We originally featured the amazing ballpoint pen drawings of Portuguese artist Samuel Silva back in 2021, but he has been buys over the last eight years, and I though we’d take a look at what he’s been up to.

Looking at some of Silva’s incredibly realistic artworks, it’s clear why many consider him the no. 1 ballpoint pen artist in the world. The photo-like level of detail in his masterpieces is simply uncanny, making it hard to believe that he is a self-taught artist who never went to art school. He started drawing when he was 2-years-old, and developed his own style and technique by creating “simple classroom sketches in the back of exercise books”. A lawyer by by training, Samuel Silva doesn’t create new works as often as other artists, but when he does, you better believe it’s something special.

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A Filipino father came up with an ingenious way of keeping his young boy in the house during the recently issued lockdown due to the rapidly spreading Covid-19 pandemic.

The novel coronavirus continues to spread around the world, and the Philippines is no exception. As in most other places, the Government has enforced a social distancing program that requires citizens to isolate themselves in their own homes and go out as little as possible. However, enforcing this type of lockdown isn’t as simple as you might think, especially when dealing with young children used to spending most if their time playing outside with their friends. But, to their credit, some parents are coming up with some creative solutions…

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This is the story of a middle-aged woman from the UK who decided to end her unhappy marriage to pursue a fairy-tale romance in an online video game which ultimately resulted in a real-life wedding.

Kelly Sexton was 37 when she first started playing Second Life, an online simulation game where players customize their avatars and live out their fantasies. She was suffering from fibromyalgia, ME and non-epileptic attack disorder (NEAD), and Second Life proved a welcome escape from the troubles of daily life. She was married at the time and had four children, so she never really considered the idea of falling in love with a stranger and starting a new life, albeit an online one. But that’s exactly what happened.

On New Years Eve 2016, Kelly’s avatar, Selena, was approached by a tall, dark-haired, buff male avatar who started pole dancing in front of her. She found it very funny, so she started flirting with him.

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London-based Ben Koracevic is a young, self-taught string artist determined to push the boundaries of the art form. Looking at the insanely detailed portraits he is able to create using only black string and expertly placed nails, I’d say he has already succeeded.

Using thousands of nails carefully positioned on a blank white canvas, and pieces of string with a collective length of over one kilometer, Ben Koracevic spends dozens of hours painstakingly recreating iconic portraits of celebrities, movie characters and even animals. The level of detail in his works is simply uncanny considering the materials he works with.

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40-year-old Pepper Apollo has been fascinated with snails ever since she saw some outside her workplace, 10 years ago. Today she is a self-described “crazy snail lady” with 150 shelled gastropods in her care.

When I first saw a short video documentary on Pepper Apollo and her pet snails, I though it was just a gimmick to promote her online presence. Yes, that kind of thing happens quite a lot these days, and it usually involves wannabe Instagram influencers looking to grow their following, but it’s definitely not Pepper’s case. The UK-based woman is genuinely fascinated with snails and that becomes obvious when browsing her social media profiles. Her Facebook profile picture is a doctored version of the Mona Lisa where the protagonist’s head was replaced with that of a snail, her handle is always some variation of “crazy snail lady”, and she seems to only post about snails.

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Only slightly larger that the insect it’s named after, the Bee Hummingbird weighs no more than two grams and lays eggs roughly the size of coffee beans. It is officially the world’s tiniest bird.

Found only in Cuba, the Bee Hummingbird is extremely small even for a hummingbird, so much so that people often mistake it for an actual bee when they see it hovering over flowers. But this tiny flier not only looks like an insect, it also competes against them for resources. It is the result of a phenomenon scientists call “island dwarfism”, where certain species have problems competing against larger species for resources, so they get smaller and smaller over evolutionary time to avoid running out of food and start competing against other categories of organisms.

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We’ve featured our share of famous internet felines, from grumpy cats, to incredibly beautiful fur balls, but we never really posted about scary-looking felines. That ends today, with Xherdan, the scariest-looking sphinx you’ve ever seen.

The phrase “a face only a mother could love” is usually used maliciously, but in the case of Xherdan, a bald, wrinkly and evil-looking cat, it couldn’t be more true, And his mother, 47-year-old Sandra Filippi, from the Swiss town of Rüti, does indeed love him very much and claims that despite his scary look, he is a sweet pet who loves to sleep and interact with his human owners. She claims that although most people are indeed a bit scared the first time they see Xherdan, they eventually grow to like him after seeing how playful and friendly he really is.

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You’ve probably seen photos of horses sporting luxurious staches and thought to yourself “that must be fake”, but it turns out that horses can indeed grow mustaches.

From curly mustaches worthy of classic cartoon villains, to locks that reach way past their snout, horses can grow mustaches in a variety of styles. And the strange thing is that the style of mustache, or even the chance of growing a mustache doesn’t depend on breed. When photos of dashing, mustache-sporting equines originally went viral online, everyone credited the Gypsy Vanner breed for the trait, but it turns out that specimens of that breed are indeed more likely to grow impressive facial hair, they are definitely not the only ones.

