In most places around the world, people are taught that eating raw meat is bad for them due to the high risk of contacting parasites and harmful bacteria, but in Ethiopia raw meat is a popular delicacy.

Walking through the streets of Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, it’s not uncommon to see groups of people gathered around restaurant tables feasting on chunks of raw beef or goat meat. Although particularly popular on holidays or various celebrations, like weddings, a lot of people consume raw meat virtually every day. They will tell you that raw meat is a hearty meal that energizes them and refreshes their bodies, as for the risks associated with eating uncooked meat, which include exposure to tapeworms and dangerous bacteria like salmonella and E-coli, most just choose to ignore them.

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A group of 75 female volunteers from India’s Odisha state has spent every day of the last 20 years patrolling a 75-hectare forest to protect it from woodcutters and timber smugglers.

In 1999, the eastern state of Odisha was ravaged by a supercyclone. People lost their homes, their crops and had to go without food or clothing for several days. But many in Gundalba, a small village in the Mahanadi delta of Puri district, realized that the only reason they were still alive was thanks to a forest and mangrove area that had shielded them from the brunt of the devastation. They knew they had to protect it at all costs, but with all the men busy rebuilding the village after the supercyclone, the task of watching over the forest fell to the women. They quickly formed a vigilante group and  have been taking turns patrolling the forested area in search of timber smugglers and woodcutters for the last 20 years.

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The Resistencia Sport Club, a small football club in Paraguay’s second division, is the first in the world to make a tree growing in the stands of its stadium an official supporter, even offering it a membership card and complimentary jersey.

Resistencia’s evergreen supporter is as old as the club, so both the team and its human supporters consider it part of their history. It was around back when the stadium was a mere football field in the middle of a wasteland, so 20-years ago, when the club decided to built concrete stands for its fans, it never even considered the possibility of cutting down their oldest supporters. Instead, they asked the architects and engineers in charge of the project to come up with a solution that would allow it to thrive. So they built the stands around it, allowing human fans to watch home games in its shade. A couple of years ago, when Resistencia celebrated its 100th anniversary, management decided to honor the tree by making it an official member of the club, complete with its own member card and jersey.

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Looking at the edible masterpieces of culinary artist and Instagram sensation mikyoui00, it’s hard to believe his journey into the world of food art began as a way of getting his son interested in cooking.

mikyoui00 never had any professional art or design training, but he was always passionate about food preparation and plating, and wanted to instill that same kind of love in his son. But getting a young boy interested in cooking isn’t the easiest thing in the world, and his father quickly realized he needed to think outside the box to make it happen. In the summer of 2017, he started working with fish and teaching his son the art of slicing and plating sashimi by creating all kinds of cool edible art. It was a fun activity that allowed them to bond over something he loved, and the more time he spent coming up with new sashimi designs, the better he got at it.

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The Russian city of Krasknoyask recently hosted the country’s first ever amateur face-slapping championship, which had participants slap each other across the face until one of them got knocked out.

The controversial event was held during the Siberian Power Show, a popular sports show held in Krasnoyarsk on March 16 and 17. A similar competition took place last year, in Moscow, but it featured only professional athletes competing for the unofficial title of most heavy-handed face slapper. This time, organizers decided to give amateurs the chance to prove themselves, so anyone willing to engage in some manly face slapping was invited to sign up. Most of the participants were just random guys who had come to attend the power show and decided to try something new. It’s fair to say that some of them didn’t know the world of pain they would be experiencing at the hands of a mountain of a man…

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The village of Mafi Dove, in southern Ghana, is home to around 5,000 people, almost none of whom were born here. Because of an archaic belief that childbirth in the village brings offense to the gods, expectant mothers are rushed to neighboring communities to deliver their babies there.

Like many other Ghanaian communities, Mafi Dove has a host of customs and traditions that have been passed down since times immemorial. But apart from minor taboos that don’t really impact the lives of its inhabitants, this village continues to enforce three major rules that make it unique in the world. One of the first things you notice when visiting Mafi Dove is the complete absence of animals. Apart from the wild birds flying overhead, there’s virtually no bird or mammal to be found here. Rearing animals in Mafi Dove has been forbidden for as long as anyone can remember, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon. Interestingly, bringing animals into the village and slaughtering them on the same day is permitted, but people aren’t allowed to rear them here.

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Today, Dan Drake, aka ‘Dancakes’, is known as one of the world’s most talented pancake artists, but few people know that he never planned, nor trained for this career. He was just a guy flipping fried foods at a diner to make ends meet, but his artistic talent catapulted him to international fame.

Dan had always had a talent for drawing, but never really considered turning it into a career. In high-school, he would doodle and draw comics in the back of the classroom out of boredom, and dreamed of becoming a renowned musician with his band, Psychedelic Psycho Nuts. While trying to get his musical career off the ground, Drake got a job as a fry cook at the Courtesy Diner, in his home city of St. Louis. Because he needed to earn his chops, he was placed on the slow shifts, which resulted in few tips but a lot of time on his hands. It was on one of these shifts that he got his feet wet in the world of pancake art.

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A New Jersey man will never forget 62nd birthday after his sons posted his phone number on a large roadside billboard inviting people to call and wish him well. So far, he has gotten over 15,000 calls and texts from people all over the world.

