A US woman is taking legal action against a fertility clinic after an error essentially made her an unwitting surrogate, carrying and eventually another couple’s baby, and having to give up custody. The day Krystena Murray learned that she was pregnant after undergoing IVF treatment at the Coastal Fertility clinic in May 2023 was one of the happiest of her life, but that happiness soon turned to horror when she gave birth in December of that same year. Despite being white and having chosen a white sperm donor, Krystena gave birth to a black boy. She didn’t allow her family and friends to see that baby, and in January of last year, a DNA test confirmed that she and the baby were not genetically related. Murrya alerted the IVF clinic about the terrible mixup, but decided to keep the baby and even got to raise it for a few months until his biological parents filed for custody. Read More »

A Frenchman appealed to the homeless thieves who stole his credit card to buy a jackpot-winning scratch lottery ticket, offering to split the €500,000 jackpot with them. They say every misfortune can be a blessing in disguise, and that certainly seems to hold true for a Toulouse man who had his credit card stolen earlier this month and now stands to pocket over $250,000 because of it. On February 3rd, Jean David discovered that the backpack containing his wallet had been stolen from his car, but before he could contact the bank to block all his credit cards, someone used one of them to make a €52.50 ($55) purchase at a local convenience store. Upon visiting the store, the man learned that the two men who had used his credit card appeared to be homeless and attracted the cashier’s attention because they didn’t seem to know the PIN code of one of the cards they attempted to use. Jean David was also shocked to learn that one of the scratch lottery tickets the two thieves had purchased was worth €500,000 ($525,000). Read More »

An Australian high school teacher has come under fire from concerned parents for allegedly identifying as cat and acting weird in front of students. Australian media have been reporting on the bizarre case of a teacher at Marsden State High School in Logan City, Queensland, who reportedly asked students to refer to her as “Ms. Purr”, allegedly hissing at students and licking the back of her hand. Photos of the unnamed teacher show her wearing a cat-ear headband and a lanyard that reads “purr” in class, which further fueled parents’ concerns that she was behaving inappropriately in class. One parent claimed that the teacher made her daughter purr for a lollypop, while another said that the teacher growled at students if they weren’t paying attention in class. Read More »

A team of Chinese plastic surgeons recently reported the bizarre case of a 33-year-old woman who had lost no less than five contact lenses behind her left eye. The patient, referred to only as Ms. A, arrived at the Plastic Surgery Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, in Beijing, to have her hemifacial atrophy treated in order to improve her facial symmetry. The initial examination results showed that the left side of her face was atrophied and her left eyeball was slightly sunken. After carefully examining the woman’s face, the medical team decided to use autologous fat grafting to mitigate the effects of her condition. What they didn’t count on was finding not one but five different contact lenses while grafting fat into the empty space behind the eyeball. She told doctors that she had lost several contact lenses in the past few months, but never imagined they were stuck in her eye. Read More »

A 55-year-old woman tragically had both her hands bitten off by a shark she was trying to photograph while on vacation in the Turks and Caicos islands. The Canadian woman was reportedly trying to photograph a 6-foot-long shark in the shallow waters at a beach in the Turks and Caicos Islands when the marine predator attacked her. Alerted by her screams, the unnamed woman’s husband rushed into the water and bravely managed to scare the shark away and bring the victim ashore, but she had already suffered severe damage to both her hands. The attack occurred on February 7 and the victim was treated at a hospital before leaving the island for better medical care. Unfortunately, doctors could do nothing to save her mangled hands, both of which needed to be amputated. Read More »

Many people struggle to hike using their legs, but one Chinese man has become famous for climbing his country’s most popular mountains on his hands. 38-year-old Sun Guo Shan only started practicing handstand climbing in May of 2023, but last year he embarked on a monumental challenge – to climb the 50 most popular mountains in China by Spring 2025. Previously employed in the education system, Sun realized the importance of health during the COVID-19 pandemic and decided to convey a message of health training but also honor his country’s mountainous scenic spots in a unique way. Sun Guo Shan began his unusual challenge in May 2024, but he only went viral in November 2024, when a clip of him tackling Haibat – the highest peak of Wudang Mountain at 1,612 meters – using his hands went viral. Read More »

For more than a year, at the start of every month, the people of Beeston, a town in the United Kingdom, have been finding a plate of peeled bananas in exactly the same place. Between the first and second day of each month, a plate stacked with 16 to 20 peeled bananas always shows up on the corner of Abbey Road and Wensor Avenue in Beeston and residents have no idea who is behind the strange custom or its meaning. All everyone can say is that the banks have been appearing in the same spot for more than a year, and despite several signs asking whoever puts them there to stop, it doesn’t look like the mysterious fruit is going away anytime soon. Some have speculated that the plate of honey-drizzled bananas has some sort of religious meaning, while others believe that it’s just someone feeding the local wildlife, although no animal ever touches them. So far, no one has come up with a real answer to this quirky mystery. Read More »

