Death doesn’t put an end to the luxurious lifestyles of some of Manila’s wealthy Chinese residents. They are buried by their loved ones in a mammoth graveyard known as the Chinese Cemetery of Manila. This place is a small neighborhood in it’s own right, with many tombs reaching the size of mansions with all the modern amenities included!

The ginormous mausoleums lining either side of two-way streets within the cemetery are equipped with state-of-the-art facilities that many living people can only dream of. They have fully-functioning kitchens and bathrooms with luxury fittings, and plush bedrooms for visiting relatives. Some of these places even have full-time residents who don’t seem to mind sharing their living space with the dead.

Read More »

An Argentinian woman found it so hard to part with her recently deceased pet cat that she had its body stuffed by a taxidermist just so she could keep carrying it with her everywhere she goes.

Daniela Cardone and her stuffed cat Matute shot to fame a few days ago, when she posted some pictures of their trip to Lujan city, in the Buenos Aires province, on Instagram. Speaking to reporters, the former model said she simply couldn’t bear to part with Matute after he died around a month ago, so she sought out someone to help her preserve his body. She strongly believed that his soul was still around her, and it didn’t make sense for her to dispose of his body.

Read More »

Rob Spence, a Toronto-based filmmaker, is so dedicated to his craft that he’s replaced one of his eyeballs with a camera-eye. Before you become too horrified, you should know that he hasn’t taken out a real eyeball, just a fake one that he’s had since he was a kid.

43-year-old Spence – who calls himself an Eyeborg – lost sight in one eye in a freak accident at age nine – he was shooting a pile of cow dung and badly injured his eye when he held the shotgun incorrectly. Since then, he’s lived with a fake eyeball in his right socket. But he recently thought it would be more interesting to remove it and replace it with a camera of his own invention.

The camera-eye looks like a regular prosthetic, but it isn’t connected to an optic nerve so Spence cannot actually see with it. It is equipped with a micro radio-frequency transmitter and whatever the eye can ‘see’ is played on a handheld monitor. The camera can be switched on and off with a push of a button.

Read More »

When Sally Bourne Interiors, a posh shop in Muswell Hill, London, decided to paint a few firewood logs for their Christmas window display, they had no idea they were actually creating the latest decor trend that would sell out in just a few days’ time. Believe it or not, they ended up selling about 60 logs of painted wood at £10 ($14) apiece!

“They were used as a window display over the Christmas period, but then we got lots of people asking if they could buy them when that finished,” the store manager said. “We didn’t want to throw them away so we decided to sell them as people thought they could make stools and side tables out of them. We had about 50 or 60 logs in total and most of them were the large ones, which were a good 50cm circumference.”

The logs were apparently sold out last Thursday, with the last one going at a whopping £30 ($40).

Read More »

Aleksandar Pirivatric, a 50-year-old Serbian dentist, appeared in the city of Belgrade last Saturday, after spending the last 15 years concealed deep in the forest of Krusna Gora, in the Czech Republic.

Aleksandar used to be a renowned oral surgeon in the Czech city of Teplice, but the Serb couldn’t legally reside in either country because he had no documents. So at one point, he ended his practice and took to the forest for nearly a decade and a half, visiting the nearby city from time to time, for supplies. His bizarre story was finally discovered by Peter Silva, a Czech professor who befriended him after noticing his regular presence on the outskirts of Teplice.

Read More »

It’s hard to imagine how putting dead fish on your face can pass off as make up, but that didn’t stop Russian makeup artist Elya Bulochka using them as facial accessories for a marine-themed photo shoot. Her original idea, however, sparked a deluge of criticism and outrage on Instagram for what is being viewed as a highly insensitive act. A lot of her 25,000 followers on Instagram called it ‘unnecessary’, saying “it’s not art, just another stupid person killing animals for nothing.”

Elya first shared a photo of her holding a bag of newly purchased aquarium captioned: ‘Guess what I’m going to be wearing today?’ She followed that first post with photos of models wearing mermaid makeup that included what were undoubtedly dead angelfish, neon tetra and other small fish. Many more of her followers asked if the fish were real and she confirmed they were ‘already dead. Same as in your dining plates.’ 

Read More »

They say we all have seven doppelgängers scattered across the world, but you’d be lucky to meet just one of them in your lifetime. However, one Irish woman has had the good fortune of meeting not one, not two, but three other women who look almost exactly like like her. And she’s now made it her mission to find the other four!

Niamh Geaney launched a project called ‘Twin Strangers’ – a website where people can upload their photographs and find their lookalikes for a small fee. She wanted to find her own doppelgänger within 28 days, and was amazed to discover Karen Branigan, a spitting image of herself, living just an hour away.

Photographs of Karen and Niamh went viral and nobody, including them, could get over the coincidence of two unrelated people resembling each other so closely. “For the duration of our encounter, I pretty much stared at her,” Niamh later said. “I couldn’t get over her face. And some of the expressions she would pull I think to myself or say aloud, ‘Oh my God, that’s my face.’ I can’t remember the number of times I said ‘this is so freaky’. It was truly amazing.”

