A former beauty pageant winner from Guinea has taken a Swiss skin-care product company to court for allegedly ruined her once healthy complexion and ruining her modelling career.

25-year-old Mariama Diallo, who previously won Miss Guinea, Miss West Africa and participated in the Miss World pageant, had a successful modelling career until three years ago, when trying a new skincare product left her face full of blemishes and scars. She has been struggling to find work since 2018, as the healing process has been very slow and no company would hire her. Diallo has now taken the manufacturer of the product she claims ruined her career to court.

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Touching your girlfriend isn’t generally considered a punishable offence, but things change considerably when your date for the day is a rental.

A Taiwanese university student learned that the hard way, after getting a bit too close to a girlfriends he had rented by the hour, and getting sentenced to jail for it. In July of 2019, the boy, identified only as ‘Chen’, paid 7,200 Taiwanese dollars ($260) to rent a girlfriend for three hours, from a company called “Love Acting-Extra”. The service had very specific rules detailing what the client was allowed to to with his rented girlfriend, but also what was forbidden. Unfortunately for Chen, he got carried away, and paid a steep price for it…

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44-year-old Niel Kenmuir suffers from aphantashia, a rare and strange medical condition that prevents him from visualizing things in his head.

Niel first realized that there was something different about his brain when he was in primary school. He had trouble falling asleep at night, so his step-father told him to close his eyes and visualize a flock of sheep and count them as they jump over a fence, one by one. The problem was he couldn’t see anything when he closed his eyes, no sheep, no fence, nothing. Later on, he would discover that he had a blind mind’s eye, which means he cannot visualize anything, not even the face of loved ones.

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Doctors recently reported the strange case of a 30-year-old man who injected magic mushrooms into his bloodstream, only to find that they had started growing in his veins.

The Journal of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry published a case report about a man who sought to self-medicate for opioid dependence and depression by injecting magic mushrooms directly into his blood. Referred to as “Mr. X”, for anonymity purposes, the man had reportedly been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had stopped taking his prescribed medication. Instead, he had started researching the therapeutic effects of psilocybin, a naturally occurring psychedelic found in over 200 species of mushrooms, as a way to treat his condition and decrease his reliance on opioids. The compound had been shown to be effective in treating symptoms like depression and anxiety in numerous medical trials, but only when consumed orally. Mr. X had other plans…

The protagonist of this strange story reportedly managed to get his hands on psychedelic mushrooms, which he boiled to obtain a “tea”, which he then proceeded to filter through a cotton swab, and then inject directly into his bloodstream.

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A 58-year-old French woman has been fight to get her life back, after being wrongfully declared dead by a court, during a long-running dispute with a former employee.

Jeanne Pouchain has been trying to prove she is alive and well for three years, ever since a labor court declared her dead, allegedly acting on information provided by one of her former employees, who she was in a legal dispute with. The verdict not only ended a decade-long lawsuit between Pouchain and her ex-employee, it also ruined her life as a citizen. Her name was wiped from official records, she lost her ID card, her driver’s license, medical insurance, bank account, everything. It was like she didn’t exist anymore.

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A computer programmer who years ago wrote down the password to a cryptocurrency wallet on a piece of paper, has since lost the said paper, and with it access to around $220 million in Bitcoin.

Can you imagine having over $200 million and no way to ever access it? That’s exactly the story of San Francisco-based programmer Stefan Thomas, who has been trying to remember the password of his IronKey, a special hard-drive that contains the private keys to a digital wallet with 7,002 Bitcoin. He received the digital currency 10 years ago, while living in Switzerland, from an early Bitcoin adopter, as payment for an animated video he made, titled “What is Bitcoin?”. He lost the password to his IronKey that same year, but since a Bitcoin was only worth around $5 back then, it didn’t bother him that much. Things have changed a bit since then, though…

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An unnamed wannabe driver from the UK has reportedly managed to pass the driving knowledge test after failing to answer enough questions correctly a whopping 157 times.

The United Kingdom’s Driving and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) recently reported a new record for the number of times someone failed the driving knowledge test before finally passing. A man, whose name was not disclosed for privacy reasons, reportedly managed to pass the theory test after previously failing it 157 times, and spending £3,000 ($4,100) in the process. The man was billed a candidate for the title of world’s worst driver by several media outlets, but others called him an example of perseverance.

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The D’Cruz siblings, whose ages range from 75 to 97 years, recently set a new Guinness World Record for the highest combined age, 1042 years and 315 days.

The idea of setting a Guinness record was first mentioned among the D’Cruz family members during a reunion in 2018. 75-year-old Genia, the youngest of the 12 siblings, recalls one of her nephews going “This is amazing. I’m going to write Guinness,” after seeing the family together. They all laughed it off as a joke, but two years later, on December 15, Guinness actually called to let them know that they had been recognized as having the highest combined age of any siblings in the world, 1042 years and 315 days.

