Every year, in late autumn, thousands of people flock to Bangye–ri, a village in Gyeongsang, South Korea, to witness the beauty of a majestic 860-year-old ginkgo biloba tree.

The secular Wonju Bangye-ri Ginkgo Tree is a national monument of South Korea famous for its impressive crown which currently covers a perimeter of around 17 meters. At around 32 meters tall (104ft), it is not even the Asian country’s tallest ginkgo tree, but the way its branches are spread out makes it one of the most visually impressive trees on Earth. In South Korea, the Bangye-ri Ginkgo Tree is often called the world’s most beautiful tree.

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The village of Baktawng, in India’s north-eastern state of Mizoram, is home to the world’s largest known family, 199 people who live under the same roof in a giant building.

Pu Ziona was the patriarch of what was generally regarded as the world’s largest family – 38 wives, 89 children, and 36 children. Ziona passed away in 2021, at the age of 76, due to health complications caused by hypertension and diabetes, but his family continues to live under the same roof in the impressive living complex Ziona built in the hills of Baktawng. Some of his children got wives of their own, some more than one, and the family member count now stands at 199. They all gather in the great hall of their home twice a day to eat, in a scene that looks more like a busy canteen than a family dining room. The members share everything, from the daily workload to the food and finances, and even though everyone wants to carry on the legacy of Pu Ziona, things are changing for the world’s largest family…

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Makeup artists on TikTok are busy freaking out their followers with a new style of makeup called “uncanny valley” and inspired by the human-like yet unnatural appearance of androids.

The term uncanny valley is used to describe the hypothesized uncomfortable feeling triggered by seeing an entity appearing almost human but not quite so. It is used mainly in relation to humanoid androids that try to mimic our look and mannerisms to perfection but don’t quite succeed. These days, the phrase is going viral on TikTok thanks to a new makeup trend used to transform fleshy humans into creepy cyborgs. The trend is believed to have been sparked by Zara (@alkiiwii), a TikTok user who transformed herself with layers of foundation, concealer, eyeliner, and mascara. Her viral video tagged with #uncannyvalleymakeup has been viewed and shared tens of millions of times, inspiring other makeup enthusiasts to post their own takes on the trend.

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A 63-year-old Chinese man who only started learning ballet a decade ago has gone viral on social media as a living example that you are never too old to follow your dreams.

Liu Ziqing has been a fan of ballet for as long as he can remember. He fell in love with it as a little boy, after watching The Red Detachment of Women ballet show in the early 1960s, more than 10 times, but he never really got the chance to practice it himself. Growing up in a poor family in a village near Baotou, the largest city in Northern China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region, his main focus was always on helping his family and putting food on the table. Dancing was a luxury he could not afford. He ended up becoming a farmer but also worked as a street cleaner in order to make ends meet. But he never got over his love for ballet, and at age 53, he decided to become a ballet dancer.

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Aitana Lopez, aka Fit Aitana, has only been on Instagram for four months, but she already has over 110,000 followers and generates over $4,000 in monthly revenue. Not bad for someone who doesn’t exist.

Virtual models have been around for a few years now, and the advent of artificial intelligence has only made them more realistic and more popular. One standout representative of this new wave of AI-created digital influencers is Aitana, a cute, pink-haired female model from Barcelona who has managed to attract over 100k followers in just a few months. She only posts photos of her, since video is likely to make her digital form a bit too obvious, but every one of her photos garners tens of thousands of likes and hundreds of comments. Her popularity has translated into a steady monthly income for her creators, who claim that she generates over 4,000 euros a month.

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Matthew Lani, a young South African man with over 3oo,000 followers on TikTok, was recently arrested for allegedly posing as a doctor and sharing medical advice without having any medical experience.

27-year-old Matthew Bogani Lani rose to internet fame when he started claiming that he was one of the youngest doctors in South Africa. He often told his followers that he was somewhat of a wunderkind, skipping several high-school grades entirely to graduate at age 16, before enrolling at Wits University to study medicine. He often filmed himself patrolling through hospitals dressed in white and wearing a stethoscope around his neck, claiming to be on his way to see patients and even dishing out medical advice to his followers, or selling them medication. He wouldn’t be the first doctor to do this in order to build an online following, but the problem was that Lani wasn’t a doctor at all, he just posed as one.

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A Spanish man from the city of Malaga was recently arrested after reportedly holding a plumber at gunpoint because he asked for too much money to fix a broken water pipe.

On November 4th, when the unnamed plumber received a call from a man asking for help with a broken water pipe in his home, he never imagined he would end up a hostage of the would-be client. Upon reaching the man’s home and seeing the problem that needed fixing, the plumber gave him an estimate of the cost, which caused the man to go into a rage. Apparently, he found the cost of the operation so obscenely high that he pulled out a gun and threatened to kill the man. The man’s neighbors called the police after hearing several boom-like noizes from his apartment windows, but when officers arrived, the assailant refused to release his prisoner, threatening to detonate a butane cylinder if anyone tried getting through his door.

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Ben Miller is the world’s only fly cast painter. Instead of a regular paintbrush, he dips his special flies in paint, attaches them to a fly rod and flings them against a canvas from dozens of feet away.

