Ukrainian scientist Vladislav Kiselev claims that he has developed a type of battery that can power gadgets like smartphones and even cars for up to 12 years, without having to be recharged.

Kiselev, a senior researcher at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry and Petrochemistry in Kiev, and professor at Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences, unveiled his intriguing battery prototype during the 2016 edition of Sikorsky Challenge, a prestigious international competition for research projects. The matchbox-like device looks fairly unimpressive, but the Ukrainian scientist claims that it has been continuously powering electrical devices for a year and four months without a single recharge, and will continue to do so for the next 11 years. That’s because his “battery” produces energy instead of simply storing it.

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People generally love decorating their homes for the winter holidays, but how many of us would actually put a whole month into making sure that the whole place is filled with Christmas decorations? Well, one man does it every year.

43-year-old Jack Baremans, from Etten-Leur, a commune in southern Netherlands, has always loved the Holidays. He has been collecting all kinds of Christmas decorations ever since he was 16-years old, and has made a habit of using all of them to decorate his home every year. His collection has gotten so large over the years, that he now reportedly takes about a month filling the inside of his home with dozens of artificial Christmas trees, thousands of ornaments, garlands, wreaths, plush reindeer and polar bears, Christmas lights and pretty much every other decoration imaginable.

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In an effort to combat plastic pollution, Indian startup EnviGreen has come up with a combination of natural starch and vegetable oils that looks and feels just like plastic, but is 100 percent organic, biodegradable and eco-friendly. You can even dispose of such a “plastic” bag by eating it.

EnviGreen founder Ashwath Hedge came up with the idea for these revolutionary bags after seeing people struggling to find alternatives to plastic bags, following bans imposed by several Indian cities. “People were concerned bout how they would carry products from the market now. Everyone cannot afford a bag worth Rs. 5 or Rs. 15 to carry a kilogram of sugar,” he told The Better India. So the 25-year-old decided to work on something that would solve this problem while being environment-friendly.

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Authorities in Ghana have recently shut down a fake United States embassy in the capital Accra that had been issuing illegally-obtained but authentic visas for the last 10 years. The fake institution was being run by members of organized crime from both Ghana and Turkey.

The real U.S. embassy in Acra is a large office building complete with security fencing and U.S. military guards, located in one of the city’s most expensive neighborhoods, while the fake one was just a rundown, pink two-storey building with a corrugated iron roof and a United States flag flown outside. There were no actual Americans working there, not even con artists. Instead the staff was made up of English-speaking Ghanian and Turkish citizens. And yet, for 10 years, the organized crime ring operating this fake embassy was able to convince people to pay thousands of dollars for visas and false identification documents. Maybe it was the portrait of Barrack Obama that police found inside that made the place seem legit.

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Most of us don’t pay much attention to light bulbs. They play a very important role in our lives, but when it comes to aesthetics, most of them are nothing special. But there was once a company that produced the most amazing flower light bulbs, and luckily some of its creations are still around today.

Aerolux Lighting Corporation was an artistic light bulb manufacturer that operated from the 1930s through the 1970s. The company made beautiful gas-discharge light-bulbs in various shapes, from cartoon characters and animals, to religious symbols and popular emblems. But their most impressive and popular creations were the flower light bulbs. They not only had these intricate metallic flower sculptures for filaments, but they would also shine in various colors depending on the gases and coatings used. They were really popular back in the day, and looking at the photos below, it’s easy to see why.

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A number of people looking to buy hairless Sphynx cats for cheap fell victim to a scammer who meticulously shaves regular kittens to make them look exactly like the exotic breed.

Genuine Sphynx cats usually sell for $1,000 or more, so when Shayla Bastarache, from Alberta, Canada, saw an ad for a Sphynx kitten for just $650, last month, she thought it was too good a deal to pass up. There was no photo attached to the ad, but the price was so enticing that she agreed to meet the seller in a gas station parking lot an hour north of Calgary, at night. She handed him the money and received two hairless kittens, one for herself and one for a friend. Bastarache says she only realized that she had been scammed two weeks later, when both felines grew a thick coat and were revealed to be regular house cats. The cat lover, who owns two genuine Sphynx cats – for one of which she had paid $1,500 – said she was amazed by how thoroughly the animals had been shaved. “I don’t know how she did it,” Bastarche told reporters.

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If you’re sick of running out of battery on your smartphone when you need it the most, and don’t mind paying a whopping $2,480 on a coat, you might want to consider getting this solar-powered jacket that can charge your gadgets on the go.

COMME des GARÇONS’ alumnus Junya Watanabe first unveiled his FW16 solar-powered men’s coat back in March, but his unique creation is doing the rounds once again, after becoming available for purchase at the hefty price of $2,480. So what makes this coat so special, apart from being a designer item, you ask? Well, just in case the four large solar panels on the back and the two in the front haven’t given it away already, this coat harnesses the power of the sun, converts it to electricity and stores it in a hidden power pack for on-the-go charging.

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23-year-old Julia Koceva has taken the internet by storm with her impressive drawings created using an old technique known as stippling – creating pattern and applying varying degrees of solidity or shading to it by using small dots.

A criminologist by day, Koceva spends her nights working on her amazing drawings. She takes between 40 and 100 hours to finish a piece, painstakingly applying tiny black dots to a large piece of paper, using nothing but a ballpoint pen. As Alphonso Dunn, author of “Pen and Ink Drawing: A Simple Guide,” says, stippling creates a unique texture but requires patience and a meticulous approach. It’s a technique that requires nerves of steel and mountains of patience, but the end results are nothing short of awe-inspiring.