Chris Ferry’s sons used to prank him when going to restaurants by telling waiters that it was his birthday just so they could watch him squirm uncomfortably as they brought him cake. This year, they took things to a whole new level by renting a billboard outside Linwood and posting their dad’s phone number on it, inviting people to send him their best wishes. They thought it would be something of a local joke, with their dad getting a few calls from random strangers, but after the photo went viral on social media, things got a bit out of hand.

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Money counting machines have been a staple of banks all around the world for decades now, and China is no exception, but here bank tellers still practice their banknote counting skills every day, and some of them can really give those automated counters a run for their money.

Videos of Chinese bank tellers showing off their amazing money counting skills have been doing the rounds online for a long time, and for good reason. There’s something oddly satisfying about watching someone breeze through a wad of cash in mere seconds, but if you go deeper down this rabbit hole, you’ll find that there’s a whole lot more to Chinese banknote counting, including several techniques, one more impressive than the other, and even a popular TV contest in which money counting champions of different banks compete for the title of fastest and most accurate “human banknote counting machine” and the bragging rights that come with it.

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If the idea of getting paid a decent monthly wage to do nothing, or whatever you want, for the rest of your life sounds appealing, you may be interested in this Swedish experimental art project that plans to hire a very lucky person for a responsibility-free job with just one very simple requirement.

This government-funded conceptual art project/ideal employment opportunity in Gothenburg, Sweden will select one very lucky applicant to show up at a train station currently under construction in the city every day and punch a time clock. This will turn on a set of fluorescent lights over the boarding platform to let everyone know that the useless employee showed up at work that day. After that, the person is free to do anything they want, or nothing at all, just as long as they return to the station to clock out and turn off the lights when their shift is over. They don’t have to hang around the train station during working hours, and they can quit or be replaced by someone else anytime they want. As long as they don’t get another job, the position is guaranteed for the rest of their lives.

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A 56-year-old woman from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has been diagnosed with Transient Global Amnesia (TGA) after a terrible headache apparently caused her to completely forget the last 38 years of her life.

One day in early October of last year, Kim Denicola was leaving a bible study at a local church when she called her husband to complain about an excruciating headache and blurry vision. He told her to go to the emergency room, but some friends found her passed out in the church parking lot and rushed her to the hospital. The first thing Denicola remembers from after that incident is lying in a hospital bed and a nurse asking her questions she apparently had all the wrong answers to.

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Authorities in the German town of Ahlen have come under fire for seizing a family’s dog over unpaid taxes and then selling it on eBay to recover the money owed.

This bizarre story started back in November, 2018, when a court bailiff and two city officials showed up at an Ahlen family’s home to seize valuables as compensation for financial debts owed to the municipality. The family, who preferred to remain anonymous, told local newspaper Ahlener Tageblatt that the officials first tried to seize her disabled husband’s wheelchair, but couldn’t because it wasn’t their property. Instead, they settled on the family’s pet dog, a pedigree pug named Edda.

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Romanie-Jade Tulloch, a 20-year-old self-taught makeup artist from Nottingham, in the UK, combines her love of makeup and art to create mind-blowing optical illusions on her face.

Romanie has always been into makeup, but she only started focusing on it two years ago, in the hopes of becoming a freelance makeup artist. She never studied professional makeup, preferring instead to hone her skills by watching online tutorials and experimenting with various cosmetics. Having studied fine arts for two years in college, she naturally drifted from conventional makeup to painting artistic optical illusions on her face and posting her best work on Instagram. Before she knew it, she had hundreds of thousands of followers on the popular social network.

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A South African pastor has been making news headlines all over the world for staging a hilariously ridiculous prank in which he appears to bring a dead man back to life in front of a congregation of churchgoers.

Pastor Alph Lukau, of the Alleluia Ministries International church, in Kramerville, South Africa, has landed in hot water after a video showing him supposedly bringing a dead man back to life went viral online. The controversial religious figure can be seen putting his hands on the “dead” man’s chest and shouting “rise up!”. The man, who had supposedly died last Friday due to an undisclosed illness, opens his eyes and rises from the coffin with his mouth and eyes wide open, to the shouts and cheers of churchgoers gathered around him.

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Bobby Humphreys, a competitive bodybuilder from Boonsboro, Maryland, has always loved dogs, but until two years ago, he never really cared for small breeds. He always felt that his pets should fit his own image, and even made fun of his male friends who owned small dogs. But one day everything changed and today Bobby shares his home with no less than 37 adorable chihuahuas.

Humphreys used to be a “Big Dog Guy” and he and his wife of 17 years had owned three Rottweilers. He loved their tough, imposing look and never even considered the idea of ever owning a small dog. In fact, he went as far as to poke fun at his male friends if they ever allowed themselves to be seen walking their girlfriends’ small canines. It was an ego thing, but one that Bobby quickly put behind him when he fell in love with Lady, a tiny Chihuahua that he now credits for getting him through the darkest period of his life. She opened his eyes to the love and support that small dogs are capable of offering unconditionally, and the big, strong bodybuilder is now what many would call a Small Dog Guy who looks after dozens of chihuahuas.

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