A 7-year-old Samoan rugby player who towers over most kids his age recently sparked controversy in the world of children’s sports, after a video showing him effortlessly tearing through the entire opposing rugby team during a league game went viral online.

Vaka Tuitupou may be only 7-years-old, but he already weighs around 100 kg and is one or two heads taller than most kids his age. He’s also a pretty good rugby player and considering his physical advantages, it’s no wonder that his team, the Sydney St John’s Eagles, only play him when they really need to. In a video that has been doing the rounds online for the last two weeks, the boy effortlessly goes through the entire opposing team to score a try, despite their efforts to stop him.

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Fidget spinners are everywhere these days, but if you’re looking for ultimate performance, there is nothing like the Saturn Spinner, a marvel of engineering that can spin continuously longer than any other fidget spinner on the market – over 12 minutes.

Dubbed the “Rolls Royce of fidget spinners”, the Saturn Spinner was developed by a subsidiary of NSK, a Japanese precision machining company that specializes in ball bearings for satellites and computer drives. It is designed to resemble a ship’s wheel, with added weights on the outer ring and a light aluminium ball bearing in the center, to increase centrifugal force. It was designed to spin continuously for at least 12 minutes, so each manufactured toy is tested for performance, with those that fail to pass the 12-minute threshold being dismantled, cleaned, reassembled and retested until they can be certified as “compliant”.

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Scientific evidence shows that when a person loses their sense of sight, the other four senses are enhanced, allowing them to be more aware of their surroundings even if they can’t see them. 17-year-old Jeet Trivedi is not blind, but he claims that he doesn’t need his eyes to perform tasks like driving, reading or even passing thread through a needle, after training his other senses to a superhuman level.

Jeet Trivedi is a controversial figure in India. There are those who see him as a real-life Daredevil, who can function as a normal human being without using his eyes, while others consider him and his mind training teacher, Bharat Patel, as frauds trying to make money by using deceitful tricks. To be honest, it’s hard to believe that someone could drive a gearless scooter for 40 km, on the world’s highest motorable road, while blindfolded, but Jeet allegedly did just that, in September of last year. How? Bharat Patel explains:

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Naresh Kumar, from Muzzafarnagar, northern India, claims that he has a unique gift. Not only is he naturally insulated against high voltage, but he can allegedly draw energy directly from electricity, so he doesn’t need regular food to survive.

42-year-old Naresh says that he discovered his unusual powers completely by accident. He was at work and touched a live wire, by mistake, but nothing happened. Most people would have probably thanked their lucky stars and vowed to be more careful in the future, but not this guy. Instead, he decided to explore his “superpower”, by grabbing even more live wires and eventually realized that he could use electricity as an alternative to traditional food.

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7-year-old Shilah Yin is one of only around 100 people in the world with a condition known as “uncombable hair syndrome”. Instead of downwards, her hair grows out from the scalp in multiple directions, and can’t be combed flat.

Shilah, from Melbourne, Australia, was born with normal hair, but her parents noticed a strawberry blond fuzz growing on her scalp when she was 3 months old. From then on, her hair started growing straight out and became even blonder. The girl noticed her unusual hair when she was about 4, after it started getting a lot of attention from other children and adults. It made her feel uneasy at first, but after her parents told her it was special, she embraced her unique look.

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People have been making wine of thousands of years, but in only three colors – red, white and rose. But not anymore. Spanish companies have come up with ways to make all-natural wines in pretty much any color imaginable, from vibrant blue to green and even pink.

It all started last year, when Spanish startup Gïk unveiled the world’s first blue wine. They spent two years working with scientists at the University of the Basque Country and food researchers at Azti Tecnecalia trying to use anthocyanin, a natural pigment in the grapes’ skin, in order to manipulate the color of wine. It became a great commercial success, with the company reporting in January that it had sold over 100,000 bottles in under six months. But competition is ramping up, as other Spanish wineries are using similar technology to create all kinds of unusually-colored wines.

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Researchers at the Biotherapy Development Research Center Co. in Kanazawa, Japan, have come with a 100%-natural solution to the age-old problem of melting ice-cream. By using polyphenol found in strawberry, they can keep a popsicle from melting for hours, on a hot summer day.

Believe it or not, the secret ingredient for “unmeltable” ice-cream was discovered by mistake. The Kanazawa research center had asked a local pastry chef to create new confectionery using strawberry polyphenol, in an attempt to find new uses for strawberries not good enough to be sold as fresh fruit. However, the chef later reported that  that “dairy cream solidified instantly when strawberry polyphenol was added”. That made it redundant in confectionery, but researchers at the center realized that polyphenol could be used to make ice-cream melt a lot slower.

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Even in a highly creative environment, work at the office can get pretty stressful, so a digital advertising agency in Bangkok, Thailand is encouraging staff to bring their pets, especially dogs, to work, to help them relax.

