Up until four years ago, Monet’s Pond, a small body of water just outside Seki City, in Japan’s Gifu Prefecture, didn’t even have a name, but thanks to social media and a catchy nickname, it has become one of the most popular tourist destination in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Before it became known as Monet’s Pond, this hidden gem was called Namonaki, or “Nameless Pond”, and what’s even more interesting is that it was never meant to be a tourist attraction. It was originally designed as an irrigation reservoir, but after it fell into disrepair during the 1990s, the owner of the neighboring  Itadori Flower Park took it upon himself to clear the overgrown weeds and clean it up. With the help of the neighborhood council, the man filled the lake with clean water from Mt. Koga, and planted beautiful water lilies. Later, Japanese carp were donated by local owners who could no longer care for them. But it would take over a decade and a half for this pristine body of water to reach its full potential as a tourist attraction.

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Not everyone chooses to use their superpowers for good; case in point, this Japanese store clerk who used his amazing photographic memory to memorize the credit card info of over a thousand clients in mere seconds of interacting with them.

34-year-old Yusuke Taniguchi was recently arrested for having stolen the credit card information of over 1,300 people and then using it to by things for himself on the internet. Apparently, Taniguchi worked as a part-time clerk at a shopping mall in Koto City, Tokyo, where he would use his trained photographic memory to steal people’s private information whenever they used their credit cards to buy something. In the few seconds it took to process a payment, the clerk would memorize the card’s 16-digit-number, the holder’s name, expiry date, and security code, all the elements needed to later use the card for online shopping.

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Gemma Cairns, a 32-year-old woman from Scotland, can’t remember the last time she experienced total silence. Even in the absence of outside noises, she can hear everything going on inside her body, from blood pumping through her veins, to the movements of her eyes.

Cairns has been able to hear noises coming from inside her body for as long as she can remember, but she only realized it was unusual after mentioning it to her mother as a teenager. She’s been looking for explanations ever since, but until three years ago, doctors couldn’t properly diagnose her condition and only prescribed her medication for blocked ears and nasal problems. Nothing worked, and the young woman had to get used to the idea that she would never learn what was wrong with her. Luckily, she moved to Glasgow in 2016, and was able to see a specialist who finally diagnosed her with bilateral superior semicircular canal dehiscence.

The rare condition means that Gemma is missing part of a tiny temporal bone in both her ear canals, which impacts both her hearing and her balance when moving around. Doctors recommended that she undergo surgery as soon as possible in order to fix the problem, but after getting her right ear fixed last September, she will have to wait until next month to hopefully experience silence for the first time.

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For the last three years, a man in India’s Madhya Pradesh state has been living a real-life daily nightmare inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Birds’. Every time he walks out of his house, he gets attacked by a murder of crows. The strange thing is the birds only target him.

Shiva Kewat, a daily wage labourer from Sumela village, says his troubles with crows began three years ago, due to a misunderstanding. One day, as he was walking on the street he noticed a crow chick stuck in iron netting, but despite his efforts to help the small bird escape, it died in his hands. Some of the rows must have seen the scene and assumed that he killed their young, because they’ve been attacking him ever since. Sometimes they come for him in groups, otherwise it’s just a single bird, but Kewat always carries a stick with him to fend off their sharp beaks and talons.

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Seen from up close, the creations of Swiss artist Simon Berger look more like vandalism, but take a few steps back and you’ll notice the cracks in the smashed glass panes form clear and complex portraits and images.

Berger admits that as an artist, he had the desire to be taken seriously, to attract attention, and the easiest way to do that was to use a material or a creative technique than no one had used before. The trained carpenter decided that laminated glass was not very popular as an artistic medium, so he started experimenting with it, developing an original technique that involved smashing the glass with hammer and chisel to create detailed and recognizable patterns. Having honed his skills, Simon Berger is now able to wield this wilful destruction to create stunning human portraits that are only visible from afar.

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Mangayamma, a 74-year-old woman in India’s Anthar Pradesh state, recently became the oldest woman in history to give birth, after successfully delivering twin baby girls following an IVF procedure.

The Indian woman had married Yaramati Sitarama Rajarao, a farmer from Nelaparthipudi village, back in 1962, but despite visiting countless doctors and temples, the couple were unable to bear children for 54 years of their marriage. Mangayamma remembers people looking at her as if she had committed some kind of sin, and some calling her cursed, but luckily her husband stuck by her and gave her the strength to move on. Even after reaching menopause some 25 years ago, the woman still had a strong desire to give birth, and last year, after seeing a 55-year-old neighbor become pregnant via in-vitro fertilisation, she and her husband decided to undergo the procedure as well.

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Zao, a Chinese artificial intelligence-powered app that allows users to swap faces with actors and other celebrities in videos and GIF images, has sparked serious privacy concerns due to how convincing the transformation can be.

Uploaded to China’s iOS App Store last Friday, Zao became the number one downloaded app on the platform in only two days and looking at what it can do, it’s easy to see why. By using artificial intelligence, the app is able to take a simple picture of the user and superimpose it on to the face of any character in a video or GIF with truly breathtaking results. For example, one user claims it only took them under 8 seconds to swap faces with Leonardo DiCaprio and fulfil their dream of starring in blockbusters like Titanic.

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With gun crime so frequent in the United States these days, even making a gun gesture with your hand can put some people on edge. A Pennsylvania man found that out the hard way after being charged with disorderly conduct for pointing a “finger gun” at another man during an argument.

