A young copywriter for an advertising agency in New Zealand recently made international headlines for bringing a professional clown as a support person to a company meeting in which he he expected to be fired.

Employers in New Zealand are legally required to offer employees the chance to bring a “support person” to so called pink slip meetings, to help them cope with being laid off. But while most people opt to bring a close friend or a family member, one young copywriter decided to bring a professional clown. Upon receiving an email from management regarding a discussion of his role in the company, and the mention of a support person, Josh Thompson expected the worse, so he prepared for it. Only instead of asking a someone close to accompany him, Thompson spent $200 to hire a professional clown. It turned out to be one of the most awkward pink slip meetings in history.

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We’ve featured several heartbreaking stories of faithful canines waiting for their owners in the same spot for years at a time, never to see them again, but this is one of those rare stories with a happy end. After spending four years waiting for his human masters, a lost dog in Thailand was finally reunited with them thanks to social media.

The story of Leo, a stray dog who has spent the last four years of his life waiting at an intersection in the Thai city of Khon Kaen, went viral at the beginning of this month, after a Facebook user uploaded photos of the canine, sharing that he had seen the animal sitting in the same spot every day, as if waiting for someone. They originally thought the dog had been abandoned, but then realized that he looked well-fed, so he asked around about him. It turned out that the dog had indeed been spending most of his time around that intersection, but a woman had been coming around regularly to bring him food and water. The plot thickened…

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A California woman who dreamed about swallowing her engagement ring during an apparent robbery woke up to find that the said ring was missing from her finger in real life as well.

Last Tuesday night, Jenna Evans dreamed that she was on a high-speed train with her fiancé, when some “bad guys” appeared. In her dream, the fiancé told her that the only one way to make sure she didn’t lose the 2.4 carat diamond engagement ring she had waited so long for – swallow it. She quickly popped it in her mouth and washed it down with a sip of water. Then she woke up, relieved that it had only been a vivid dream. But then she looked at her left hand and noticed that her ring was gone in real life too…

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We’re no strangers to weird stories here on OC, but this one’s a bit too weird even for us. A French burglar intentionally left traces of DNA all over the crime scene just so he would end up in prison and watch encrypted TV channel Canal+ for free.

A monthly subscription to French premium television channel Canal+ costs around 10 euros ($11), but inmates in French prisons can apparently watch it for free, which was apparently a good enough reason for an ex-con to commit a crime and get himself caught. Over the course of the summer, the unnamed 25-year-old man committed a series of burglaries in the Toulouse suburb of Colomiers, but there was something about his modus operandi that left investigators scratching their heads. He left traces of saliva over the crime scenes, as if he wanted his DNA to be identified.

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For the past three months, Riley Horner, a teenage girl from Illinois, has been waking up every morning thinking it’s June 11. To make matters worse, her memory resets every couple of hours, so she can’t even remember things she did or people she met that very day.

Riley’s troubles began after she got accidentally kicked in the head by a teenager who was crowd-surfing during a dance at the FFA State Convention. She was taken to the hospital, but doctors there only diagnosed her with a concussion and sent her home with crutches. Tests showed no brain bleed, tumor, or anything else out of the ordinary, but Riley’s family soon noticed that there was something wrong with her. It was like her brain was suck in the past and refused to make any new memories. But apart from her memory constantly resetting, Riley has also experienced dozens of seizures in the last three months.

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Orthodox priests in Russia’s Tver Oblast region, literally reached new heights in their quest to save their congregations from addictive sins like drinking and fornicating. They got in an airplane and doused the whole city of Tver in holy water, in order to cleanse it.

Metropolitan Savva of Tver and Kashinsky, Father Alexander Goryachev and two other members of the Russian Orthodox Church performed the bizarre aerial blessing last Wednesday, in honor of All-Russian Sobriety Day. They boarded a small plane and brought with them 70 liters of holy water and two icons – the “Inexhaustible Chalice,” said to be able to cure people of alcohol and drug addiction, and one of John the Baptist. A married a couple that claimed the husband had been miraculously cured of alcohol addiction in the past was also present aboard the airplane.

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Having armed men wearing combat masks manhandling you and simulating a drug bust hardly sounds like the scenario of a perfect marriage proposals, but it’s apparently all the rage in Russia.

Imagine driving a car, minding your own business, when all of a sudden a black van cuts you off and slams the breaks forcing you to do the same in a split second. That would be scary enough, but it gets worse. The van door slides open and masked men carrying assault rifles jump out and violently pull you out of the vehicle, while they go through your personal belongings seemingly searching for something. And then they find it – a small plastic bag full of white powder that they claim is illegal drugs. You’ve never seen it before, but they claim otherwise and you feel your legs shaking under you as you try to grasp the implications of the situation. Then, all of a sudden, one of the threatening men drops down to one knee, pops open a small case and says “Marry me!”

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A 71-year-old man in the UK reportedly spent almost 30,000 pounds ($37,000) fighting a 100-pound speeding fine over several years, but in the end sill lost the case.