Read More »

A Japanese man named Mansun has invented a new contraption that’s supposed to be an improvement on selfie sticks. It’s called the ‘selfie arm’, and as the name suggests, it’s a super-long stick fitted with a fake hand.

Mansun said that he felt compelled to invent the device because he was too embarrassed to use selfie sticks in public. But he might just have made things worse for himself, because selfie arms are way more ridiculous – they’re just selfie sticks concealed inside an altered shirt with extremely long sleeves and fake hands attached at the ends. Thankfully, he isn’t planning to mass produce the device, but he’s provided detailed pictures for anyone who might be interested in making their own set of arms.

Read More »

Despite its tiny size, the brown thornbill is quite capable of protecting itself in the wild. Its survival strategy is simple yet effective – it scares other birds away by ‘crying hawk’!

It seems that most birds use certain calls to warn their kin of impending danger, especially when hawks and other birds of prey are approaching. The thornbill is not only aware of this fact, but can reproduce the danger signals of several species, including the much larger pied currawong. Predators are fooled by the false alarm, and the thornbill earns its chicks a few extra seconds to escape.

The thornbill’s talent for mimicry was discovered by researchers from the Australian National University (ANU). “I am amazed that such a tiny bird can mimic so many species, some much bigger than itself. It’s very cunning,” said one of the researchers, Dr. Branislav Igic.

Read More »

UK-based artist Julie Alice Chappell has chosen an unusual medium for her sculptures – discarded electronics. She tears out circuit boards and other components from broken devices, and converts them into delicate insect figurines.

Julie’s introduction to the unique art form occurred several years ago, when she happened to find a big box of tiny electronic components at ‘The Craft Bank’, in Portsmouth, UK. “The first thing that came into my head when I looked at them was, ‘a mass of tiny bodies and legs… ants!’ I took them home to my children and we made ants.”

Read More »

Meet the Dynastor darius darius, a harmless caterpillar with astounding survival skills. In order to avoid being attacked by predators during its pupal stage (when the larvae transform into butterflies or moths), the helpless creature takes on the form of a rather menacing snake!

Native to Trinidad, the shape-shifting D. darius often mimics the head of a Gaboon pit viper, successfully fooling even the toughest of its predators. After it sheds its final layer of skin, the caterpillar enters its pupal stage, and its chrysalis takes the shape of a viper’s head. The transformation lasts 13 days, during which time this mimicry is its only line of defense. To make the appearance even more believable, the scary-looking chrysalis hangs on the underside of forest leaves at a carefully selected angle.

Read More »

Chinese student Long Yi recently made a small fortune selling quilts used by female students to their male admirers on campus.

The idea sounds creepy, but Long said that he was inspired by a female graduate who sold her own quilt within minutes of posting it online. He quickly did the math and realised that the market was potentially worth thousands of yuan. So he spent his savings on dozens of old quilts belonging to female students who are graduating this year from Qinghua University, where Long is a junior.

Next, Long posted all the quilts online, and managed to sell a major chunk of them in just one day, raking in a whopping 10,000 yuan (US $1,600). In fact, the demand is so high that he has set up a live stall on campus to complement his online sales. Believe it or not, lovestruck young men are lining up for the chance to cuddle with quilts that once belonged to the women of their dreams.

Read More »

We’ve heard people going on all sorts of crazy diets, but this one is a first – an American student recently went a 30-day bug fest! Throughout  the month of February, Alabama student Camren Brantley-Rios ate insect-laced meals three times a day.

The 21-year-old, who documented his bug-eating experience on a blog called ‘30 Days of Bugs’, believes that traditional meats such as pork and beef are unsustainable as sources of protein. He considers insects to be the diet of the future, so he’s experimenting with creepy crawly ingredients to make delicious dishes.

There was a time when Camren himself was repulsed by the idea of consuming insects. But now that he’s actually done it, he says it hasn’t been too difficult to get used to. “I’m mainly sticking to three species,” he said. “Mealworms, waxworms and crickets. Those are definitely the bulk of my diet. But I’m trying here and there to incorporate things a little bit more exotic.”

Read More »

Long eyelashes are generally considered beautiful, but this Ukrainian man’s extra-long lashes are just plain creepy. 58-year-old Valery Smagliy, from Kiev, believes that he has the world’s bushiest eyelashes, a trait that he attributes to a secret ingredient in his diet.

Valery said that he started eating something, and noticed that it made his eyelashes grow really long and thick. And when he realized that it made women jealous, he decided to keep the ingredient a secret in order to market it later. “Women would stop me in the street and ask me what the secret was, they can see that they are real and not fake,” he said. “And whether it’s man or woman, most people don’t seem to pay much attention when I’m talking to them because they’re always looking at my eyelashes.”

Read More »

Most of us find it normal to consume cow, goat and even donkey milk, but there’s something undeniably creepy about adults drinking human breast milk. Yet, it’s the latest fad among bodybuilders convinced it will help them gain muscle faster.

It’s unbelievable how many fitness fanatics out there believe that drinking human milk is the ultimate way to gaining muscle mass and are willing to go to any lengths to buy as much of it as they can. A simple Google search reveals dozens of online forums and articles this growing trend, and one thread on bodybuilding.com actually hails breast milk as the ‘greatest supplement ever’.

Read More »