Walking into the Bangkok headquarters of Adyim, a successful digital marketing firm, it’s not uncommon to see young employees holding small dogs in their laps, stroking them with one hand and operating their computer mouse with the other, or even pooches playing on the table during an office meeting. In fact, company manager, Anankanat Kongphanich, encourages staff to bring their pets too work as often as possible, let them run around, and play with them whenever they have free time.

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At an age when most kids keep their hands busy with video game controllers, smartphones or tablets, 12-year-old Ezrah Dormon, from Panama City, is already a popular tattoo artist. Despite his young age, people are lining up to have him ink a permanent tattoo into their skin.

Tattoo parlors are usually off-limits to kids, but walk into the Honolulu tattoo shop in Panama City, and you may see a cute long-haired kid painstakingly working on a client’s tattoo or honing his inking skills on a grapefruit. His name is Ezrah, and he is already one of the most in-demand artists in Panama. I don’t know what it is about getting tattooed by an inexperienced child, but people are reportedly lining up to have him work his magic on them. They’ve all been pleased with his work, too.

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Like many other cities around the world, Indian urban communities have large numbers of stray dogs living alongside their human inhabitants. But canines are not India’s biggest stray problem, cows are. They cause thousands of road accidents every month, block traffic and spread disease. The Government has long been aware of the many issues caused by cows roaming free on busy city roads, but no one seems to know what to do about them.

Stray cows have been a part of Indian urban life for as long as anyone can remember, but they’ve become increasingly problematic in recent years, with the development of infrastructure and the increase in the number of cars driving on Indian roads. Urban cows don’t fear traffic, so it’s not unusual to see them loitering, in the middle of the road, unperturbed by honking or drivers trying to scare them away. Violence is not acceptable, as cows are considered sacred, and harming them in any way would enrage Hindus, so people have to keep their frustration in check, no matter how bad things get.

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26-year-old Helena Fernandes likes to draw, but she is not particularly good at it. But did that small detail stop her from opening her own tattoo shop and permanently inking people with her mediocre designs? Of course not! If anything, her poor drawing skills actually contributed to her success.

Helen did her first tattoo about a year ago, when she inked her boyfriend for fun. Apparently, their friends found her work appealing, because it was natural and different, and some of them asked her to work her magic on them as well. She bought her own tattooing kit on the internet, and due to the high cost of materials, she started charging for tattoos, investing all the proceeds into better quality supplies. She started working as a professional tattoo artist in March, inking people at a studio she set up at her home.

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Carolyn Hartz, a 70-year old entrepreneur and mother-of-three from Perth, Australia, recently shocked the world with her shockingly youthful looks. She claims that it’s all do to a healthy lifestyle and cutting sugar out of her diet 30 years ago, but a lot of people believe that her wrinkle-free face and bikini body are the result of cosmetic procedures.

Photos of Carolyn Hartz have been doing the rounds online for over two months now, and for good reason. At 70 years of age, she looks much better than most women do at 50, and we know how obsessed people are with turning back, or at least slowing down the clock. But while most are in awe of her youthful looks and describe her as an inspiration, there are also those who accuse her of not being completely honest about how she manages to look so good at her age.

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Families in Ghana are increasingly turning to troupes of dancing pallbearers to send their loved ones off in style, and bring some joy to what is usually perceived as a very sad event.

Dancing pallbearers not only lift the casket at a funeral, they also lift the mood of attendees by putting on a show. They parade the casket on their backs and shoulders, while at the same time executing a complex choreography that often involves spinning around, dropping to the ground and even pretending to drop the casket, all to the delight of the audience. It’s definitely an unusual display, but families in Ghana are increasingly paying for the services of such troupes to give their loved-ones an upbeat send-off.

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Alberto Gutierrez Giron has been living alone in the mountains of Nicaragua for nearly 40 years, sculpting a 300-foot long cliff into a giant artwork, just like the one he saw in a dream, when he turned 9-years-old.

Popularly known as the “Hermit of Nicaragua”, “Stone Man” or “Sculptor of the Mountain”, Alberto Gutierez claims he was born on October 17, 1944 – although he doesn’t have a birth certificate anymore – in a village near Esteli City. He had always loved exploring the forests around his home, and at age 33, he decided he wanted to live his whole life surrounded by nature, creating an epic stone artwork he had dreamed of as a young boy. He had been thinking about it for years, but during the war that swept Nicaragua at the time, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get away from it all.

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A man from Surrey, UK, lost consciousness and had to be hospitalized after he and a few friends shared a bottle of Satan’s Shot vodka, a special liquor infused with Carolina Reapers, the hottest chillies in the world.

Emma Mirrington, 42, from Farncombe, bought a bottle of Satan’s Shot vodka at Guildford Cheese and Chilli Festival, on Sunday, and decided to share it with some friends. They all gathered at at The White Hart pub to sample the rare spirit, ignoring the label warning “Only Satan himself is brave enough to drink this vodka neat, if you feel fearless and want to drink with Satan, you will feel like you are burning in hell itself.” It turns out the bottling company wasn’t exaggerating one bit.

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