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Shaped more like a like a jalapeno pepper than a citrus fruit, the small finger lime yields tiny caviar-like pearls that burst with flavor when you bite into them.

Originating from the lowland subtropical rainforests of coastal Australia, Citrus australasica, or the Australian finger lime has become one of the most sough-after ingredients by Michelin star restaurants around the world. It’s not that they taste radically different than regular limes or lemons – in fact their flavor is described as a combination of the two – but the texture of their pulp really makes all the difference. Somewhat similar to the pomelo, these tiny citrus fruits contain caviar-like pearls that can be used to garnish posh dishes, ensuring a burst of acidic flavor when a person bites into them. Hence the nickname “caviar of citrus” and the crazy price tag that comes with it.

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In a time when washing your hands as often as possible can literally make the difference between life an death, hiding sexy anime babes in bars of acrylic soap suddenly doesn’t seem kinky at all…

If the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic isn’t enough to scare you into washing your hands more often, maybe this otaku soap will. Aimed at dudes who fantasize about hot anime girls, this clever hygiene product contains a small standee depicting female protagonists of popular mobile video game Arknights concealing their “assets”. What really makes the soap bars special is that they only reveal their secret the more you use them. So if you want to see the heroines in all their glory, you have to go through the entire bar of soap. What better excuse to keep the coronavirus off of your hands and body?

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If you’ve ever dreamed of wielding your favorite sword or mage staff from the video game that most impacted your childhood, there’s a company that can make that dream a reality, sort of…

Let’s face it, taking a life size replica of Cloud’s Buster Sword from Final Fantasy VII to work with you isn’t very practical, unless you’re a professional cosplayer, but there’s still a way to carry it with you everywhere. Hero’s Armory is an online company that specializes in everyday items and accessories shaped like mythical and fantastic weapons, from intricate blades to sorcerer wands. Ever dreamed of unlocking your front door with a tiny replica of Frostmourne, the legendary sword of the Lich King from World of Warcraft, done! Need a tie clip shaped like Thor’s Hammer? they have that too.

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Photos of what looks like an Alien scene featuring dozens of xenomorph eggs ready to burst have gone viral on Japanese social media, but there’s nothing alien about it.

If you’ve ever seen Sigourney Weaver blasting xenomorph in any of the classic Alien movies, you probably get goose bumps just looking at the photos below. I can’t blame you, seeing those creepy Facehuggers bursting out of slimy Ovomorphs was one of the most disturbing experiences of my childhood, but the things pictured in these photos are perfectly natural. Posted on Twitter by a Japanese farmer, the viral pics simply depict Chinese cabbages in the early days of Spring, when the water in the outer layer freezes, giving the common vegetable an eerie look.

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When it comes to fondant modelling, there are few food artists in the world who can even hold a candle to Zhou Yi, China’s famous “Sugar King”. His amazing sculptures are so incredibly detailed that even though they’re edible, they definitely qualify as ‘too good to eat’.

The first time we featured Sugar King on Oddity Central was in early 2018, just after he blew everyone’s minds at the International Cake Competition, where he and his team managed to win three gold medals and one bronze, with an incredible cake featuring an awe-inspiring fondant sculpture of Empress Wu Zetian, the only female ruler in China’s history, as a young woman. It was so detailed that judges could literally count her eyelashes. He was the first Chinese artist to get a gold medal, and even though he was already very popular on Chinese social media, his fame grew even more after being featured in national and international news outlets.

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Samia Al Homsi Dagher, a software engineer and illustrator from Lebanon, has made a name for herself by creating stunningly realistic ballpoint pen portraits. From celebrities to commission portraits of everyday people, this talented artist’s artworks are sometimes hard to tell apart from photographs.

Born in 1987, the Tripoli-based artist started drawing when she was only five years old, and as you can see from the images below, she has gotten a lot better since. She is now considered one of the world’s best ballpoint pen illustrators, and it’s not hard to see why. The attention to detail, the precision of every stroke and dot, the perfect proportions of various facial features, all come together to form drawings that are sometimes indistinguishable from photographs.

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A popular Japanese cosplayer known for transforming herself into real-life versions of hot female anime characters, recently came out as a man who uses makeup, wigs and various accessories to achieve a shockingly feminine look.

With over 65,000 followers on Twitter, and several other thousands on Instagram, Rei Dunois can safely be described as a fairly popular female cosplayer. But appearances can be deceiving. Despite having made a name for herself by transforming into various female anime characters over the last couple of years, Rei recently left her fans with their mouths wide open by revealing that she was actually a “he”. After keeping the appearances up for so long, the talented cosplayer apparently decided to reveal the truth and convince people that they shouldn’t believe everything they see on the internet.

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