The Goupitan shiplift in China’s Guizhou Province is the largest shiplift in the world. It can lift ships with a displacement of up to 500 tons to a height of 199 m (653 ft).

Dams are characterized by a drastic change in water levels and that makes navigating large waterways a daunting task. Luckily, advanced technology makes things a lot easier, and the Goupitan shiplift incorporated into the Goupitan Hydropower Station is a perfect example. Completed in 2021, it consists of three different hydraulic lifts connected by navigable water channels with a total distance of 2.3 kilometers. Located on the Wu River, a tributary of the Yangtze River in Guizhou, the Goupitan shiplift is one of the world’s most intriguing technological marvels, one that makes shipping along the waterway so much easier.

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Kurt Wenner, a former NASA illustrator turned professional artist, specializes in chalk-drawn three-dimensional illusions that seem carved into the pavement rather than drawn on it.

Born and raised in Santa Barbara, California, Kurt Wenner attended both the Rhode Island School of Design and Art Center in Pasadena and was quickly recruited to work for NASA while studying at the Art Center. There, he was among the few highly skilled artists whose work was done solely by hand. Eventually, Kurt eft the agency and moved to Europe to study some of the world’s greatest works of art. Disappointed to find no class on the principles of classicism, the young artist came up with his own self-learning program which involved spending countless hours drawing from the magnificent art collection of the Vatican Museums and the Pantheon.

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An American man has been going viral on Ukrainian social media after being spotted wearing an attire similar to that of Jesus Christ and carrying a large wooden cross on his shoulders on his way to Kyiv.

Identified only as Jimmy from Virginia, the young American has been drawing a lot of attention while walking through Poland and Ukraine because of his unusual attire and the large wooden cross on his shoulder. He told a number of Ukrainian news outlets whose reporters interviewed him that he doesn’t really have a goal. He left the Polish capital of Warsaw and he hopes to eventually reach the Ukrainian city of Kyiv on foot, but he leaves that plan in God’s hands. The 33-year-old man claims he is just doing what his heart is telling him to because that is the best way to honor God.

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Pterocarpus angolensis, commonly known as wild teak or bloodwood, is a species of tree native to Southern Africa known primarily for the dark red sap it secretes which looks like blood when the tree is cut.

Well-known in tropical Africa, where it is used to make high-quality furniture and musical instruments, wild teak is resistant to termites and has a nice, spicy fragrance. It is also resistant to fire so trees are sometimes planted around structures that need to be protected from flames. But outside of southern Africa, bloodwood is most known for its unique dark red sap. Its resemblance to blood has made some people speculate about the tree’s magical healing powers in blood illnesses, none of which have been proven by conventional medicine.

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Japanese men who carry mobile shrines known as mikoshi every year as part of important Shinto festivals are left with giant callouses on their shoulders that they display as badges of honor.

Carrying mikoshi shrines is considered a great honor among Japanese Shintoists, and while some may do it just once in their lives, the most dedicated of them actually help carry the mikoshi every year, for decades. Because these mobile shrines and the large wooden beams that support them can weigh over a ton, the pressure on the bearers’ shoulders is significant, and after years of service, the shoulders start to develop large callouses known as ‘mikoshi dako’. They are not the prettiest things in the world to look at, but mikoshi bearers wear them as badges of honor.

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A wooden chair perched on the edge of an exposed attic in Dennis Township, New Jersey, has become an obsession for thousands of people and even spawned its own dedicated social media groups.

A dilapidated house with a collapsed roof located on Route 47 in the unincorporated Dennisville community of Dennis Township has become somewhat of a tourist attraction thanks to a small wooden chair perched right at the edge of its exposed attic. Many of those driving past the house on their way to and from work have become fascinated with this chair that doesn’t really move but is destined to fall at some point. Some want to know how it wound up on the edge, others whether it is nailed to the floor to keep it from falling, and a few are interested in the home’s history and why it is in its current condition. But most are just interested in watching the chair until the day it inevitably falls to the ground.

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A Lithuanian man has been arrested in Spain after allegedly faking heart attacks at 20 restaurants around the country in order to avoid paying the bill.

The unnamed 50-year-old man reportedly scammed at least 20 eateries, the majority of them in Spain’s Costa Blanca region, by theatrically faking a heart attack. After ordering food and drinks, he would put on an outrageous theatrical performance, clutching his chest and pretending to faint on the floor. The scam worked like a charm until one establishment owner saw right through the man’s act and started other local restaurants photos of him warning them not to fall for his heart-attack routine.

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Capitojoppa amazonica is a newly-discovered genus of parasitic wasps that stabs its victims with its giant ovipositor and sucks the blood out of them before laying its eggs inside.

The terrifying insect was discovered by scientists from the University of Utah while surveying the National Reserve of Allpahuayo-Mishana in Peru. They laid large netted devices called malaise traps to capture as many flying insects as possible. Among the creatures caught in their traps was a bright yellow wasp with a giant almond-shaped head and tube-like organs sticking out of it. Scientists concluded that the specimen, an adult female, was a new ‘solitary endoparasitoid’ – meaning it lays a single egg inside the body of its host (caterpillars, beetles, and even spiders). The egg hatches in a matter of days, after which the wasp larvae start to consume the host’s inside.

