A pastor in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe was in the news recently for selling hundreds of special, ‘anointed’ pens to local students. Prophet Sham Hungwe claims that the miracle pens will help students pass exams without even studying!

“It is anointed and I declare passes when your children sit for exams; when you sit for exams,” he told members of the House of Grace International Church, during a sermon. And with the ‘O’ and ‘A’ level exams coming up, he managed to sell a lot of the 15-cent pens for different prices, ranging from $1 to $20. The more you pay, the higher the chances to pass the exams.

Several believers scrambled to secure the pens for themselves or their children, especially after one of the congregants testified that he scored 14 points on his ‘A’ level last year with Prophet Sham’s special pen. The testimony boosted sales, with one woman paying over $10 for a single pen.

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You can’t solve every problem with pure logic. Learning that the hard way is Zhejiang University economics professor Xie Zuoshi. He’s on the receiving end of a nation’s wrath after he suggested wife sharing to solve China’s gender imbalance issue.

News reports say that China’s gender ratio at birth is about 1.02 to 1.07 boys born for every girl, an imbalance created because of the one-child policy and the cultural preference for male children. As a result, men, especially in rural China, are finding it increasingly difficult to get married. In fact, the nation is expected to have 30 to 40 million bachelors by the year 2020.

In the face of such alarming statistics, Prof Xie wrote an essay highlighting what he believes is the most obvious solution – that men of lower incomes should share wives. He reasoned that the huge demand for wives would increase their value, making them unaffordable to poorer men. “Men with high incomes will have an advantage in finding women, because they can afford the high price,” he wrote. “And what about the low income men? One way is for several men to band together to find a wife.”

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Lots of people are obsessed with the idea of a post-apocalyptic world, and playing to their fears and fantasies is Vivos – a company that creates luxurious Doomsday bunkers. Created by California entrepreneur Robert Vicino, the bunkers at are exclusively meant for those who can afford them, and deemed worthy of Vicino himself.

The company claims to own a network of underground shelters, but the exact locations are a carefully guarded secret. “Vivos is the only co-ownership community shelter network on the planet,” reads the marketing material, which assumes that the time for evacuation is fast approaching. “Limited space is still available for those that qualify. Members are now boarding. Don’t be left on the other side of the door.”

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Unable to afford ridiculously expensive rental housing in San Francisco, young professionals are trying to find interesting alternative living arrangements. One of them literally involves living in a box – there’s a whole village in Oakland where shipping containers are doubling up as tiny apartments!

At ‘Containercopia’, you can rent a 160-square-foot metal container complete with glass windows, electricity, and private bathroom for just $600 a month . The whole package is considered a steal when compared to skyrocketing rents in the city, which went up by 20 percent in the last year.

The idea for Containercopia belongs to 32-year-old Luke Iseman and his ex-partner Heather Stewart. They were fed up of spending huge amounts on rent, so they bought a shipping container for $2,300 from the Port of Oakland, rented half an acre of land, and moved in. Then they spent about $12,000 converting the box into a home – with a small toilet, custom-built shower, queen-size bed, glass windows, and solar panels.

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Can you imagine going without food, drink and sleep for nine straight days and nights? It sounds impossible, but a Japanese Buddhist monk proved that it can be done, after recently completing a grueling ritual.

Last Wednesday, 41-year-old Kogen Kamahori, one of the “marathon monks” of Mount Hiei, a holy mountain that straddles Japan’s Kyoto and Shiga prefectures, became one of only 13 monks to have completed the endurance test since the end of World War 2. He emerged from a training facility, assisted by fellow monks, after spending nine days without eating, drinking, sleeping or even lying down. During this time, he was also required to chant sutras 100,000 times. Just keeping count under these conditions sounds like a superhuman task.

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A couple from France are so obsessed with dolls that they’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to transform themselves into real-life Ken and Barbie. They’ve had over 15 procedures between them so far and plan to keep going until they achieve perfect doll-like appearances. And to complete the effect, they’re legally changing their names to ‘Ken’ and ‘Doll’!

