The ripe berries of the genipa tree, called genipapo, have long been used throughout Central and South America to make syrups and liquors, but for a few years now unripe genipapo berries have become highly sought after for their ability to turn foods blue.

The coloring properties of unripe genipapo berries have been documented since the colonization of South America, when Europeans reported its use by local communities like the Tupinambás and the Pataxós as a temporary tattoo dye, but it wasn’t until 2014 that people learned about its potential to turn food blue as well. It was then that professor and biologist Valdely Kinupp published his book, Unconventional Food Plants in Brazil, where he detailed a process for extracting an edible blue pigment from genipapo berries. Natural blue pigments are very rare in the food industry, so Kinupp’s discovery caused quite a stir which eventually turned into a blue food craze.

Read More »

A mysterious prankster who has been dressing up as Pennywise the evil clown from the popular “It” films and trying to scare passers-by has been getting a lot of attention in Ukraine, including from prosecutors who think the people behind the stunt deserve to be locked up.

The real-life Pennywise was first spotted on the streets of Mukachevo, in Western Ukraine, on December 9th, when local media published photos of a scary looking clown walking through the streets and hiding behind a bridge, waiting to pop in front of unsuspecting passers-by. Then, a few days later, a video shot at a gas station shows the mysterious clown pretending to pour gas over people’s cars after they go inside to pay. Some run for the hills abandoning their vehicles, while other just get behind the wheel and drive away. In another video, the clown opts for the classic popping-out-of-a-trash-can stunt, which doesn’t work quite as well as intended, but is apparently enough to get him in trouble with local authorities.

Read More »

Moscow-based artist Alena Litvin has a very special gift – she can recreate a detailed photographic portraits using only colored pencils and mountains of talent. The results are often so impressive that you can barely tell the drawing apart from the photo.

Looking at her amazing drawings, it’s very hard to believe that Alena is a self-taught artist who has only been exercising her craft for the last eight years. From portraits of celebrities like Scarlett Johansson or Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, to regular people who commission her to draw portraits of their loved ones, there’s nothing the young Russian artist can’t pull off. She can take up to 10 days to finish a portrait, which may sound like a long time, but just look at the level of detail in some her artworks…

Read More »

Following the tragic death of their young daughter, a California family has asked members of their church, the Bethel Church in Redding, California, to help them attempt a miraculous resurrection through prayer, singing and praise.

Early on Friday, 2-year-old Olive Alayne Heiligenthal stopped breathing in her sleep, and despite the best efforts of paramedics, who arrived on the scene after the girl’s parents called 911, she could not be resuscitated. Her body was taken to the Shasta County Coroner’s Office, but her parents refuse to believe that their daughters time on this Earth has truly come to an end, and have appealed to their church to attempt a resurrection through prayer. Andrew and Kalley Heiligenthal, both of whom are members of the Bethel Church in Redding, hope that through mass prayer, music and praise, Olive can be revived.

Read More »

A Western Australian man claims to have successfully cooked a whole pork roast by leaving it inside a car for about 10 hours on a very hot day. Although he conducted the experiment for fun, the man did warn people not to leave their kids or pets in their cars during the summer.

Stu Pengelly, from Perth, in Western Australia, decided to see what would happen if he left a 1,5 kg pork roast on the front seat of his old Datsun for ten hours on a hot summer day. He put the meat in at around 7 a.m, when the thermometer showed a bearable 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) inside the beat-up vehicle, but by midday, temperatures reached a scorching 81 degrees Celsius (more than 177 Fahrenheit). Pengelly monitored the temperature throughout the day, and when the ten hours were up, he took the pork, sliced it and even took a few bites to show that it was cooked.

Read More »

A 46-year-old man who reportedly spent the last three decades of his life with his face pressed against his thighs, after being diagnosed with a rare condition called ankylosing spondylitis (AS). Luckily he is now able to stand straight again after undergoing  life-changing surgery to fix his hunched back.

Li Hua was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis when he was only 18-years-old, and over the years his condition worsened to the point where he literally became a “folding man” with his face pressing against his thighs. Mr Hua’s family, who hails from the city of Yongzhou in Central China’s Hunan Province, did not have the money required for treatment, but his case became so severe that it attracted the attention of Professor Tao Huiren, head of spinal surgery and orthopaedics at Shenzhen University General Hospital. He had treated people of ankylosing spondylitis before, but had never seen such a severe case. Still, he took it upon himself to help Li stand up straight again.

Read More »

Rhea Ballos, an 11-year-old student of Salvacion Elementary School in Balasan, the Philippines, has become an overnight sensation after winning three gold medals in a provincial sports event, despite not having proper running shoes.

The young athlete managed to win the 400-meter dash, the 800-meter run and the 1,500-meter run in the girls’ categories while wearing strips of bandage over her feet instead of proper running shoes. Rhea basically ran barefoot, with the thin bandage offering minimal protection against the running track, but that didn’t stop her from beating all the other girls, all of whom were wearing running shoes, and taking home the gold at the inter-school sporting event held in Iloilo, central Philippines. Photos of the girl’s makeshift shoes, complete with a hand drawn swoosh logo, and the “Nike” brand scribbled on the side quickly went viral, wining her praises from all around the world.