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Developed by champion bodybuilder and auto parts salesman Ken Kolb, the Kooty Key is a handy little tool designed designed to help people avoid touching germ-infested surfaces like door handles, ATM machine keyboards public toilet faucets.

Ken Kolb says that he spent most of his life as a traveling salesman, and the years he noticed how air blowers in public restrooms were replacing old paper towel dispensers. While the new technology does have it advantages, it also prevents people from using the paper they would wipe their hands with after washing them to open the bathroom door on their way out. This he claims increases the risk or re-contamination, so he took it upon himself to come up with a solution. That’s basically the short story behind the Kooty Key, a small hook-like plastic device that allows germaphobes to interact with potentially-germ-infested surfaces without the risk of contaminating their hands.

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The staff at a dog shelter in Downey, California, recently had to go through one of the most heartbreaking experiences of their lives – watching a rescued dog get all excited after seeing its family walk through the door, only to learn that they weren’t there to take the pooch home, but pick out another dog.

Zuzu, a 2-year-old German Shepherd mix had been brought to the Downey Animal Care Center after being picked up from someone’s yard. Shelter staff thought she was a stray, but they showed her the same love and affection they do all their canine residents. Still, despite their best efforts, they could tell that Zuzu was miserable, for some reason. “She is a friendly girl but I sensed sadness and confusion,” volunteer Desi Lara said. “Most dogs zoom around the yard. She treaded softly, nervous to look around.” But her attitude suddenly changed one day, when a family came through the gates. As they walked by her enclosure, Zuzu was wagging her tail, barking and looked overjoyed. At the same time, these people began to pet her and talk to her through the fence. You could tell they knew each other very well.

“With her fast wagging tail seeing her owners Zuzu lit up like a Christmas Tree. She looked like the happiest dog. Yeah, she’s going home,” Desi Lara wrote on Facebook. “But no. Talking to her owners they told me they were not here to reclaim her, they were getting another dog.”

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For over 2000 years, the good ol’ iron horseshoe has remained the only reliable footwear for horses, but an Austrian company is ready to “take the horse out of the Iron Age” with the world’s first equine running shoes, the Megasus Horserunners.

Charly Forstner, the founder of Megasus, used to work as an animal welfare inspector for horses in Austria. He learned that over 50% of horses that needed to be put down suffered from severe hoof and leg problems. 20 years ago, he decided to dedicate his life to coming up with a better alternative to the iron horseshoe. Over the last two decades, he invented various hoof protection products made of plastic, like the ‘Dynamix’ or the ‘Easywalker’, but he recently unveiled something truly revolutionary – clip-on running shoes for horses. Forstener claims that they combine the qualities of both the common horseshoe and the hoof boot to offer horses the protection and freedom of movement that they require.

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Jose Antonio Garcia has become known as ‘The Pilgrim’ in his native country of Spain, after spending the last 11 years of his life walking over 100,000 kilometers to various pilgrimage sites on all continents except Oceania. This year, his amazing journey has finally come to an end.

Born in Puerto de Santa María, in the Spanish province of Cadiz, Jose Antonio Garcia spent most of his life on water, working as a sailor. He wasn’t the most religious person, but after going through a near-death experience, he decided to dedicate his life to an epic pilgrimage to as many holy sites as he could walk to. In 1999, the fishing boat Jose was working on capsized off the coast of Norway, and he was the only survivor out of a crew of 17. He spent hours in the freezing water clinging to the bodies of two fellow sailors, and it was then that he turned to religion, vowing to the Virgen del Carmel, the patron of sailors, that he would walk to all of the world’s holy shrines, if she saved his life.

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For the last 20 years, Elizabeth Eaton Rosenthal, a.k.a. Elizabeth Sweetheart, a fine artist in Brooklyn, New York, has been dressing from head to toe in various shades of green. To her, green is the happiest, most positive color in the world, so she can’t imagine wearing anything else.

‘The Green Lady of Carroll Gardens’, as Elizabeth is most widely known, has always had a thing for experimenting. At one point in her life she wore only 1930s print dresses, before moving on to single colors, like silver, pink, purple, blue and finally green, which she surprisingly never got bored of. Her passion for green started with some home-mixed green nail polish and a neon lime streak in her hair, but it quickly spread to her clothing and her home, as well. Today, she always sports green hair, an attire made up of different hues of green, and most of the things she buys, from towels and skin care products to furniture and appliances, are also green.
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Jack Ma, founder of internet giant Alibaba Group, has one of the most recognized faces in China, but he’s not exactly famous for his good looks. Still, that hasn’t stopped on young entrepreneur from spending a small fortune on plastic surgery just so he could look more like the popular billionaire.

Huang Jian, a young man in Shenzhen, claims that he has so far spent around one million yuan ($145,000) on facial plastic surgery, in an effort to make himself look more like Jack Ma. The procedures were done in South Korea, Asia’s premier destination for extreme plastic surgery. Jian says that he is a big fan of China’s second richest man and is undergoing this extreme makeover in the hopes of one day meeting his idol.

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If your idea of a good restaurant experience includes a nice conversation and interaction with the waiting staff, then Ichiran Ramen is probably not a place you want to visit. The popular Japanese chain is all about solo dining, taking extraordinary measures to ensure that patrons avoid human interaction as much as possible.

Manabu Yoshitomi, the founder of Ichiran Ramen, came up with the concept for his famous restaurants when he was just a high-school student, after seeing his female friends attempting to cover their mouths when eating ramen. After asking them about it, Yoshitomi discovered that their reluctance to being watched by other people as they slurped noodles was actually a huge barrier to them visiting ramen shops. This information inspired the young man to open a tonkotsu (pork bone) ramen restaurant that offered almost total privacy instead of human interaction.

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