Anastasia Reskoss, 20, and Quentin Dehar, 23, met at a boat party in 2013, and they quickly bonded over their fondness for the plastic lives of dolls. “When I’d laid eyes on Quentin for the first time, I knew that I’d found the love of my life,” Anastasia said. “Quentin walked over to me and said: ‘I’ve found the Barbie to my Ken.’ It was so straightforward. We both knew we had met a partner who was going to enable us to become the Ken and Barbie we had always dreamed of being.”

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When it comes to idol groups in Japan, good ol’ music just doesn’t cut it anymore. They’ve got to throw in an additional gimmick or two, just to standout among the massive competition. And Hamburgirl Z is doing just that – it’s the world’s only hamburger-themed girl band!

In the words of Japanese culture blogger Tofugu, the new West Japan band is a “group of cute, smiling girls dancing and singing in hamburger costumes. Their sole purpose is to serenade hamburger lovers, by singing only about, well, burgers.

The girls are dressed like different hamburger ingredients – there’s beef, lettuce, egg, tomato, fish, chicken, onion, pork/bacon, avocado, pineapple, and even eggplant. There are a total of 15 members in the band sporting 14 ingredients. They perform at a variety of events across West Japan, and sell merchandise after the concert is over.

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For the past 45 years, Martin and Sinforosa Colomer have been the only two residents of La Estrella, an abandoned village in Spain. The only living beings they have for company are three dogs, four hens, a rooster, about 25 cats, and a few bees. The closest inhabited town is at least 25 kilometers away!

It’s a strange way to live, without any human contact, almost like they’re the last two people on earth. But the tiny village was not always this isolated. It was once bustling with life, with hundreds of inhabitants, a church, two schoolhouses, and several bars. In fact, La Estrella has an interesting past – legend has it that the village was constructed exclusively for the mistresses of many wealthy men.

According to various sources, a torrential storm in 1883 killed nearly half the inhabitants and destroyed at least 17 houses. The village square, vicarage and church remained unharmed, and a memorial was erected for all those who died. The place lost its charm after that and locals slowly began to abandon their homes.

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When 27-year-old Quinn Duane’s finance dumped her just a week before their wedding, the young woman decided to make the best of the situation. Instead of cancelling the wedding venue and catering, she invited the city’s homeless to partake in the elaborate feast.

Quinn herself was too devastated to attend what should have been her own wedding reception, but her family stood in for her to welcome the guests at Sacramento’s Citizen Hotel. “When I found out Monday that the wedding would not be taking place, it just seemed like, of course, this would be something that we would do to give back, Quinn’s mother Kari told local media. “I feel a lot of heartache and heartbreak for her, but I will take away something good from this.”

The meal, prepared by the hotel’s four-star restaurant ‘Grange’, consisted of salad, appetizers, gnocchi, salmon, and steak. It was originally intended to feed 120 guests, after the $35,000 ceremony at the hotel. The wedding, sadly, was not meant to be, but Quinn and her family decided to go ahead with the meal, only with an entirely different guest list.

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Li Yongzhi, 48, is fondly known as the ‘king of chilli’ in his home village of Shawoli,  Henan Province. He starts his day with a chilli mouthwash and continues to eat copious amounts for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He recently told local media that he’s loved spicy food since childhood, and that chilli is his staple food – he could eat meals without meat or eggs, but never without a handful of chillies.

“Most people brush their teeth in the morning, I just eat chillies to freshen up my breath,” he proudly stated. “Without chillies, any meal is tasteless.” In fact, Li’s chilli needs are so great that he grows his own supply of eight different types of peppers in his backyard.

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British man Ted Richards is so in love with his pet parrots that he wants to look just like them. So he actually went through a six-hour operation to have his ears removed. And now he’s planning to turn his nose into a beak, as well!

