An 18-year-old lioness has baffled staff at a zoo in Kansas after growing an “awkward teenage mane” after the pride’s last male lion passed away.

Looking at Zuri, you’d think she was a young lion growing his mane for the first time, but she is actually an 18-year-old female. That makes the mane around her neck pretty unusual, with only a handful of similar cases reported in the past. The lioness reportedly started growing a mane soon after the last male lion at Topeka Zoo in Kansas passed away in October of 2020. Although zookeepers don’t believe there is any connection between the lack of a male lion and Zuri’s mane, they do admit that the lioness has gotten feistier since growing the new fur, growling, snarling, and roaring more often than before.

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A Pittsburgh-based robotics and engineering startup recently unveiled Moonwalkers, a pair of battery-powered shoes that it claims can boost walk speeds by up to 250%.

At first glance, Moonwalkers look like a pair of futuristic rollerskates, but there is actually a lot more to them than that. You’re actually meant to walk with them the way you would regular shoes or sneakers, letting the motorized wheels put a spring in your step. Powered by a state-of-the-art brushless DC motor, this ingenious contraption is actually a platform that can be attached to a wide variety of footwear to significantly increase your walking speed up to a reported 7mph/11kph. For comparison, humans’ average walking speed ranges from 2.5 to 4 mph. The sensation of walking with the world’s fastest shoes has been compared to that of walking on a ‘moving walkway’ in an airport.

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An archery master recently set a new Guinness Record by shooting seven consecutive arrows through a tiny keyhole using a traditional Ottoman bow.

Lars Andersen is often hailed as the world’s ultimate archer, performing feats that most us mere mortals can only dream about. He is the only person capable of shooting 10 arrows in just 4.9 seconds, he can shoot arrows that turn in mid-flight, and shoot while holding multiple arrows in his draw hand. Recently, Andersen added another feather to his already impressive cap by shooting seven consecutive arrows through a keyhole less than 10mm in size, thus setting a new Guinness record.

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A young French woman has been raising eyebrows on the internet for using OnlyFans in a rather unusual way – letting her fans make the important decisions in her life.

OnlyFans is usually associated with adult content that fans can access by paying an annual fee, but Laurie, a 23-year-old woman from Paris has found a way of keeping things interesting for her fans while keeping most of her clothes on. Although she does post the odd lingerie photo for her OnlyFans subscribers, Laurie keeps everyone happy by allowing them to vote on different things going on in her life, from simple things like what she should have for lunch on a given day, to life-changing decisions like quitting school or breaking up with her boyfriend.

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Certain species of wild oats have a special seed dispersal system that looks as if the seeds are walking on the ground looking for suitable soil to take root in.

Modern-day oats (Avena sativa) have been drastically altered through domestication and are entirely dependent on humans for their survival. Not only do they need to be drilled into the soil, but the seeds remain attached to the panicle to make them easier to harvest and minimize seed losses. Wild oats, on the other hand, are a completely different story. They have evolved highly specialized anatomical features that actually assist the spikelets housing the seeds to move on the ground in search of suitable rooting soil. This amazing ability has won the plants several nicknames, including “Animated Oats” and “Animal Oats”.

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In 1994, a man was involved in a serious car accident that should have left him with at least a few broken bones. But he suffered no fractures at all, because he had the densest, strongest bones anyone had ever seen.

When doctors looked at the X-rays of the man involved in the car accident – his name was never disclosed to the public – not only did they notice no fracture, but also that his bones seem to be unusually dense, eight times denser than normal, to be precise. This was unlike anything they had ever seen or even heard of before, so they referred the man to Karl Insogna, the director of the Yale Bone Center. Insogna performed additional tests, but after failing to discover a cause for this unusual bone density or any negative effects associated with it, he sent the man on his way. As fate would have it, a few years later, the researcher would come across a few people with similarly dense bones, which turned out to be distantly related to that remarkable man he’d examined…

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A US woman recently went viral for dedicating herself to a very unusual hobby – cooking recipes etched into people’s gravestones as a unique way of remembering and celebrating their lives.

About a year ago, Rosie Grant was studying library science at the University of Maryland and interning in the archives of the Congressional Cemetery. At one point, she started a TikTok account and started sharing facts about her studies with the internet, and it was this foray into the world of cemeteries that led her to her first gravestone cooking recipe. It was for spritz cookies, featured only seven ingredients and included no instructions, but Rosie managed to use it to make something edible, and the experience just left her hungry for more gravestone recipes.

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A 33-year-old gorilla who has spent most of her life alone inside a metal cage on the seventh floor of a shopping mall in Bangkok, Thailand, has been dubbed the world’s loneliest gorilla.

