Chef Sues Michelin Guide for Including His Restaurant Against His Wishes

Seoul chef Eo Yun-gwon has shocked the restaurant world after announcing that he is suing Michelin Guide for including his restaurant in their 2019 edition, despite him asking them not to.

Most chefs would kill to have their restaurant included in the famous Michelin Guide, and in fact some waste years of their lives and big money in pursuit of a Michelin star and never get it, so Eo Yun-gwon’s announcement that he not only explicitly asked the authors of the guide to remove his restaurant from this year’s edition, but that he also sued them for not honoring his request, came as a huge shock. Eo described the Michelin Guide as cruel and unfair, and vowed to continue his crusade against the publication.

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Man Coughing Non-Stop for Two Months Had Leech Stuck to His Throat

Doctors at a hospital in south-eastern China’s Fujian Province recently reported the unusual case of a man whose non-stop coughing had apparently been caused by a leech attached to his throat.

Last Friday, the unnamed man arrived at the Wuping County Hospital in the city of Longyan complaining of almost non-stop coughing over the past two months. He had become increasingly worried about his condition after coughing up phlegm and blood, so he finally decided to seek medical attention. Doctors at the hospital’s respiratory department initially recommended a CT scan, but when that didn’t reveal anything, they decided to try a more invasive procedure called “bronchoscopy”, which allowed them to inspect the patient’s air passages with a small camera. That’s how they found a leech living in his throat.

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Mysterious Benefactor Settles People’s Debts in Poor Turkish Neighborhoods

Poor families in the Turkish city of Istanbul have been visited by a mysterious patron paying off their debts at grocery stores and leaving envelopes of cash on their doorsteps over the past year.

Last week, many poor people in Tuzla, a shipbuilding district on the Asian side of Istanbul ,were happy to find out that their debts at local grocery stores had been paid by an unknown male benefactor who claimed to be doing the selfless deeds “only to earn God’s blessing”. After the crash of the Turkish lira last year, food prices soared, as did the prices of utilities like electricity, and the unemployment rate. The rising cost of living has been hard to keep up with some people, but this mysterious benefactor is doing his best to help the poorest people in Istanbul.

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The Fashion Houses Selling Expensive Dresses That Don’t Really Exist

Earlier this year, San Francisco businessman Richard Ma spent $10,000 on a dress created by The Fabricant, the world’s first digital-only fashion house. The problem is that the dress didn’t really exist outside the digital world.

Digital-only clothes are so new that most people haven’t even heard about them, but some experts believe they will one day be a flourishing industry. But why would anyone be interested in fashionable garments that don’t exist in the physical world? If you can’t put them on and show them off, what’s the point? Well, that’s what makes them so interesting, you can actually put them on (sort of) and show them off on social media, in fact that’s actually their main purpose.

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South Korea Runs Out of Dog Deworming Medicine Because People Think It Cures Cancer

Remember that story we ran a few months ago about a man who claimed he cured his terminal cancer with a cheap dog deworming medicine? Well, apparently it recently went viral in South Korea and stocks of the antiparasitic medicine have been depleted.

Back in May, the story of Joe Tippens, an Oklahoma man who allegedly cured his terminal with the help of a $5 dog deworming drug called fenbendazole, went viral. Doctors said the cancer had spread everywhere in his body and he only had about three months to live, but today he is cured and he credits the veterinary medicine for the miracle. The news made headlines all around the world, but it really made a big impact in South Korea, where stocks of fenbendazole have evaporated due to people buying it as a way to prevent or cure cancer.

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Man Impersonates Airline Pilot So He Can Board Plane Faster

Did you know airplane pilots can skip airport security checks even on flights conducted by other airlines? Well, one Indian businessman certainly did, so he bought himself a pilot uniform so he could board planes faster.

Rajan Mahbubani, a 48-year-old consultancy agency owner from New Delhi, was recently arrested at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, after posing as a pilot for German airline Lufthansa. He was about to board an Air Asia flight to Kolkata, when the airline called Lufthansa offices to confirm the trip of a pilot wearing the German carrier’s uniform. A team of Lufthansa officials was sent to confirm the pilot’s identity, but after they confronted the suspicious pilot he admitted to impersonation.

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Woman Allegedly Suffers Multiple Bone Fractures Due to Excessive Sunscreen Use

A Chinese woman whose violent coughs reportedly resulted in 10 fractured ribs was shocked to hear that her bones had become fragile due to her excessive sunblock use, which caused a severe vitamin D deficiency.

The 20-year-old woman from Zhejiang province, in eastern China, first started experiencing coughing episodes after pulling out a straw mat to sleep on to combat heat during the night. She started coughing that very night, and although her doctor first diagnosed her with a case of allergic asthma, the violent coughs soon revealed an even bigger health concern. After a few days, after particularly violent coughing fits, Xiao Miao (a pseudonym used by Chinese media) experienced severe pain in the left side of her chest, which investigations revealed was caused by several broken ribs.

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This $5.5 Million Floating Mansion Is the Ultimate Luxury at Sea

The Arkup is a luxury yacht shaped like a 4,300-square-foot modern villa. It can float like a boat, or rise above the waves using hydraulic pilings, for added stability in case of rough waters, and it’s reportedly built to withstand a category four hurricane. It also costs $5.5 million!