The bizarre incident took place in June 2018, when, according to surveillance footage, 64-year-old Stephen Kirchner was walking with his girlfriend on a street in Manor Township, Pennsylvania. The woman reportedly had a no contact order against one of her neighbors, and when the couple walked by the neighbor’s residence, Kirchner stopped, turned around, formed a finger gun with his thumb and forefinger, pointed it at the neighbor and pulled the imaginary trigger. Little did he know that the gesture would lead to a year-long litigation.

The 64-year-old’s finger gun was apparently so disturbing to bystanders in the area that some of them actually called the police about it. To make matters worse, the neighbor he pointed he finger gun at later told police that he had felt “extremely threatened” by the gesture. Kirchner himself admitted that he knew his gesture would only inflame tensions, but he later learned that it was actually a crime.

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Doctors in the UK recently reported the shocking case of a teenager whose vision has deteriorated to the point of blindness due to a poor diet based mainly on French fries, potato chips, processed meat and white bread.

The Bristol-based teenager, who preferred to remain anonymous, had reportedly been eating only French fries, Pringles chips and white bread, as well as the occasional sausage or ham slice, ever since he left primary school. His family describes him as a fussy eater who could never tolerate the texture of fruits or vegetables. He first went to see his doctors when he was 14, because he had been feeling tired and unwell, and was diagnosed with severe vitamin deficiency. The doctor put him on supplements and advised him to drastically change his diet, but he failed to do so and also neglected taking the supplements, and three years later he was diagnosed with progressive sight loss due to undernourishment.

Doctors at the Bristol Eye Hospital concluded that the teen’s poor diet caused him to suffer from nutritional optic neuropathy. This condition is treatable when diagnosed early, but in this particular case the fibers in his optic nerve had been so badly damaged that the sight loss has been deemed irreversible. As a consequence of the considerable sight loss, the now 19-year-old has quit college and is struggling to find a job.

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An Indian artist has come up with an ingenious and hilarious way of showcasing the poor state of roads in the city of Bangalore – he put on a realistic astronaut costume and filmed himself walking trough the craters that made a local road look like the surface of the moon.

Baadal Nanjundaswamy is well known for flagging civic issues like the poor condition of roads and large potholes through his stunning street art, but his latest project was by far his most popular one yet. To raise awareness about the pothole-filled Tunganagar Main Road in North Bangalore, the Indian artist dressed as an astronaut and had someone film him as he “moonwalked” through the large craters, while cars and rickshaws drove by. He then posted the hilarious video on social media, where it quickly went viral.

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Cilla Carden, a vegan woman from Perth, in Australia, took her neighbors to court for “deliberately” allowing the smell of barbecued meat and fish to cross onto her property.

The frustrated vegan has been in a dispute with both her neighbors since 2017, and has taken one of them court several times, unsuccessfully. After having her case thrown out by a tribunal earlier this year, Carden recently applied to the Supreme Court of Western Australia for right of appeal, which was also rejected back in June. It doesn’t take a legal expert to figure out why, though, as the woman basically argued that one of her neighbors deliberately barbecued meat and fish in their backyard, because they knew she couldn’t stand it.

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An Indian woman recently made national news headlines for seeking divorce from her husband on grounds that he is so busy studying for the nationwide UPSC examination that he spends almost no time with her.

The unnamed woman, who hails from the city of Bhopal,  has alleged in family court that her husband spends all day preparing for the difficult UPSC (Union Public Service Commission) exam, never has time to go out with her, and sometimes doesn’t speak a word to her. She also told a counselor at the District Legal Service Authority in Bhopal that her husband is always too busy studying to take her out shopping or to watch a movie, and doesn’t even visit his relatives. After a while, it all got too much to bear, so she decided to get a divorce.

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Did you grow up wishing the school you went to every day looked more like a fairy-tale palace? No? Well this Russian billionaire sure did and when he became rich enough to afford it, he actually turned his old school into a flamboyant palace, complete with gilded walls, marble floors and even a water fountain.

Walking into the 106 Secondary School in Yekaterinburg after its recent renovation you couldn’t be blamed for thinking you had been magically transported to a French Baroque palace like Versailles. With golden chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, gilded decorations covering the walls and luxurious marble floors, it certainly looks nothing like a Soviet-era school dating back to the 1940s. That’s thanks to the generous donation of a former student named Andrei Simanovsky who grew up to become a successful businessman and decided to fulfill his childhood dream of turning his school into a palace.

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İbrahim Sedef, an experienced beekeeper from Turkey’s Black Sea Region, has come up with an ingenious way of having his honey tested by the same bears that used to steal it.

Agricultural engineer and beekeeper İbrahim Sedef had been struggling to deal with thieving bears for over four months, but nothing worked. When he tried covering his precious beehives with steel cages, the bears toppled to get to the precious honey, when he reinforced the cages with a cement base, they just dug in the ground and toppled them again. Even raising the hives higher up didn’t help as the bears just climbed up to reach them. So earlier this month, Sedef decided to stop looking for solutions and at least use the bears’ appetite for honey to his advantage.

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A Japanese man who goes by the online handle “Hiiragi Sensei” (Teacher Hiiragi), has been getting a lot of attention on Asian social media for his dramatic physical transformation which he claims was possible with just 4 minutes of high-intensity training per day.

The intriguing story of Hiiragi Sensei began back in March, when he posted a photo of himself and his unflattering pot belly on Twitter, along with the promise to completely change his look by losing fat and gaining muscle mass. Five months later, he posted another photo alongside the old one to showcase just how dramatically his body had changed. His flabby pot belly was replaced by a clearly-defined six-pack, his arms were visibly more muscular, as was his chest. And it was all thanks to the Tabata regimen – a 4-minute high-intensity workout that he repeated every day over the course of five months.

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