A Chinese family has sparked a debate on social media after moving into a luxury hotel suite permanently because it’s cheaper and more convenient than renting or owning a home. The family of eight has been living in a luxury hotel in Nanyang, China’s Henan Province, for 229 days and has no plans to move out anytime soon. After getting a special rate (1,000 yuan or $140 per day) for a luxury suite with two bedrooms and a large living room based on the length of their stay, the family now plans to remain in the hotel indefinitely. Because the daily price of the suite also includes electricity, heating, water, and parking, the unnamed family claims that they actually save money by living in a hotel and their life is much more comfortable. Read More »

A Brazilian man tragically lost his life by plunging down a deep shaft he had dug in his kitchen after dreaming that there was gold buried deep under his house. 71-year-old João Pimenta da Silva’s dream of enrichment ended as a nightmare that claimed his life. His lifeless body was found at the bottom of an exceptionally deep well he and his neighbors had dug under his kitchen in Ipatinga, a municipality in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state. The man had reportedly dreamt that there was gold deep under his home, and that all he had to do was dig to get to it. He even told his neighbor about his dream and even though he was laughed at in the beginning, da Silva was actually able to convince the man to assist him with the digging. Unfortunately, the treasure hunt ended in disaster when the 71-year-old plunged to his death while trying to exit the 40-meter-deep hole. Read More »

Cosimo Caiffa is a talented Italian graffiti artist who uses spray cans to create some of the most fascinating street art illusions you’ve ever seen! 44-year-old Caiffa, who also goes by ‘Cheone’, paints most of his impressive artworks in his hometown of Nerviano, near Milan. Most of his street art projects not only integrate perfectly with their surroundings, but they also have this uncanny depth to them that often fools passers-by. Having grown up around art and artists in Gallipoli, Leece, Cosimo started painting on canvas at a very young age, but as soon as he discovered graffiti, he knew that was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. He taught himself the 3D street art technique, and he has been using it for years to great effect to turn bland, boring urban spaces into outdoor works of art. Read More »

Ghanaian personality Afua Asantewaa Owusu Aduonum recently attempted to get her name into the Guinness Book of Records by attempting to sing continuously for 126 hours and 52 minutes. Last month, women’s rights advocate, journalist, and event organizer Afua Asantewaa Owusu Aduonum tried to beat a world record that had been standing for over a decade. In 2012, Indian singer Sunil Waghmare sang non-stop for 105 hours, an incredible feat that required resilience, concentration, and mountains of energy. However, the Ghanaian woman claims to have beaten the old record by over 20 hours and is now waiting for confirmation from Guinness Records that her attempt was valid. She told journalists that she was hopeful of a favorable response in the coming days. Read More »

American tattoo artist Amanda Graves has become famous for her glittering tattoos, which somehow appear to be shimmering on the skin. Maryland-based Amanda Graves never claimed to be the inventor of the glitter tattoo technique, but when it comes down to it, she is universally considered the best glitter tattoo artist in the world. Her tattoos are so good that people often ask if she actually uses glitter ink to do them (spoiler – she doesn’t), or if her artworks interfere with X-rays. In reality, the glitter is an optical illusion expertly created by Graves using the painstaking pointillism technique. She creates each speck of glitter by overlapping colors with small gauge needles, but the end result is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Read More »

Carmen Dell’Orefice is known as the oldest working model in the fashion industry. She was discovered on a bus when she was only 13 years old, and she is still working today, at age 92. Carmen Dell’Orefice’s first contact with the fashion world was a flop. After being approached by the wife of photographer Herman Landschoff while riding a bus to ballet class when she was only 13 years old, Dell’Orefice saw her test photos go nowhere fast. But she was destined for greatness, and just two years later, at age 15, she graced the cover of Vogue Magazine for the very first time, after becoming a favorite model of photographer Erwin Blumenfeld. Last year, at age 92, Carmen Dell’Orefice was featured on the cover of Vogue Czechoslovakia, this time as the oldest working model in the world. Read More »

A Japanese company that has been developing crow repellants for 15 years claims that its Crow Buster, a translucent piece of yellow plastic, is more effective than any scarecrow. Crows are auspicious omens in Japanese culture, but in day-to-day life, they can be quite pesky pests. Notoriously intelligent and highly adapted to both rural and urban environments, crows have been known to cause serious damage to fruit and vegetable farms, rummage through garbage in search of food, and attack smaller birds, animals, or even humans, if they perceive them as threats. Because of their higher-than-average bird intellect and excellent memory, crows can be very tough to deal with, so even the most realistic of scarecrows may prove ineffective. However, one Japanese company claims that all you need to keep crows at pay is its surprisingly simple Crow Buster. Read More »

Maisie Matilda, a 24-year-old artist from the UK, is being credited for shining a bright spotlight on the fascinating but dying art of book fore-edge painting. Matilda had been painting for a long time, but she only started experimenting with fore-edge painting during the first COVID-19 lockdown, when she found herself with lots of time on her hands. The self-taught artist went viral at the end of 2021, after posting videos of her work on the fore-edge of a J.R.R. Tolkien book on social media. Her TikTok videos got millions of views, and the young artist found herself giving interviews to some of the world’s largest news outlets. She has been riding this wave ever since, and she currently has over half a million loyal fans on Instagram alone. Read More »

