A five-month-old bar-tailed godwit recently smashed the record for long-distance migration after flying 13,560 kilometers non-stop over a period of 11 days.

Every autumn, millions of migratory birds take to the sky for a long and perilous journey to escape the coming cold, feed and breed for the next few months. Many of them cover impressive distances of over 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles), but this year, one small bird surpassed all expectations regarding long-distance flying, traveling a whopping 13,560 kilometers (8,425 miles) without stopping, and setting a new Guinness record in the process. And it was all because of an unusual detour that could have cost the bird its life, considering that the non-stop journey pushed its flight capacity to the limit.

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An entrepreneur in Can Tho, Vietnam’s fourth-largest city, has been getting a lot of attention for his unique home, which is gilded both inside and out.

Mr. Nguyen Van Trung is a Vietnamese businessman who reportedly made his fortune in the real-estate business. After visiting many countries around the world, he decided to return to his home city and build a house with a real touristic appeal, and after speaking with a home decorator he decided to go for a gold theme. To say that he went a little overboard with the gilding would be an understatement, as you can clearly see in the photos below. From the walls to the furniture and the various decorations, everything looks like it’s made of gold or at least gold-plated.

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A couple of Japanese math enthusiasts recently spent 24 hours covering the walls of an entire room with calculations in an attempt to find the ultimate answer to the ‘1+1’ formula.

It’s widely regarded as the easiest mathematical formula, but ‘1+1’ isn’t as simple as it appears. Well, at least not to math purists looking to apply multiple fields of mathematics while tackling this deceptively simple calculation. Popular YouTubers and math enthusiasts Hanao and Dengan recently proved this by spending a whopping 24 hours and covering the walls and floor of an entire room with calculations in one of their most intriguing projects yet.

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A bankrupt former millionaire in China has been making news headlines for his plan to pay a debt of 46 million yuan ($6.4 million) by selling grilled sausages at a street food stall.

Not too long ago, Tang Jian, a restauranteur in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, was considered one of the most successful businessmen in all of Zhejiang Province. By the age of 36, he already owned a chain of restaurants and had amassed an enviable fortune. But in 2005, Tang decided to invest a sizeable portion of his money into a completely new industry and things started going horribly wrong for him. Now at 52, the former millionaire finds himself over $6 million in debt, but he is working hard to repay every single cent by selling grilled sausages on the street.

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An up-and-coming fashion brand is selling a Yu–Gi–Oh!-inspired hoodie that lets you become Yugi Muto himself when you zip it all the way up.

“Craziest hoodie ever made” is a very bold claim, but it’s the one Unoriginal Ideas is going with for its first – and so far only – creation, a purple hoodie with the iconic head of Yugi Muto for a hood. Called the “YAMI HOODIE”, the intriguing piece of apparel has been going viral on social media in China and other Asian countries both for its design and its spicy price tag – $190.

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Pheasant Island is a tiny island on the border between Spain and France that alternates ownership status between the two countries every six months.

Located on the Bidasoa River, the natural border between Spain and France, Pheasant Island is a deserted patch of land with a rather fascinating history and political status. It might not look like much today, but hundreds of years ago it was where the Thirty Years’ War between Spain and France finally ended. The two countries sent a couple of their most important dignitaries to the island to negotiate, with their respective armies gathered on both sides of the Bidasoa, in case things went wrong. 11 years and 24 summits later, a deal was struck, and Pheasant Island became the world’s smallest condominium, under the joint sovereignty of the two nations.

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A herd of sheep in China has been walking in a circle for almost two weeks now, and no one seems to really know why.

The bizarre behavior was captured on surveillance video at a sheep farm in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region. In a video released on Wednesday by Chinese state-run news outlet People’s Daily, dozens of shep can be seen walking clockwise in a large circle, as other animals stare from outside the circle or at times stand motionless in the middle of it. Although it has been reported that the sheep appear to be perfectly healthy, it’s unclear if the animals ever stop to eat and drink, and if others take their place in the circle when that happens.

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Izumi is a young Japanese food artist who specializes in detailed cake icing artworks inspired by popular manga and anime characters.

We’ve featured some incredible cake artists over the last 12 years, from the super-talented Sarah Hardy, who can create edible replicas of just about anything, to Chinese patissier Zhou Yi, whose creations look more like porcelain dolls than sugar paste, but when it comes to anime-inspired cake art, Japanese artist Izumi is in a class of her own. One of her latest projects, an edible, three-dimensional rendition of Kaoru Hakaze from the Ensemble Stars! video game recently went viral, and that’s how most people discovered her impressive portfolio of cake decorations.