Retired engineer Richard Keedwell’s troubles began in November of 2016, when during a day trip to Worcester, he was clocked by police doing 35mph in a 30mph zone. Only he didn’t agree, and recalls having his day ruined by the notice of intended prosecution (NIP) he got in the mail a few days later. He was convinced he couldn’t have been speeding, so he put down “no case to answer” on the document where he was supposed to write how he pleaded to the charges. Furthermore, he hired a video and electronics expert to prove that there must have been something wrong with the police speed camera. Little did he know this was the beginning of a long and expensive legal battle.

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A Chinese woman recently had to have her jaw set back in place by a doctor after she dislocated it by laughing too loudly. I guess laughter really wasn’t the best medicine for her, quite the contrary.

The bizarre incident took place on September 1st, on a high-speed train heading to Guangzhou South Railway Station. Doctor Luo Wensheng, who had boarded the train in Kunming, the capital of south-western Yunnan Province, was commuting to Liwan Hospital – part of Guangzhou Medical University – when he heard an urgent appeal for medical assistance being broadcast through the carriage speakers. He rushed to help and found a female passenger who had her mouth open and was drooling profusely, which indicated that she had suffered a stroke, but he blood pressure was normal. It was only after speaking with eye-witnesses that he learned that the woman had become unable to close her mouth due to laughter.

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Viewers of an exhibition match between two major football clubs last Sunday were outraged to see what looked like a child puffing away on a cigarette in the stands. However, the smoker turned out to be a lot older than he appeared.

During a televised exhibition match between Bursaspor and Fenerbahce, two of Turkey’s biggest football clubs, viewers were treated to some disturbing-looking scenes. As the reporter interviewed someone on the pitch while the players were warming up, the cameras jumped to a couple of young Bursa fans in the stands, one of whom was eagerly puffing on a tobacco cigarettes. Everyone was outraged, and the short clip spread on social media like wildfire.

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A soon-to-be father in China recently made international news headlines after using 2,000 packets of expired instant noodles to build a playhouse for his unborn son.

Photos of the unusual playhouse went viral online quickly after being posted on social media by the builder, a certain Mr. Zhang, from Huadian county, in Northeast China’s Jilin province. He was swiftly tracked down by Chinese reporters and revealed that he had spent four days building the edible structure out of thousands of of out-of-date noodle packets fixed together with glue.

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A single mother in China was recently arrested after a police investigation revealed that she had sold her twin newborns for 65,000 yuan ($9,100) to settle her mounting debts and buy herself a new phone.

According to Chinese newspaper Ningbo Evening News, the woman, who is in her 20s, resorted to selling her newborn twin sons in September of last year, because she was “penniless and heavily in debt”. Surnamed Ma, the heartless mother added that her parents had been furious about her pre-marital pregnancy and refused to help her raise the babies, while the father, known only as Wu, made it clear that he didn’t want anything to do with his children.

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In a story that seems taken out of a Hollywood movie, an American family stranded at the top of a hidden waterfall in California, with no way to safely descend, managed to call for help by throwing a message in a bottle down into the waterfall.

Curtis Whitson, his girlfriend, Krystal Ramirez, and their 13-year-old son, Hunter, were nearing the end of a four-day floating and camping trip when they realized they had become stranded on an isolated patch of land, atop a waterfall on the Arroyo Seco seasonal river, in California. Whitson had embarked on the same trip seven years prior, but recalled a thick rope attached to the slippery wall that had allowed him to safely rappel down and continue his journey. That rope was gone now and the rope he had with him was too flimsy to guarantee a safe descent. They were stuck there, and he needed to come up with a plan to call in a rescue party.

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When it comes to buying a fashionable handbag, there’s one figure most young Chinese women turn to for advice – Mr. Bags. With millions on followers on China’s most popular social networks and many of the world’s biggest bag brands fighting to gain his favor, this 27-year-old really has the Chinese bag game on lock.

As a student of the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, Tao Liang (Mr. Bags’ real name) spent most of his free time shopping on Rodeo Drive. While most of his fellow Asian colleagues developed hobbies like playing basketball or video games, he couldn’t get enough of luxury bags. He went on shopping sprees with friends, educated himself on bag culture, followed the biggest trends in fashion and posted his opinions on the hottest bags on various social media. The son of financiers, Mr’ Bags never imagined his passion for bags would one day catapult him to the top of China’s fashion influencers, but that’s exactly what happened.

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Portuguese street artist Vile has a gift that some would consider similar to a superpower – he can make concrete walls look transparent to the naked eye, using only cans of graffiti paint.

Rodrigo Miguel Sepulveda Nunes, aka Vile, started doing graffiti when he was 14 years old. In college he studied Cartoon and Animation Film and Drawing and Illustration, and in 2007 he started working as an independent artist. Vile has several remarkable paintings and portraits under his name, but graffiti always remained his biggest passion, and today he is better known as a street artist. Looking at some of his most impressive works, it’s easy to see why Vile is considered one of the world’s most talented graffiti artists.

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