A Chinese woman was forced to lie to her grandmother, and even recruit someone to do the same, for 13 years, just to avoid breaking the old woman’s heart.

Chinese media recently featured the heartbreaking story of a young woman who decided to deceive her own grandmother for over a decade, knowing that the truth would be to much for her to bear. Cheng Jing, a 46-year-old woman from Xi’an, recently lost her grandmother, who died at the ripe old age of 100, but for the last 13 years of her life, she did everything in her power to make the old woman believe that her daughter was still alive. Jing’s mother had died in 2003, but knowing that the news would devastate her grandmother, she resorted to recruiting someone to imitate her mother’s voice over the phone to spare her granny the heartache.

Jing’s mother, Cheng Congrong, and her grandmother had always been very close, and even after Cheng developed lung cancer in 2003, she still called her mother as often as she could to let her know she was alright. Knowing that she didn’t have much to live, Congrong even recorded dozens of voice messages and asked her children to play them to their grandmother so she wouldn’t worry.

Read More »

After suffering from pain on the right side of her nose for most of her life, a New Zealand woman was shocked to discover a plastic board game piece that had apparently been stuck in her nostril for 37 years.

Mary McCarthy, from Christchurch in New Zealand, had always struggled with pain and breathing difficulties on the right side of her nose, but having put up with it since childhood, she never bothered seeing a doctor about it. But last October, following ab excruciatingly painful nasal swab test for Covid-19, her nasal issue got even worse. Her nose would be leaking constantly and she was in a lot of pain, so she finally decided to get medical help.

Read More »

DentalSlim Diet Control is a controversial weight loss device designed to allow wearers to open their mouths only about 2mm, thus making them unable to chew while making breathing and speaking possible.

Developed by scientists at University of Otago, in New Zealand, the DentalSlim Diet Control is an intra-oral device that can be attached to the wearer’s upper and lower back teeth by a dental professional. It features unique custom-manufactured locking bolts powered by magnets, which, when activated, only allow a mouth opening of about 2 mm, restricting the wearer to a liquid diet, while allowing them to breathe and speak normally. Apparently, the developers of the DentalSlim Diet Control believe that it can play a role in the fight against the global obesity epidemic.

Read More »

A Buddhist monk in Shanghai, China, has dedicated more than half of his life to caring for stray dogs, rescuing and taking care of tens of thousands of them since 1994.

53-year-old Zhixiang is the head monk of the Bao’en Temple in Shanghai, but nowadays his disciples take care of most of the day-to-day business, as he spends all his time taking care of the rescued animals. There are currently around 8,000 dogs, not to mention hundreds of cats, as well as chickens, geese and peacocks in Zhixiang’s care, but he’s been rescuing abandoned and stray animals since 1994, so he is used to it. Over the years, he has learned to administer medicine and give the animals shots, as taking them all to a vet would be too costly, and only recently started taking donations from other animal lovers, as a ways to make ends meet.

Zhixiang’s mission as a rescuer of stray animals began in 1994. He was riding in a car on the highway when he witnessed a cat being hit by another vehicle. It wasn’t dead, but it was left severely injured, struggling to crawl to the side of the road with only two paws. It’s an image that the Buddhist monk hates to remember and the one that pushed him to start rescuing strays.

  Read More »

An Indian man has filed a complaint against his wife, her family and their marriage mediator for allegedly tricking him into marrying a transgender person.

A resident of Kanpur City, in India’s Uttar Pradesh state, recently visited a local police station to file a First Information report (FIR) against his wife of nearly two months, her family and the marriage mediator, for failing to mention that the woman was transgender. He accused accused his in-laws of deceiving both him and his family by not revealing his wife’s original gender at the time of the marriage, on April 28. The unnamed man claims that he only found out that his wife was transgender after taking her to a gynecologist for a checkup.

Read More »

Xavier Bouget, an 80-year-old pensioner from France’s Brittany region, and Blanchon, a majestic white pigeon, have been best friends for two years, ever since the Frenchman rescued the bird from becoming a cat’s lunch.

Xavier first met his unlikely companion two years ago, while walking to his house in the town of Gommenec’h. He noticed this small, almost featherless pigeon chick fall out of its nest, in a desperate attempt to escape a hungry cat. He didn’t think to help it at first, but when he got home and mentioned it to his wife, Marie-Françoise, she asked him why he didn’t pick it up. So he went back to get the small pigeon chick, which had miraculously managed to escape the purring predator until his return. Xavier came home with the frail bird in his bird, not knowing that it would soon become his best and closest friend.

Read More »

On Valentine’s Day, a young Ukrainian couple made international news headlines after chaining their hands together for three months, as a last ditch effort to save their relationship. They lasted the three months, but split up as soon as the chain came off.

In February, Alexander Kudlay, a 33-year-old car salesman, and 29-year-old beautician Viktoria Pustovitova shocked the world when they filmed themselves getting chained together with an actual chain. The chain was welded shut under the supervision of a representative of the country’s national register of records, who also added a seal to the chain to make sure they don’t cheat. The plan was to go three months with their hands chained together, which meant sharing bathroom breaks and showers, not to mention planning their day so that both could get stuff done. Few thought they could last three months, but they proved everyone wrong. Well, sort of…

Read More »

In the arid wastes of eastern Yemen lies a fascinating natural wonder called the Well of Barhout. Shrouded in mystery and folklore, this large hole in the ground said to be the most hated spot on Earth to God.