Read More »

A Chinese father sparked outrage on social media after it was reported that he made his son beg at a Shanghai train station as punishment for not doing his homework.

Lat Thursday morning, Shanghai police responded to an emergency call about a young boy with a schoolbag on his knees begging for food in a local train station. When officers found the 10-year-old, he was holding a small bowl and asking people for food. Asked how he had gotten there, the child told them that his father had left him at the station about 45 minutes earlier, put the bowl in his hands and told him to beg from strangers as punishment for not doing his homework.

Read More »

A young Japanese couple have come up with an ingenious way of making their one-year-old son stop crying whenever he notices that his mother isn’t around – life-size cardboard cutouts of the woman placed strategically in the room he is playing in.

Fuki Sato recently became an overnight sensation after photos of her life-size cutouts went viral all around the world. It’s not that they’re unusually life-like – although they do seem very well done – it’s what they are used that has gotten the family so much attention online. Apparently Sato and er husband had been having trouble calming down their one-year-old boy, who would start to cry whenever he noticed that she wasn’t around. Since staying by his side 24/7 really wasn’t an option, they decided to have her be around the child all the time, while not really being there.

Read More »

A driver in West Yorkshire, UK, luckily escaped with only minor injuries after accidentally blowing up his car while in it, by trying to light a cigarette after spraying an excessive amount of air freshener.

Passers-by and residents on Fountain Street, in Halifax, were startled by a powerful explosion at around 3.30 p.m. on Saturday. Witnesses said the blast was “enormous”, damaging the windows of several businesses and shaking up entire homes. People took to Twitter to report the blast minutes after it occurred, and while some indicated that it was a car explosion, no one new why it had blown up. Few could have guessed, really, as it’s not every day that cars get blown up by excessive use of air freshener.

Read More »

If you’ve ever had to go to work with a splitting headache after an alcohol-fueled long night on the town, you can probably appreciate this company’s policy of giving employees “hangover days” off work to put themselves back together.

Let’s face, we all wish we could call in sick to work after having one, or five, too many drinks the night before, but for most of us that’s not an option. But the same cannot be said for the young people working at The Audit Lab, a digital marketing agency in the UK, where a specific hangover policy allows them to take time off to deal with the nausea, headache, and overall foul mood that hangovers come with. In a nutshell, this intriguing perk lets employees work from home if they are suffering from hangover, and as long as they don’t abuse the policy by taking time off to often, they can even schedule the days off in advance when they know they will end up wasted.

Read More »

You may think it’s the most wonderful time of the year, but I know one canine who definitely disagrees. Well, at least he looks like he does anyway, as Anuko, a five-year-old Siberian Husky has one of the grumpiest faces I’ve ever since on a canine.

Anuko first rose to internet stardom in 2015, when his owner, 22-year-old Jasmine Milton, from the UK, started posting photos of his  thoroughly unimpressed mug on social media, where they quickly went viral. He has been entertaining online audiences worldwide ever since, and has managed to build up quite a following on Facebook and Instagram. His fans are always on the lookout for new photos, but Anuko’s popularity always peaks around the Holiday Season, because his face simply doesn’t match the cheery atmosphere. We may have lost Grumpy Cat this year (RIP!), but his legacy is in good paws.

Read More »

In a time when reality TV is pretty much synonymous with the Kardashian name, launching a reality show centered around life at a secluded orthodox monastery hardly sounds like a winning idea, but one Russian TV channel is going ahead with the project anyway.

A television channel entirely owned by a religious organization affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church is currently busy filming a reality show with a spiritual twist. Named “Island”, the original program will take place at a secluded monastery located on a lake between Moscow and St. Petersburg. There, the 10 chosen participants will embrace the monastic lifestyle, taking part in activities like cleaning the monastery grounds, making candles, preparing foods and meeting with priests, as they try to find the answers to questions that have long been troubling them.

Read More »

Called ‘devil lips’, or ‘octopus lips’, a cosmetic procedure that allegedly involves inserting filler into the edge of the upper lip to give it a wavy look is getting a lot of attention on Instagram these days.

No one knows exactly when and where this unusual beauty trend originated, but some sources claim that the procedure was pioneered by Russian plastic surgeon Emelian Braude. One thing’s for sure, though, the unusual lip contouring technique has been raising eyebrows on social media, especially in Russia, where it’s supposedly the most popular. But before you pick up the phone and call your favorite plastic surgeon about the devil lips procedure, you should know that no one is yet clear if it actually exists. Some plastic surgeons say that getting this wavy contour through lip fillers alone is impossible, and attempting to to do can be very dangerous.

Read More »

A 43-year-old man was recently caught wearing an old woman’s disguise during a driving test in an attempt to help his mother get her driving license.

After Heitor Schiave’s 60-year-old mother, Maria, failed her driving test three times, the car mechanic felt that he had to do something to help her. Probably thinking that giving her some pointers wasn’t enough, the loving son decided to put on a believable old woman disguise and take the test in her place. He put on makeup and glasses, got a white haired wig, dressed in a colorful blouse and long skirt, and tried to imitate his mother’s voice as best he could. Unfortunately, his disguise wasn’t quite as believable as he had hoped.

Read More »