iPhone Stuck Under Ice Becomes Ice Skate Rink Attraction

A seasonal ice skating rink in Milton Keys, England, has been getting a lot of attention because of a bright pink iPhone stuck under two inches of ice. Skaters at the Willen on Ice skating rink in Milton Keys will sometimes stop in the middle of the giant ice rink to stare at something under the ice – a bright pink iPhone. It has become a sort of tourist attraction after the BBC and other UK media outlets reported about it online. Apparently, one of the workmen setting up the rink this year lost their smartphone and had to borrow their daughter’s iPhone for a day only to forget it in the middle of the ice rink right before it was flooded with water and frozen overnight. The next day, some of his coworkers spotted it while inspecting the ice, but they could do nothing but laugh at his misfortune, as damaging the ice was out of the question.
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Mother Installs Jail Cell in Her House to Protect Herself from Addict Son

An elderly Thai woman desperate to keep her drug and gambling-addicted son away from temptation installed an iron jail cell inside her home. After more than 20 years of living in constant fear of her drug-addicted son, a 64-year-old woman from Thailand’s Buriram Province took extraordinary measures to protect herself and her neighbors. She recently had contractors build a jail cell inside her home where she could confine the 42-year-old man when he became violent. She told police that she had tried everything to save her son over the years, including several rehabilitation attempts in over 10 different centers across the country, but nothing worked and he became increasingly violent as time went by. To make matters worse, at one point, the son became addicted to gambling as well, which only made things worse.
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Junk Food Diet Causes 12-Year-Old Boy to Go Permanetly Blind

A 12-year-old Massachusetts boy has tragically lost his eyesight to a nutrient-poor junk food diet that caused his optic nerves to atrophy beyond any hope of reversal. The New England Journal of Medicine recently documented the case of a 12-year-old boy suffering from autism who ultimately went blind because of a junk food diet based mostly on burgers, fries, ranch dressing, donuts, and boxes of sugary juice. The boy had been diagnosed with autism and suffered from an extreme phobia of certain food textures, so his parents found it impossible to introduce vital nutrients into his diet. Earlier this year, the unnamed boy began experiencing vision problems in the hours of the morning and in the evening, but his eyesight was fairly normal during the day. However, his vision started degrading at a rapid pace, and in six weeks’ time he could only move around if his parents helped him navigate obstacles. Then, one night, he woke up screaming that he couldn’t see.
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Court Bans Woman from Entering Brother’s Room to Clean It Against His Will

A Singapore family court recently issued a partial domestic exclusion order against a woman who had allegedly been forcefully entering her adult brother’s room at odd hours of the night to clean. On October 31st, two Singaporean siblings obtained court orders against each other following a bizarre legal dispute that left the judge scratching their head. A woman managed to get a protection order against her brother who had reportedly physically assaulted her, while he got a domestic order banning her from entering his room, which happens to be why he assaulted her in the first place. A third sibling told the court that tensions between the two had been rising for years, particularly because their sister would come into the brother’s room in the middle of the night to clean it, infringing on his privacy and preventing him from sleeping. One day, the man just snapped.
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Chinese Woman Faces Divorce After Giving Birth to Dark-Skinned Baby

A young Chinese woman had the happiest day of her life turned into a nightmare after her husband asked for a paternity test because of their newborn baby’s suspiciously dark skin. Chinese newspaper China Times recently reported the bizarre case of a 30-year-old Shanghai woman desperate to save her marriage after giving birth to a dark-skinned baby by C-section. The woman took to social media to tell her sad story and ask other mothers for advice on how to handle the situation. She claims that after delivering the baby, when it came time for her husband to meet his son for the first time, he just stared at him with bewildered eyes and refused to hold him. The woman admitted that she too found the baby’s dark skin odd and felt embarrassed when holding it, feeling the need to clarify that she “had never been to Africa and didn’t know any black people”.
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Filipino Hotel Is the World’s Largest Rooster-Shaped Building