Fly fishing and painting don’t really seem like a match made in heaven, but then again, you probably haven’t seen Washington-based artist Ben Miller at work either. He is regarded as the world’s first and only fly cast painter, meaning he uses a fly rod and the art of fly casting to create thought-provoking artworks designed to raise awareness about the importance of preserving the world’s rivers. Growing up in central Washington state, Ben was introduced to the beautiful rivers of the region early on in his life, learning to fish from his father. As a young adult, he got the idea to combine his love for fly fishing with his passion for art in a unique art form that has come to be known as fly cast painting.

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Tommy, a 13-year-old Brown Swiss from Cheshire, in Massachusets, was recently crowned the world’s tallest living steer, measuring an impressive 1.87m(6ft 1in).

Tommy the steer has been living with the Balawender family on their farm in Cheshire since he was just one day old, after being bought for just about $10. It’s safe to say that he is worth a bit more than that today, but the Balawender see him more as a member of the family than an asset, so they are not considering selling him. Brown Swiss cattle generally have large bodies for dairy cows, but they are considered a medium-sized breed, which makes Tommy somewhat of a freak of nature. A typical Brown Swiss cow weighs between 1,300 to 1,400 pounds, while bulls can reach 2,000 pounds. Tommy weighs about 3,000 pounds, which makes him heavy even for his breed, and he has the frame to match the weight – 1.87 meters (6ft 1in).

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Safety Shot, a new blood alcohol detox drink set to launch later this year, promises to reduce blood alcohol content in less than an hour after consumption and make hangovers a thing of the past.

The global market for hangover cures is growing faster than ever, with experts predicting that it will exceed $6 billion by 2030. A fast-growing market usually means cutthroat competition, and that is certainly the case here, with hundreds of startups fighting to establish themselves as major players. One of the most promising companies in the field is Safety Shot (formerly Jupiter Wellness), whose upcoming product, set to launch in Q4 of 2023, has been described as “the biggest disruption in the drink market” to date and “the epitome of beverage innovation”. Its patented formula is said to be able to slash a person’s blood alcohol content in half in just 30 minutes, giving them a general feeling of well-being and reducing the risk of alcohol poisoning and even hangovers.

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A Chinese food vlogger found herself at the center of a social media storm after she posted a controversial video of herself killing, deboning, and cooking a 90 kg alligator.

Nowadays people do all sorts of crazy, controversial things on camera for attention, from eating tapeworm-infested fish to crashing small airplanes, but most of them draw the line at gratuitous animal cruelty. One Chinese influencer recently learned the hard way that people don’t like it when you kill, dismember, and cook a defenseless wild animal for their viewing pleasure, and that the stunt may now get her in trouble with the law. Chu Niang Xiao He, a female food vlogger with over 3.5 million followers on Douyin (China’s version of TikTok), recently posted a short clip demonstrating how to kill and prepare an alligator in the comfort of your own home. It was meant to shock and draw attention, but it also attracted a wave of negative reactions and accusations of animal cruelty.

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Green Ant Gin is a unique gin made by an Adelaide distillery that is infused with green ants for an extra bit of citrus flavor and a hint of coriander.

Green ants have been a source of protein for Australia’s aborigines for thousands of years, and even though bugs are yet to catch on as food in the modern world, these little critters’s neon abdomens can still be used as a flavorful ingredient. Adelaide-based food company Something Wild came up with the idea of using the ants for their natural citrus flavor in a spirit that has won multiple awards since its launch in 2017. Created in collaboration with the Adelaide Hills Distillery, Green Ant Gin is made with Boobiala (a native species of juniper) as well as other botanicals like finger lime, strawberry gum, lemon myrtle, and pepper berry, but its secret ingredient is green ants, as evidenced by the handful of ants floating in every bottle.

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Security guards at a shopping mall in Shanghai, China recently discovered a young man who had allegedly been living comfortably under a staircase for over six months.

Shopping malls are busy places, so keeping an eye on every suspicious-looking individual can be challenging even for the most attentive security guards, but failing to notice someone living in a shopping mall continuously for about half a year is a little suspicious in itself. And yet, that seems to have happened at a busy mall in Shanghai, where a young man managed to remain undiscovered for more than six months while living quite comfortably. According to a White Deer video that went viral, the unnamed young man had installed a sleeping tent under a secluded staircase in the building, along with a small desk and an office chair. He charged his laptop and mobile phone from the shopping mall electric outlets and managed to keep a very low profile.

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A Chinese woman was recently charged with fraud for allegedly cheating 3 men out of nearly $100,000 by marrying them in staged ceremonies, despite being already legally married.

The 35-year-old fraudster was already married and raising a daughter when she started dating other men with the specific purpose of defrauding them. It is unclear what drove the woman to a life of constant pretending, because, according to Chinese media, her husband had his own business and the family had a good financial situation. One thing is for sure, though, one of the factors that allowed the woman, known only as Zhou, to juggle between four husbands over several years was the fact that her real husband was always busy with work and didn’t pay too much attention to his wife.

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It’s rare for any dog to reach 100 kilograms, let alone a stray one, but Krugets, a stray dog living in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, has become so fat that he can barely get up.

The Great Dane, the world’s largest dog breed, weighs between 300 (136 kg) and 400 pounds (181 kg), but for a midsize stray dog to weigh just under 220 pounds (100 kg) is somewhat of an oddity. Volunteers in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, recently found a stray dog so fat that he howled in pain every night, and barely managed to get up on all fours because of the unbearable joint pain. The dog had to be placed on a large scale by a number of people, and his weight reportedly stunned everyone. Krugets weighed a whopping 99.9 kilograms (220 lbs) and no one could understand how a stray could become so heavy.

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