A 55-year-old grandfather of three stands accused of eloping with the 22-year-old fiancée of his teenage son and taking his family’s savings and gold jewelry with him.

They say the heart wants what it wants, and in the case of an Indian man, if this happens to be his son’s fiancée, then so be it! Shakeel, a 55-year-old father of six from Rampur, a village in India’s Uttar Pradesh state, recently shocked his family by running away with Ayesha (pseudonym), a 22-year-old woman from a neighboring village, who was initially supposed to marry his son. According to Shabbana, Shakeel’s wife, he had insisted on arranging the marriage of their son, Aman (pseudonym), to Ayesha, despite her protests concerning financial reasons and their child’s young age (17). Still, despite Shabbana and Aman’s opposition, he remained adamant about the marriage until one day when he called from Delhi to tell his family that he had married Ayesha himself.

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In order to keep dust and noise pollution to a minimum, Chinese authorities in the city of Jinan have installed the world’s largest inflatable dome over an area of 20,000 square meters.

Urban construction is a dirty business that affects large areas around the construction site, but a unique project in Jinan, China, is proof that large construction projects can be isolated to reduce noise and pollution, helping to protect nearby communities and the environment. All you need is a giant inflatable balloon! The first of its kind in China and reportedly the largest in the world, the inflatable dome of Jinan is 50 meters high and covers an area of 20,000 square meters. It uses negative pressure and advanced air filtration systems to prevent dust from escaping into nearby areas, but also to ensure that air remains breathable for the workers inside.

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In 2010, thousands of cars came to a standstill along the China National Highway 110, creating the now-famous China National Highway 110 traffic jam, which lasted 12 days and stretched over 100 kilometers.

Identifying the longest traffic jam in history is tricky because it depends on the factors considered. For example, according to Guinness World Records, the longest traffic jam ever reported occurred in 1990, on the East-West German border, and involved 18 million cars crawling to a halt. If we’re talking about distance, a traffic jam that occurred in February of this year in Uttar Pradesh could qualify as the longest ever. It reportedly stretched for 300 km across several districts of Madhya Pradesh and kept motorists crawling at a snail’s pace for about 48 hours. But, if we factor in time, there is no beating the China National Highway 110 traffic jam, which lasted for a whopping 12 days and even created a makeshift economy.

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The Shrinking Mill of Port Colborne, in Ontario, Canada, is an intriguing optical illusion that makes a giant grain elevator shrink the closer you get to it.

Usually, things tend to appear smaller in the distance and grow in size the closer you get to them, but that rule does not apply to the grain elevator located in Port Colborne’s Sugarloaf Marina. As motorists turn left onto Lakeshore Road west from Cement Road, they have their view filled by this massive concrete building in the distance. It’s so big it literally fills the horizon, but as you drive forward, instead of getting even bigger, it starts to shrink, and by the time you make the left-hand bend, it’s just an average industrial building in the distance. The mind-bending optical illusion has such a strong effect that nine out of ten people who see it for the first time drive back to get another look.

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There’s nothing strange about adding a bit of milk or cream to a cup of coffee, but in northern Sweden, they prefer a different kind of dairy with their coffee – cheese.

Kaffeost is a combination of hot coffee and a particular type of cheese called leipäjuusto, which loosely translates to “bread cheese”. But there’s no bread involved in this unusual combination, just cheese and coffee. The name most likely comes from the cheese’s absorbent quality, which allows it to take on a surprising amount of coffee flavor after soaking for only a few minutes. The spongy texture may not be for everybody, but the taste is said to be more than worth it. Leipäjuusto is noticeably sweeter than your average block of cheddar, so adding a few pieces to your cup of coffee is surprisingly similar to adding cream, or milk and sugar to it.

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A 62-year-old man in France put police on high alert after calling emergency services to report that he had forgotten his wife at a highway gas station and couldn’t remember which one.

On July 5th, a Paris man left on vacation for Morocco with his wife and daughter in the family car. They made several stops at gas stations along the way, but during one of these breaks, something peculiar happened. At around 4:30 in the morning, the man, whose name has not been revealed by the media, left the gas station without realizing he had forgotten his wife there. He only realized his mistake about 300 km (186 miles) later, and quickly called emergency services for help. It was a very bizarre conversation, as the man not only had to explain how he could have forgotten his wife at a gas station, but also had trouble remembering which gas station it was.

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A 37-year-old woman from Jilin, China, has gone viral after revealing that she hadn’t properly removed makeup in over two decades, which ultimately caused a severe rash on her face.

Known only as Gao, the Chinese woman took to social media to share her story as a warning to others to properly cleanse their face regularly after putting on makeup. She herself allegedly failed to do so for over 20 years, which ultimately led to a serious allergic reaction that left her face inflamed. Gao said that she becme fascinated with her mother’s lipstick in her early teenage years and started wearing makeup when she was 15. However, she found removing the makeup “too troublesome,” instead going by the principle, “why bother removing the makeup if you’re going to put it back on the next day?” So she only rinsed her face with water before going to bed and applied more makeup the next day.

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A Chinese football club has been fined 30,000 yuan ($4,100) for attempting to channel evil spirits by placing paper talismans in the opponent team’s locker room.