If you’re the kind of person who likes sailing or going on cruises, but wishes they could do it from the comfort of their own home, well, now you can! Arkup, the world’s ultimate “house yacht”, is literally a floating villa that doubles as a luxury sea vessel, thanks to its two 100 kW/272 hp electrical engines. It features four bedrooms, a living room, kitchen,  4.5 bathrooms, a swimming platform, retractable deck, and a roof covered with solar panels that make it completely self sufficient in terms of electricity. Thanks to a rainwater purification system, the chances of the 4,000-gallon fresh water tank going dry are very small, so as long as you have plenty of food supplies, you can pretty much live off the grid for a long time.

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Child Genius Set to Graduate from University at Age 9

Outside of school, Laurent Simons is your typical 9-year-old child. The Belgian boy plays video games like Fortnite and Minecraft, spends time on social media, and loves to travel. But when it comes to studying, he puts students a decade his seniors to shame, graduating from university at age nine.

If all goes well and Laurent Simons completes his final project at Eindhoven University of Technology, in the Netherlands, he will graduate with a degree in electrical engineering in December. Most people take three years to graduate from the very same program, but Laurent entered just last year, and he is set to complete in just 10 months. That’s thanks to his superior intellect and his remarkable capacity to take in lots of information in very little time, which allows professors to go through the curriculum at a much faster pace.

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You Can Now Buy “Virginity Pills” to Fake It on Wedding Night

Retail giant Amazon recently found itself at the center of controversy in India, after it was reported that it is selling virginity pills that help women fake their virginity on wedding night.

Called “i-virgin”, the controversial product consists of small capsules containing a mysterious “blood-powder” that allegedly imitates human blood. All the user has to do is insert one of these pills in the vagina a couple of hours before the planned intercourse to fake virginity. The producer adds that the “high quality blood” completely dissolves, posing no health danger to the user. Amazon India has been accused that by selling a product which helps fake virginity on the first day of marriage it is supporting a centuries-old taboo.

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Company Makes Vodka Out of Thin Air Using Captured CO2, Water and Solar Power

Brooklyn-based startup Air Co. claims to have created the world’s first “carbon negative vodka” by capturing carbon dioxide captured from the air and using a solar powered machine to turn it into ethanol.

According to Air Co. co-founder Gregory Constantine, each bottle of carbon negative vodka sucks a pound of carbon dioxide from the air in its entire life cycle, or as much as eight full-grown trees. Unlike traditional vodka, which is made by fermenting starch-rich grains like wheat, or potatoes, in a process that can create around 13 pounds of greenhouse gases, Air Co. vodka is made only with water and carbon dioxide, and its production process actually removes carbon dioxide from the air.

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Thousands of Birds Found Dead Near Indian Lake And No One Knows What Killed Them

Wildlife experts in India are trying to make sens of the mysterious deaths of thousands of birds near the country’s largest inland lake. While the reported death toll is currently around 2,000, locals claimed that it could reach 5,000, as carcasses allegedly cover an area stretching from 12 to 15 km around the lake.

Sambhar Lake, 80km south-west of the city of Jaipur, is India’s largest inland lake and a popular gathering place for migratory birds like flamingos, storks, sandpipers, redshanks, black-winged stilts, among dozens of species. Last Sunday, however, locals alerted authorities that the lake shoreline had become an eerie graveyard for thousands of birds, with only a few dozen still left alive as far as the eye could see. There were reportedly so many bodies that when people first saw them, they mistook them for piles of cow dung, but it didn’t take them long to realize that they were really bird carcasses from more than 10 species.

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Gold Thread Acupuncture – A Bizarre Way to Deal with Pain

From actual snake oil to music therapy, over the years humanity has come up with all sort of bizarre treatments for chronic pain. One of the strangest ones you might have never heard of before is gold thread acupuncture, where tiny gold threads are implanted in the human body.

Gold thread acupuncture has long been used in Asian countries to treat various types of pain. The procedure is usually performed by a person with no medical training and involves the permanent implantation of tiny threads of gold in painful areas of the body, using acupuncture needles. Apparently, the insertion of these sterile pieces of gold is believed to result in continuous stimulation inside the body, and pain relief. There is no evidence that this alternative pain relief treatment actually works, but doctors have reported several complications related to the procedure.

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Colombian Soccer Field Has Two Living Trees as Goalkeepers

A newly-inaugurated synthetic soccer pitch in Bogota, Colombia, has been attracting a lot of attention on social media due to a couple of permanent “players” – two trees growing in front of each goal.

Back in 2017 the District Institute of Recreation and Sports (IDRD) commissioned engineering and architecture studies for the adaptation and improvement of Parque Japon, a park in northern Bogota, the capital of Bogota. Everything was going according to plan until locals in the area surrounding the park learned that authorities planned to remove or relocate some of the trees in the park to make room for a synthetic soccer and volleyball field. The people took the IDRD to court and in January of this year they won, which technically meant that the trees could not be touched by authorities. However, that didn’t stop contractors from moving forward with the soccer field…

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University Lets Students Lie in a Grave to Reconcile With Their Mortality

Radboud University, in the Dutch city of Nijmegen, has been raising some eyebrows with its “purification grave”, a hole dug in the ground that students can lie down in for up to three hours to reflect on what is important to them.

The “purification grave” at Radboud University is at the same time a modern form of memento mori and an invitation to think about what is really important in life. Initially dug in 2009 the grave was part of a two year project that ended in 2011. However, it seems to have made a comeback this year, probably by popular demand. Students at the the univeristy, and well as those at the neighboring HAN University of Applied Science can sign up to lay in the several feet-deep hole in the ground for 30 minutes up to three hours. They are not allowed to take their phones or any books with them in the grave, allowing them to focus on their surroundings and their inevitable demise.

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