When he’s not too busy fighting crime and battling super-villains in New York, Spiderman teaches computer science at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, in Ciudad de Mexico.

It all started in 2002, when the blockbuster movie Spider-Man, featuring Tobey Maguire, started screening in Mexico. 12-year-old Moises Vazquez Reyes instantly fell in love with the Marvel superhero and even started working on his own Spiderman outfit, after failing to find one that fit his high standards. He used online tutorials as inspiration, but it wasn’t an easy job for a young boy. Moises finally finished his dream Spiderman costume in 2014, the same year he started reading more comics about his favorite character. One day he stumbled upon the Amazing Spider – Man # 661 in which the popular superhero offers to be a substitute teacher at the Avengers Academy. He thought to himself “not a bad idea, wouldn’t it be great if Spiderman gave classes in computer science?” 

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When 29-year-old Nina Zgurskaya, from Krasnoyarsk, Russia, started dating the charming director of a law firm, she thought she had finally met the man of her dreams. Little did she know he would one day take her to court for all the expenses incurred during their relationship.

Nina met 38-year-old lawyer at a ski resort and the two of them instantly hit it off. She remembers that the businessman seemed perfect in every way – he was attentive, courteous and calm, offered her flowers and picked her up from work. As their relationship evolved, the man confessed he had been married twice, so when he asked Nina to go on a romantic vacation, she thought he was going to propose.

She dreamed of traveling to a popular tourist destination abroad, but her boyfriend insisted on Feodosia, Crimea. As long as it involved romantic walks on the beach under the moonlight and an unforgettable marriage proposal, she didn’t mind the destination too much. But time passed and her dream guy didn’t seem to have any intention of popping the big question, so after losing her patience, Nina threw a tantrum and the pair got into a fight. The next day, her perfect gentleman threw her out of the hotel room, claiming he had paid for everything. The woman had to call her parents and ask for money for a return ticket, just so she could get back home.

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American company Cabot Guns has recently unveiled a pair of “extra-terrestrial pistols” made almost entirely from a piece of Gibeon meteorite that crashed on Earth approximately 4.5 billion years ago and was discovered in Namibia, in the 1830’s.

“It hasn’t been done before and that’s the kind of thing that drives me,” Rob Bianchin, founder of Cabot Guns, said last year, when the company first announced its intention to forge twin 1911 handguns out of Gibeon. “Meteor is rare, more so than terrestrial precious metals and I wanted to create a set of guns that were formed from a material that had intrinsic value,” he added.

For the last five months, the expert gun makers at the respected company that many refer to as the “Rolls Royce of firearms” have been hard at work, trying to cut as many necessary pieces from the expensive lump of meteorite. It was a tougher job than most people realize, or as Bianchin puts it “we were sweating bullets. That first cut, when we sliced the meteorite chunk in two, was really scary.” Luckily, the team had some experience after using Gibeon to craft meteorite grips for one their standard 1911 handguns. That first success inspired them to push the envelope and create the world’s first meteorite firearms.

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A grandfather from Orangeburg County, Columbia, recently made the news after going to school to pick up his young grandson and coming home with a totally different child. It sounds like the plot of a 90’s comedy, but this happened in real life.

On May 19th, 65-year-old Joseph Fuller went to Edisto Primary School in order to pick up his six-year-old grandchild early. According to a police report, when he arrived at the school, Fuller saw a group of students leaving the school gym, one of which he thought was his grandson. He got out of his car, approached the boy, gave him a hug and told him he was there to pick him up early. When he asked him if he was ready to go, the kid said “yes”. A teacher’s assistant later told deputies that when he asked the boy “Was this your grandfather?” he also answered “yes”. So the two of them then went to the front office so the boy could be signed out, and since the grandpa was on the list of approved people to pick up kids, everything went smoothly. If you think this is weird, hold on tight, because it’s about to get weirder.

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When MIT-trained engineer Todd Rider revealed his revolutionary idea for killing virtually any virus, everyone from fellow scientists to The White House praised him for his results, with some going as far as to call his discovery the most important medical breakthrough since antibiotics. Yet four years later, Rider is struggling to find funds for his research and has to turn to online crowdfunding for something that could save the lives of millions.

The story of Todd Rider’s quest to rid the world of viruses began over 15 years ago, when, while in the shower, he came up with a radical idea in his head – what if there was some way to kill viruses by flipping their biologic suicide switches leaving the patient healthy and infection free? For the next decade, he and his colleagues worked on the concept of Broad-Spectrum Antiviral Therapeutics, which proposed a whole new approach to tackling viruses. Instead of containing and preventing viral infections, their method actually killed virus-infected cells, without harming normal cells.

In early tests, this new weapon dubbed Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) Activated Caspase Oligomerizer (DRACO), eliminated 15 pathogens, from the common cold to H1N1 influenza to hemorrhagic fevers like the dengue virus. It proved effective across 11 human cell types, including heart, kidneys and liver, and mice infected with lethal doses of influenza virus were cured with DRACO treatments.

