Nigel Richards, a 57-year-old New Zealand scrabble phenom, recently won the 2024 Spanish-Language Scrabble World Championship despite not speaking the language at all.

It’s been almost a decade since we first wrote about the talented Mr. Nigel Richards; He had just won the 2015 French-Language Scrabble Championship despite being completely unable to have a conversation in French. It was a remarkable feat that made international news headlines at the time. Richards was already known as the world’s best scrabble player and had earned nicknames like ‘the Tiger Woods of Scrabble,’ but this was completely unheard of. A person who didn’t speak French at all had run through the world’s best French-speaking Scrabble players to earn the title of world champion. Some thought it was a fluke, but Nigel has repeated the feat since, and he recently proved he could do it in other languages he didn’t speak.

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Sister Anna Donelli, a respected nurse from northern Italy, was recently arrested under suspicion of having colluded with a powerful clan of the ‘Ndragheta mafia family.

The arrest of 57-year-old Anna Donelli, a respected nun and recent recipient of the Golden Panettone, an annual Milanese civic award, for her volunteer work in prisons and in the troubled outskirts of cities like Milan, Rome and Brescia, came as a shock for the whole of Italy. On Thursday, Sister Anna and 24 other people were arrested following an investigation into the activities of the ‘Ndragheta in Brescia, with authorities claiming they had strong reasons to believe the nun had been working with the mafia crime family for a long time. As part of her work in several prisons where ‘Ndragheta members were being held, the nun is suspected of facilitating communication between prisoners and the clan’s leaders and solving conflicts and disputes between inmates.

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A Chinese man bored with his daily life recently got detained for posting a “wanted order” in his name on social media and bragging about the countless crimes he had allegedly committed.

Can you imagine being so bored that you start posting made-up crimes online and posting as a criminal mastermind, hoping to get some kind of attention? That’s exactly what a man from northern China did last month, taking to social media to spread lies about himself, including that he had recently extorted 30 million yuan ($4million) from a company, that he owned a firearm and ammunition, and challenging people to find him if they wanted a 30,000 yuan ($4,000) reward. His post went viral, but it also caught the attention of Chinese law enforcement monitoring social media, and he ended up behind bars for his unusual stunt.

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Death Clock is an innovative app that uses artificial intelligence to accurately predict a person’s life expectancy based on a number of factors like diet, exercise level and sleeping habits.

We’re all going to die someday, but wouldn’t it be nice to have an idea of when that will be? Many people would probably answer ‘no,’ but for those curious when their demise will occur, there’s Death Clock. Launched in July, this AI-powered app uses a dataset of over 1,200 life expectancy studies and 53 million participants to provide personalized death predictions to its users. It’s a dark premise, to be sure, but financial planners have been paying a lot of attention to Death Clock because of its potential to motivate people to more carefully plan their finances for retirement.

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An Argentinian man was wrongfully imprisoned after police mistook 18 containers of talcum powder for cocaine and it took three weeks to analyze the true nature of the substance.

In early October, Maximiliano Acosta got on a bus in the town of Mendoza towards the capital, Buenos Aires. Shortly after, the bus was stopped in La Paz for what was supposed to be a routine check by a team of gendarmes. Upon checking the passengers’ baggage, the gendarmes discovered that Acosta had 18 containers of talcum powder and questioned him about it. Despite the man’s explanation that the containers actually contained talcum powder for personal use, the gendarmes detained him on suspicion of drug possession. The tests that followed the arrest, allegedly showed that the 18 containers were full of cocaine, and Maximiliano was put behind bars without so much as alerting his family about his situation.

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Shikoku Bank’s leadership has come up with a bizarre way of reassuring clients of its commitment – promising to pay with their lives if found guilty of ‘financial irregularities’.

Banking executives are always held to high ethical standards, considering that they handle the wealth of thousands, sometimes millions of people, but while they face serious punishment in case of fraud or embezzlement, they aren’t quite expected to pay with their lives. That is not the case with the management of Shikoku Bank, a financial institution whose top 23 executives, including President Miura, signed a blood oath requiring them to commit seppuku if found guilty of engaging in financial irregularities, embezzlement or other fraudulent activities. Rooted in the code of honor of Japan’s samurai era, the bizarre pledge posted on Shikoku Bank’s website went viral sparking reactions varying from admiration to disbelief.

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Chinese robotics company Robot Era recently unveiled Star1, the world’s fastest bipedal robot capable of reaching and maintaining speeds of up to 8 mph (12.98 km/h).

Photos and videos of a sneaker-wearing robot running through the Gobi Desert went viral on Chinese social media last month, inspiring all sorts of humorous comments from the public, but few people realized they were watching the world’s fastest humanoid robot in action. Developed by Robot Era, a Chinese robotics company, STAR1 is powered by high-torque motors and AI algorithms and can tackle all sorts of surfaces and environments, including sand and grassland. Its advanced motors help the robot move efficiently, while high-speed sensors and communication modules let it process information about its surroundings in real-time, but what really helps put it above other bipedal robots in terms of speed is old-fashioned human footwear.

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A 26-year-old South Korean man was recently sentenced to one year in prison for deliberately binge eating in order to become obese and be declared unfit for mandatory military service.

Military service is no trivial matter in South Korea. It doesn’t matter if you’re a globally-known singer, a successful actor, or a billionaire; if you’re a healthy adult male between the ages of 18 and 35, you have to spend at least 21 months in the army. The most you can do is postpone the compulsory service, but you’ll have to go through it at some point. However, if you are declared unfit for service because of health issues, you’re off the hook. One young South Korean man allegedly tried to avoid serving in the military by binge eating and becoming obese. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out quite as he had planned and he now has to spend a year behind bars.