Bua Noi was only one when she was put into the cage that would become her permanent home for more than three decades. She was one of the main attractions of a bizarre zoo – if one could even call it that – inside Bangkok’s oldest shopping mall, Pata Pinklao Department Store, and owners refused to relocate her to a more suitable location, despite numerous requests from animal rights activists and the Thai Government. Even today, Bua Noi’s owners refuse to let her live out the rest of her days in a sanctuary, with other members of her species.

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An Australian man has become known as the COPD Athlete because of his incredible ability to run entire marathons despite having only 30 percent lung capacity as a result of an incurable and progressive condition.

Russell Winwood was diagnosed with COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) in 2011. By that time, the Brisbane native had already turned his life around, having survived a stroke at age 36. He had given up smoking, cut down on drinking alcohol, started eating better, and, most importantly, he had taken up sports. For years, he competed in varying distances of triathlons, from sprint to Half Ironman and even a few ultra-marathons. Everything was going great, but at one point Winwood noticed that his usual training felt harder and he found it difficult to breathe. That’s when he received his COPD diagnosis, along with the warning that his lungs were operating at less than 30 percent capacity.

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Marlene Engelhorn is not your average millionaire. At age 29, she has more money than she knows what to do with, so she has decided to give away 90 to 95 percent of her inheritance of tens of millions of dollars.

Marlene Engelhorn is the granddaughter of 94-year-old Traudl Engelhorn-Vechiatto, a member of the famed German industrial family whose patriarch, Friedrich Engelhorn, founded the chemical giant BASF in 1865. Traudl’s brother-in-law, Curt, ran the family business until 1997, when it was sold to Roche for about $11 billion. At the time of the sale, Marlene’s grandmother received approximately $2.45 billion, a veritable fortune that ballooned to $4.2 billion, at the time of her death, earlier this year. Marlene Engelhorn now stands to inherit tens of millions of dollars, but she doesn’t want it.

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French champagne brand G.H. Mumm has poured a lot of time and resources into developing a futuristic champagne bottle that can be used in space.

The Mumm Cordon Rouge Stellar is the first champagne designed specifically for space travel. It comes in a half-glass bottle and features a specially-designed stainless steel opening-closing device that curves over the classic cork. The unique bottle apparently features a finger-controlled valve which, when engaged, releases a globule of champagne spheres. Astronauts or space tourists can then scoop the drink out of the air using special glasses that resemble tiny egg cups.

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Researchers have discovered that green tree frogs in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone have turned dark in order to better mitigate the effects of radiation.

In April of 1986, a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine exploded, releasing approximately 100 times the energy released by the nuclear bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and drastically altering the lives of both humans and wildlife in the surrounding area. But while authorities were able to evacuate most civilians from the area closest to the nuclear disaster, the animals were left to their own devices. In the decades since, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone has become a wildlife refuge that offers a unique view into the evolution triggered by the nuclear meltdown.

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Located on a hill in the heart of Rome and featuring the only ceiling mural ever painted by the Italian Baroque old master Caravaggio, Villa Aurora is widely regarded as the world’s most expensive house.

The 30,000-square-foot, 16th-century villa is located a short walk from the famous Via Veneto, home to some of Rome’s best hotels, and close to the iconic Piazza di Spagna and the ancient Porta Pinciana. Originally a hunting lodge, the villa is all that remains of a 30-hectare complex owned by Italy’s Ludovisi noble family, who gave the country numerous diplomats, patrons of the arts, and even a Pope. Today, Villa Aurora finds itself at the heart of a legal battle and an Italian court has ruled that it should be sold at auction. Only the price set for the property is so high that no one seems interested in paying it.

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A 19-year-old man and a 56-year-old grandmother-of-three in Thailand have been making international news headlines after getting engaged to be married.

Wuthichai Chantaraj, 19, met his fiance, Janla Namuangrak, 56, almost 10 years ago, when the woman moved next to his family home in the Akat Amnuay district of Thailand’s Sakhon Nakhon province. Their first real interaction occurred when Janla asked the 10-year-old boy to help her move some potted plants, and from that day on Wuthichai would often drop by the divorced woman’s house to play and help her with chores. The two describe their early relationship as a friendship, but when Wuthichai turned 17, he started developing feelings for Janla, and they eventually became a couple. They only announced their romance to their families at the start of this year, and their love story has been making headlines in Thailand ever since.

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Science, a Japanese technology company specializing in bathroom and kitchen innovation, recently unveiled plans to produce a washing machine for humans.

Believe it or not, the concept of a human washing machine isn’t new. At the 1970 Osaka Expo, Japanese electronics giant Sanyo Electric showcased its ‘Ultrasonic Bath’, a human washing machine that cleaned, massaged, and dried the occupant in a fully-automated 15-minute cycle”. The concept never really took off as a commercial product, but now another Japanese technology company wants to take a shot at it, promising to deliver a modern take on the human washing machine by 2025.

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