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While most 10-year-olds are busy playing games, learning the ropes at school and enjoying their childhood, Janna Jihad risks her life reporting on the Palestinian – Israeli conflict in the occupied West Bank, in an effort to raise awareness to the plight of her people.

A resident of Nabi Saleh, a small Palestinian village north of the West Bank city of Ramallah, Janna has been a witness to the tragedies of war from a very young age. Her mother, Nawal, says she was traumatized after one of her friends was shot dead by the Israeli army. “He was older than her but used to always be friendly and nice to her so that she became attached to him. When she saw his blood on the ground, she became frantic.”  She used to pen her feelings and frustrations in a locked journal every night, but the deaths of two of her relatives – her cousin, Mustafa Tamimi, and another uncle, Rushdie Tamimi – inspired her to get involved and reveal the injustice the people in her village are being subjected to.

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Rescue teams have been scouring the thick woods of northern Hokkaido, Japan, for the past three days in search of a young boy who had been abandoned there by his parents, as punishment for being naughty.

7-year-old Yamato Tano-oka was first reported missing on Saturday, when his parents alerted the police saying that he had become separated while they were out walking through the forest, looking for wild vegetables. However, a day later, during questioning, one of the parents admitted that Yamato had been left alone in the bear-infested woods on purpose, as a form of punishment for misbehaving. Although the police has yet to confirm the exact reasons for this punishment, local media reports that he had been throwing rocks at passing cars and people.

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Grandmas are usually proud of you even if you so much as sneeze, but this North Carolina woman has taken granny-love to a whole new level. 66-year-old retiree Carmen Baugh is so enamoured with her grandkids that she’s converted her living room into a shrine of sorts, with their photographs plastered across the wallpaper, curtains, and even cushions.

Carmen got the idea to do up her home with her grandchildren’s faces when she moved from Charlotte to Raleigh. She looked at lots of different wallpaper and curtain samples before deciding to design her own. “My grandson and granddaughter are my pride and joy so why not decorate my home with their faces on?” she asked herself.

So instead of just using framed photos of her grandkids, she decided to have a specially-made wallpaper featuring over 30 different photographs of theirs. And she liked it so much that she went on to design a similar fabric for her curtains and cushions, and then used it to make herself a top as well! 

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Mithalal Sindhi, from the Indian city of Ahmedabad, is not a rich man, by any means. He has been living on the streets for the last six decades, earning a modest living by selling Bajra (pearl millet) from his pedal rickshaw. Most of what he makes, Mithalal spends on performing the last rites for unclaimed dead bodies that no one else takes responsibility for. He is without a doubt one of the most kindhearted people we have ever written about.

During the partition of the British Indian Empire, 15-year-old Mithalal moved from Pakistan to Bombay, with his family. He did a number of odd jobs to make ends meet and survive in the big city, but in 1957, he moved to Ahmedabad where he started a small fruit selling business using what little savings he had. It was during this time that he met Nyaldas Sindhi, a vegetable vendor, with whom he became very close friends. They would eat lunch together and even sleep next to each other on the footpath, at night. Their friendship came to an abrupt ending in just two years, after Mithalal tried waking his friend one morning, but he didn’t respond.

Devastated by Nyaldas’ death, the young fruit vendor realized his friend had no close families or relatives to take care of the last rites. Mithalal asked the Mukhya (Leader of Vegetable Market) for help, but he refused, telling him it was not his concern. No one was willing to take responsibility for his friend, so he stepped up and had his body cremated near Callico Mill. It was this experience that made him realize that there were so many people dying every day in Ahmedabad that had no one to perform their last rites. He decided he was going to be the person to do it.

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American ballet dancer Erik Cavanaugh is proving to the world that plus-size performers can be just as agile and graceful as their slim counterparts. His Instagram is filled with photographs and videos of himself performing ballet and other contemporary dance routines. He hopes to appear in music videos and on the Ellen Show, and his ultimate goal is to “change the mind and shape of dancers”.

Erik, 23, works at a pizza parlor by day and spends all his spare time dancing and choreographing. He learned the basics of dance at the Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts School when he was much younger, and was encouraged to post videos of his performances online by his dance coach at his alma mater, Slippery Rock University.

Some of his short video clips feature him pulling off incredibly difficult and impressive moves, like multiple pirouettes, set to contemporary music like Justin Bieber’s Purpose and Jordan Smith’s Settle. The New York Post featured a compilation of Erik’s moves in a Facebook video, which went viral, inspiring millions around the world.

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Who needs a boat when you’ve got incredible core strength and balance? Two simple bamboo poles will do if you’re anything like this 51-year-old Chinese man who is able to cross a large river standing on one pole and rowing with the other!

A video of Fang Shuyun’s unique commute has recently gone viral on Chinese social media and millions were left baffled by the ease with which the middle-aged man navigates the waters of Fuchun River, sailing smoothly and swiftly on a 23-foot bamboo cane. He was reportedly traveling at a speed of 100 to 164 feet per minute.

