There are plenty of interesting places to visit in South Korea, but if you’re all about adding new and exciting content to your Instagram feed, the you simply must add the Purple Island on your itinerary.

With the Covid-19 wreaking havoc around the world, South Korea included, international travel isn’t what it used to be just a few months ago, but that just means more time to plan your next great adventure. And if you have your sights set on Instagram-worthy destinations, South Korea’s new Purple Island is a must-visit. As the name suggests, this place is a purple paradise complete with vast fields of lavender, empress trees that bloom purple, purple painted houses, bridges and even purple roads.

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The Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, in the UK, are home to thousands of fascinating plants, but none as lonely as the Encephalartos woodii, an ancient cycad species and, most likely, the last one of its kind.

It was in 1895 that botanist John Medley Wood noticed this interesting-looking palm tree on a steep slope in Zululand, southern Africa. Intrigued by its multiple trunks and arched palm fronds, Dr. Wood — who made his living collecting rare plants – had some stems removed and sent to London in a box.It ended up in the Palm House at the Royal Botanical Gardens of Kew, where it has been waiting for a mate for over a century. Despite numerous efforts to find it a mate, the Encephalartos woodii at Kew remains alone, unable to produce an offspring and propagate its species. For this reason, many consider it the world’s loneliest plant.

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A 50-year-old man from China has been exercising by moving around on all fours and climbing trees like a monkey every day for the past three decades.

Chen Haigang, a fitness enthusiast from China’s Shanxi province, attracts attention whenever he exercises in public, due to the bizarre routine he has been practicing for about 30 years. Instead of the popular tai-chi practiced by many of his countrymen, jogging or simple stretching, Chen acts like a monkey, walking on all fours, crouching his back and dangling his arms, and even imitating the primates’ tree-climbing techniques. He has been doing it for three decades now, ever since he was inspired by a monkey at the zoo, and claims that it’s been keeping him in perfect health ever since.

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Judit Czinkné Poór, Judit Czinkné Poór cake-decorating shop in the Hungarian city of Ajka, is famous for her ability to turn simple gingerbread cookies into edible masterpieces.

Mézesmanna (~Honeyed manna) drew international attention back in 2016, when popular blogs like Bored Panda and This Is Colossal featured Judit Czinkné Poór’s stunning gingerbread creations. Her incredibly detailed embroidered-like treats received the most attention, and for good reason, but the talented pastry chef has since moved on to other types of decorations, from embossed animals to intricate cartoon characters.

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While the rest of the world struggles to find a cure or even a treatment for Covid-19, Indonesia’s Agriculture Ministry  claims to have found a solution – wearing a eucalyptus necklace developed by one of its agencies.

The so-called “antivirus necklace” was developed by Balitbangtan, the Agriculture Ministry’s Health Research and Development Agency, and will go into mass-production next month. According to minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo, the necklace was made using a species of eucalyptus that can kill the novel coronavirus. Simply wearing the accessory for 15 minutes allegedly kills 42 percent of coronavirus, while upping the time to 30 minutes doubles its effectiveness. The eucalyptus necklace is just one of a whole line of all-natural products designed to prevent or treat Covid-19.

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Taipei’s Songshan Airport recently launched a unique “fake flight” service that gives melancholic travelers the chance to go through the check-in and plane boarding procedures without actually taking off.

Ever since Taiwan closed off its borders in mid-March, travelers have been forced to dream and reminisce about their past adventures in foreign lands, but on July 2nd, the Songshan Airport in Taipei introduced an offbeat service that gives people the full airport experience without the actual takeoff. The new fake flight service includes airport security checks, passport verification, the full check-in procedure, as well the boarding of an Airbus A330 airplane. Cabin crew give passengers the usual instructions as well as some relating to the Covid-19 pandemic, and serve them snacks and coffee, before preparing them for the fake landing.

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A 31-year-old Instagram model from Ukraine recently made international news headlines because of her bizarre addiction to cosmetic fillers, which she apparently likes injecting into her cheeks.

Like many young women nowadays, Anastasiia Pokreshchuk decided that she needed cosmetic enhancements to achieve her desired looks. Only instead of seeking a professional to carry out the procedure, the 31-year-old took it upon herself to inject her own face with hyaluronic acid. The Instagram model seems to be particularly interested in increasing the size of her lips and cheekbones, and despite having already “achieved” a bizarre look, she says she is not going to stop injecting even more fillers into her face.

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On a list of worst yet most original ways to strike up a conversation with the opposite sex, slashing their tires just so you could then come and offer assistance has to rank pretty high…

A 32-year-old man from Aichi Prefecture, Japan, was recently arrested after allegedly slashing a woman’s tire just so he could follow her and offer assistance when she eventually pulled over to check the wheel. On June 11, an unnamed 43-year-old woman walked out of the supermarket in Higashiura, went to her car and drove away. She didn’t get very far before noticing that her driver’s side front tire was almost completely flat, so she pulled over to check it out. That’s when a friendly man stopped his car next to hers and offered to help fix her flat. It’s not every day that you get to meet such kind souls, the only problem was that the woman quickly realized that the same thing had happened to her just a year before, and the knight in shining armor looked suspiciously familiar too…

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A Pune man has been getting a lot of attention on Indian social media after photos of him wearing a solid gold face mask as protection against the coronavirus started doing the rounds online.