Changchun Xidu FC, who play in China League Two, have been found guilty of placing “a number of feudal superstitious items in the away team’s dressing room” before their match on June 28, in a bid to increase their chances of winning. Photos widely shared on Chinese social media showed yellow paper charms inscribed with messages like: “By decree, Shanxi Chongde Ronghai must be defeated.” Known as ‘fu’, the use of paper charms is a Taoist practice believed to use spirit energy to bring good fortune, but it can also be abused to cause harm and misfortune to others.

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AI-generated Psych-rock band The Velvet Sundown didn’t exist two weeks ago, but today they boast over half a million listeners on Spotify and are getting to put out their third album.

The Velvet Sundown is either the hardest-working and most inspired rock group ever, or they are simply playing by different rules. The psych-rock band appeared out of nowhere two weeks ago, but managed to put out to albums and has already announced that the third will be released on Spotify soon. They already boast a respectable 500,000 monthly listeners on the popular music streaming platform and show no signs of slowing down. But the overnight success and record-breaking album release schedule drew attention to the band this week, with many accusing The Velvet Sundown of being an AI-generated gimmick. And, truth be told, all the signs point to that being the case.

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Italian police recently discovered two siblings, ages 6 and 9, raised on an isolated farm in Piedmont by their virus-obsessed father.

During the flood that affected the Italian province of Piedmont in April, local carabinieri visited an isolated farm in the foothills of Lauriano, a small comune near Turin. They were there to issue a temporary eviction notice for the safety of the residents, but what they found shocked them – a 9-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl in diapers, both unable to speak, read, or write, who didn’t show up in any local registers. Their Dutch parents, a metal sculptor and a stay-at-home mom, claimed that they were home-schooled and otherwise had everything they needed, from food to toys and books, but the children were ‘ghosts’ who didn’t show up in any Italian records and seemed completely cut off from the outside world.

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A 33-year-old Chinese man who showed up at the emergency room with severe abdominal pain turned out to have a foot-long live eel in his abdominal cavity.

Yesterday, Chinese newspaper Huaihua Daily reported the unusual case of a Hunan man who showed up at the First Affiliated Hospital of Hunan Medical University with a pale face, sweating profusely, and complaining of stomach pain. A CT scan of the man’s abdomen showed a foreign object that seemed to have pierced his stomach and ended up in his abdominal cavity. The man’s abdomen was already as hard as a board, and fearing a potentially fatal peritonitis, doctors decided to perform laparoscopic emergency surgery. While exploring the man’s abdomen, they were shocked to discover a live eel swimming among his organs.

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An 8-year-old boy in Thailand’s Uttaradit Province, who had been neglected for years by his drug-addicted mother, spent most of his time with dogs and started communicating by barking.

Paveena Hongsakul of the Foundation for Children and Women learned about an 8-year-old boy in a drug-infested’ red zone of Uttaradit Province who had been neglected by his mother and older brother for so long that he started behaving like the dogs he spent most of his tie with. The disturbing case had been pitched to her by a school principal in Lap Lae district who claimed that the boy’s mother had brought him to school once only to collect benefits, but had never enrolled him. The child had not been in kindergarten either and had been emotionally abandoned by his mother and brother. He had found the love and attention he craved from a pack of dogs, and instead of talking like a human, he began to bark like them.

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Indian police recently reported the interesting case of  Nisha, a young woman who filed a complaint against her husband, claiming that his asking her to spend less time on social media had caused her to lose followers.

The bizarre marital dispute began when the woman’s husband, identified only as Vijendra, suggested that she should spend less time on social media and more time doing house chores. The 30-year-old woman later told police that, up to that point, she and Vijendra had lived in relative harmony in their home in Noida, India’s Uttar Pradesh state, but his demands ruined her social media presence. Nisha would post at least two reels on her Instagram every day, but her husband’s demands made that impossible, and when she lost two followers in a single day, Nisha threw in the towel. She left the marital home, moved back in with her parents in another village, and filed a complaint against her husband.

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Sergey Torop, a Russian religious cult leader who claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, was recently convicted to 12 years in prison for causing physical and psychological harm to his followers.

A former traffic cop, Torop gained a huge religious following in the early 1991, taking advantage of the void caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union. He called himself Vissarion and claimed to be Jesus reincarnated. We first wrote about the Siberian Jesus in 2009, when he started making news headlines outside of Russia for claiming to be a reincarnation of the Son of God and traveling to other countries to convert people. Even back then, he faced accusations of fraud, but denied any wrongdoing, claiming that his church made no money whatsoever. In 2020, Vissarion was finally arrested and charged with using psychological manipulation to control and exploit his followers for labor and money. He was recently sentenced to 12 years in prison.

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Italian mechanic and YouTuber Andrea Marazzi recently made international news headlines for turning a 1993 Fiat Panda into the world’s “skinniest” drivable car.

The so-called Flat Fiat looks like something made with AI, but it’s the very real creation of a young car mechanic who wanted to build the world’s narrowest drivable car. Although it retains most of the parts of the 1993 Fiat Panda, Andrea Marazzi’s special model is only 50 centimeters wide, enough space for just a driver, and a single headlight to help the driver see at night. Marazzi spent 12 months hand-building the Flat Fiat using ‘99 percent of the original parts’ of the 1993 Fiat Panda it is based on, even retaining the four wheels, despite its’ ultra-skinny frame.

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