A Singaporean man got fined thousands of dollars for forging his grandfather’s death certificate so he could get paid leave from his workplace. Earlier this month, 29-year-old Barath Gopal was fined $4,000 after pleading guilty to forging a relative’s death certificate with the intention to commit fraud. In November 2023, while working as a security financing operation analyst, Gopal learned that his then-girlfriend had cheated on him and he was allegedly so devastated that he couldn’t focus on his job. But instead of applying for one of the several days of annual leave offered by his employer, the Singaporean asked for paid compassionate leave from Nov 8 to Nov 10, claiming that his grandfather in India had died in his sleep. His request was granted, but when his supervisor asked for his grandparent’s death certificate, things got complicated. Read More »

Japanese coastal containership operator Imoto Lines operates a number of feeder vessels with a unique look inspired by the nose of large passenger airplanes. In 2015, the Kyokuyo shipyard in Yamaguchi, Japan, completed the first SSS-feeder (Semi-Spherically Shaped-feeder) commissioned by Imoto Lines. It was one of the largest feeder vessels ever built in Japan, but what really separated it from other ships in its class was the unusual design. The 600-TEU Natori featured a hemispherical bow that looked very similar to the nose of a large Airbus passenger jet that no one had dared implement before. But this wasn’t just a design option to make the vessel stand out, it had functional aspects that won the Natori the title of “Ship of the Year” from the Japan Society of Naval Architects and Oceanographers as well as numerous other awards in the small cargo vessel category. Read More »

Scientists at China’s Zhejiang University recently announced that their Black Panther robot has achieved a constant speed of 10 meters per second, a world record for quadruped robots. Black Panther has been in development at Zhejiang University’s Hangzhou International Science and Technology Innovation Center since 2018, but over the first six years, scientists struggled to exceed the speed of 6 meters per second. In early experiments, once the robot went over this speed threshold, it suffered severe damage, such as ruptured “calves” and in some cases, the entire torso disintegrated. However, after numerous trials and attempts to mimic the joint and muscle structures of various animals and even humans, researchers managed to make important modifications, such as adding springs between the leg joints to cushion impact, and earlier this year Black Panther reached a record speed of 10m/s. Read More »

Standing 185 cm (6 feet and 0.8 inches) tall from hoof to withers, 3-year-old King Kong is the world’s tallest water buffalo. Water buffalos are among the biggest bovine species, but even among them, King Kong, a 3-year-old specimen born on a farm in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, stands out as exceptionally tall. Measuring a whopping 6 feet and 0.8 inches from hoof to withers, he is about 20 inches taller than the average water buffalo, according to Guinness World Records. Owner Suchart Booncharoen said that the animal’s name is no lucky coincidence, as his potential to grow into a huge frame was obvious from birth. Still, despite his massive size, King Kong is a gentle giant who loves playing and being around people. Read More »

An Italian doctor is currently being investigated for using hospital equipment to diagnose his injured pet cat and then operating on her in order to save her life. Gianluca Fanelli , head of the simple structure of Interventional Radiology and Neuroradiology at the Parini Hospital in Aosta, Italy, recently split his home country into two camps – one that considers him a hero who values life over rules and regulations, and another that thinks he should face the consequences for knowingly breaking the rules of his workplace. On the evening of January 27, after taking his injured cat to a veterinarian and receiving a dire diagnosis, the radiologist took his feline, Athena, to Parini Hospital and put in the CT scanner to get an idea of the internal organ damage she had suffered. He then performed pneumothoracic surgery on her in the unit’s angiography room in order to save her life. Read More »

Tourists Looking to climb China’s sacred Mount Tai, in Shandong Province, can now do so with the help of a lightweight AI-powered exoskeleton that makes hiking a breeze. Clips of elderly tourists climbing up Mount Tai, one of the five sacred mountains in China, while wearing bizarre gear around their hips have been going viral on Chinese social media, sparking all kinds of strange theories. In reality, the tourists are wearing light exoskeletons offered by the Taishan Cultural Tourism Group on a trial basis. Weighing only 1.8 kg (4lbs), these advanced exoskeletons are reportedly fitted with a series of sensors that allow them to detect and analyze every movement of the wearer’s lower limbs and provide just the right amount of assistance in a timely manner, effectively reducing the burden on the legs. Read More »

Unable to offer attractive wages, a Japanese tech company has been trying to attract new talent by offering ingenious benefits such as free alcoholic drinks at work and hangover leaves. Since the burst of the Japanese economic bubble in the early 1990s, the Japanese economy has been stagnating along with employee salaries. Even though some corporations have announced plans to increase starting wages in hopes of attracting new talent, small and medium-sized companies simply don’t have that option because their budgets don’t allow it. In order to compete with big players, they have to think outside the box and offer appealing and sometimes unorthodox benefits to potential employees. One small technology company in Osaka recently went viral in the Land of the Rising Sun by offering its staff free alcoholic drinks during work hours and hangover leaves to clear their heads. Read More »

A family of European beavers has become an overnight sensation in the Czech Republic after taking just two days to build a series of dams that the Czech Government had been struggling to build for 7 years. A project to restore water areas in the Brdy Nature Park began in 2018, but authorities had taken years to get all the right permits and finally get construction of necessary dams underway. The cost of the dams needed to restore the wetlands of the area to their original condition was estimated at around 30 million Czech crowns, but thanks to a family of diligent beavers, the Government doesn’t have to spend a single dime anymore. Environmentalists monitoring the Brdy area recently reported that a few beavers took just two days to build functional dams in just the right areas, sparing us humans the trouble. Read More »