What began as a broken water pipe in Havana’s El Cerro neighborhood is now a small banana plantation, after local authorities forgot to fix the pothole.

Cuba’s infrastructure crisis is a well-known fact, with around 70% of the country’s roads deemed in “regular” or “poor” condition, but some streets are in such a bad state that they can hardly be considered functional. For example, a street in the El Cerro district of Havana, has become famous for having a veritable banana plantation square in the middle of it. The large pothole housing this urban oddity began as a broken water pipe that was eventually fixed by the local authorities three years ago. The asphalt, however, was never replaced, and at one point, plants began taking root in the massive pothole. One of these plants was a banana tree which gradually turned into a small plantation that residents tend to religiously.

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Doctors in Henan, China, were shocked by the case of a middle-aged man who suffered a pneumothorax after mild physical exercise – 20 pushups and a few minutes of skipping rope.

The unnamed man told physicians that he had decided to get in shape as part of a New Year’s resolution, but things didn’t really play out like he imagined. Last month, he started doing pushups and skipping rope as a way of losing weight, but he only managed to do two sets of pushups and skip ropes for a few minutes when he started feeling bad. He stopped and went about his day, but when he woke up the next day, he started experiencing severe chest pain and difficulty breathing, especially after minimal physical effort, like climbing stairs. At one point, the pain got so bad that he went to the hospital where doctors diagnosed him with pneumothorax.

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With a holding capacity of up to 9,100 vehicles (conventional or electric), the Höegh Aurora holds the title of “world’s largest vehicle carrier”.

Operated by Norway’s Höegh Autoliners, the Aurora was built by China Merchants Heavy Industry (CMHI) in Jiangsu, China, and made its maiden voyage last year. Measuring about 37.5 meters wide and 199.9 meters long, it is considered the world’s largest Pure Car and Truck Carrier (PCTC) vessel for transporting various types of vehicles, and thanks to strengthened decks and enhanced internal ramp systems, it can carry heavier electric vehicles on all 14 decks, making it future-proof. With a cargo capacity of 9,100 vehicles, the first Höegh Aurora class carrier beats the previous world’s largest vehicle carrier by 600 vehicles.

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A young Chinese doctor has gone viral for his rapid weight loss, shedding 25 kilograms (55 pounds) in just 42 days and then entering and winning a professional bodybuilding contest.

At the end of 2024, Wu Tian Gen, a 31-year-old surgeon at Hubei’s Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, weighed 97.5 kg (215 lbs), the heaviest he had ever been, but by the end of January 2025, the 1.82m tall doctor had shed over 42 kilograms and was in such an amazing physical condition that he won a bodybuilding competition. How did he do it? Well, he didn’t share every detail, but it was a combination of personal ambition, physical training, and a carefully thought-out diet. Even so, losing so much weight in 42 days is nothing short of impressive.

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Developed by the American-Polish company Clone Robotics, Protoclone is a unique humanoid robot that features a skeleton based on 206 human bones, 1,000 artificial muscles, and a water-based cooling system.

Clone Robotics first attracted attention online back in 2021, when it released a series of videos showcasing its artificial muscle system based on the McKibben pneumatic muscle. Back then, the company only had a functional robotic arm capable of grabbing and handling various objects, but it recently released footage of its first humanoid robot, dubbed Protoclone. The twitching, human-like figure suspended in mid-air is a far cry from the uncanny valley, in fact, it doesn’t even look capable of standing on its own two feet, but its muscle and skeletal are certainly intriguing. The metallic skeleton replicates 206 human bones, and the so-called “Myofiber” muscle system features 1,000 artificial muscles.

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Isamu Tomioka met his wife, Midori, when he was still in school. She was the mother of one of his classmates and 21 years his senior, but he didn’t let that stop him from marrying her.

Isamu and Midori’s unusual love story went viral in Japan after the Shizuoka couple spoke about their relationship on a popular television show. The 32-year-old man said that he first saw Midori at a parent-teacher at his school when he was a minor. She was the mother of one of his classmates, and he recalls thinking that the woman was very beautiful. When they met again, 20 years later, he was attracted by the woman’s mature and dignified look and contacted his ex-classmate in order to get close to her. Midori rejected his advances at first, thinking that the significant age difference made them incompatible, but she was eventually overwhelmed by his persistence and grew to like him too.

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Buriticupu, a town of roughly 55,000 people located in the Brazilian Amazon, risks being swallowed by giant ravines that have been growing “exponentially” over the last few months.

Authorities in Buriticupu have already evacuated 1,200 people from the highest-risk areas of the town, but with no solution in sight, the giant ravines threaten to eventually swallow the entire settlement. Buriticupu’s sinkhole problem dates back roughly three decades and is reportedly the cause of a combination of factors, such as erosion-prone sandy soil, poor urban planning, and deforestation, but it has been exacerbated by recent heavy rains which caused the sinkholes to expand at a rapid pace. A couple of years ago, experts identified 26 giant holes advancing toward the town, some of which have since merged to create ravines up to 20 meters deep.

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Mzee Ernesto Muinuchi Kapinga, a man from a small village in Tanzania, has a very special family. He is married to 16 women, has over 100 children, and a whopping 144 grandchildren.