Fang, a native of Hangzhou city, first tried out the feat one night in 2014 after he missed the last boat ride home from work. He spotted a bamboo pole floating in the river and decided to use it to get to the other side. He failed in that first attempt, but came away with the feeling that he could complete the ride if he worked on his sense of balance. So Fang spent the past two years practicing, and it appears that he has finally managed to master the skill. “The leg you put forward carries the center of the body weight so you should use it to step on the bamboo pole evenly,” he explained, speaking to local media. “Then you use the big toe of your other leg to stop the stick from rolling in water. As long as you achieve a balance and stop the bamboo from turning, it’s possible to cross a river on a single bamboo pole given you’re fit enough.”

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Temporary tattoos have been around for a long time, but as any inking enthusiast would agree, they’re nothing compared to the real deal. And yet, there are times when tattoos don’t end up like you wanted them to, or you just get bored with them after a while. In such cases, getting a tattoo removed involves laser treatments that are both expensive and painful. But not anymore. It might soon be possible to temporarily get a permanent tattoo, thanks to this new type of tattoo ink developed by a group of engineering students.

The special ink has a huge advantage over regular tattoo ink – it can be removed from your skin through an extraordinarily simple and inexpensive process. You simply visit your tattoo artist and have them trace over the tattoo with a removal solution. Voila! It’s all gone. Or, you can just erase the part of it that you don’t like and turn it into a whole new artwork. The choice is yours.

The product is named ‘Ephemeral’, after the team of Chemical and Biomolecular engineering students who took part in the recent $200,000 Entrepreneurs Challenge held by NYU Stern’s Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. The team comprised of five School of Engineering students and a sixth one from Stern won the grand prize of $75,000 for their unique invention.

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In a blatant display of patriotism, a Chinese newlywed couple spent their first night of wedded bliss copying parts of the Communist party’s constitution, by hand. Most people would find this incredibly unromantic, but for Li Yunpeng and his bride Chen Xuanchi, there couldn’t have been a better way to kick start their married life. In fact, they viewed the task as a way of creating “beautiful memories” of their wedding night.

Both Li and Chen are government employees from China’s Jiangxi province. On Monday, photographs of their wedding night appeared in online newspapers, along with a brief account by their employers, the railway bureau of Nanchang city. “Laying down a sheet of paper and neatly copying down out the Party Constitution left blissful memories of their wedding night for these newlyweds,” the report read.

The photos later went viral on social media. The couple can be seen seated next to a double bed decorated with balloons, but they appear oblivious to the romantic decor, completely engrossed in transcribing parts of the 17,000-word, 11-chapter text. They apparently did it as a part of a government-backed challenge called ‘Copy the Communist party constitution for 100 days’.  The initiative was launched in March in a bid to raise awareness of party’s rules, its constitution, and the speeches of general secretary Xi Jinping. As reported by the Global Times, the challenge meant to target party members whose confidence in communism and socialism is beginning to crumble, and those who “advocate western values, violate party rules, work inefficiently, or behave unethically.”

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He may not look it, but this young Indian beggar is actually richer than most of the nation’s middle class. Pappu Kumar has managed to make a small fortune during eight years of begging on the streets of Patna, in the state of Bihar. He reportedly has 500,000 rupees ($7,500) stashed away in four bank accounts, and property worth 1.25 crore rupees ($185,000). He even lends money to local businessmen on the side and earns money from the interest charged. But the 33-year-old still doesn’t want to quit begging.

Pappu was not exactly destined for the life of a beggar – he went to high school and even had plans to study engineering in college, but sadly, he suffered an accident that left him partially paralyzed. His father passed away soon after, and he was disowned by the rest of his family. Pappu was then left with no choice but to beg for his survival.

“I passed my intermediate examination with 57 percent marks and a major contributor to this was my mathematics subject where I obtained 72 marks, which was the maximum of all subjects,” he told local media. “My dream was to pursue an engineering course. I was even trying for this, but, in the meantime, I met with a serious accident leaving me paralyzed. I had no option but to turn to begging to eke out my living as my family disowned me after the incident.”

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‘Between Music’, the world’s first aquatic music band, are all set to perform their very first underwater concert – ‘Aquasonic’ – at Rotterdam on 27 May. The Danish ensemble will be playing specific instruments and even singing inside water tanks, using special techniques that they developed over 10 long years of experimentation.

The story of this unique musical group began when lead singer and composer Laila Skovmand decided to find a way to sing underwater. Her first experiment involved singing while submerging her mouth in a kitchen bowl filled with water. While she was able to produce sounds, she was also generating a lot of bubbles that added ‘pop’ sounds to the music. But she was determined to find a way to sing underwater, so she kept trying new things.

After a lot of trial and error, Laila finally came up with a technique that involves holding an air bubble in her mouth and singing through it while submerged in water. She has to rise to the top once every minute to breathe in fresh air and start with a new bubble, but otherwise, she claims it works. “There is also a technique where I switch between singing on the exhale and inhale,” she says. “But it can be hard to control.” Due to the small amount of air in a bubble, the underwater singer can only produce short tones, preferably high ones, because lower tones tend to sound nasal. 

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