Italian luxury fashion brand Gucci has sparked controversy with its new line of products for Fall 2020, which includes distressed jeans with what looks like grass stains on them.

Distressed jeans have been around for a long time, but fashion companies have been pushing the envelope in this area for a while now. Back in 2017, fashion retailer Nordstrom made news headlines for selling jeans caked in fake mud for a whopping $425 and the Onomichi Denim Project boutique has long been selling premium jeans that have been pre-worn by someone for at least a year. Now, Italian fashion house Gucci has released a pair of jeans and a pair of jeans overalls “specifically treated for a stained-like, distressed effect” They cost $765 and $1,400 respectively…

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Chinese media recently reported the fascinating story of a young boy who, after witnessing his father’s murder at the hands of a neighbor, when he was 9-years-old, spent the next 17 years trying to catch the culprit.

Looking back on that fateful day of August 9th, 2000, Xiang Mingqian wishes he had never thrown that stone that eventually got his father killed… He was only 9 at the time, playing with his neighbor, Zhang Jun in a ditch, by the side of an old road in Changba Town, Zhenxiong County. Jun had thrown a stone into a puddle, and the splash had hit Xiang Mingqian, so he decided to return the favor by throwing an even bigger stone into the water. It was just a childish game, but the quarrel that erupted between the two boys would eventually involve both boys’ families and result in a tragic death…

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Eddie Lebeau & Richard Amon, the two halves of London-based food art studio Tattooed Bakers pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved in the world of cake art, with their functional carousel cakes being by far the most impressive.

From marine cakes that exotic destinations almost to perfection, to sweet architectural wonders and doll-like edible creations, we’ve featured our share of stunning cake art here on Oddity Central, but we haven’t seen anything quite like Tattooed Bakers’ carousel cakes. Not only are these treats incredibly beautiful, featuring rococo and baroque-inspired decorations, but they actually incorporate mechanisms that make the merry-go-round turn, for an added visual effect.

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A fifteen-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl in Indonesia were reportedly forced to marry after breaking a local custom that forbids dating after sunset.

Child marriage has been a controversial issue in Indonesia for a long time, and last week it was once again brought into the limelight by the story of a young teenage couple forced to marry after only four days of dating. According to multiple media reports, 15-year-old Suhaimi and his 12-year-old girlfriend, Nur Herawati, were pressured into the marriage by the girl’s parents, after allegedly breaking customary dating laws, which forbids young couples to return home after dusk. Since the teenage boy brought his young girlfriend home after 7:30 pm earlier this month, her parents gave them no choice but to marry…

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Laungi Bhuiyan, a pensioner from the Indian state of Bihar, has become known as “Canal Man” after it was revealed that he spent 30 years of his life digging a 3-kilometer-long water canal, all by himself, using hand tools.

The remote village of Kothilawa, in the Lahthua area of Gaya district, had always suffered water shortages, with most of the rainwater falling in the nearby hills flowing into the river, instead of towards the village. This was one of the reason that some residents decided to move away and start anew, but one man decided to stay behind and fix the problem instead of running away from it. 30 years ago, local man Laungi Bhuiyan decided to take matters into his own hands and dig a canal to bring the water from the hills to a pond near his village. No one offered to help, so for three long decades he dug the 4-feet wide and 3-feet deep canal himself, using only whatever hand tools he had available.

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The Qiyi City Forest Garden residential complex in Chengdu, China, was supposed to be a green paradise for its residents, but two years on, the vertical forest concept has turned into a nightmare.

Back in 2018, the idea of living among dozens of exotic plants proved very exciting for the people of Chengdu, one of China’s most polluted cities, and by April of 2020 all 826 units in the Qiyi City Forest Garden complex had been sold. Each unit had up to 20 types of plants growing on the balcony, and filtering the city’s air and noise pollution. However, instead of an urban paradise, the eight-tower complex looks like a scene out of a post-apocalyptic film, with balconies overrun by sprawling greenery and plagues of mosquitoes.

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Hongeo is a bizarre South Korean dish with a pungent aroma that most people describe as a mix of dirty public toilet and wet laundry left untended for days.

Made from skate, a bottom-dwelling ray fish, Hongeo is considered by far South Korea’s smelliest food. It’s so stinky that many South Koreans wouldn’t come near it, let alone put in their mouths. However, its many fans can’t get enough of the ammonia fumes it emanates and swear that once you get used to it, it’s impossible to replace with anything else. But feasting on this stinky delicacy comes with a social cost, as the smell tends to linger in the mouth as well as on clothes. In fact, hongeo-specialized restaurants advise customers to seal their jackets in plastic bags before eating, and spray them with deodorant before leaving.