The Campuestohan Highland Resort in the Philippines’ Negros Occidental province was recently awarded the Guinness record for the highest rooster-shaped building. Standing 114 feet, 7 inches tall, the Rooster Hotel at Campuestohan Highland Resort is quite a sight. It’s not only shaped like the domestic bird, but actually looks like a giant realistic rooster dominating the entire area with its imposing stance. Ricardo Cano Gwapo Tan, the director of the resort, told journalists that he wanted to create something eye-catching that also paid homage to the local culture, of which gamefowl is a huge part. Negros Occidental has a gamefowl breeding industry that employs millions of Filipinos, so he hopes some of them will want to spend a night in one of the 15 air-conditioned rooms of the new hotel.
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Indian Temple Goers Mistake AC Condensation Dripping on Sculpture for Holy Water

Devotees at a temple in Vrindavan, India, queued to drink the water dripping from an elephant sculpture, believing it was holy water from the feet of Lord Krishna, but is was only condensation from the temple’s air conditioning. Shocking videos showing dozens of people at the Shri Banke Bihari temple in the city of Vrindavan queuing in front of a wall-mounted elephant statue to drink the liquid dripping from it once again brought into the spotlight the barrier between religious devotion and critical thinking or even common sense. it was reported that all these people believed the liquid to be Charan Amrit (sacred water from the feet of Lord Krishna), when in fact it was merely condensation from the temple’s air conditioning unit. Temple authorities issued a clarification to convince people to stop drinking the dripping liquid.
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The World’s Highest Bridge Stands 565 Meters Above a Steep River Valley

The Beipanjiang Bridge sits over 565 meters (1,854 feet) above the Beipan River Valley nestled between two very steep cliffs, making it the world’s highest bridge. Also known as the Duge Bridge or “China’s Impossible Engineering Feat”, the world’s highest bridge may not look that impressive at first sight, but it is a testament to Chinese engineering and innovation. Located close to the border between the provinces of Guizhou and Yunnan, in one of China’s most mountainous regions, the Beipanjiang Bridge required so many design innovations and new technologies that the company that built it won a Gustav Lindenthal Gold Medal, considered the “Nobel Prize” in the field of bridge construction. Completed in 2016, the world’s highest bridge connected the provinces of Guizhou and Yunnan, opening up an entire area that had previously been inaccessible to cars and trucks.
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New World’s Thinnest Mechanical Wristwatch Is Just 1.65 Millimeters Thick

The ThinKing by Russian watchmaker Konstantin Chaykin is only 1.65 mm thick, making it the world’s thinnest mechanical wristwatch. The “arms race” for the world’s thinnest wristwatch has been in full swing for a few years now, with some of the most prestigious watch brands on Earth trying to one-up each other with ingenious designs. The latest to claim the coveted title is independent watchmaker Konstantin Chaykin with its ThinKing prototype, a 1.65-thick masterpiece that is so incredibly thin it needs a special wristband. The ThinKing’s case is so delicate that the simple pressure from being worn is enough to damage it, so the special strap made of alligator leather and elastic inserts with titanium has to absorb some of the shocks, twisting and bending.
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Sick Man Brought to Bank on Hospital Bed to Confirm His Identity

A severely sick Chinese man was pushed to a local bank branch on a hospital bed by his family in order to confirm his identity for a money transfer. A video that has been doing the rounds on Chinese social media shows a woman struggling to push a man on a hospital bed in a Shandong Province bank after being told that the only way to access his account was to confirm his identity in person. Despite explaining to the bank manager that the account holder was hospitalized because of severe health problems, the family was told that the only way to access their account was to bring them there in person. The man was so sick that he could not move on his own, but even evidence of his hospitalization failed to convince the bank staff, so they had no choice but to figure out a way to bring him in for identity confirmation.
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Viral Chinese Street Food Looks Like a Lump of Black Hair

