaching his son the art of slicing and plating sashimi by creating all kinds of cool edible art. It was a fun activity that allowed them to bond over something he loved, and the more time he spent coming up with new sashimi designs, the better he got at it.

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Sanom Chantaraphirom, a 58-year-old man from Thailand who had become famous for wearing an eye-catching “Buddha armor” made up of dozens of blessed Buddha amulets to enhance his luck, recently died in a tragic car accident after leaving his house without his protective garment.

Chantaraphirom, a dedicated Buddhist, first made news headlines in Thailand two years ago, when a video of him wearing one of his several Buddha armors on the streets of his native Sawaeng Ha district, in Ang Thong Province, went viral. Reporters soon got in touch with him and learned that the man, who earned a living making errands with his rickshaw, had accumulated hundreds of blessed Buddha amulets from various temples around the country and had fashioned them into a chain mail-like armor complete with a helmet. Buddha amulets are considered tools to increase the wearer’s luck in different aspects of life, and virtually every Buddhist in Thailand owns at least one, but Sanom Chantaraphirom wore dozens of them over his clothing as a sign of his dedication to Buddhism.

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The Russian city of Krasknoyask recently hosted the country’s first ever amateur face-slapping championship, which had participants slap each other across the face until one of them got knocked out.

The controversial event was held during the Siberian Power Show, a popular sports show held in Krasnoyarsk on March 16 and 17. A similar competition took place last year, in Moscow, but it featured only professional athletes competing for the unofficial title of most heavy-handed face slapper. This time, organizers decided to give amateurs the chance to prove themselves, so anyone willing to engage in some manly face slapping was invited to sign up. Most of the participants were just random guys who had come to attend the power show and decided to try something new. It’s fair to say that some of them didn’t know the world of pain they would be experiencing at the hands of a mountain of a man…

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He Yuhong, a 27-year-old beauty blogger from China, has become an online sensation thanks to her amazing ability to transform herself into a doppelganger of celebrities and iconic characters, using makeup.

He, who posts photos and videos of her work on various social networks under the pseudonym Yuyamika, shot to fame last year, when she used her makeup skills to turn herself into a real-life version of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. The video of her remarkable transformation got tens of millions of views on China’s Weibo platform alone, and quickly went viral on Western social networks as well. Since then, Yuhong has been entertaining her growing fan base with more makeup magic, turning herself into doppelgangers of celebrities like Johnny Depp and Taylor Swift, as well as Albert Einstein or the Girl with a Pearl Earring.

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A Chinese woman obsessed with unconventional health treatments can consider herself lucky to be alive after she injected the juice of 20 types of fruit directly into her bloodstream.

The 51-year-old woman, surnamed Zeng, had apparently become obsessed with leading a healthy lifestyle to the point where she didn’t shy away from trying things most people wouldn’t even consider. On February 22, Zeng made juice from 20 different fruits, but instead of drinking it, she decided to injected into her vein, using a drip. It wasn’t long before she started experiencing worrying symptoms, like itchiness and rising body temperature, but she simply ignored them. Luckily, the woman’s husband noticed her discomfort and as soon as he learned about the bizarre fruit juice infusion, he took her to the hospital.

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Fathers sometimes like to say that they can do anything mothers can, except give birth and breastfeed. Well, thanks to a new device developed by Japanese company Dentsu, breastfeeding babies may not be a problem for fathers in the near future.

Recently unveiled at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, the Father’s Nursing Assistant is an intriguing, if somewhat bizarre, gadget that aims to allow fathers to help out with stressful tasks usually reserved for mothers. Data shows that much of the parental stress and difficulties associated with taking care of a baby are related to feeding and sleeping, responsibilities in which fathers’ participation tends to be low. In order to get fathers more involved and relieve some of the burden off mothers, Japanese corporation Dentsu has created a wearable milk or formula tank shaped as a pair of female breasts, which allows men to breastfeed children.