Shankar Kurade, a resident of Pimpri-Chinchwad, on the outskirts of Pune City, has been fond of gold for as long as he can remember. He never leaves the house without gold chains on his neck and large rings on most of his fingers, so when people started wearing medical face masks to prevent getting infected with the novel coronavirus, Shankar knew he had to find a way to make himself stand out. Then he saw a news report about a man who had commissioned a silver face mask, and realized that he could do the same, only he would get a mask out of his favorite precious metal.

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A video of 7-year-old fitness sensation Brodie Bowen dead-lifting a 43kg barbell with impressive determination has sparked a heated debate on social media, with some praising her dedication and other expressing worries about her health.

Brodie, who is the daughter of fitness instructor and Instagram influencer Jes Bowen, has been following in her mother’s footsteps from a very young age, and has been showing remarkable progress lately. In of the recent videos her mother posted on social media, Brodie can be seen dead-lifting a 94-pound (43kg) barbell under the watchful eye of her father, Jordan. The impressive video was picked up by the popular House of Highlights Instagram page which shared it with its 17.7 million followers, causing it to go viral. While some declared their admiration for the young fitness enthusiast, others expressed concern for her health.

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Detroit agate, also known as fordite, looks like a precious stone that has formed in the Earth’s crust over millions of years, but it’s actually a man-made material dating back only a few decades.

Looking very much like a natural agate, the sought after Detroit agate actually consists of layers upon layers of enamel paint from old car painting racks in Motor City factories. Trapped in these layers of paint are decades of automotive history and unique, vibrant colors that we may never see on cars again. For example, the earliest pieces of fordite mainly consist of blacks and browns, the most popular automotive colors of the time, others have gray primer layers between the colorful ones, and some have shiny flakes of metallic paint. Because the hand-painting process has long been replaced by an automated one, Detroit agate is no longer produced, so the pieces that do exist are actually prized as actual jewels especially by automotive history buffs.

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Andrey Poletaev is a master of the ballpoint pen, wielding the common writing tool to create stunning works of art that sometimes rival photographs in terms of realism.

Ukrainian-born artist Andrey Poletaev is considered one of the world’s premier ballpoint pen artist, and looking at his exquisite works of art, it’s easy to see why. Although he doesn’t like to be categorized as a hyperrealist artist, his expertly drawn city landscapes and portraits are incredibly realistic to the point where they often get mistaken for photographs. To achieve this amazing level of realism in his ballpoint pen artworks, Poletaev applies up to twenty layers of pen ink on the canvas, and spends hundreds of hours on a single art piece.

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When it comes to promoting a book on mushrooms, I think it’s safe to say that no one will top biologist Merlin Sheldrake’s marketing campaign anytime soon.

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Future is an intriguing book on the fascinating life of various fungi, written by biologist Merlin Sheldrake. But at the end of the day, it’s still just a book on mushrooms, and most people just aren’t drawn to that sort of literature. But Sheldrake came up with an ingenious PR campaign to promote his book that drew the attention of the art world and the general public, not just of fungi enthusiasts. He let his book on mushrooms be devoured by pleurotus mushrooms and then ate those mushrooms himself.

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In what can easily be regarded as a top contender for the 2020 Darwin Awards, Alabama students are allegedly throwing “Covid-19 parties” as part of a stupid game to intentionally infect each other with a disease that has so far killed hundreds of thousands of people in the US alone.

Tuscaloosa City Councilor Sonya McKinstry was the first to blow the whistle on this potentially deadly game that students in Alabama have been playing. She claims that organizers of so-called Covid-19 parties are intentionally inviting people infected with the disease to see who catches it from them first. As crazy and unfathomable as that sounds, this shocking behavior has been confirmed by the Chief of the Tuscaloosa Fire Department, who told the City Council that such parties had been held for weeks.

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Redefined Meat, an Israeli startup specializing in alternative meat, recently unveiled what it calls the world’s first 3D-printed plant-based steak called Alt-Steak.

Using its own patent-pending 3D-printing technology, Redefine Meat has allegedly been able to create a meatless steak that features the appearance, texture, and, most importantly, the taste of the real thing. The company was apparently to achieve all this by working with expert butchers, chefs, food technologists and Swiss flavor company Givaudan. The revolutionary Alt-Steak is created by mixing Redefined Meat’s Alt-Muscle, Alt-Fat, and Alt-Blood plant-based formulations in several layers. The end result is a sustainable, high-protein, cholesterol-free steak that looks, cooks and tastes like real meat.

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