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A Kenyan man was recently arrested after it was revealed that he had impersonated an attorney and represented various clients in 26 different cases – all of which he won – despite lacking any formal training.

Brian Mwenda Njagi has been dubbed the ‘real-life Mike Ross’, in reference to the popular character from the TV series ‘Suits’, a bright young man who manages to work at a high-profile law firm and represent clients despite lacking any kind of formal law school education. The comparison is justified, considering that Mwenda managed to represent clients in front of Court of Appeal judges and High Court judges in 26 different cases, winning every one of them. The young man had managed to portray himself as a qualified attorney and none of the judges he had ever pleaded before suspects that he was not really a lawyer. The Law Society of Kenya (LSK) only began suspecting him after receiving complaints from an actual lawyer also named Brian Mwenda who complained that he couldn’t access his account.

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A 71-year-old African man has been living in an isolated house surrounded by a 15-foot fence for over half a century because being close to women terrifies him.

Callitxe Nzamwita was only 16 when he decided that his fear of women was too much to bear. He couldn’t stand being around members of the opposite sex, let alone talk to them, so he built a wooden fence around his modest home and hasn’t stepped outside the property since. Instead of shunning him, the women of Nzamwita’s community have always looked after him, throwing all sorts of things like food and clothes into his locked yard. Although he never opens the door for them, he does use the things they give him.

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China’s Qiantag River is famous for a unique natural phenomenon, a wavy pattern tide that was only observed for the first time in 2021 and has come to be known as fish scale tide.

The Qiantang River’s estuary in Zhejiang Province has long been famous for having the strongest tidal bores in the world. At times, they can get as tall as nine meters, which means the area regularly sees trains of large waves moving upstream against the normal current. However, in 2021, during a scientific expedition, researchers discovered another intriguing natural phenomenon unique to this estuary. When certain conditions are met, the tide comes in spiraling waves that look like fish scales on the water’s surface. The phenomenon hs become known as ‘fish scale tide’.

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A road leading to Bali’s Pandawa Beach that seems to split an entire plateau in half has sparked a heated online debate about the practicality of the project and its effect on local wildlife.

Featuring fine white sand and crystal-clear water, the picture-perfect beach of Pandawa was already one of Bali’s most beautiful seaside destinations, but the road dug into the limestone cliffs separating the beach from the rest of the island really catapulted it into the top tourist destinations on the island. Until only a decade ago, Pandawa Beach was only popular among locals, as the limestone cliffs secluded from foreigners’ eyes were notoriously hard to traverse. However, everything changed in 2012 when a road leading down to the beach was created by cutting through the cliffs. Today, that road has itself become somewhat of a tourist attraction in its own right, but also the topic of a heated debate.

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A popular restaurant in Tokyo, Japan, sparked controversy for claiming to dip its delicious pork skewers in a sauce jar that has not been cleaned in over half a century.

Abe-chan, a famous pork skewer eatery in Tokyo’s Azabu Juban shopping district, was recently featured on a popular Japanese television show where it was revealed that one of the secrets to its success was a rather dubious-looking jar covered in a gelatinous mass. Apparently, this was the same sauce jar that pork skewers have been dipped in for the last sixty years, and the dark brown mass around the jar is the sauce that spilled over and hardened over the decades. According to the third-generation owner of Abe-chan, the jar has never been cleaned in the last six decades, which apparently contributes to the rich taste of the sauce.

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A Japanese producer of milk and dairy products came up with an ingenious way of motivating kids to finish their milk bottles at lunch – decorating the bottles with manga comics.

Seki Milk, a milk producer and processor in Japan’s Gifu Prefecture, has been providing its products to local schools, but in recent years the company had seen consumption of milk drop significantly. According to its own research, the majority of school students (around 65% of them) were not finishing their milk bottles at lunch, which caused unnecessary food waste and also deprived them of calcium and other valuable nutrients. However, if you’re a parent, you probably already know that getting kids to eat things that are good for them isn’t the easiest thing in the world. Luckily, Seki Milk came up with an original and fun way to motivate children to finish their milk – manga bottles.

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Chicago’s McCormick Place, the largest convention center in North America, was recently responsible for the deaths of at least 1,000 small birds that crashed into its thick glass walls.

According to the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors (CBCM), a volunteer conservation project dedicated to the protection of migratory birds, on October 5, the carcasses of at least 1,000 small birds, including  Tennessee warblers, hermit thrush, and American woodcocks were found around McCormick Place. They all died after colliding with the iconic building’s transparent glass walls, which birds simply cannot detect. The CBCM said that this was the highest number of crash-caused bird deaths that the group recorded from the grounds of one building in a single day. Unfortunately, the number of deaths may actually be much higher, because many birds continue to fly after suffering serious injuries only to die hours later.

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