Believe it or not, the Vietnamese province of An Giang, in the Mekong Delta, is less known for its breathtaking natural attractions than for the giant loaves of bread that went viral online a couple of years back.

It all started in 2018, when lifestyle and entertainment website Brightside published a list of the world’s strangest foods, including a giant loaf of bread that was supposedly very popular in Vietnam’s An Giang province. There were those who claimed the accompanying photos of the bread were either photoshopped or shot from a certain angle to create the illusion that they were much larger than ordinary loaves, but then other photos and videos of the unusual bread started going viral online. Vietnamese media started giving the giant loaves a lot of attention, and soon the whole world knew about the now famous giant bread of An Giang.

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An eerie art installation located in a barren field in the Finnish countryside recently went viral after someone accidentally stumbled upon it while searching on Google Maps.

With quarantine and isolation measures still in place in many countries around the world, people are spending a lot of time online looking for cool places to visit once they can travel again. Many a re using free tools like Google Maps and end going deeper down the rabbit hole than they originally anticipated. That’s probably how some people recently discovered The Silent People, a creepy-looking art installation that left them scratching their heads about why anyone would fill a field with hundreds of scarecrows and dress them as real people.

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At just 27 years old, Li Jiaqi is already one of the most successful online personalities in China. He specializes in selling makeup, particularly luxury brand lipsticks, which has earned him crazy nicknames “King of Lipstick” or “Iron Lips”.

With over 40 million fans on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, and millions others on various other social networks, Li Jiaqi is perhaps the most sought after beauty vlogger in all of China. Whatever product he chooses to promote turns into an instant hit, and companies are desperate to work with him, but he remains mostly focused on makeup, lipstick in particular. It’s not really the kind of career you would expect a young man to venture into, especially in a traditionalist country like China, but his success is proof that unconventionality can be an advantage. That’s how Li Jiaqi looks at it, anyway. He says that most people doubted him at first, saying that he could never sell to a female audience, but he had always been confident that he had an advantage over female beauty vloggers – stamina.

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“A group where we all pretend to be ants in an ant colony” has to be one of the most popular and at the same time strange Facebook groups ever created. It’s basically 1.8 million people pretending they are ants and worshiping their queen.

Being stuck at home for weeks on end makes people do crazy and unusual things, and the rise of Facebook’s now famous “ant group” is a perfect example. Created in June of 2019, A group where we all pretend to be ants in an ant colony numbered a respectable 100,000 members in march of 2020, but then the Covid-19 pandemic started wreaking havoc everywhere prompting social distancing and isolation measures, and the number of members skyrocketed to over a million in less than two months. At the time of this writing, the Facebook group where everyone “worships the Queen and do ant stuff” has over 1.8 million members.

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Last month, South Korean television featured the bizarre case of a shoe repairman from Seoul who has been conditioning his body by banging his body and his head against a tree for the last five years.

Would you ever pick on a man after seeing him violently banging his forehead against a full-grown tree trunk? I myself would, steer away immediately, which is just what the hero of our story is betting on. Back in April, South Korean TV show X SBS WOW featured a shoe repairman from Seoul’s Sinchon neighborhood famous for banging his head and body against a tree every day. You’d think they had made up such a preposterous story, but this man has the forehead callus to prove that he has been doing a lot of head banging for quite some time.

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Chicago-based Jim Bachor is one of those rare street artists’ whose works can be classified as both art pieces and a public service. The man specializes in fixing up pot holes by filling them up with his beautiful and durable mosaics.

In fact Jim’s career as a pothole artist began with a trip to the ancient city of Pompeii, in Italy, where he learned just how durable mosaics really were. The tour guide pointed at a 2,000-year-old artwork and said that although it had been set in mortar, the marble and glass pieces had not faded. The realization of the artwork’s staying power blew him away, and a few months later he was in Italy learning the secrets of ancient mosaic art. He pursued it as a hobby for a few years, but then he started doing commission works and in May of 2013 he got the idea of applying his skill to fixing a pesky pothole in his neighborhood.

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Looking at photos of Chinese cosplayer CROME拉面猫就是星空萌 dressed up as some of the most famous anime heroines, you would never guess that the person under all that makeup and female clothes is a man.

A former art teacher, CROME拉面猫就是星空萌 now works as a full-time cosplayer, regularly posting new photos and updates for his legion of online fans, attending events and working on new costumes. He reportedly started trying on women’s clothes in secret, in 2007; it was nothing fancy, he didn’t experiment with makeup at the time, and he didn’t tell anyone about it, but he considers those days the true beginning of his female cosplaying career. It wasn’t until 2012 that he was comfortable enough to go out in public dressed as one of his favorite anime characters.

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Chinese media recently reported the bizarre case of a 10-yer-old boy who allegedly developed black mold in his ear canal because of wearing earbuds for long periods of time.

