Doctors in Singapore were shocked to discover an octopus lodged in a man’s esophagus while performing a gastrointestinal examination to see what was causing him to vomit.

The unnamed Singaporean man first realized something was wrong when he started vomiting following a meal that happen to include a raw octopus. When he realized that he also had trouble swallowing, the man panicked and quickly decided to pay a visit to the Tan Tock Seng Hospital emergency room. Doctors there quickly conducted a CT scan, which revealed a super-dense mass in the man’s esophagus, but they couldn’t be sure what it was without attempting an invasive procedure called esophagogastroduodenoscopy, which involves inserting a small, flexible tube with a camera at its end down the person’s throat. That’s how they discovered that the man had a whole octopus stuck in his throat.

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A Chinese man who has dedicated most of the last 22 years to trying to find his abducted son finally managed to find his son in a city 560 miles (900 kilometers) away.

On October 9, 2001, Lei Wuze left his home in Yueyang, Hunan Province without knowing that it would be the last time he would see his son for over two decades. The man left his 4-year-old boy, Yuechuan, playing under the supervision of one of his neighbors. The woman later told police that they had met a suspicious man on the street who had later laid a trap for the boy and abducted him when she wasn’t paying attention. Lei was devastated, but he never lost hope of one day seeing his boy again. He immediately embarked on long trips in and around Yueyang, holding pictures of his son and stopping people in traffic to ask if they had seen him. Years passed, but Lei Wuze persisted, and this year, his resilience finally paid off.

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Featherless chicken is a relatively new breed of poultry created through selective breeding in order to combat a very common problem – overheating. However, the so-called ‘naked chickens’ have yet to become mainstream.

Commercial broiler chickens are genetically prone to eat more and gain weight very fast which causes their body metabolism to operate at higher temperatures than that of other chicken breeds. Their hearts operate at up to 300 beats per minute, and while the rapid weight gain makes them perfect for the ever-growing meat industry, it also creates a very big problem – overheating. Raising broilers in hot climate regions requires expensive coolers to keep the birds’ temperature in check, but what if there was a more economical way to keep birds cool without using vast amounts of energy? That was the idea that led to the creation of the controversial featherless chicken.

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Australia’s Phil Gore recently set a new world record at the 2023 Dead Cow Gully Backyard Masters Ultramarathon by running a whopping 425 miles (685 kilometers) in four days.

The Dead Cow Gully Backyard Masters is billed as a ‘race with no finish line’ by its organizers, and that makes sense because the format requires runners to complete a loop of 6.7km every hour and the race continues until only one runner remains. This year’s event was held on a farm in Nanango, 112 miles northwest of Brisbane, Australia. The endurance race began at 7 am on Saturday, June 17th, and ended four and a half days later, when there was only one person still running, Australian Phil Gore. After running the 6.7-km lap no less than 102 times, he was finally declared the winner.

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An 81-year-old Russian woman with ties to the criminal underworld of Krasnodar was recently arrested for ordering the killing of a criminal investigations detective.

Lyudmila Ryabykh is not your average grandmother. Not only does the 81-year-old have a strong connection to members of Krasnodar’s organized crime, but she once threatened to kill a paramedic with a sawed-off shotgun and she recently placed a hit on a local detective that apparently rubbed her the wrong way. The pensioner was caught red-handed after ordering the killing of an officer from the Krasnodar police department and paying part of the reward for proof of his death. Unfortunately for her, Ryabykh didn’t know that her criminal associates had revealed her plan to the authorities, and she now risks spending the rest of her days behind bars.

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Pinanga subterranea, a new species of palm discovered by researchers at the Royal Botanic Gardens, is one of only two known plants that exclusively fruit and flower underground.

There are more than 2,500 species of palm known to science, but Pinanga subterranea, a new species discovered on the tropical island of Borneo, is the only one that flowers and fruits only underground. The plant and its sweet fruits are well-known to the island’s indigenous population, but it has somehow been overlooked by scientists until now. Dr Paul Chai, a Malaysian botanist and namesake of the palm species Pinanga chaiana was the first to spot the underground-flowering palm, and in 2018, Kew scientists Benedikt Kuhnhäuser, Peter Petoe and William Baker took some samples for research purposes and discovered the plant’s amazing abilities.

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An international team of scientists has reportedly created a genetically-modified ‘superbanana’ that contains significantly more nutrients, especially vitamin A.

Vitamin A deficiency has been plaguing poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia for hundreds of years, inhibiting children’s growth, causing blindness and significantly weakening their resistance to deadly treatable diseases such as diarrhea and measles. The World Health Organization estimates that 190 million preschool-aged children worldwide are deficient in vitamin A and that malnutrition accounts for 6% of early childhood deaths in Africa alone. Luckily, a cheap and viable solution to malnutrition and vitamin A deficiency, in particular, may be available in the very near future…

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The Sol e-book reader is a new and innovative e-book reader that you wear on your face, just like a pair of sunglasses.

