Matt Nadin, a father of three from Barnsley, in the UK, wanted his 40th birthday to be special, so he celebrated it by eating a McDonald’s Big Mac menu that he had buried in his friend’s backyard a year before.

Just before his 39th birthday, Nadin came up with the “McDonald’s 365” challenge, which basically involved buying a Big Mac menu – burger, fries and a milkshake – put it in a plastic container and bury it for a year in his friend Andy Thompson’s garden. He had intended to dig it out on his 40th birthday, in November of last year, as a special way of celebrating, but only found time to retrieve the container earlier this month. The food didn’t look great, and tasted even worse, but Matt stuck to his guns and got everything down despite a lot of burping and gagging.

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A 45-year-old Belgian man claims that he has eaten only potato fries and a fricadelle – Dutch hot dog – for dinner every day ever since he was 13.

Rudy Gybels, a resident of Schaffen in Belgium’s Flemish Brabant province, has had the same food for dinner every evening since he was a teenager. It all started when he was 13, when his mother, desperate to get him to eat more fruits and vegetables, came up with a compromise solution. Rudy would eat healthy food at lunch, and he was free to enjoy his favorite food – potato fries – for dinner. And he has been sticking to that deal ever since, eating only fries for dinner every evening for the last 32 years.

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For the last two decades, Indian wildlife photographer and conservationist Aditya Singh and his wife have been buying land adjacent the famous Ranthambore Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan, and simply letting the forest grow back as a refuge for big cats and other wildlife.

In 1998, Aditya Singh left his comfortable job with Indian civil services in Delhi and moved to a remote part of Rajasthan, in the vicinity of the Ranthambore Tiger Reserve, to be closer to nature. He took up photography and together with his wife, artist Poonam Singh, opened a tourist resort to earn a living. They had been able to buy a piece of land, because farmers were eager to sell due to the danger of tigers from the nearby reserve venturing onto their properties. Over the year, the couple bought up more land, but instead of planting crops, they just let nature slowly reclaim it. Over the last 20 years, their 35 acres of land has transformed into a green forest patch where lions from the tiger reserve as well as wild boars and other animals come all year round.

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Photos of an adorable “fox dog” have been doing the rounds on the internet over the past week, leaving people wondering whether the animal is a dog, a fox, or a mix between the two.

The adorable Mya first drew the internet’s attention back in 2016, when her Instagram account went viral and she made appearances in some of the world’s most popular publications. But fast forward four years, and most most people still don’t know what animal they are looking at. The truth is that Mya’s blue eyes and vixen-like appearance can be a bit confusing, but she is actually a Pomsky, which is apparently what you call a Pomeranian-Husky mix.

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Maverick Francisco Oyao, a student taking up Bachelor of Culture and Arts Education at Western Mindanao State University in the Philippines, recently made news headlines around the world after surprising his sister with a one-of-a-kind prom dress that he made by hand.

It all started earlier this month, when the Culture and Arts Education student from Zamboanga City learned that his sister, Lu Asey Keanna Oyao, wanted to attend the upcoming Junior and Senior Prom in February. Unfortunately, renting a dress suitable for such an event was very expensive, and their parents simply couldn’t afford it. Keanna was worried that she didn’t have enough money to afford a proper prom dress, but since she was in her final year of junior high-school, she still insisted on going. Determined to make his sister’s prom a memorable one, Maverick decided to make her a unique princess dress himself.

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As children, we learn that birds build their nests out of twigs and dry grass, but the truth is that bird nest architecture varies greatly, as demonstrated by the tiny Tailor Bird, which uses as its beak as a needle to stitch a protective nest out of leaves.

Orthotomus sutorius, or the Common Tailor Bird, is a small, warbler-like songbird that lives in tropical Asia, but it’s not its singing that’s intriguing, it’s the bird’s nest building skills. It stitches one or two solid tree leaves together to create a cup that provides both a comfortable shelter and camouflage from predators. And when I say stitches, that is exactly what I mean. The female tailor bird uses its sharp beak as a needle to first pierce the leaves, then takes cobwebs or plant fibers and guides it through the holes as thread, until the pouch is nice and secure. It’s unclear how the tailor birds picked up this talent for sewing but it’s clear that it is passed on genetically.

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In the late 1990’s, when a Texas farmer decided to clear up some new grazing land for his cattle by leaving up just enough trees to spell his name in giant letters, he probably never imagined that his signature would one day be used by NASA to evaluate the quality of their satellite cameras.

Jimmie Luecke was a young Texas state trooper who left the highway patrol in 1980 to try his luck in the oil business. He was lucky enough to do so during the chalk oil boom, became a millionaire, and invested most of his profits in land outside the town of Smithville. He started raising cattle on it, and by the late 1990’s his heard had gotten so large that he needed to clear up some more of his land of trees for grazing. Only he didn’t just settle for bulldozing all the trees, he decided to write his name in the process, thus creating the world’s largest signature.

