An Australian sailor and his loyal dog were recently rescued after surviving two months adrift in the Pacific Ocean by eating raw fish and drinking rainwater.

54-year-old Tim Shaddock and his dog Bella left Mexico for French Polynesia back in April, but a few weeks into their 6,000 km journey, Tim’s catamaran was severely damaged in a storm, and they were left with no way to sail. The storm also knocked out all the electronics, so the Sydney-based man had no way of contacting anyone for help, or even cooking his supplies. The last time Shaddock saw dry land was in early May as he sailed out of the Sea of Cortez and into the Pacific during a full moon. He and his canine have been drifting in the Pacific ever since, taking shelter from the sun under a canopy, eating raw fish, and drinking rainwater.

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A Saudi man had to undergo laparoscopic surgery to unblock his airway after he accidentally swallowed his car key while playing with it.

A medical team at a hospital in Saudi Arabia’s coastal Al Qunfudah governorate has been praised for saving a man’s life by extracting his car key from his respiratory tract. Just how the 49-year-old man managed to swallow his own car key is still unclear, but most Middle Eastern news sources claim that he was ‘playing’ with it. That doesn’t really explain much as we can’t even begin to picture how he was playing with the car key if he ended up swallowing it, but the important thing is that the driver didn’t choke to death and even managed to recover his car key.

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A Belarussian company specializing in agricultural machinery recently unveiled a Formula 1 car built with tractor parts that can allegedly reach speeds of up to 320km/h (198mph)

The Russian city of Yekaterinburg recently hosted the Innoprom exhibition where over 150 companies from Russia and Belarus showcased their newest agricultural, construction, and transportation machinery. However, the ultimate stand-out was not a tractor, a combine, or an excavator, but a unique-looking Formula 1 car developed by Belarusian company Minsk Tractor Plant. At first glance, it looked like a slightly unusual racing car, but the more you looked at it, the more you spotted similarities to a tractor, which makes sense, considering that it was allegedly inspired by the company’s tractor-building pedigree and built using tractor parts.

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A Chilean man was kicked out of the house by his family after the Civil Registry Office mistakenly registered him as the father of two Venezuelan children whom he had never even met.

Up until the beginning of this month, Leonardo Sepúlveda Rodríguez, a middle-aged man from Santiago, Chile, had enjoyed a peaceful and fulfilling life alongside his wife of 30 years and their two children. However, everything came crashing down on July 5th, when his son went to the local Civil Registry Office to get some documentation required for Family Court and learned that Leonardo had recognized two Venezuelan children as his own. The son called Sepúlveda Rodríguez to confront him, but he was just as dumbfounded. He had never even traveled abroad, let alone conceived two children in Venezuela, but despite his best attempts to prove his innocence, his wife asked him to move out of the house.

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A 17-year-old Mexican teenager died because of a brain embolism allegedly caused by the hickey his older girlfriend left on his neck during a date.

There is a viral video going around Latino TikTok these days about the tragic story of Julio Macías González, a 17-year-old teenager from Iztapalapa, Mexico, who died in 2016 because of a hickey. In the viral video, which has been doing the rounds online for about a week, an AI avatar of young Julio tells the tale of how he died after collapsing during dinner at his parents’ house. On August 25, 2016, while making out with his 24-year-old girlfriend, Julio got a hickey on his neck, but he didn’t think anything of it. After all, young lovers give themselves hickeys all the time, and they’re considered virtually harmless. But what the teen boy didn’t know was that in very rare cases, they can apparently be deadly…

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A controversial Russian scientist claims to have implanted an electrode into his brain to control his dreams by performing brain surgery on himself, in the comfort of his living room.

Michael Raduga, a Russian researcher with no neurosurgery qualifications whatsoever, reportedly lost more than a ‘liter of blood’ while performing brain surgery on himself in his home in Kazahstan, in order to implant an electrode that one day has the potential to control lucid dreams. Raduga is not a doctor, but he is the founder of Phase Research Center, and organization that claims to provide beginner’s guidance on how one may experience sleep paralysis, out-of-body experiences, and ‘astral projection’. He has quite a cult following in Russia, and many of his followers have been praising him for his courage to push boundaries in order to achieve his goals, but neurosurgeons are warning that he is treading on extremely dangerous ground.

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A team of Dutch researchers has discovered that magpies and crows are using metal spikes designed to keep them away from certain urban areas to reinforce their own nests and keep intruders at bay.

Scientists have known for a while that magpies and crows are some of the most intelligent birds in the world, but even they were baffled by their amazing ability to adapt to hostile urban environments. It’s not unusual for birds to use human trash and debris as tools and building materials for their nests, button see them use the very things we humans use against them was nothing short of baffling for researchers at the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam and the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, in the Netherlands.

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The German city of Dresden is famous for the Baroque architecture that runs along the banks of the Elbe River, but there is one exception that stands out like a sore thumb – the iconic Yenidze building, aka the ‘tobacco mosque’.

Featuring clear oriental architectural elements of mosques and the famous Alhambra Palace of Granada, the Yenidze has been towering over Dresden’s Friedrichstadt neighborhood for over a century. At 62 meters (203 ft) tall, featuring 600 windows of various styles, and boasting an impressive glass dome, it would be one of the largest mosques in the world, but despite its appearance, the Yenidze is not, and has never been a mosque. For most of its existence, the Yenidze has operated as a tobacco factory and its unusual design was chosen both as homage to the Oriental origin of the tobacco processed here, but also a clever way to vend the rules on architectural restrictions in Dresden’s city center.