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Whenever 19-year-old Optimosprayn Ismael Meza Barbosa tells people his name, they think he is making fun of them. That’s because his name is the phonetic version of how some people pronounce “Optimus Prime” in Spanish. It was given to him by his father, an avid fan of the Transformers animated series.

The Paraguayan teen recently got his five minutes of online fame after a photo of his ID card went viral on social media. A lot of people thought it was digitally altered to attract attention, but Optimosprayn recently sat down with Paraguayan newspaper Cronica to confirm that he was indeed the Latino namesake of Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots.

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The village of Mafi Dove, in southern Ghana, is home to around 5,000 people, almost none of whom were born here. Because of an archaic belief that childbirth in the village brings offense to the gods, expectant mothers are rushed to neighboring communities to deliver their babies there.

Like many other Ghanaian communities, Mafi Dove has a host of customs and traditions that have been passed down since times immemorial. But apart from minor taboos that don’t really impact the lives of its inhabitants, this village continues to enforce three major rules that make it unique in the world. One of the first things you notice when visiting Mafi Dove is the complete absence of animals. Apart from the wild birds flying overhead, there’s virtually no bird or mammal to be found here. Rearing animals in Mafi Dove has been forbidden for as long as anyone can remember, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon. Interestingly, bringing animals into the village and slaughtering them on the same day is permitted, but people aren’t allowed to rear them here.

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A football match between two teams from Poland’s third division received a lot of international attention last week, not for the quality of the football displayed by the players, but for the appalling conditions in which fans of the visiting team had to watch the game. Shocking photos show a group of supporters crammed in a large metal cage that some media outlets described as a human zoo.

Last week, around 100 supporters of Hutnik Krakow accompanied their team for an away game against Spartakus Daleszyce, in the Polish third football division, and found themselves locked in a large metal cage for the entire 90-minute game. According to Polish rules, supporters of the away team must be kept separated from fans of the team hosting the game, but they usually end up in an isolated sector of the stadium, or in a seating area divided by a high fence, to avoid violent clashes. However, Spartakus Daleszyce, is one of several Polish teams that have opted to keep away fans in metal cages. The controversial structure has actually been around for years, but it only recently attracted attention after photos posted on a popular Polish football fan website went viral online.

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A Chinese university professor has sparked a heated online debate after giving his students an unusual assignment that required them to add 1,667 friend on WeChat, China’s most popular social network, in order to get an A+.

The controversial assignment required students taking the Online and New Media course at the Henan University of Economics and Law to add at least 1,001 new friends on WeChat in order to earn a score of 60 out of 100. The more friends they would add above that threshold would increase their score, with those getting at least 1,667 new friends guaranteeing themselves an A+. Although some of the students – especially the most introverted ones – complained that the task was too difficult, faculty at the university defended their colleague, explaining that the assignment prepares the youths for real life.

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A North Carolina thrift shop recently sold a $1,000 hand-carved furniture set that came with a warning of haunting activity reported by its previous owners.

We’ve all heard stories about allegedly haunted furniture or memorabilia before, but it’s not everyday that we see these claims made on the price tags of stores selling them. However, the staff at Habitat for Humanity, a thrift shop in Salisbury, North Carolina, felt that the haunting activity reported by the previous owners of a queen canopy bed-frame and highboy chest of drawers was something they needed to disclose to potential buyers. Believe it or not, the eerie paranormal activity warning did nothing to dissuade people, if anything, it got more of them interested in the set.

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The small village of Dinoša, in Montenegro, is home to an old mulberry tree that turns into a water fountain every time it rains heavily.

As we all know, water doesn’t normally gush out of living trees, but at least in this case the phenomenon has a perfectly reasonable explanation. You see, the meadow that the mulberry tree grows in has many underground springs which flood during heavy rainfalls, and the additional pressure pumps the water up through the hollow trunk of the tree and out through a hole a few feet above the ground.

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