China’s cosmetic surgery market was estimated to be worth around $31 billion in 2018, with double digit growth per year, and at the forefront of it is a 30-year-old self-confessed cosmetic procedure addict who had her first work done when she was only 14.

Wu Xiaochen, or Abby, as she is known on social media, is perhaps China’s most popular plastic surgery crusader. Her perfect features fascinate and inspire millions of young women who either dream of making it in the competitive entertainment industry, or simply want to correct certain defects so they can regain their self-esteem. She has millions of followers on various social media platforms, owns two cosmetic surgery clinics in Beijing and has worked with some of the biggest brands in China. But Abby’s success didn’t happen overnight. She has been obsessed with plastic surgery for the past 16 years, and has gone under the knife or the needle hundreds of times during that time to make sure that her appearance is impeccable.

Read More »

In 2016, Arshad Khan was a “chaiwala” (tea maker) on the streets of Islamabad, in Pakistan, but then he looked into a stranger’s camera at exactly the right moment and that photo catapulted him to stardom.

Arshad’s family has been making tea in Islamabad for almost 30 years, but he had only joined their stall for a few months when professional photographer Javeria Ali spotted him, in September of 2016. Somehow, the young chaiwala managed to look into Ali’s camera at just the right moment to have his striking blue eyes forever immortalised in a photo that has been shared online ever since. Hours after the pic was shared on Twitter, it went viral, and everyone started asking about the handsome chaiwala.

Read More »

After three failed IVF attempts, a 68-year-old Nigerian woman and her 74-year-old husband fulfilled their dream of having their own children this month, by giving birth to healthy twins.

Margaret Adenuga is thought to be the oldest first-time mother in Africa, after she welcomed a pair of twins at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, almost two weeks ago. It was reported that she and her husband, 77-year-old Noah Adenuga first tried having children soon after getting married in 1974, but despite spending their life savings and travelling to a number of places both in Africa and in Europe, they couldn’t conceive for 46 years. Still, they never lost hope, and last week, their prayers were answered.

Read More »

Two Canadian men wagered a whopping $517,000 on three simple games of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Now a court ruled that the loser doesn’t have to pay up.

It’s unclear how Edmund Mark Hooper and Michel Primeau ended up playing a simple hand game for over half a million dollars in January 2011, but what we do know is that the former lost at least two of the three games they played, and had to take out a mortgage on his house to pay off the debt.  Can you imagine telling your wife you have to mortgage the house because you lost over $500,000 at rock, paper, scissors? Luckily for him, a court cancelled the mortgage contract in 2017, on grounds that the amount wagered was excessive.

Read More »

A 24-year-old Indian man was recently hospitalized after he allegedly cut off his tongue as an offering to the Hindu goddess Kali Mata, to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

From putting quarantine offenders in haunted houses to people locking spouses in the bathroom, we’ve seen people do some pretty extreme things to stop the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, but Vivek Sharma, a young stone sculptor working in Suigam, India’s Gujarat state, takes the cake. Frustrated about not being able to return to his home town in Madhya Pradesh, because of nationwide lockdowns, Sharma reportedly chopped off his own tongue at a temple, as an offering to Hindu goddess Kali Mata, to stop the spread of the virus. So far his sacrifice has proven to be in vain…

Read More »

Finding any sort of protective face mask is a challenge these days, as demand has gone through the roof, but if you’re looking for something special and have money to burn, you can try a mask made out of alligator or snake skin.

All American Gator, a Florida-based company specializing in products made out of alligator and snake skin has started selling special Covid-19 face masks made from reptile skin. The skin itself doesn’t really provide any protection against the novel coronavirus, but it’s a fashion statement, and the mask itself is designed to make the insertion and removal of filters and linings as easy as possible.

Read More »

A former chemistry teacher in Ukraine has been dubbed a real-life version of Breaking Bad’s Walter White after he was caught cooking large quantities of amphetamine in two separate drug labs, and trying to sell them online.

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) recently announced the bust of a drug operation in the Kiev area and the capture of its leader, a former chemistry teacher at one of the most prestigious higher learning institutions in the country’s capital. According to a preliminary investigation, the teacher had put together a criminal organization that specialized in the production and distribution of synthetic drugs like amphetamine and cathinone, as well as several precursors. The illegal products were sold on a dedicated website as well as on social media.

Read More »

Remember those bra-cup face mask memes doing the rounds on social media not too long ago? Well, a Japanese company decided to make them a reality, and they sold out almost instantly.

Getting your hands on a proper medicinal face mask in Japan is pretty hard these days, but clothing companies around the country are trying to alleviate the shortage by producing reusable cloth masks. Atsumi Fashion, an apparel manufacturer in the city of Himi, Toyama Prefecture, is one such company, only it’s going about things a bit differently. You see, Atsumi specializes in women’s underwear garments, and its management decided that applying the same design to face masks wouldn’t be such a bad idea. They were right!

