Japan’s Mitsubishi Uni-ball ONE series black gel pen has been recognized as the world’s blackest gel pen by Guinness World Records.

When it comes to the world’s blackest paint, there is no competing with Vanta Black, but pen gel is a whole other matter. Mitsubishi Pencil Co.Ltd. now holds the record for the blackest gel pen, thanks to an innovative type of pigment-containing particles that seal the paint inside. When writing on paper, it can reduce the penetration of the gel into paper fibers, making the color look more saturated than other gel pens.

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A Spanish restaurant recently paid 30,000 euros ($32,800) for a 2.2kg (4.85 lbs) piece of handmade cheese, thus setting a new world record for the most expensive piece of cheese.

Every year, in the last week of August, the town of Las Arenas de Cabrales hosts a contest where the best pieces of Cabrales cheese are auctioned off to the highest bidder. This year, Llagar de Colloto, a restaurant in Oviedo, Spain, paid a whopping 30,000 euros for a piece of Cabrales cheese made by hand from cow and goat milk and matured for several months in a cave in Los Picos de Europa mountains. Made by the Los Puertos cheese factory from Poo de Cabrales, the 2.2kg piece of cheese was selected by the jury as the best of the cheeses of fifteen producers who participated in the contest and was the most coveted in the subsequent auction.

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A Swiss man ended up in the hospital after reportedly putting his head into the Jet D’Eau, a giant water fountain on Lake Geneva, and being thrown several meters into the air.

According to eyewitness reports, the 20-something man, whose name has not been revealed, somehow breached the security perimeter around Geneva’s famous Jet d’Eau water fountain and put his head into the nozzle of what is essentially an extremely powerful water cannon. The Jet D’Eau pumps out 500 liters of water per second, at a speed of 200 kilometers per hour, to a height of 140 meters (460 feet) into the air. When the water sprouted out of the fountain, the young daredevil was catapulted backward by the force, which was actually a lucky outcome considering the alternatives. However, this was only his first attempt…

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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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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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An American woman recently set a new world record for the world’s loudest burp by a woman after belching at a measured 107.3 decibels.

The previous Guinness record for the loudest burp by a woman dated back to 2009 when Elisa Cagnoni of Italy managed a 107-decibel belch. It was an impressive achievement, but now her record is history. Kimberly “Kimycola” Winter, a young woman from Maryland who has mastered the art of burping, recently visited a “dead room” at iHeartRadio where she managed to release a monstrously-loud burp that beat Cagnoni’s record by 0.3 decibels. Before her historic attempt, Kimycola prepared her body by eating breakfast and drinking coffee and beer. The tried and true combination apparently played a pretty big part in breaking the 14-year-old record.

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Located in Havana, Cuba, Coppelia Park is the world’s largest ice cream parlor. Also known as the ‘Ice Cream Cathedral, it serves around 30,000 customers per day and up to 600 at a time.

Built in 1966, Cuba’s ‘Parque Coppelia consists of a two-storey domed pavilion inspired by Oscar Niemeyer’s iconic Cathedral of Brasilia outside which people queue for ice cream every single day, and a lush park complete with hundreds of tables where up to 1,000 people can enjoy the frozen treats at a time. The story goes that Fidel Castro ordered the building of Coppelia Park shortly after the success of his Communist revolution. He reportedly ordered twenty-eight containers of ice cream from American producer Howard Johnson’s, and upon tasting it decided to respond by creating something bigger and better, but cheap enough that anyone could afford. His idea was a huge hit, and to this day thousands of people continue to enjoy subsidized ice cream at Coppelia Park, the world’s largest ice cream parlor.

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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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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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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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The Putrajaya Roundabout in the administrative capital of Malaysia holds the Guinness record for the world’s largest roundabout. It measures 3.4km in circumference and features 15 entry/exit points.

Located in the heart of Putrajaya, the administrative capital of Malaysia, the Persiaran Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah Roundabout, aka Putrajaya Roundabout, is one of the most unusual attractions in the Southeast Asian country. It was designed by renowned Malaysian architect Hijjas Kasturi and inaugurated in 2003. A feat of modern infrastructure engineering, the world’s largest roundabout is built around Istana Melawati, the second-largest palace of Malaysia’s Yang di-Pertuan Agong, the Putra Perdana Landmark, and a luxurious five-star hotel. It is also the main access point to Putrajaya’s major attractions, including the prime minister’s green-domed office complex and the city’s enormous mosque.

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Comparable in height to a skyscraper and weighing a whopping 13,500 tons, the German-made Bagger 288 holds the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest excavator.

Here at oddity Central, we love big, heavy machinery! In fact, we just featured the world’s largest dump truck, the BelAZ-75710, a Belarussian behemoth capable of carrying a load of over 500 tons. However, this metal monster looks positively tiny next to the world’s largest excavator. A one-of-one, the Bagger 288 giant excavator was produced in 1978 by German company Krupp and has been holding on to the title of ‘world’s largest excavator’ ever since. It can go through 240,000 cubic meters of rock per day, and is used to produce around 8.5 million tons of coal per year.

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One of the world’s most expensive and sought-after coffee varieties is actually harvested from the droppings of the jacu, a large, black, turkey-like bird whose digestive system brings out the aroma of the coffee beans.

When Henrique Sloper, the owner of the Camocim coffee farm in the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo, first saw his coffee plantation overrun by jacu birds, he panicked, not knowing that the birds would soon become a sort of business partner. He called environmental protection agencies, but they didn’t know what to do and suggested that the farm introduce some natural predators for the large birds. But that was difficult to do, especially with a bird as large as the jacu, so, in the end, Sloper decided to adopt the old ‘if you can’t beat them, join them‘ mantra, and soon discovered that the bird invasion had been a blessing in disguise.

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