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An Indian woman who went into a private clinic to have her uterus surgically removed woke up from the procedure to find that both her kidneys had been stolen.

A couple of months ago, we featured the shocking story of an Indian woman who claimed that one of her kidneys had been stolen by her husband and sold for profit. As cynical as this may sound, she was lucky compared to another fellow Indian who had both her kidneys removed without her consent and now has to rely on daily dialysis to survive. Back in September, Sunita Devi, a woman from Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district went to a private clinic in Bariyarpur to have her uterus surgically removed. Only instead of her uterus, doctors there removed both her kidneys and then disappeared.

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Motorcycle chariot racing is a modern take on one of the most popular sports in ancient Greece, Rome, and the Byzantine Empire.

We’ve featured our fair share of unusual sports here on Oddity Central, but motorcycle chariot racing is undoubtedly one of our most unique entries. Replacing the horses of old with some real horsepower in the form of two motorcycles, this unusual sport is making a comeback in the Land Down Under. Originally invented in the early 1900s in Australia, motorcycle chariot racing eventually spread to Europe and the USA before gradually being banned because of the danger to the riders. However, the adrenaline-fueled sport is currently making a comeback in Australia, thanks to a professional stunt rider.

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A 95-year-old Chinese war veteran recently discovered he had been living for almost eight decades with a bullet lodged in his neck.

After suffering a fall from the balcony of his house in Shandong, China, Zhao He didn’t report any symptoms to his worried family. He didn’t feel any pain, but after a while, the World War 2 veteran did start to feel a slight discomfort in his neck, so his son decided to take him to the hospital for a checkup. After hearing about his fall, doctors recommended an X-ray, to ensure that he hadn’t suffered serious damage to his neck. Only instead of a fracture, the X-ray revealed a foreign object in the man’s neck, which would later be identified as an old bullet.

The 95-year-old man told doctors that he had joined the Chinese army as a teenager and fought through two wars – against the Japanese invaders during World War 2 (1931-1945) and on the side of North Korea during the Korean War (1950-1953). He suffered multiple injuries during his time in the army, but he did not remember anything about taking a bullet to the neck.

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Argentina is known for a lot of things, from tango to its love of football, but you probably didn’t know that it’s also home to the world’s drunkest drivers.

Back in March of this year, Argentinian media reported that a young man in the town of Plottier, Neuquén province, had broken the world breathalyzer record, after scoring an unprecedented 5,79 grams of alcohol per liter of breath when tested by police, after crashing his car in a ditch. Despite suffering minor injuries to his face and arms because of the crash, he refused medical assistance and did not cooperate with the police. However, he would not get to brag about his unusual record for too long, because just last week, a fellow Argentinian broke it again.

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Lerik, a mountainous region in southern Azerbaijan, is famous for being home to an unusually high concentration of centenarians.

Regions where people tend to live longer than average are known as “blue zones”, and we’ve actually covered a couple of them in the past – Japan’s Okinawa island and Ikaria, Greece’s island of longevity. However, there are places famous for the longevity of the local population that are not officially categorized as blue zones. One such place is Lerik, a region in the Talysh Mountains of southern Azerbaijan, famous for its high number of centenarians and even the world’s only Longevity Museum.

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Hum is a picturesque hilltop settlement in Croatia’s Istria region whose main call to fame is being the smallest town in the world.

Located in central Istria, approximately a 2.5 hours drive from Croatia’s capital city of Zagreb, the medieval hilltop town of Hum is home to between 20 and 30 people (21 according to the 2011 national census, and 27 as of 2021). Its origins are shrouded in mystery, but its first mention in historical documents dates back to the year 1102, when it was called Cholm. A bell and watch tower was built in 1552 as part of the town’s defenses, and guards and their families started moving in, but the town never really developed over the centuries, and even today it consists of just three neat rows of medieval houses and two streets.

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A Japanese mother has come under fire for having her 9-year-old daughter undergo double eyelid surgery in order to become more beautiful.

In Japan, plastic surgery is legal for anyone under the age of 18, as long as they have the consent of their parents or a legal guardian, and according to a recent report by VICE Asia, some parents are actually encouraging their children to undergo cosmetic procedures in order to enhance their physical appearance. In a recent episode of its “Deadly Beauty” series, the online magazine featured Rucchi and Micchi, a Japanese mother-daughter duo whose YouTube channel focuses on makeup and plastic surgery. In order to help her 9-year-old daughter become more beautiful, Rucchi had her undergo a blepharoplasty operation, aka double eyelid surgery.

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