Apple recently received some free advertising from an iPhone 13 Pro Max user who dropped his handheld while skydiving at 14,000 feet, only to find it in perfect working order on the ground.

Last month, Casey Flay, an engineer and skydiving enthusiast from Devon, in the UK, jumped out of an airplane at 14,000 feet (4,267 meters) without closing one of the front pockets on his wingsuit, which caused his iPhone 13 Pro Max to fall out almost immediately after leaving the airplane. The GoPro camera on his helmet captured the moment on video, but before checking the footage, he was convinced he had left the phone on the plane. It was only after searching for it that he decided to use the Find My iPhone app to learn that his handheld was located about 4 miles from where he had landed. But the most shocking thing of all was that the phone still worked.

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A 68-year-old Swiss woman was taken to Court by her neighbor, who claims that the pensioner systematically fed her pet cat for months, despite being notified in writing to stop.

This unusual story takes place in Zurich, where a woman stands accused of luring her neighbor’s cat with food for a period of 10 months with the intention of stealing it away. The plaintiff claims to have notified the woman repeatedly, even in writing, to stop feeding her pet, Leo, but to no avail. Not only did the accused continue to feed Leo, but she also installed a cat flap on her door so the feline could come and go as it pleased. As a result, after a while, the cat stopped returning to its original owner, and they were left preparing meals for it in vain. The pensioner’s neighbor filed a criminal complaint against the woman, and the public prosecutor’s office ordered the accused to pay a fine of 800 Swiss francs ($950) and also issued a suspended fine of 3600 francs ($4,273) for unlawful appropriation. But the 68-year-old woman refused to pay, so the case ended up in Court.

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A 35-year-old man diagnosed with avoidant restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) claims that the mere thought of eating fruits, vegetables, eggs, or meat is enough to make him sick.

Calling Thomas Sheridan a picky eater would be an understatement. The 35-year-old UK man relies on a very strict daily diet that usually consists of two loaves of white bread, three bowls of Shreddies cereal, and lots of Haribo sweets, and he has never tasted fruits and vegetables. Because of his bland diet, he needs to take protein and vitamin supplements, but only those with a taste profile that he can stomach. The unemployed man claims to have made attempts to diversify his diet, but they have all ended in failure. A couple of years ago, he was diagnosed with avoidant restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID), an eating disorder that prevents sufferers from eating certain foods, and despite several attempted treatments, his daily diet remains incredibly restricted.

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A UK woman whose co-workers compared her to Darth Vader after taking an online personality test on her behalf has been awarded £30,000 in damages.

Darth Vader is an iconic villain, and being compared to him by workmates is apparently insulting and traumatic enough to warrant compensation. At least that was the decision of a UK court in the case of an NHS blood donation worker who claimed that the association with the Star Wars character caused her to feel unpopular at work and ultimately quit her job. The judge concluded that being told she has the same personality type as the infamous sci-fi villain was a workplace “detriment”,(a negative experience) that required compensation.

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A Greek woman decided to divorce her husband of 12 years after ChatGPT told her he was having an affair, simply by “reading” the coffee grounds in his coffee cup.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot is great for a lot of things, but it can ruin your life if you blindly put your trust in it. One Greek man recently appeared on the Greek TV morning show To Proino to complain about ChatGPT destroying his marriage by painting him as an adulterer simply by interpreting the coffee grounds in a cup of coffee he had posed with for his wife. Allegedly following a social media trend, the man’s wife thought it would be fun to have the world’s most popular chatbot “read” their coffee cups in a sort of modern twist on the art of tasseography. She made coffee for both of them and then uploaded photos of the grounds in their cups for ChatGPT to “read”. The chatbot claimed that the woman’s husband was having an affair with another woman, which made his wife furious enough to file for divorce without even asking him if it was true.

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A 22-year-old Australian man has been suffering from a mysterious illness that causes his body to feel hot when he experiences cold, and cold when he touches anything hot.

Aidan McManus’ troubles began at the age of 17, when he was in his final year of high school. At first, he lost feeling in his feet, telling his mother that they felt “tingly and numbish”. When his feet started swelling, he went to the hospital, where doctors gave him some medicine for fluid retention, but that didn’t help his condition at all. Things only got worse from there, as the simple act of walking felt like stepping on sharp tacks, and he was diagnosed with post-viral irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), which complicated his condition even more. Despite his failing health, Aidan managed to graduate from high school, but then he began experiencing a bizarre sensation in his hands as well. When he touched something cold, his hands felt like they were burning, and when he touched something hot, it felt extremely cold.

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China’s Chery Automobile brand recently introduced Mornine, a humanoid robot designed for use in car dealerships, at one of its Malaysian dealerships.

Originally designed as a digital character meant to connect with the young generation by leveraging concepts like the metaverse and social media, Mornine evolved into a humanoid robot that can interact with customers in the real world. Technically known as the AiMOGA Robot, Mornine uses a multimodal sensing model that allows it to accurately perceive the gestures and commands of humans it interacts with, as well as navigate the environment it functions in. Its robotic body incorporates automotive-grade technology and a bionic motion system that allows upright movements and accurate hand gestures. For decision-making, Mornine uses Deepseek’s large language models, which allow it to understand natural language and deliver personalized responses.

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A 24-year-old mother from Helsingborg, Sweden, was recently convicted of harassment after cracking an egg on her daughter’s forehead for a TikTok video.