Read More »

Fed up with people constantly neglecting self-isolation and quarantine rules, a local politician on Indonesia’s Java Island decided to lock rule breakers in a haunted house to set an example for others.

Kusdinar Untung Yuni Sukowati, the head of Sragen regency came up with the idea of taping into the locals’ fear of ghosts as a way to deal with an influx of newcomers in the area. Because of lockdowns in the capital Jakarta and other major cities, Sragen has started seeing quite a lot of people coming in, many of whom completely disregard the rule to self-isolate themselves for 14 days, in case they are infected with the novel coronavirus. To make sure people started respecting the rules, Kusdinar started putting offenders in abandoned houses locals believe are haunted.

Read More »

The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Tasmania, Australia, isn’t the only museum to have shut its gates because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but it stands out because of its unique, human artwork.

As hard as it is to believe, Tim is both a man and an artwork. A former tattoo parlor owner from Zurich, in Switzerland, he agreed to have his back tattooed by artist Belgian artist Wim Delvoye in 2006, and has been exhibiting his body art in museums and art galleries ever since. He has been coming to MONA since 2011, for stints that can last up to six months at a time and see him sitting with his legs crossed on a plinth, in complete silence, showing off Delvoye’s artwork. And even though MONA closed down on March 18, he continues to sit in the empty museum for six hours a day. That is his job…

Read More »

A 22-year-old Chinese woman who suffered from a persistent cough was shocked to learn that she had a piece of chicken bone lodged in her lung.

After 14 years of checkups and X-rays to figure out what had been causing her persistent coughing for the last 14 years, a 22-year-old unnamed woman from China recently learned that it had all been caused by a chicken bone. The woman’s problems started after she suffered a serious coughing fit when she was seven or eight years old, and despite numerous hospital visits, no one could spot any anomalies that might be causing her uncontrollable coughing.

Read More »

Prickles, a bare-faced merino sheep that ran away from a Tasmanian farm during the 2013 bush-fires, recently returned home, probably after deciding that it was finally time for a sheer.

According to farmer Alice Gray, Prickles was only a lamb when she ran away, seven years ago. The bush fires that ravaged the area back then destroyed a large chunk of her family’s massive property, and the young sheep got stuck in a 200-acre bush block at the back, unable to return after they rebuilt about 50km of fencing. They had spotted her a few times, and even recorded footage of her with surveillance cameras installed to monitor deer activity, so they knew she was alive, but they didn’t expect her to ever return on the farm. They were wrong.

Read More »

If you thought America was the only country where a bogus religion like Scientology could thrive, you were wrong. Japan has its own version, it’s called Happy Science, and it apparently offers spiritual Covid-19 cures, for a fee, of course.

Happy Science is the creation of a Wall Street trader turned spiritual leader named Ryuho Okawa, who during the 1990s came to believe that he was in contact with religious figures like Buddha and Jesus. They apparently told Okawa that like them and others throughout human history, he was the reincarnation of a creator god from Venus named El Cantare and had been chosen to save the world from ruin. He wrote a couple of popular books on metaphysical subjects, entitled  “The Terrifying Revelations of Nostradamus” and “The Great Warnings of Allah,” and before he knew it, the former trader had a sizeable following.

Read More »

Chinese media recently reported the case of two doctors who got infected with the novel coronavirus while treating patients and suffered a drastic change in skin pigmentation, going from white to dark brown.

Dr. Yi Fan and Dr. Hu Weifeng, both 42, became infected with the coronavirus in January, while treating patients at the Wuhan Central Hospital. They were colleagues of Dr. Li Wenliang, the late whistle-blower who first sounded the alarm about the dangerous new virus and was originally reprimanded by the Chinese Government. They both would have shared his tragic fate too, if not for the valiant efforts of their fellow doctors to keep them alive. The two doctors spent more than a month on life-support and only regained consciousness this month, when they also learned that their appearances had changed drastically…

Read More »

Johannes Stötter is a world-renowned body-painter whose artworks are so incredibly realistic most people would never guess they are actually made up of people contorted in just the right positions and photographed from the right angle.

We originally featured the magical body-paintings of Johannes Stötter back in 2014, when he made international news headlines with a mind-blowing project where he turned two of his models into almost perfect Ara macaws. sitting on a branch. He has been keeping busy since then, coming up with all sorts of stunning compositions, from a near-perfect frog made up of several painted human models, to a single person posing as perfectly-detailed butterfly sitting on a sunflower. But, as always, even knowing the secret of Stötter’s art, you still have to squint to make out the people hidden in the artworks.

Read More »