You would think that the human body had some way of preventing mould from developing, even in dark and secluded orifices like the ear canals, but it turns out that with the right conditions fungal infections can occur in our ears. Doctors at the Shunyi Women and Children’s Hospital in Beijing recently reported the case of a young boy who came in with his mother complaining of ear pain and stuffiness-like sensation. Upon examination, he was diagnosed with ear canal mycosis, or in simple terms – mold in the ear canal.

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If, like me, you spent a fair bit of your childhood on a farm, or if you’re simply fascinated by domestic birds, you’ve probably seen a crested duck at least once in your life. Their fluffy headgear is a adorable to look at, but it comes with some severe side-effects.

First of all, the funny-looking plumage on the heads of crested ducks is just a genetic defect, and one that has some serious health implications. The fluffy hairdo actually grows out of a section of fatty tissue that covers a gap in the duck’s skull. Not only does this defect make it dangerous for a female crested duck to mate – especially with a particularly aggressive drake – but it has also been linked to seizures, neurological problems and early death. Unfortunately, the photos of cute crested ducks circulating on social media these days don’t come with information about these issues, which only makes the ducks sought after as pets. That leads to another serious problem, breading…

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A 35-year-old Russian influencer got a lot of backlash after announcing her upcoming marriage to the 20-year-old stepson she helped raise for 10 years.

Marina Balmasheva, who rose to fame in Russia for documenting her weight-loss adventure online, is getting a lot of attention these days, because of her controversial new romantic relationship. Shortly after divorcing her 45-year-old husband, to whom she had been married for 1o years, the Instagram influencer announced that she was romantically involved with her 20-year-old stepson, Vladimir. The couple reportedly plan on tying the knot in the near future and having children of their own…

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Lee Su Jin, a 51-year old dentist from South Korea, has amassed quite an impressive online following thanks to her incredibly youthful looks.

The first time we featured Lee Su Jin on Oddity Central was back in 2016, when photos of her went viral on Asian social media, along with the heart-to-believe information that she was 48-years-old. It turned out her age was correct, and we subsequently learned that she was already popular in her native South Korea, having already appeared on several television shows. She has since solidified her reputation as a “goddess of eternal youth”, as the years keep rolling by, but she simply refuses to age.

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Asking to get the coronavirus might sound crazy anywhere but in Kibera, Kenya’s biggest slum, where a new hairstyle inspired by the spiky look of the SarsCov-2 virus has become a big hit.

With client numbers dwindling and their income collapsing, hairstylists in Kibera had to come up with ways to stay relevant, including finding solutions relating to the problem. In the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, some stylists found inspiration for new hairstyles in the shape of the deadly virus seen under a microscope. But it’s not just about the design; the new hairstyle is also cheaper than other popular styles – it costs less than $1, making it an attractive option for cash-strapped clientele.

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Most of us have to trim our toenails as soon as they become even slightly uncomfortable, but for “long nail beauties” like Arinda Storm Weaver that’s not an option, as their nails are the objects of desire for thousands of people around the world, and a valuable source of income.

The 58-year-old from Ohio used to work as an account manager at a manufacturing plant, but she accidentally discovered the world of LNBs (long nail beauties) 14 years ago and she never looked back. Weaver was blogging about her journey battling breast cancer in 2006, when she noticed that some of her readers were paying a bit too much attention to her long fingernails. She had always liked to take good care of her talons, growing them as much as possible, but she had never realized that there was a full fledged community of long nail enthusiasts willing to pay for the chance to admire them freely. Arinda eventually quit her job in 2008 and has been making a living selling videos of her six-inch-long toenails ever since.

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If you’re the kind of person who thinks drinking Coke every day is a sure way to an early grave, this 74-year-old woman who has been basically living on the popular soft drinks for four decades would like a word with you…

Back in February, South Korean YouTube channel X SBS featured the unusual story of a pensioner who has allegedly been drinking nothing but Coca Cola for the past 40 years. Interestingly, she isn’t one of those people who just can’t stand water, or who has been drinking Coke from a young age and could never be weaned off of it. Her Coke addiction is related to a traumatic event – the loss of her husband, the love of her life, at the age of 34. The woman said that she turned to Coke the way other people turn to alcohol to drown their sorrows, and only became more addicted to the drink even more after also losing her son in a traffic accident.

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Endemic to a very specific area on the Malaysian Peninsula, the Fire Snail – named after its bright red foot – is one of the rarest, most sought after snail species in the world.

Platymma tweediei was first discovered in 1938, in Telom Valley, Malaysia’s Cameron Highlands district. Since then, it has also been spotted Temenggor and Kelantan, but nowhere else. According to conservationist Junn Kitt Foot, from Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), the stunning-looking snail species can only be found in a 100km radius in the Cameron Highlands, as it only thrives in very specific conditions. Apparently fire snails can only live in very cool, humid environments, more specifically cloud forests – forests located high enough for clouds to form in (at least 1,000 meters above sea level).

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