Researchers at MIT created a high-tech pill that starts to vibrate once it makes contact with gastric fluid in the user’s stomach in order to stimulate receptors in the stomach and create the sensation of fullness. VIBES, short for Vibrating Ingestible BioElectronic Stimulator, was only recently unveiled in a study published in the Science Journal, but it is already being touted by the media as the future of weight loss. Although it has yet to be tested on humans, trials on pigs have yielded very promising results. After about 30 minutes of VIBES activity, pigs consumed on average almost 40 percent less food in the next half hour than they did without the smart pill. Apparently, the revolutionary device works by activating stretch receptors in the stomach, simulating the presence of food. This in turn signals the hypothalamus to increase the levels of hormones that make us feel full. Read More »

Yeono is a super-talented artist who specializes in micro-realism, creating small but impressively realistic pieces that look ready to jump off of the skin. 28-year-old Yeono is recognized as one of the most talented tattoo artists in Los Angeles. Born and raised in South Korea, Yeono discovered her passion for tattoos only a decade or so ago when her mother decided to get a tattoo and asked her help with finding a good tattoo artist. She soon discovered the world of Japanese tattoos and was blown away by the intricate artworks masters of the craft could produce. She started looking into the possibility of working in the field after graduating high school and began tattooing professionally in 2014. She has since become a master in her own right, producing some truly awe-inspiring masterpieces. Read More »

Japanese media recently reported the controversial story of a 35-year-old Japanese man who allegedly has four wives and three small children but hasn’t worked in over a decade. 35-year-old Ryuta Watanabe of Sapporo, on Japan’s Hokkaido Island, has become an overnight sensation in his home country due to an unconventional lifestyle. Watanabe reportedly lives with three of his four wives – who get along great with each other – and relies on them for most of the family’s financial needs, as he hasn’t had a job in the last 10 years. The polygamous family’s daily life was recently featured on Japan’s AbemaTV news program Abema Prime and sparked quite a heated debate in Japan, a country where polygamy is officially banned. To bypass Japan’s polygamy law, Ryuta’s four wives are currently in what is known as a ‘common-law relationship’ with him, but they plan to register their marriages and then divorce him, one at a time, so they can take the surname ‘Watanabe’ and pass it on to their children. Read More »

The Chained Tree of Peshawar, in Pakistan, has been under arrest since 1899, when a British officer decided to teach it a lesson for moving away from him. It has remained chained ever since. 125 years ago, a drunk British officer by the name of James Squid performed one of the most bizarre arrests in history in Landi Kotal, a town near the Torkhan border. Convinced that the tree was trying to get away from him as he struggled to approach it, Squid ordered it chained to the ground and placed under arrest. The chains have remained in place ever since, and a plaque tells the story of the arrest for curious tourists. Read More »

Emily Pellegrini has only been on Instagram for four months, but she already has nearly 150,000 fans showering her with compliments and date invitations. Only she’s not a real person… AI-generated social media influencers are on a tear these days. A couple of months ago, we featured Aitana Lopez, aka Fit Aitana, a Spanish model who had amassed a following of around 110,000 people on Instagram in four months despite only existing in the digital world. She was the creation of a communication agency, but she looked just like a real person. It turns out that she was only one of many hyperrealistic digital avatars taking social media by storm and making their creators fortunes in advertising, sponsorships and paid personalized content. Emily Pellegrini, a digital model based on the guidelines of ChatGPT, has been getting a lot of attention in the media recently, sparking controversy in the process. Read More »

Every year, Japanese pesticide company Earth Corporation holds a ‘transcendence ceremony’ at the Myodoji Temple in Ako City to honor insects that sacrificed their lives for research purposes. Earth Corporation prides itself on being the ‘no. 1 preferred household insecticide company in Japan’, a status it has achieved over decades of research and trial & error. In order to test the efficacy of its products, the company uses them on various species of insects at a proprietary research facility in Ako City, and some of those bugs inevitably die in the process. The company breeds the bugs it uses for testing, but that doesn’t make their sacrifice meaningless, and to show that it doesn’t take the tiny creatures for granted, Earth Corporation holds an honorary ceremony at the Myodoji Temple in Ako City. Read More »

The Swan Car is regarded as one of the craziest, most eccentric vehicles ever to hit the streets and one look at it is enough to explain why. The Swan Car was commissioned in the early 1900s by Robert Nicholl ‘Scotty’ Matthewson, a wealthy British engineer living in Calcutta. It’s never been clear why he was so obsessed with swans – maybe because he lived in Swan Park, next to Calcutta Zoo, which was home to many beautiful swans – but he loved the birds enough to travel to England in 1909 and placed a very special with JW Brooks and Company of Lowestoft, Suffolk – a swan-shaped car. The following year, the unique vehicle arrived in Calcutta and immediately became the talk of the town. It was unlike anything anyone had ever seen, or would ever see again for that matter, and came with some intriguing features. Read More »