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According to his birth certificate, Denis Vashurin was born in 1987, but looking at him you would swear he was still in his early teenage years.

Denis became one of the hottest topics on Russian social media after doing an interview with popular YouTube personality “Vasya na sene”. People can’t seem to get over how incredibly young he looks for a 32-year-old man, and Denis himself admits that whenever he reveals his age to people he doesn’t know he almost always gets reactions of disbelief. That’s why he prefers living in a small village in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk region, instead of moving to the city. Everybody knows him there, and he gets to spend time alone doing what he likes – hunting, fishing and spending time with his girlfriend.

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Emanuele Dascanio is a super-talented artist whose graphite and charcoal pencil drawings look like high-resolution black-and-white photographs.

Looking at some of 37-year-old Emanuele Dascanio’s masterpieces, it’s easy to see why he sometimes takes hundreds of hours to complete a single piece. He often works 12 to 14 hours a day, often sacrificing his private life for art, but he sees it as an investment, if he sows a lot today, he’ll have more results to harvest in the future. The level of detail he is able to achieve using simple pencils is mind-blowing, making it easy to understand why is considered one of the most gifted hyperrealists of this generation.

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Every year, flocks of thousands of hungry ducks are released into vast rice paddies to clean the fields of unwanted pests and rice stubble left over from last harvest.

Humanity has witnessed unprecedented technological advancements over the last few decades, but in Thailand, the world’s second largest rice exporter, farmers still use a centuries old solution to keep their rice paddies in optimal condition. Every year, they rely on duck farmers to unleash thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of young, hungry ducks onto their fields, to clean them of pests like cherry snails and apple snails, as well as weeds and leftover rice stubble. Apart from acting as a natural pesticide, the ducks also fertilize the fields with their droppings.

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During the month of September, over 500,000 high-school graduates in Sudan will be taking their university admission exams, and to discourage applicants from cheating mobile internet will be turned off nationwide for three hours every day.

Sudan has a long history of turning off its internet during protests in order to disrupt the coordination of participants, but this year it is using the internet shutdown as a measure to prevent “large scale cheating” during university admission exams. Yesterday, September 16, at 8 am sharp, the people of Sudan realized that despite having paid their bills on time, their mobile internet service wasn’t working. After receiving thousands of complaints, internet operators announced that the Government had ordered a daily mobile internet shutdown until September 24, as a way to discourage university applicants from cheating on exams.

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All Kabaddi World is a popular Facebook channel that popularized a bombastic, over-the-top version of the ancient wrestling art of kabaddi. It’s basically a Pakistani version of World Wrestling Entertainment.

The first time I watched a clip posted by All Kabaddi World, I was confused yet enthralled by these two topless men that seemed to chase each other around a dirt ring while slapping the hell out of each other. They were slapping each other on the cheeks, the chest, their bellies, all to the cheers of a huge crowd. Every once in a while one of them got thrown to the ground and fell in a really exaggerated manner that explained the “wwe” in the Pakistani title I didn’t understand. This was a really unique, yet strangely-entertaining take on American wrestling.

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A 7-year-old boy from India’s Uttar Pradesh state has been dubbed ‘Spider Boy’ for his ability to effortlessly scale 10ft walls using nothing but his bare hands and feet.

Yasharth Singh Gaur, a class three student from the Indian city of Kanpur, was inspired by Marvel’s popular Spider-Man to try and scale the walls of his home. It seemed impossible at first, but he kept at it and before long he was able to climb the corners of his room with only his hands and feet. His brother started telling people about Yasharth’s special ability and word about the real-life Spider man started spreading around the city.

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A South-African female engineer has become an inspiration for other women looking to succeed in fields dominated by men, after photos of her constructing an extension to her house went viral on social media.

Last month, South Africa celebrated Women’s Month and a 26-year-old woman from Pietermaritzburg became the unlikely poster girl for this year’s celebration, after photos of her single-handedly working on an extension to her house went viral on Facebook and other social networks. The pics showed the woman preparing the cement, making all the measurements and stacking the building blocks all by herself, which not only won her a lot of praise, but also empowered other women to follow their dreams even if the odds are stacked against them.

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Inspired by the popular #gettychallenge a Russian woman has been using various household items and her own makeup skills to recreate over 100 classic paintings to great effect.

Back in late March, Saint Petersburg-based art lover Liza Yukhnyova accepted the Getty Museum’s #gettychallenge as a fun way to pass the time during quarantine, only she got so into it that she continued to recreate famous paintings long after the lockdown ended. While most people were content recreating just one famous artwork, Yukhnyova set a goal for herself to replicate a painting a day for 30 days, but she is currently on day 142 and has no plans to stop anytime soon.

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