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Fed up with tourists who only come in to check out the scenery, the owners of Queviures Múrria, a centennial grocery store in Barcelona, have put up a sign announcing a 5 euro fee ($5.6) for coming in just to look.

Queviures Múrria has been in business since 1898 and is one of the most eye-catching locations in all of Barcelona. The vintage look of the store and the traditional design of the interior draw in hundreds of tourists every day, but the problem is that many of them aren’t actually interested in the products sold inside – all kinds of traditional Spanish cured sausages, cold cuts, cured cheeses, oils, wines, etc. According to one of the managers, many tourists enter the store without even muttering a simple ‘hello’, wander around taking pictures, and then simply leave without buying anything. So he decided to charge people for ‘just looking’ just to discourage them.

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Burger King Thailand recently shocked the fast food world with its latest addition to the menu – a ‘real cheeseburger’ that consists of 20 slices of cheese between two sesame burger buns.

The Real Cheeseburger hit Burger King locations across Thailand last Sunday and immediately went viral online. People started posting photos of the tower-like burger, expressing their disbelief that something like this was actually being sold as food. Many people still didn’t believe it was anything more than a stunt, but Burger King clarified that “This is no joke. This is for real,” via its social media channels. The unusual burger, which consists of 20 slices of American cheese stacked between two buns, comes with no sauce, pickles, and most importantly, no meat patty. By some accounts, the cheese is sometimes not even grilled or melted.

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A Barcelona man was sentenced to one year in prison after a court found that he had been terrorizing his neighbors for at least 5 years by playing loud electronic music almost non-stop.

A court in Mataró (Barcelona), Spain recently ruled against a man who had reportedly been driving his neighbors crazy by playing electronic music at a loud volume. The nightmare of the man’s neighbors began 2012, when he started playing his unbearably loud music all day and night. Despite repeated requests to turn the volume down, as well as visits from the local police, the man refused to comply and people had no choice but to put up with it. In 2015, 3 neighbors who lived in a house attached to that of the accused filed a complaint against him, after having endured nearly 3 years of electronic music at full volume. They claimed that the constant banging music was causing them both physical and mental issues.

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A Spanish man stands accused of taking advantage of an overly-religious old woman by posing as her Lord and Savior and asking her to deposit money at His ‘Church of Heaven’.

Could you say ‘no’ to God? What if He called you directly to ask for a favor? Esperanza, an elderly woman from León, in northwestern Spain, could not refuse God when He called her on her telephone and told her to put her savings in His ‘Church of Heaven’, because it offered better interest than earthly ones. The woman never once suspected that she was being scammed, as she was convinced that she was a ‘chosen of the Virgin’ long before receiving the call, so getting a direct call from the Almighty didn’t really seem that strange. Over six years, Esperanza followed God’s instructions and deposited around 300,000 euros in a small drawer at a local convenience store, convinced the money would end up at a heavenly church…

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An Indian man who spends his days asking people for pocket change on the streets of Mumbai has been dubbed the ‘world’s richest beggar’ by Indian media who claims he is worth over $1 million.

While many people in India toil long hours every single day for a few hundred rupees, Bharat Jain, the so-called ‘world’s richest beggar’, reportedly makes between 2,000 and 2,500 rupees every day by asking generous people for handouts. Jain has been begging at busy Mumbai locations like Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus railway station (CSMT) or Azad Maidan for many years now and has accumulated quite a fortune. His net worth is expected to be around 7.5 crore ($1 million), and includes a 2-bedroom flat in Mumbai worth 1.2 crore, and two shops in Thane that rent for 30,000 rupees per month. His monthly income is estimated to vary between 60,000 rupees ($731) and 75,000 rupees ($914), which is apparently a lot more than most employed Indians earn.

Photo: Brijesh Nirmal/Unsplash

According to the Economic Times, Bharat Jain did not afford to pursue any formal education and resorted to begging to earn a living. His kids, on the other hand, will not be following in his footsteps. They have already completed their education in convent schools and are already employed. Jain’s family constantly advises him to stop begging as they can afford to live comfortably without it, but he continues to hit the streets almost every day.

Bharat Jain has been making news headlines in India for his less-than-meager earnings since 2015 when his reputation as a wealthy beggar started growing. His name has since been mentioned constantly by Indian media looking for the next viral news story.

The title of ‘world’s largest gas station’ belongs to a 74,000-square foot Buc-ee’s In Tennessee with 120 gas pumps and 350 employees.

Buc-ee’s, the world-famous giant gas station chain that dominates roads across the American south, operates dozens of gas stations, but none as big as the recently opened one near Sevierville, Tennessee just off of I-40. Buc-ee’s is known for incorporating megastores into their massive gas stations, but this newest one really takes the cake! At 74,000 square feet, the world’s largest gas station features a massive shopping center, a full barbecue restaurant, spacious bathrooms, and a massive rest area. And, like any respectable gas station, it has plenty of gas pumps, 120 to be exact.

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Chinese netizens have been reporting the presence of high-tech urinals capable of conducting quick urine sample tests at shopping malls, scenic spots, and other busy urban areas.

Photos of a strange-looking urinal at a mall somewhere in Beijing’s business district have been doing the rounds online and sparking heated debates. Apparently, it features a digital display complete with a built-in payment processing unit that allows users to have their urine tested after relieving themselves. The urinal presumably has hidden sensors that analyze the urine for a bunch of markers, including calcium, glucose, protein, ketone bodies, ascorbate, and others. The information displayed on the screen suggests that the developer has obtained some patents for the urine testing technology, but the accuracy of the results is a matter of contention…

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