A new snack served on the streets of Chengdu, in China, has been getting a lot of attention because of its unusual appearance; it looks like a lump of black human hair. Fa Cai or Fat Choy is a type of dried cynobacterium that has long been a part of Chinese cuisine. It grows mostly in dry and barren desert areas such as Gansu, Shaanxi, Qinghai, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia in China, and is processed by air-drying immediately after harvesting. Because of its dark, filiform shape, it is commonly known as the “hair vegetable”. Fa Cay – scientific name Nostoc flagelliforme – is most often served as black vermicelli in a variety of broths and soups, and served on New Year’s Eve for good luck, because its Cantonese name sounds very similar to the phrase “struck it rich”. However, the dark treat recently went viral as a new street snack that makes it seem like you’re eating human hair.
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Woman Finds Out Aristocratic Husband-to-Be Is a Scammer Two Weeks Before Wedding

A young English woman who thought she was marrying a “lord” found out that he was a romantic scammer who had already put her tens of thousands of dollars in debt. 27-year-old Megan Clark was working as a manager at a bar on the Isle of Wight when Lord Bertie Underwood first walked into her life. He was charming, kind, thoughtful, and made it very clear that he was interested in her. He claimed to be a descendant of John T. Underwood, who owned the company that sold the Underwood Typewriter in the early 20th century, and certainly looked and acted like a modern-day aristocrat. He would send her flowers at work, buy her expensive gifts from Harrod’s, and drive to London in his Bentley for romantic dates. Lord Bertie Underwood was a dream, so when he asked her to move into his three-story seafront villa, it didn’t matter that they had only been dating for one month. Five months after that, he had asked for her hand in marriage and she accepted.
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Startup Charges Parents-to-Be $50,000 to Screen Embryos for Higher IQ

American start-up Heliospect Genomics is charging wealthy parents-to-be up to $50,000 to screen their embryos for IQ and other desirable traits. Wish you could ensure your unborn child has a higher-than-average IQ? Well, apparently now you can, with the help of genetic enhancement technology. This is controversial territory, as it tends to normalize the idea of superior” and “inferior” humans,, but according to undercover video footage obtained by the campaign group Hope Not Hate, at least one genomic prediction company has begun selling its services to parents who can afford them. Heliospect Genomics has apparently already offered its services to over a dozen parents undergoing in-vitro fertilization, charging them up to $50,000 to screen 100 embryos for IQ and other traits and boasting that their technology could help select children with IQ scores six points higher than those conceived naturally.
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Jealous Woman Stabs Boyfriend After He Greets Another Woman on the Street

A 23-year-old Argentinian man tragically lost his life at the hands of his jealous girlfriend who attacked him with a knife for simply greeting another woman on the street. A little jealousy can actually be good for a relationship, but too much of it can be fatal! Take the tragic story of Mariano Grinspun, a 23-year-old man from González Catán, a city in Argentina’s Buenos Aires province, who was stabbed to death by his jealous girlfriend after greeting a former schoolmate on the street. The shocking incident occurred in the early hours of October 21st, near the corner of Balboa and La Bastilla streets, in González Catán. Grinspun and his girlfriend, Natacha Palavecino, were walking hand in hand when they ran into a woman who greeted Mariano and asked him how he was doing. The woman’s simple greeting was enough to drive the man’s girlfriend crazy, as she pulled out a hidden knife and attacked her.
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China Develops Lunar Bricks Designed to Be Used on the Moon

Chinese scientists recently unveiled an innovative brick type that they hope will be used to build the world’s first base and inhabitable houses on the surface of the moon in the near future. It’s no secret that China has big plans when it comes to moon colonization. Earlier this year, it became the first country to land a probe on the dark side of the moon and bring it back with valuable soil samples, and putting people on the moon appears to be the next logical step. However, the Asian giant is already planning for the day when we’ll be able to build bases and other buildings on the Earth’s natural satellite, and to that end, it has developed an ingenious type of brick designed to withstand both physical pressure and high levels of radiation from the sun. The so-called “moon soil bricks” will be sent to the moon to be tested until the end of next year.
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