A Japanese man named “Happy” has been struggling with his unusual name for as long as he can remember, claiming that it had attracted bullying as a kid and ridicule as an adult. When Terauchi Happy’s mother chose his unconventional name, she had no idea the kind of problems it would pose for him throughout his life. The 27-year-old man insists that he bears no grudge towards his mother, as she only named him “Happy” to express the overwhelming joy she felt when he was born. In fact, that is the only reason why he never went through with legally changing his name, despite the misery it caused him. When he was a small boy, the other kids teased and even bullied him because of his name, and unfortunately, things didn’t improve with age. Companies always thought he was joking when he sent in his resume for employment, and the unusual name even ruined his romantic relationship. Read More »

A London-based startup has come up with an innovative self-cooling beverage can technology that could soon make drink refrigerators obsolete. There are few things better than a cold drink on a hot summer day, but with energy costs and refrigeration-related carbon emissions increasing every year, it’s high time humanity came up with a better, more eco-friendly way of chilling beverages. Enter Delta H Innovations, a London-based startup that claims to have developed the world’s first self-cooling aluminum can. Codenamed ‘Cool Can’, this intriguing invention combines clever design with simple chemistry to make magic happen at the press of a button. The company claims that the Cool Can can lower the temperature of its liquid contents to about 6-7 degrees Celsius (42.8 – 44.6 Fahrenheit) and keep them cool for up to 45 minutes. Read More »

A German man has been unable to find employment for the last four years after having his ID card stolen during a trip to London and waking up with a lengthy criminal record to his name. 24-year-old Rami Battikh’s nightmare began five years ago, following a short holiday in London in 2019. He had traveled to the UK with his passport and ID card, but at one point realized that he no longer had the latter. He assumed that he had lost it or had it stolen but didn’t think much of it and used the passport to return to Germany, where he simply applied for another ID card. The young man carried on with his life, finished his studies, and after completing his vocational apprenticeship at Vodafone finance in Bonn, he was offered a job opportunity at the corporation and another one with the local tax office. Rami had a brilliant career in front of him, but before he could make up his mind about what job offer to accept, both opportunities evaporated because a routine check revealed that he had a criminal record in the UK. Read More »

A young man in Russia was hospitalized and treated for kidney failure after doing 2,000 squats to win a bet with a friend. Doctors at the nephrology department at the Vladivostok Clinical Hospital No. 2, in Primorsky Krai, Russia, recently reported the unusual case of a man in his early 20s who was hospitalized with severely reduced kidney function as a result of physical overextension. The patient told doctors that his troubles began after winning a bet with a friend who challenged him to do 2,000 squats in a set period of time. Confident in his physical abilities, he accepted, but after completing the challenge, he began experiencing troubling symptoms. His legs, which had never failed him before, became sore and extremely swollen, his urine turned dark brown, and before long, he couldn’t urinate at all. Scared, he sought medical help and was diagnosed with rhabdomyolysis. Read More »

Doctors at a hospital in Jilin, China recently reported one of their most bizarre cases yet – a woman who had gotten her hand stuck in her boyfriend’s mouth while trying to film a funny video. Clips and photos of a couple walking into the emergency room of a hospital in Jilin Province have been doing the rounds on Chinese social media. The premise doesn’t sound very intriguing but what really attracted people’s attention was that the woman had her hand in the man’s mouth. Apparently, they had tried to shoot a funny video to post online in which they tried to see if the woman’s hand was small enough to fit in her boyfriend’s mouth. She managed to stuff her fist in his mouth just fine, but when she tried to pull it out, his mouth muscles stiffened and the hand became stuck. After repeatedly trying to pull out her hand from the man’s mouth, the young woman decided that they needed medical attention.

 

Read More »

Members of the State Duma (Russian Parliament) and activist organizations in Russia have called for the ban of Turkish soap operas because their perfect male protagonists put Russian men in a bad light. Representatives of the “Veterans of Russia” movement have appealed to the Russian State Duma and Roskomnadzor (the agency responsible for monitoring and censoring the media in Russia) to ban Turkish soap operas, due to their projection of an “unrealistic image of men,” which makes women lose interest in Russian men, ultimately contributing to the country’s demographic decline. In its petition, Veterans of Russia proposed introducing the concept of ‘destructive propaganda,’ calling Turkish soap operas part of an ‘ideologic war for minds’ that target Russian women and threaten to destroy the institution of family in the country. Read More »