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A 33-year-old Japanese man has been getting a lot of attention for his ingenious way of putting a roof over his head – asking total strangers to let him sleep over.

Shuraf Ishida has slept in over 500 different homes over the last five years. After quitting his job, he decided to sell all his belongings except for a few essentials that fit into his backpack and travel around Japan using his savings. Normally, accommodation would have ranked highest on his list of expenses, but the 33-year-old man found an ingenious way of putting a roof over his head for free. Every day, Ishida stands in crowded areas sometimes for hours at a time, holding up a sign that reads “Please Let Me Stay Over Tonight!” As weird as it sounds, he almost always finds someone willing to take him in, mostly lonely homeowners in need of someone to talk to.

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Ligament tears occur about 60 milliseconds, but a startup claims to have created a knee airbag that inflates in just 30 milliseconds, enough to prevent ACL and MCL injuries.

Hippos, a startup founded by Kylin Shaw and Bhavy Metakar, recently raised a $642,000 pre-seed round from investors Possible Ventures and Silicon Roundabout Ventures for their revolutionary “knee sleeve,” a sort of high-tech airbag for the knee that uses sensors to rapidly detect incoming stress and deploy tiny air canisters that fill up small airbags around the knee, thus preventing critical injuries. It only takes 30 milliseconds for the knee airbag to inflate, considerably faster than the 60 milliseconds that ACL injuries typically occur in. If the device works as presented by the company, it could save athletes thousands of dollars in medical expenses and much more in inactivity.

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Axel Pons, formerly a competitor in the Moto2 World Championship, changed up his lifestyle dramatically six years ago when he decided to travel the world barefoot.

Son of the legendary Sito Pons, two-time MotoGP winner, Axel Pons had a lot to live up to early in his career as a motorcycle racer. Expectations were very high, but so was the pressure on his shoulders, and despite some promising results in the Moto2 World Championship – a 16th place finish in the 2016 season being the apex of his racing career – he decided to take a break from motorcycle racing and focus on fashion. He did some work as a fashion model, then disappeared only to resurface in 2019 to do an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais in which he said he wanted to slow down and put his past life behind him. But no one expected the kind of change that was coming.

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Osaka-based showerhead maker Science Co. has developed a cutting-edge washing machine for humans aptly named “Mirai Ningen Sentakuki” (Human Washing Machine of the Future).

At the 1970 Osaka Kansai Expo, Japanese tech giant Sanyo Electric Co., now Panasonic Holdings Corp., launched the world’s first-ever human washing machine. Its futuristic egg shape and bubble technology captured people’s imagination and drew huge crowds to the manufacturer’s booth. Yasuaki Aoyama was one of the many people who got to see Sanyo’s washing machine in action. He was only a curious fourth-grader at the time, but the feeling of awe stuck with him all through adulthood, and today, as the chairman of Science Co., a company specializing in bathtubs and showerheads, he is preparing to launch his very own modern washing machine for humans.

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Laibo 2, a quadruped robot developed in South Korea, has become the first robot to ever complete a full marathon on a single charge after running the 42.195-km Sangju Dried Persimmon Marathon.

Developed by Professor Hwangbo Je-min and his team at the Korea Advanced Insitute of Science and Technology, Laibo 2 is an advanced quadruped robot designed with a focus on endurance. It recently became the first robot to run a full marathon after completing the 22nd Sangju Dried Persimmon Marathon in Sangju, South Korea with a respectable time of 4 hours, 19 minutes, and 52 seconds, on a single charge. The 42-kg robot had to navigate difficult terrain, including two relatively steep hills, gauge its distance from the other runners, and maintain course, all the while mitigating power consumption to ensure it reached the finish line.

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A Wisconsin man who had been missing since August after going kayaking on Green Lake recently resurfaced to confess to faking his death and moving to Eastern Europe.

On August 12, the tranquility of the town of Watertown, Wisconsin, was shattered by the disappearance of Ryan Borgwardt, a 44-year-old husband and father of three. Borgwardt had gone on a short kayaking trip on Green Lake but disappeared completely, and an emergency search found his capsized kayak on the lake and his vehicle and trailer in a nearby park, suggesting that he had fallen in the lake and drowned. A day later, local fishermen found Ryan’s fishing rod and then a tacklebox containing his belongings. All the signs pointed to Borgwardt’s accidental demise, but then, one day, during the investigation that followed, local law enforcement found evidence that suggested Ryan had crossed into Canada, and border authorities there confirmed that they had indeed run his passport a day after his disappearance. It was this discovery that led to the uncovering of Ryan Borgwardt’s elaborate plan to fake his death and leave his family behind.

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A Belarusian blogger managed to convince dozens of Russian teachers to make and wear tinfoil hats as means of protection against radiation from NATO satellites.

Vladislav Bokhan, a Belarussian blogger and activist known for his elaborate pranks, made headlines earlier this month when he released several photos of dozens of Russian teachers wearing tinfoil hats decorated with the Russian flag. He reportedly contacted multiple schools in Russia’s Voronezh region, introducing himself as an official from the local branch of United Russia (the country’s ruling party), and ordered them to hold a patriotic master class called “Helmet of the Fatherland.” Bokhan demanded that teachers working at these schools make tinfoil hats to “demonstrate their readiness to protect themselves from radiation from NATO satellites,” and to his surprise, seven of the schools he contacted actually followed his instructions without question.

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