The 56-year-old retired shoe factory worker from Hartcliffe, Bristol, is passionate about extreme body art. He sports 110 tattoos, 50 piercings, a hot iron branded peace sign on his shoulder, and even has a split tongue. The tattoos on his face are like birds’ feathers, and he’s got two magnetic horn implants on his forehead. His eyeballs are tattooed too, and with the ears removed, he feels he’s getting closer and closer to resembling his parrots – Ellie, Teaka, Timneh, Jake, and Bubi.

“I think it looks really great,” he said. “I love it. It’s the best thing that has happened to me. I’m so happy, it’s unreal, I can’t stop looking in the mirror.” To keep his glasses in place, he has had small metal pins added to the side of his head. Read More »

Texas-based Paige Chenault loves birthdays, and believes everyone should have a chance to celebrate theirs. So she hosts beautiful parties for homeless children, giving them birthday celebrations they’ll remember for the rest of their lives. She started with a few parties in Dallas and went on to found a non profit called The Birthday Party Project, with chapters across the US.

Chenault, a former wedding planner, is perfect for the job because of her extensive experience. It all started when she read a magazine on a plane about kids’ birthday parties, when she was pregnant with her daughter. “I was just dreaming about all the great stuff that I could do for my daughter, just because I was an event planner, so I thought, ‘If anybody could throw a big bash, it was going to be me for my kid,’” she said.

And then she picked up another magazine and read about poor children in Haiti who didn’t have anything. That’s when it struck her that there are millions of children in the world who not only have shelter or food, but would never be able to enjoy the kind of celebration she had in mind. “That’s where the idea came from, and it really started stirring in me,” she said.

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Meet Gong Xunhui, a 62-year-old Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) patient who recently wrote a detailed autobiography using only her eyes!

Gong Xunhui has been suffering from ALS for the past 12 years. She’s been confined to a wheelchair since 2006, but despite her almost complete paralysis, she has actually managed to write a 150,000-word book on her life – something that even able bodied people might struggle with. And she did it with the only part of her body she still has full control over, her eyes. 

It all started about three years ago, when Xunhui’s family bought her an eye-tracking assistive device that she could use to communicate and also control a computer. After it was installed, the first line she typed was: “I am very happy today, and after I get better at typing with my eyes, I will probably write an autobiography.”

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Scientists and doctors have made a huge leap in cryonics – the effort to save lives through sub-zero temperatures – by freezing the body of a two-year-old child. Matheryn Naovaratpong is now the youngest person in the world to be cryogenically preserved.

Fondly known to her family as ‘Einz’, the little girl was diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer shortly after her third birthday. She died in January this year, just before she turned three. But her parents – both medical engineers – have decided to give her another chance at life using cryonics. 

Through cryonics, it is possible to preserve the bodies of humans and animals who cannot be cured through contemporary medicine, with the hope that they may be healed and resuscitated if extraordinary medical advances take place in the future. “As scientists, we are 100% confident this will happen one day – we just don’t know when,” Einz’s father Sahatorn said.

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Navy veteran Sean Mace is suing a California national park for $5 million after his skull was crushed in a freak accident. A giant pine cone apparently fell out of a tree and hit him on the head, causing serious, life-altering injuries.

The incident occurred last October at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, where Mace was reading a book under a grove of coniferous Araucaria bidwillii trees. He had been waiting to watch a Blue Angels air show when a 16-pound pine cone dropped from a tree and smashed his skull, knocking him unconscious. Mace suffered severe swelling and a brain hemorrhage.

He was immediately rushed to San Francisco General Hospital, where he underwent two emergency surgeries to relieve the pressure on his brain. A part of his skull had to be removed during surgery, in order to save his life. He now suffers from permanent brain damage, memory loss, depression, and ‘a tremendous degree of anxiety’. He cannot get a job, while he still has to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills. And he still has to get a third operation.

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