Joseph Mellen is a British-Born author famous for ‘Bore Hole’, a controversial book about his three attempts at drilling a hole in his own skull so he could be permanently high.

Mellen, an active member of the Swinging Sixties acid revolution, wrote his famous book in 1970, but his story has been going viral online regularly for decades, for understandable reasons. It’s not every day that you learn of a man who tried to drill a hole in his own skull, not once, not twice, but three times, for the sole purpose of being permanently high. The archaic process of drilling holes in one’s skull is called trepanation and is considered by many the oldest operation in the world. Trepanned skulls have been found on all continents, and some African tribes even perform them today, but Joe Mellen is one of the few people in history to perform trepanation on himself to produce a permanent acid trip.

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A Russian woman has been accused of hiring a contract killer to have her own daughter murdered in order to get her hands on the woman’s apartment.

A 67-year-old woman from Krasnoyarsk, Russia, is being accused of ordering the murder of her 48-year-old daughter so she could inherit her apartment. According to investigators, the pensioner shared her ominous intentions with a local acquaintance who told her that they knew someone who could pull it off, for a fee. On April 19, 2023, the acquaintance set up a meeting between the woman and the would-be perpetrator of the murder in a park on Odesskaya Street, in the city of Krasnoyarsk, during which they discussed the details and method of committing the crime. The woman allegedly promised to pay the contract killer 80,000 rubles ($1,040) once he produced evidence of her daughter’s murder.

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The Ottomeyer Mammut is the largest plow ever made. It was created for the specific purpose of converting bogs into agricultural land and could cut channels in the ground to a depth of over 2 meters.

The bog areas of the Emsland district in Northern Germany, on the border with the Netherlands, had been determined uninhabitable since the 1700s, but in the early 20th century, the government of Western Germany decided that the region had fallen behind the rest of the country economically and needed to be converted into arable land. That was easier said than done, however, as the bogs had kept farmers away for hundreds of years, but the Germans had an ace up their sleeve – Otto Meyer, a brilliant engineer and inventor who specialized in steam tractors and difficult soil cultivation.

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Los Algodones, a small Mexican town of about 7,000 people, has the highest concentration of dentists per square mile in the world and is famously known as Molar City.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans visit Los Algodones every year, but they don’t come in search of sandy beaches, they come for veneers, root canals, and dental implants. Of the roughly 7,000 inhabitants of Los Algodones, about 600 are dentists and the four main streets of the town are full of dental clinics offering a variety of services at a fraction of the cost in the United States. Between November and April, the population of Los Algodones almost doubles, as the tiny town is overrun by US tourists, but also some from Canada and even as far as the UK. Despite the stiff competition between dental clinics in the small Mexican town, demand often exceeds supply when it comes to dental services.

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Japanese luxury ice cream brand Cellato recently set a new Guinness record for the world’s most expensive ice cream with a decadent treat priced at a whopping 880,000 yen ($6,700) per portion.

On April 25, a Guinness World Records representative certified Byakuya, Cellato’s new protein-rich ice cream, as the most expensive in the world. It consists of a velvety base made with milk, two types of cheese, egg yolks, and sake leek, and is topped with Parmigiano cheese, white truffle, truffle oil, and gold leaf. The ‘highest grade’ gelato has a faint sweetness, complex taste, and a luxurious, smooth texture. It comes packaged in a stylish black box. It includes a hand-made metal spoon created by Takeuchi craftsmen in Fushimi, Kyoto, using techniques and materials used in the construction of temples and shrines. One 130ml Byakuya ice cream is currently available on the Cellato website for 880,000 yen ($6,700).

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A Brazilian doctor recently shocked millions on social media by posting an X-ray of a man suffering from cysticercosis whose body was riddled with calcified tapeworm eggs.

Last month, Doctor Vitor Borin de Souza, a resident at the Hospital das Clínicas in Botucatu, Sao Paulo, posted an X-ray of a patient on Twitter to show his followers how bad a tapeworm infection could get. The doctor explained that the white spots visible all through his midsection and his arms were calcified tapeworm eggs following infection with the common intestinal parasite. Luckily, the patient, who had come in for a checkup following a persistent cough, was in no danger from the eggs, as they were all calcified (unviable). Although the tapeworm eggs (cysticerci) posed no threat to the man’s health, they caused quite the stir on Brazilian social media.

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A Minnesota man who lost his iPhone 14 while kayaking in Hawaii got the shock of his life when a complete stranger got in touch and told him that they had found his handheld and that it was working perfectly.

27-year-old Zach Siggelkow of St. Anthony Village, Minnesota, was on vacation at Waikiki Beach, Hawaii, with his mother and sister last December. On the last day, Siggelkow decided to go kayaking, despite his mother’s warning, and that’s when tragedy struck. He had taken his iPhone 14 out to film some Air Force planes flying over, when a big wave hit the side of the kayak, causing it to overturn. As he struggled to find his paddle and get back into the kayak, Zach realized he had lost both his smartphone and his sunglasses. At first, he was pretty bummed out about it, but then he realized there wasn’t much he could do about it, so he just moved on with his life. Until 33 days later, when he got an email from someone claiming to have found his iPhone on the bottom of the ocean…

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Police in Groningen, the Netherlands, recently pulled over a driver who presented a rather unusual driver’s license, one issued by Ukraine to Boris Johnson, the former UK prime minister.