If the humble Kindle isn’t just isn’t good enough anymore and you’re looking for the next big thing in the e-book reader space, you may want to check out the Sol e-book reader, an intriguing device shaped like a pair of sunglasses. Somewhat similar to a VR headset, the Sol is a much more simplistic gadget designed solely as a hands-free e-reader. Weighing only around 100 grams and shaped like a pair of black sunglasses, the Sol was created for a more comfortable reading experience, like reading a book while lying down. But, before you ask, no, you will not be able to flip pages with your eyes or the power of your mind…

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A Brazilian lawyer is currently under investigation after allegedly spending over 13,000 Brazilian reals ($2,700) at a shopping mall, and then claiming that someone had kidnapped him and used his credit card.

On May 19th, Rodrigo Barcelos de Oliveira, a lawyer from Rio de Janeiro, stormed into the 16th police precinct of the Brazilian city to report a serious crime. He told officers that earlier that day he was driving down the Avenida das Américas road when he was approached by two armed men on motorcycles and forced to pull over in the parking lot of Barra Shopping Center, a mall in the west side of Rio. There, one of the men took his credit card and spent five hours shopping around, while the other guy held him at gunpoint. He gave the men the PIN code to the card and they used it to the limit set by the bank. The kidnappers then left with the purchased products, his jewelry, phone, wallet and wedding ring.

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A New Zealand woman who had a small chicken bone lodged in her throat claims that she was prescribed an interesting remedy by an emergency room doctor – lots of Coke.

Beth Brash recently sat down with New Zealand magazine Stuff to tell the unusual story of how she managed to get rid of the chicken bone stuck in her neck. It all started when she visited her favorite Wellington restaurant and tried their new chicken dish. To be fair, the staff there asked if she was ‘alright with bones,’ and having visited multiple countries where serving meat on the bone was considered normal, she wasn’t put off by it. Unfortunately, while eating the spicy dish, the young woman started experiencing a kind of tickling in her throat, which turned out to be a small piece of chicken bone.

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Japanese metal processing company Yamaguchi Seisakusho has been getting a lot of attention for showcasing its capabilities by creating a very detailed wireframe car that looks almost rendered in augmented reality.

If you’ve ever played mobile video games like the widely popular Pokemon GO, you probably know a little about augmented reality or AR for short. It’s a technology that visually enhances the real world with computer-generated images, basically overlaying digital elements onto real-life environments. Looking at the photo of this white wireframe car, you’d be tempted to think that it was the product of augmented reality, but it was actually painstakingly created out of metal wire. Photos of it recently went viral on Japanese social media, because people just couldn’t believe it was real.

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A Florida police officer has come under fire for reportedly putting his own 3-year-old child in jail and even putting him in handcuffs as punishment for pooping his pants.

In a conversation captured on body camera, Lt. Michael Schoenbrod of the Daytona Beach Police Department can be heard telling a Department of Children and Families caseworker that his son was ‘having difficulty’ with toilet training. To teach the 3-year-old boy a lesson, he put him in jail on successive days back in October of last year and even handcuffed him on the second occasion. Schoenbrod said that after the traumatic experience, the child vowed to ‘never again poop his pants’.

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A 4-and-a-half-year-old Nelore breed cow known as Viatina-19 FIV Mara Imóveis was recently priced at $4.3 million, making it the most expensive cow in the world by a large margin.

One-third of the ownership of the cow was recently sold at an auction in Arandú, Brazil for 6.99 million real ($1.44 million), putting its total value at a staggering $4.3 million. Viatina-19 FIV Mara Imóveis had already been named the world’s most expensive bovine last year when half of its ownership was auctioned off for around $800,000, which was another record-breaking price at the time. The record-breaking transaction is indicative of the Nelore cattle breed’s genetic qualities, as well as the demand for high-quality animals with outstanding genetic characteristics.

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A Chinese manufacturing company has come under fire for allegedly firing employees who can’t finish a 5 km (3 miles) race in 30 minutes, because ‘they lack hard-working spirit’.

Mr. Liu, a man living in Suzhou City, China’s Jiangsu Province, filed a lawsuit against his former employer for wrongful termination after allegedly being fired for not being able to run 3 miles in 30 minutes at 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). Liu apparently applied for a job at a mechanical parts factory and, after passing a series of practical tests that involved electric welding and gas cutting, he was announced that he had gotten the job. After paying for a medical examination out of his own pocket, Mr. Liu started working at the company in a maintenance position. Little did he know that he still had one more big test to pass…

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Thai Ngoc, an 80-year-old farmer in Vietnam, claims that he hasn’t slept in over 60 years, since coming down with a fever as a young man. Somehow, this severe insomnia hasn’t affected his life.

Most people can’t go an entire day without a few hours of sleep, but one Vietnamese man claims that he has spent the last 60 years wide awake, without so much as a short nap. Thai Ngoc has been making news headlines in his home country for years now, ever since it was originally reported that he does not need any sleep to lead a happy, active life. Ngoc’s family, including his wife, children, friends, and neighbors insist that they have never seen the octogenarian sleep, and he insists that the complete lack of sleep has never affected him negatively.

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