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Photos of a young topless man wrapped in plastic foil and tied to a tree in Hanoi for allegedly failing to pay for his tattoos have been doing the rounds on Vietnamese social media.

It’s winter in Vietnam right now, with temperatures dropping under 10 degrees Celsius, so seeing topless men on the streets isn’t what you would call normal, especially ones wrapped tightly in plastic foil and tied to trees. And yet this was the sight some in Hanoi were treated to last week – a young shirtless man wearing a bike helmet, wrapped in see-through plastic and tied to a tree, with a sign that read “I hate paying for tattoos“. Photos of the man were posted online, and quickly went viral.

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Chinese social media has been in uproar over reports of a technology company that allegedly used smart cushions to secretly monitor the activity of its office staff.

An employee of Hebo Technology, a high-tech company based in Zhejiang Province, recently took to social media to expose a practice that he considered illegal and immoral. The woman man, known only as Wang, said that she and at least nine other employees in her office had been monitored via seat cushions for the last several months. The smart cushions were a gift from company management and were supposed to help them them stay healthy, by monitoring their vitals and offering healthy advice, but it turns out they had a more sinister purpose.

Wang said that she and her colleagues initially welcomed the company’s gift, as the smart cushions offered a wealth of data, including breathing rate, heart rate, and sitting posture, and even reminded them to stretch or get up, if they sat down for two long. The 10 employees genuinely believed that the company cared about their health and wellbeing.

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Deathstalker scorpion venom is not only the world’s most expensive venom, but also the most expensive liquid, commanding prices of up to $39 million per gallon. Getting your hands on a gallon is a bit tricky, though.

The deathstalker is one of the most dangerous species of scorpions. Even though a sting is generally not enough to kill a healthy adult, it can prove lethal to kids and the elderly, and is said to be about 100 times more painful than a bee sting. Of course, pain is subjective, so we don’t experience it the same way, but according to experts, describing the pain of a deathstalker scorpion as excruciating would be fairly accurate. And in order to obtain the precious mix of toxins, a person has to milk the deathstalker manually, as automated solutions are only just being developed.

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A Chinese company has come under fire for fining “lazy” employees who take more than one toilet break per day.

Anpu Electric Science and Technology, a Chinese corporation based in Dongguan, Guangdong province, admitted to enforcing a bizarre once-a-day toilet break policy and fining employees who break it with 20 yuan ($3). According to notices issued by the company and leaked on social media by disgruntled employees, at least seven staff members were penalized on December 20 and 21. The rule has sparked outrage online, but company officials explained management’s decision to create the bizarre rule by saying that many employees were lazy and used toilet breaks to smoke and avoid their duties.

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Photos and videos showing scores of dead birds on the streets of Rome following the recent New Year’s Eve celebration have been doing the rounds online, fueling all sorts of conspiracy theories.

Hundreds of dead birds were found lying around the Termini train station, in Rome, Italy, on New Year’s Eve, and although the exact cause of this tragedy remains a mystery, animal groups have blamed the traditional fireworks show. The Italian capital had announced a fireworks ban ahead of New Year’s Eve, but it was largely ignored. The Italian branch of OIPA (International Animal Protection Organization) has called for a nationwide ban on selling fireworks and firecrackers for personal use, following this sad incident.

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Conspiracy theory proponents in Italy have been sharing an electronic schematic of a ‘5G chip’ allegedly implanted in Covid-9 vaccines, but evidence has shown that it’s actually the schematic of a guitar pedal.

A wise person once said “don’t believe everything you read on the internet”, and that’s never been more true than it is today. With the advent of social media, wild conspiracy theories, half-truths and fake news have been getting more attention than ever before. Take this ‘5G chip in Covid-19 vaccines’ phobia that has taken on a life of its own online, despite any sort of scientific evidence backing it up. Well, at least no real evidence, because there is plenty of fake proof going around, including a rather complex schematic of a so-called 5G chip allegedly implanted in Covid-19 vaccines. Only that schematic is actually of a badass guitar pedal…

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A Chinese man and his parents have agreed to move out of a Beijing hospital after living there continuously for six years, because of a financial dispute with the medical institution.

No one really likes spending more time than they have to in hospitals, which is why most people can’t wait to get discharged. But that’s not always the case. In 2014, a man surnamed Tian was admitted to a top Beijing hospital with symptoms that included nausea, vomiting and unsteady gait. He was supposed to spend a few days there after a medical procedure, but following a dispute regarding his medical bill, he ended up living there for six years, along with his parents. This weird saga finally came to an end last week, when the hospital squatters finally agreed to move out.

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