Located in the eponymous valley, Barhout Well is 30 meters wide and thought to be anywhere between 100 and 250 meters deep. The depth is just pure estimation, as no one has been down to the bottom of it, and considering the chilling legends and stories surrounding it, I doubt any of the locals would attempt a decent. Not even Yemeni scientists and explorers have been able to reach the bottom, as the low oxygen and strange odors emanating from the well forced them back to the surface.

Read More »

A Chinese LEGO enthusiast recently unveiled his most impressive project yet – a scale model of the Forbidden City in Beijing made out of 700,000 LEGO bricks.

The 4-meter-long by 2.4-meter-wide model of the Forbidden City was created by a Guangzhou-based LEGO fan named Li Zhining, over an entire year. It features all the elements of the world-famous palace complex, including the iconic Meridian Gate, the over 70 palaces and 9,000 houses of the three main halls of the Forbidden City, the moat and all the turrets. Even more impressive is the fact that the LEGO artist didn’t use any custom made bricks, instead relying only on his huge collection of standard pieces.

Read More »

A Ukrainian tiktoker who filmed himself giving a young girl on the street a new smartphone to get views on the popular video app, only to ask for it back once the “touching” scene was filmed, has sparked outrage on social media.

From pulling cruel pranks on unsuspecting bystanders, to renting studios to make themselves look richer, there’s not a lot modern online influencers won’t do for clicks and views. But one young influencer in Russia crossed the line when he decided to heartlessly deceive a young girl by making her think she was getting a new smartphone for free, only to then ask for it back, claiming it was just props for a TikTok video. Things got really bad when the child understandably refused to hand over her gift.

Read More »

‘Uglier and Uglier’, a controversial artwork that ranked photos and videos of 5,000 different real-life women from ugly to ugliest, was removed by a Shanghai-based gallery following public outcry.

Created by male Chinese artist Song Ta, ‘Uglier and Uglier’ featured photos and clips of thousands of women on a university campus ranked by how unattractive he found them. Song reportedly created the controversial exhibit in 2013 and showcased it in several art galleries since, but its latest outing at the OCAT Shanghai gallery was met with so much criticism from the public that it was eventually taken down. The fact that Song Ta once said that he and his assistants ranked the women depicted in his artwork from “forgivably ugly” to “unforgivably ugly” might have had something to do with people’s reaction to the exhibit…

Read More »

The Aruka Shrine in Japan’s Ebina City is the oldest shrine in all of Sagami Province, but to the general public it’s known for a unique ceremony that involves a priest wearing a 2-meter-long headgear in the shape of a green onion.

Negi-san, the head priest at Aruka Shrine has been performing the green onion ceremony for about four years , but it only went viral last year, when photos of the priest wearing the bizarre headgear went viral on Japanese social media. It was a pretty weird thing to see, even by Japanese standards, but that only made it more interesting. Here was this masked priest wearing a green skirt and white shirt matching the green-and-white green onion on their head bending over to pass through a small circle wrapped in rope. It made no sense, and yet, everyone was intrigued.

Read More »

Described as a “forced inspiratory suction and swallow tool”, HiccAway is essentially a special type of plastic straw scientifically designed to almost instantly cure hiccups. According to a new study, the L-shaped tool works in 92% of cases.

From holding your breath and drinking water, to jump scares and anti-hiccup lollypops, there is no shortage of hiccup cures in the world, which only emphasizes how pesky of a problem it can be. Unfortunately, few, if any have a proven track record when it comes to efficiency, but, luckily, we now have a scientific solution that promises to end those annoying hiccups in over 90% percent of cases. It’s called HiccAway and it looks like a simple L-shaped piece of plastic, but there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye.

Read More »

China’s Broad Group recently showcased its innovative Living Building, a new type of modular building system, by erecting a 10-storey apartment building in Changsha City in only 28 hours and 45 minutes.

The Living Building concept developed by Broad Group sounds like it could truly revolutionize the construction industry, and the Chinese company’s recent feat of erecting a 10-floor building in just over a day was meant to emphasize just how disruptive its new system can be. Technically, the building was just assembled on a site in Changsha, by three cranes and a large workforce, as all the components were built in a local Broad Group factory and transported by truck. But that’s one of the features of the Living Building system, it consists of pre-made container-size modules that only need to be bolted together at the “build” site and have their electricity and plumbing connected.

Read More »

Cookie-cutter sharks are a small species of shark about the size of a domestic cat that will attack predators several times their size, biting off conical chunks of their flesh, and even the soft parts of nuclear submarines.

The cookie-cutter shark (Isistius brasiliensis) was discovered in the early 19th century, by French naturalists, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that marine scientists realized just how brave and dangerous these small marine creatures could be. Up to that point, the conical, deep wounds that researchers often documented on all sorts of marine life, from small fish to dolphins and even great white sharks, were a mystery. It wasn’t until 1971, when Everet Jones discovered small conical pieces of flesh in the stomachs of cookie-cutter sharks that marine scientists began to realize that the deceptively small sharks could severely wound some of the ocean’s mightiest creatures.

Read More »