The removal of two prominent Chinese female track runners from the IAAF world rankings has reignited the debate surrounding their gender following previous accusations that they were actually men.

Liao Mengxue and Tong Zenghuan first made international news headlines during the 2019 National Athletics Championships, when they won the 4x400m relay race as part of a team representing Hunan Province. However, people didn’t focus on their athletic prowess as much as on their appearance. People didn’t think they looked feminine enough and accused them of being men posing as women to gain an unfair advantage in women’s athletic competitions. Some claimed they had Adam’s apples or that they had too much ‘junk’ in the groin area to be women, but the controversy eventually died out. Until recently anyway, because now the debate has been reignited by Liao and Tong’s exclusion from the new IAAF (International Association of Athletic Federations) world rankings.

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A woman allergic to peanuts claims to have had no choice but to buy all the peanut packets on board a plane so staff couldn’t offer them to other passengers, thus putting her life at risk.

Leah Williams was on a Eurowings flight from London to Dusseldorf, in Germany, when she noticed the cabin crew getting ready to serve snacks to the passengers. Because she suffers from a severe nut allergy, she felt it necessary to let the flight attendants know as well so they could inform the other passengers about it and refrain from serving peanuts during the flight. Only she claims that the cabin crew was less than empathetic to her health problems, leaving her no choice but to buy all the packets of peanuts available, just so they couldn’t serve them to other people. She ended up spending £144 ($184) on 48 packets of peanuts, almost three times the price of the ticket of the plane ticket. She is now requesting a refund.

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After arguing with his mother about overdue homework, a 10-year-old boy in China ran away from home and straight to the local police station to complain and beg to be put into an orphanage.

Chinese media recently reported a bizarre incident that took place in Chongqing. CCTV footage shows a young boy storming into the Huixing Police Station in Yubei and being approached by two policemen. They start chatting and the 10-year-old boy tells them that he had been reprimanded by his mother for not completing his homework, so he left the family home to join an orphanage. After a bit of convincing work by the officers, the boy gave them his parents’ contact information, so the police contacted his mother who confirmed their argument about the overdue homework. However, she never imagined that her son would run away from home to join an orphanage because of it.

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In the foothills of Shenyang, an industrial city in northeastern China lies the mysterious State Guest Mansions project, a real-estate complex of more than 250 luxury mansions, all of which are abandoned.

The story of State Guest Mansions began in 2010, when business in the Chinese real estate sector was booming. Property giant Greenland Group bought up hectares of land in the foothills around Shenyang and began work on what was supposed to be a retreat for the region’s rich and powerful. 260 European-style villas began rising out of the ground, complete with marble floors and gilded chandeliers hanging from the ceilings, but for some strange reason that has yet to be revealed, development stopped in 2018 and the place has been a ghost town ever since.

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Tucked away on the sixth floor of a Nanjing shopping mall is one of the fanciest, most impressive public bathrooms in the world. To some, it is the world’s most beautiful public bathroom.

Designed by X+Living, a Shanghai-based architecture firm, the bathroom on the sixth floor of the Deji Plaza shopping mall in Nanjing, China makes you feel like you accidentally walked into a whimsical palace. That’s not usually the feeling you get from most public bathrooms… It starts out with a long corridor lined with plants coming out of the walls. This part of the bathroom was designed as “an immersive walk-through-a-garden experience”, but it’s hard to focus on the green decor with dozens of giant lamps shining on you from above, and with the light reflecting on the glossy floor.

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The Giraffenap is a new style of sleeping pod that encourages power naps during the day as a way of improving concentration and work efficiency.

Japan is a notoriously hardworking country that emphasizes extreme dedication to one’s work even at the cost of that person’s health or general wellbeing. Working conditions can get so bad that the Japanese language actually has a term for ‘death by overwork’ (karoshi). In order to put up with this kind of grueling schedule and stress, some Japanese workers turn to short power naps. These are known to boost energy levels and concentration, as long as the person doesn’t go into deep sleep. In order to make it easier for people to get power naps pretty much anywhere, one company has begun installing vertical sleeping pods called ‘Gireaffenap’ in cafes all over the country.

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Tish, the oldest goldfish in recorded history, lived to the ripe old age of 43. In his later years, his scales actually started changing from gold to silver.

The average lifespan of a common goldfish (Carassius auratus), is 10-15 years, but the current Guinness Record for the oldest goldfish ever was set by a male goldfish named Tish that remarkably reached the age of 43. He spent his life in a fish bowl in North Yorkshire, UK, under the care of Hilda Hand and her son Peter. The latter won Tish as a prize at a fairground roll-a-penny stall in 1956, when he was only 7 years old, and after he left the family home, his mother continued looking after the aging goldfish. No one really expected Tish to reach his 40s, considering that most goldfish barely make it past a decade, but somehow he did, and, 24 years after his death, he still holds the record for the oldest goldfish ever.

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A 35-year-old American woman tragically lost her life while vacationing with her family after drinking two liters of water in a very short time and suffering severe brain inflammation.

Ashley Summers was celebrating the Fourth of July with her family on Lake Freeman in Indiana when she started feeling really dehydrated because of the hot weather. She eventually got a bad headache, and she was drinking a lot of water. She ended up consuming four 16-ounce bottles of water in 20 minutes, and although she didn’t experience any serious symptoms at the time, she later collapsed inside the garage of her home and never regained consciousness. Doctors told her shocked family that Summers had suffered severe brain inflammation after drinking too much water in a very short period of time.