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Turtles may be cute, but they are also slow and clumsy, which doesn’t really help them when they are trying to cross train tracks. Luckily, for the turtles in Japan’s Hyōgo Prefecture, railway operators and a local aquarium teamed up to find a solution.

Between 2002 and 2014, disruptions of train operation caused by turtles were reported 13 times, with many more probably going unreported. That is why, in 2015, West Japan Railway Co. and Suma Aqualife Park in Kobe joint forces to prevent tragic turtle deaths on the tracks and unnecessary train delay. After running a series of tests and experiments, they came up with a U-shaped ditch that collects the turtles, preventing them from getting stuck between the metal tracks and getting squashed to death.

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A Kansas-based businessman tired of online dating has announced that he will pay $25,000 to whomever manages to find him a suitable girlfriend.

47-year-old Jeff Gebhart doesn’t need someone to complete him, but he would like to meet someone to share his amazing life with, and he is willing to pay a small fortune to make that happen. The eligible bachelor claims that he has grown tired of traditional dating and hates online dating services, so he decided to try something special. Last week, he launched the website “Date Jeff G.” and announced that he would gladly pay $25,000 to the person who can find him a girlfriend that matches his criteria.

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The coronavirus has the whole world on edge, but in China, where the epidemic originated, people are taking every precaution to avoid catching the virus, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.

A Chinese woman identified only as Ms. He went viral recently after being video-recorded while visiting a hospital in Luzhou, China’s south-western Sichuan Province, in a rather unusual getup – a giant inflatable giraffe costume. In the short clip posted by Chinese video platform Pear Video, the woman can be seen walking around in the awkward brown plastic costume with only a small window of clear plastic film to see through.

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A 70-year-old Japanese man who describes himself as a professional “fundoshi”, or “poop soil master” has been moving bowels outdoors for almost half a centuries, and encouraging others to follow his example.

Masana Izawa, a published mushroom and moss photographer, is famous for avoiding indoor toilets as much as he can. In fact, he prides himself with the fact that he has only pooped indoor 14 times in the last 20 years, and then only because he had no other choice. Whether he is at his home in Japan’s Ibaraki Prefecture, in an urban environment or in the middle of nature, Izawa always does his number two outdoors. He believes that relieving ourselves in the soil rather than in dead plumbing is our responsibility as humans, and he has taken it upon himself to convince people that their poop isn’t worthless at all.

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A Utah man is facing criminal charges after admitting to releasing rodents in at least three different hotels in order to then complain about the pesky critters, and get compensated with a free room.

According to police, Ryan Sentelle State, 37, would check into hotels and sneak rodents like mice and hamsters as well. Once in the room, he would release the rodents and then call staff and complain about the terrible hygiene. He would point out the droppings and in some cases the rodents themselves, and ask to be exempt from paying for the accommodation. He obviously got away with this tactic a few times, as he is accused of scamming at least three hotels, although authorities believe he has scammed several more hotels in the area.

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Joleen Diaz, a 43-year-old woman from California has been dubbed “the world’s hottest mom” on social media, with millions commending her for her incredibly youthful looks, which often get her and her 19-year-old daughter confused for siblings.

Ab elementary school teacher by profession, Joleen says that she doesn’t mind getting mistaken for her daughter’s sibling, and neither does she. She had Meilani when she was very young, so it’s not entirely possible to believe that they could be sisters; plus, while growing up Meilani would always hear people tell Joleen they thought her mother was her sister, so she is used to it. Still, the 43-year-old looks pretty incredible for her age, which she attributes to her religious skin care.

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A Louisiana man is facing up to 70 years in prison for burning down three churches last year in a bizarre attempt to build up his reputation as a black metal musician.

22-year-old Holden Matthews has admitted to burning down three churches in  St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, to “promote himself” among fans of black metal, a subgenre of heavy metal. The son of a sheriff deputy, Mathews reportedly wanted to mimic the church burnings carried out in the 1990s by Norwegian black metal musicians as a crusade against Christianity. Matthews single-handedly set fire to three churches, using gasoline and oily shop rags in the middle of the night, in a span of 10 days.

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The coronavirus wreaking havoc in China right now has really turned things upside down for a lot of people, but not even it can come between a marathon runner and their training.

Like many of his countrymen, Pan Shancu, an amateur marathon runner from Hangzhou, in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, is trapped in his apartment because of the coronavirus epidemic, but he didn’t let that small detail stop him from keeping in shape for his next race, whenever it may be. He has been using the small space in his apartment as a miniature track, jogging around two tables and the short length of a small hallway, and recently posted on social media that he had covered a distance of 50 kilometers (31 miles).

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