These days, many men struggle with the idea of starting a family and having children, as even one extra mouth to feed feels like too much pressure. Taking care of more than two or three children is unthinkable for the vast majority of young people, but then you have guys like Mzee Ernesto Muinuchi Kapinga who dedicate their lives to expanding their families as much as possible. Hailing from a small village in Njombe, Tanzania, the African man currently has 16 wives, 104 children, and 144 grandchildren. His homestead looks like a small village, featuring a house for every one of his wives, and people running around everywhere doing chores, and looking after dozens of mall children.

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A Chinese woman subjected her fiancee to simulated childbirth pain for three hours as a sick pre-marriage test that caused the man to develop intestine necrosis and undergo emergency surgery.

It’s not uncommon for people to test their partners in various ways to see if they are right for each other, but some people take it a bit to far. Case in point, one young woman from Henan Province, China, who reportedly subjected her fiancee to three hours of electric shocks to the stomach as a twisted way of simulating the pain of childbirth. It’s unclear why the man accepted the test, or of he had any idea what he was getting into, but he clearly didn’t expect to develop intestine necrosis and have to get emergency surgery because of it. The horrific experience convinced him to not only break off the engagement but also sue the woman he was going tot marry for damages.

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A Turkish man who lost his home to a massive earthquake in 2023 has been living alone in a small cave for two years because he considers it safer than any man-made structure.

In February 2023, Southern Turkey was rocked by a Mw 7.8 earthquake that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people and turned entire neighborhoods into rubble. Ali Bozoğlan, a father of three from the southern province of Hatay, lost his home to the February 6th earthquake and its aftershocks. Even though he and his family survived unscathed, Ali became so terrified of earthquakes that he decided he didn’t want to live in a man-made building anymore. Instead, he found a small and peaceful cave on the outskirts of his city and turned it into a cozy home. Although unable to convince his family to join him in his unusual home, Ali claims he is happy and at peace.

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A US woman is taking legal action against a fertility clinic after an error essentially made her an unwitting surrogate, carrying and eventually another couple’s baby, and having to give up custody.

The day Krystena Murray learned that she was pregnant after undergoing IVF treatment at the Coastal Fertility clinic in May 2023 was one of the happiest of her life, but that happiness soon turned to horror when she gave birth in December of that same year. Despite being white and having chosen a white sperm donor, Krystena gave birth to a black boy. She didn’t allow her family and friends to see that baby, and in January of last year, a DNA test confirmed that she and the baby were not genetically related. Murrya alerted the IVF clinic about the terrible mixup, but decided to keep the baby and even got to raise it for a few months until his biological parents filed for custody.

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A Frenchman appealed to the homeless thieves who stole his credit card to buy a jackpot-winning scratch lottery ticket, offering to split the €500,000 jackpot with them.

They say every misfortune can be a blessing in disguise, and that certainly seems to hold true for a Toulouse man who had his credit card stolen earlier this month and now stands to pocket over $250,000 because of it. On February 3rd, Jean David discovered that the backpack containing his wallet had been stolen from his car, but before he could contact the bank to block all his credit cards, someone used one of them to make a €52.50 ($55) purchase at a local convenience store. Upon visiting the store, the man learned that the two men who had used his credit card appeared to be homeless and attracted the cashier’s attention because they didn’t seem to know the PIN code of one of the cards they attempted to use. Jean David was also shocked to learn that one of the scratch lottery tickets the two thieves had purchased was worth €500,000 ($525,000).

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An Australian high school teacher has come under fire from concerned parents for allegedly identifying as cat and acting weird in front of students.

Australian media have been reporting on the bizarre case of a teacher at Marsden State High School in Logan City, Queensland, who reportedly asked students to refer to her as “Ms. Purr”, allegedly hissing at students and licking the back of her hand. Photos of the unnamed teacher show her wearing a cat-ear headband and a lanyard that reads “purr” in class, which further fueled parents’ concerns that she was behaving inappropriately in class. One parent claimed that the teacher made her daughter purr for a lollypop, while another said that the teacher growled at students if they weren’t paying attention in class.

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A team of Chinese plastic surgeons recently reported the bizarre case of a 33-year-old woman who had lost no less than five contact lenses behind her left eye.

The patient, referred to only as Ms. A, arrived at the Plastic Surgery Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, in Beijing, to have her hemifacial atrophy treated in order to improve her facial symmetry. The initial examination results showed that the left side of her face was atrophied and her left eyeball was slightly sunken. After carefully examining the woman’s face, the medical team decided to use autologous fat grafting to mitigate the effects of her condition. What they didn’t count on was finding not one but five different contact lenses while grafting fat into the empty space behind the eyeball. She told doctors that she had lost several contact lenses in the past few months, but never imagined they were stuck in her eye.

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A 55-year-old woman tragically had both her hands bitten off by a shark she was trying to photograph while on vacation in the Turks and Caicos islands.

The Canadian woman was reportedly trying to photograph a 6-foot-long shark in the shallow waters at a beach in the Turks and Caicos Islands when the marine predator attacked her. Alerted by her screams, the unnamed woman’s husband rushed into the water and bravely managed to scare the shark away and bring the victim ashore, but she had already suffered severe damage to both her hands. The attack occurred on February 7 and the victim was treated at a hospital before leaving the island for better medical care. Unfortunately, doctors could do nothing to save her mangled hands, both of which needed to be amputated.

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