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An Australian woman believed to have invited her former in-laws over for lunch only to serve them highly poisonous mushrooms claims she knew nothing about the poisonous ingredients and had no reason to hurt her guests.

Two weeks ago, Erin Patterson, a 48-year-old woman from Leongatha, near Melbourne, invited her ex-husband’s parents to her house for lunch. She and her ex had reportedly split on ‘amicable’ terms, so she and her former in-laws still maintained a friendly relationship. Gail and Don Patterson arrived with another couple, Heather, Gail’s sister, and her husband Ian. The meal was uneventful, but a few hours later, the two elderly couples started complaining about gastrointestinal problems. Around midnight, the symptoms had become so severe, that they were taken to a hospital in Melbourne. Unfortunately, a few days later, three of them passed away, while Ian Wilkinsons was left fighting for his life, awaiting a liver transplant. Meanwhile, Erin Patterson exhibited no symptoms whatsoever.

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Gordos, a popular restaurant in Holon, Israel, has been getting a lot of attention online because of its latest dessert – a real toilet bowl full of chocolate ice cream.

I don’t care how much you like chocolate ice cream, you can’t tell me that you don’t find “Third House of Shit”, the controversial dessert available at Gordos just a little bit off-putting. Don’t get me wrong, I for one would still shovel the entire bowl down my throat, but I’d have to get over my initial disgust to do it. I mean, just look at it! The smeared toilet bowl and the way the chocolate ice cream is shaped like turds, it’s definitely not the most appetizing dessert I’ve ever seen. But I guess the wow factor is more important, and so far the unusual dessert has been getting a lot of attention on social media.

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An Atlanta man who lost his house after the city tore it down by mistake is now facing a lawsuit to have the entire property foreclosed unless he pays the $68,000 demolition costs.

Everett Tripodis’ property in Atlanta’s historic West End is now an empty lot, but until a few months ago he actually owned a home there, one that the city demolished without so much as a warning. Technically, they did send out letters notifying the owner that the property had been labeled unfit for habitation, but they sent them to the wrong address, in a different zip code, about 1.4 miles away. Tripodis and his mother had bought the century-old house as an investment and had been working on remodeling it when the city decided to tear it down. To make matters worse, the city of Atlanta is now suing the owner of the property and threatening to foreclose on the empty land unless he covers the cost of the demolition, $68,000.

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An 8-year-old Bolivian boy ended up in the hospital after allowing himself to be bitten by a dangerous black widow spider in order to become like his favorite superhero, Spider-Man.

The incident occurred in the municipality of Vichuloma, near the city of Oruro, in Central Bolivia. The 8-year-old child, whose name has not been revealed by the media, was reportedly playing near a river close to his house when he turned a big rock and discovered a black widow spider. Without realizing the consequences of being bitten by a highly-poisonous spider, he grabbed the arachnid and put it on the back of his hand, in the hopes of being bitten. He got his wish, and then headed home, where he began experiencing symptoms like body aches and intense muscle spasms. Initially, the boy didn’t say anything to his mother about the spider bite, but after about three hours of agony, he said that he had been bitten by a colorful spider.

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The embarrassing performance of a Somali athlete during the women’s 100-meter race at the World University Games in Chengdu, China prompted a public apology from the African country’s sports minister.

It takes an abysmal athletic performance to warrant accusations of “defaming the name of a nation in the international arena,” but then again, the run of Nasra Abukar Ali during the women’s 100-meter race last week has been dubbed as the slowest in an official tournament. In a video that has gone viral on social media, the Somali athlete can be seen starting sluggishly out of the blocks, as the other competitors burst forward, and she quickly gets behind so fast that she doesn’t even show up on the camera following the race. Abukar Ali crossed the finish line in 21.81 seconds, more than 8 seconds slower than the second-last runner, and more than 10 seconds behind the winner of the race.

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A group of car enthusiasts in Australia recently drove a 1978 Toyota Landcruiser seven kilometers on the bottom of the ocean, setting a new world record for the longest underwater drive.

On the morning of July 29th, a bright orange Toyota LandCruiser drove into the northern Australian Sea to the cheers of dozens gathered at Mandorah Beach for a historic attempt. The 1978 “rust bucket” had been bought online by a group of friends for around $5,000 and converted into an insulated electric vehicle able to drive underwater, at depths of several meters. Dubbed the “Mud Crab”, the old short-wheelbase four-wheel drive buggy was meant to cover a distance of 4.3 miles (7km), between Mandorah Beach and Darwin Harbour, and thus set a new world record for the longest distance covered by a car driven underwater.

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Two women and a teenage boy were found dead after they ventured into the mountains to live off the grid using only knowledge from YouTube tutorials.

The partially mummified bodies of 42-year-old Rebecca ‘Becky’ Vance, her 14-year-old son, and her sister Christine, 41, were recently discovered by a hiker at a camp site in Gunnison National Forest. Last summer, Becky had convinced her son and her sister to go live off the grid, in the wilderness, disconnected from a society that she no longer felt they belonged to. Unfortunately, despite having watched hours of off-grid survival videos on YouTube and on TV, they had very little experience in outdoor survival and did not really prepare enough before venturing into the wilderness. When they were discovered, they had not managed to build a shelter other than a tent and had little more than canned food and ramen noodles for supplies.

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