Last Saturday, traffic police in Groningen spotted a car hitting a sidewalk post and casually continuing on its way. A police crew managed to pull over the vehicle on the Emma Bridge and asked the driver to blow into a breathalyzer. the 35-year-old man, whose identity has not been made public, initially refused to take the alcohol test, but a subsequent blood test proved that he had indeed consumed alcohol before getting behind the wheel of the car. But there was something else that really attracted the police officers’ attention – when asked to show their driver’s license, the man produced a rather unusual one…

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Cauzinho Neto, a muscular 12-year-old boy from Brazil, has become famous both for his impressive physique and his grueling training regimen, which apparently puts most adults to shame.

Carlos Augusto Pitanga Neto, aka ‘Cauzinho’, only started hitting the gym 2 years ago, under the watchful eye of his father, himself a fitness enthusiast, but he is already seen as a CrossFit prodigy able to deadlift more than twice his own body weight and do 700 ab crunches a day. Most 12-year-olds struggle to get out of bed for school on weekdays, but Cauzinho gets up at 5:30 am every day for a 5km (3.1-mile) run and a few dozen situps. After breakfast, he goes to school, and after finishing his homework he puts in two and a half hours of work in the gym, including deadlifts, squats, bench presses, and bicep curls.

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A Swedish electric vehicle manufacturer hopes to become the IKEA of small EVs by shipping its cars as individual parts that can be assembled at their final destination.

Luvly, a Swedish start-up specializing in small and affordable electric vehicles, has announced plans to ship its tiny cars as flat packs to be assembled at their final destination. The company claims that this unusual model will allow it to fit 20 of its cars into a container that would otherwise only have room for 4 assembled vehicles, thus lowering transportation costs considerably. However, the Swedish manufacturer clarified that, unlike IKEA furniture, its electric vehicles are not meant for home assembly. Instead, the flat packs will end up at micro-factories where they will be quickly put together by specialized staff to ensure complete safety.

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A popular Japanese hotel has been forced to issue a public apology after it was reported that employees at its cafe fermented a citrus drink by using the bacteria on their own hands.

The AWA Nishiizu Hotel in Numazu, Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture, has come under fire for putting its clients’ health at risk by breaking basic hygiene rules. On April 23rd, the popular TV show ‘Beat Takeshi’s TV Tackle‘ showcased how much Japan’s travel trends have changed in Japan by featuring a ‘health’ drink sold by a hotel cafe in Shizuoka. The orange concoction kept in large plastic jars was apparently a syrup made with squeezed summer mandarins and sugar, but the secret ingredient that set it apart from similar drinks was the fermentation process. According to an interviewed employee, the syrup was fermented with the help of bacteria indigenous to the human hand, so they would just stick their hands in the jar and stir it…

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A Colombian woman has spent the last 4,000 days of her 39-year existence in excruciating pain because of a surgical needle forgotten in her belly after an operation.

María Aderlinda Forero’s decade-long nightmare began in 2012, soon after the birth of her fourth child. The housewife, who lives in the village of San Isidro, in the rural area of ​​El Retorno, decided to undergo tubal ligation surgery to close her fallopian tubes as a form of birth control. The operation was performed in the town of San Jose del Guaviare and seemingly went without a hitch. Maria left the hospital a few days later and return home to take care of her children. However, a few days later, she started experiencing severe pain in her abdomen, but every time she went to the doctor, they would just prescribe her paracetamol for the pain.

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A Brazilian mayor sparked massive controversy earlier this month after legally marrying a 16-year-old girl and then appointing her mother Secretary of Culture and Tourism.

65-year-old Hissam Hussein Dehaini, the mayor of Araucária City, in southern Brazil, recently married a girl 49 years his junior the day after she turned 16, which is the legal age that someone can get legally married. This alone sparked controversy in the South American country, but the controversial union was also shadowed by serious accusations of nepotism and corruption. The Prosecutor’s Office in the Brazilian state of Paraná is investigating the appointment of the young bride’s mother to the position of Secretary of Culture and Tourism in Araucária just a day after the mayor’s wedding.

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After meeting as adults, two step-brothers who shared the same father hid their romance from the world for nine years. Now they’re making their relationship public so they can get legally married.

Ana Parra was 20 years old when she met her step-brother Daniel (17) for the first time. Her mother had told her that her biological father had started a new family and had another child, which sparked her curiosity. She looked for her father on Facebook and that’s how she discovered Daniel’s profile. She started a false account and befriended him on the social network. They started messaging each other, discovered that they had very much in common, and Ana ultimately confessed that she was his step-sister. They decided to meet in person, gradually became good friends and then that friendship grew into something more…

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A Spanish court ruled that an electrical company was wrong to fire one of its electricians for allegedly drinking more than three liters of beer on the job because it couldn’t prove he was drunk.

Drinking alcohol during work hours is usually frowned upon and can constitute grounds for dismissal, but according to a high court in Murcia, Spain, that is only true when the employer can prove without a shadow of a doubt that the accused was inebriated to the point where he could no longer fulfill his duty safely. The court recently ordered an electrical company to either reinstate the sacked worker or pay them 47,000 euros ($52,000) for failing to show that their drinking on the job left them inebriated, intoxicated or drunk”, or unable to do their job. The controversial ruling also mentioned that the company failed to consider the hot Murcian summer, which apparently justified beer consumption.

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