In 2023, a controversial trend went viral on TikTok – parents all over the world started filming themselves pranking their small children by cracking eggs on their foreheads. Many saw this as harmless fun, even though in certain cases, the kids hardly ever joined their parents in laughter. But one particular case in Sweden recently made national news headlines after a young mother was convicted of harassment for humiliating her daughter by cracking an egg on her forehead for the amusement of her viewers. The 24-year-old woman insisted that it was just a silly prank and that everyone was doing it on TikTok at the time, but that wasn’t enough to impress the judge.

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A 42-year-old Spanish man has been unable to ingest any food or liquids for three weeks after taking a simple sip of bottled sparkling water at a restaurant.

Pablo González, a 42-year-old businessman from Salvaterra de Miño, Spain, has been hospitalized in the city of Vigo since April 12, when he suffered a bizarre accident that has yet to be explained. After eating at a tapas-style restaurant with some friends, González ordered a bottle of sparkling mineral water along with a glass of ice and a slice of lemon. The water was a well-known brand, and the glass bottle looked properly sealed, from what he can recall, but what he can remember clearly is the burning sensation in his mouth mere seconds after taking his first sip of it.

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The 25,000 residents of Lice, a town in Turkey’s Diyarbakır province, involuntarily got high after police burned tens of tons of seized cannabis in the town center.

On April 18, Turkish authorities conducted an operation to burn over 20 tons of confiscated cannabis in Lice, which caused the air in the settlement to become thick with weed smoke. For at least five days, people couldn’t leave their windows open and avoided going out, for fear of becoming intoxicated and experiencing symptoms like dizziness, nausea, and hallucinations. The destroyed cannabis, valued at 10 billion Turkish Lira ($261,433,808), weighed 20 tons 766 kilos 679 grams and had been seized from all over Diyarbakır province during 2023 and 2024.

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Dico’s, a popular Chinese fast food restaurant chain, has been attracting a lot of attention because of its newest menu item, charred-looking chicken strips that don’t have the most appetizing appearance.

Since 2015, Dico’s has been celebrating ‘Krispy Day’ by adding one or two crispy items to its menu, but this year, their newest additions have been attracting more attention than usual, mostly because of their unusual look. The “Black Gold Pepper Crispy Pork” became available at Dico’s restaurants across China at the end of last month, and it has been going viral on social media ever since. Not only do the crispy strips look charred, but their shape has been drawing comparisons to human poop and inspiring hundreds of funny comments online. Although the company has clarified that the meat is covered in a special “black gold coating” that causes it to turn black when deep-fried, most people are still not very tempted to try the new menu item.

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In a bid to build a sustainable and ethical future for the luxury materials industry, three companies have joined forces to create the world’s first T-Rex leather handbag.

Dinosaurs have been extinct for millions of years, but thanks to cutting-edge technology and genetic research, humankind has apparently become able to use T-Rex DNA to create synthetic, lab-grown dinosaur leather. In a first-of-its-kind initiative, Creative agency VML has joined forces with genomic engineering startup The Organoid Company and biotechnology innovators Lab-Grown Leather Ltd. to produce a high-quality alternative to traditional leather that is both cruelty-free and sustainable. Using a protein found in a Tyrannosaurus fossil from about 80 million years ago as inspiration, The Organoid Company and Lab-Grown Leather have been able to synthesize a next-generation material that features the durability and repairability of T-Rex skin.

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Police in Oviedo, Spain, recently rescued three young children who had been isolated in a house for over three years by their parents, who seemed obsessed with keeping them from getting infected with the coronavirus.

People usually complain about nosy neighbors who can’t seem to mind their own business, but one woman in Oviedo, Spain, has been hailed as a hero after alerting police about unusual things going on in the house across the street from her property. The woman, referred to only as Silvia by Spanish media, had been keeping records about the activity in her neighbors’ house ever since they moved in, during the COVID pandemic. She had noticed that only the patriarch of the family was allowed to leave the house, mostly just to pick up groceries delivered at the front door, and that the family’s three kids only had their window blinds raised for short periods of time. However, the thing that prompted her to notify the authorities was the constant purchase of diapers, even though the children were eight and ten.

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A UK man has been given a suspended prison sentence after admitting to setting fire to his own home twice in one night just so he could see firefighters in action.

Arsonists are obsessed with fire, but 26-year-old James Brown, from Northumberland, in the UK, has been described as having an obsession and a fascination with firefighters rather than fires. In an ideal world, he would be a firefighter himself, but things didn’t work out that way, so he just settled for admiring firefighters from a distance and calling the fire department incessantly. When that wasn’t enough anymore, he moved on to setting his own house on fire just to see the firefighters in action.

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Victoria Lee is a talented tattoo artist from Beijing, China, who can create incredibly detailed color tattoos that look just as good as high-definition photographs.

Over the last 17 years, we have featured some of the world’s best tattoo artists here on Oddity Central. Korean-born Yeono is one of the youngest masters we’ve posted about, but there were also the likes of Oleg Shepelenko, a talented tattoo artist from Russia, Poland’s Karol Rybakowski, or French sensation Sandry Riffard, just to name a few. Today, we add a new name to our already impressive list, the talented Ms. Victoria Lee, whose hyperrealistic tattoos are in a league of their own. Hailing from Beijing, Lee was originally known for her incredibly detailed black and white tattoos, but she has since transitioned to colored artworks as well, producing some truly mindblowing art pieces.

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