From clothing and footwear to lifesize cars and wedding chapels, there is virtually nothing artist Joshua Vides cannot turn into black-and-white sketches. Joshua Vides uses a technique he calls Reality to Idea (RTI) to revert different objects back to sketch form, but few people know that his success story began with a pair of Nike Air Force 1 shoes. About a decade ago, he came across a copy of the Nike designer’s original sketch for the popular footwear, so he came up with the idea of hand painting a real pair of Air Force 1s in black and white using his RTI technique. He posted the end result on his Instagram page and it blew up! Vides followed it up with several versions of sketch shoes and their success inspired him to take his Reality to Idea technique to the next level. Read More »

Online scammers tricked a 63-year-old Los Angeles woman into thinking that she was in a romantic relationship with Spanish musician Enrique Iglesias. Guadalupe Cepeda has been a fan of Enrique Iglesias for over two decades, so when the “Bailamos” singer approached on social media one day, she couldn’t believe it. He apparently found her on an online fan group and she didn’t find it at all suspicious that the man millions of women have been dreaming of for almost thirty years singled her out for a virtual relationship. Their “affair” began two years ago, and despite being married to another man, Cepeda believed that she would one day marry Iglesias. She planned to break up with her husband and run away with the Spanish superstar. Only before they could be together, Enrique needed her to send him some money. Read More »

An Indian dog breeder recently paid 500 million rupees ($5.81 million ) for a unique cross between a real wolf and a Caucasian Shephard, making it the most expensive canine in the world. Named Cadabomb Okami, the pricy canine was reportedly bred in the US and purchased by S. Satish, a Bengaluru-based dog enthusiast and the president of the Indian Dog Breeders Association. He is renowned for his collection of over 150 dog breeds, including some of the rarest in the world. Satish told Indian reporters that he felt the 500 million rupee price tag was worth it for Cadabomb Okami because he is literally one of a kind. Plus, he is an impressive specimen; at just eight months old he already weighs 75kg and stands 30 inches tall. Read More »

Popular Cambodian beauty pageant Miss and Mister Majestic has been getting a lot of attention after photos of its “ordinary-looking” participants went viral on social media. The winner of Mister Majestic 2025 will represent Cambodia in the Mister Universe international beauty pageant, but the contest has created a lot of buzz online due to the questionable looks of some participants. Last month, organizers released the introductory photos of the 17 male participants selected to take part in the competition to become Mister Majestic, and, judging by the feedback on Cambodian social media, they were not what people were expecting. It’s true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but many people complained that most of the guys competing for the title of Mister Majestic looked ordinary, and some of them had sub-standard looks. Read More »

Created by Japanese manufacturer Shimadzu Corp, the Aether Clock OC 020 is a strontium optical lattice clock advertised as the most accurate clock in the world and sold for over $3 million. The world’s most accurate clock looks less like you’d imagine and more like a small refrigerator. Its rectangular case is around three feet tall and has a volume of 250 liters. Frankly, it doesn’t look like much, but this contraption is so precise that it would take about 10 billion years for it to deviate by a single second, according to Kyoto-based manufacturer Shimadzu Corp. The Aether Clock OC 020 is reportedly 100 times more accurate than cesium atomic clocks, which set the standard for the current definition of a second. Although optical lattice clocks have been around for a while, the Aether Clock OC 020 is the world’s first commercially available model. Read More »

Garlic is probably the world’s most popular seasoning, but most of us hate pealing it about as much as we love to eat it. Having to go through over a dozen clovers per garlic bulb is just not fun, but what if I told you there was such a thing as single-clover garlic? If you live in China, Germany or Northern Europe, you’re probably wondering why you’re reading about a vegetable you regularly see at your local supermarket on a blog about oddities, but the fact is that most of the world is oblivious to the existence of this holy grail of garlic. I myself only recently found out about it after seeing a photo of what looked like an onion labeled as ‘solo garlic’ on Reddit. What I thought was a digitally altered photo turned out to be a real thing that has been around for decades and that is apparently very popular in some parts of the world. Read More »

An Italian man recently had to fight charges of manslaughter after his five-year-old son hit an 87-year-old pensioner while learning to ride a bicycle in a Milan park. What was meant to be a rite of passage for a young boy, turned into a nightmare for his entire family and that of an 87-year-old woman who had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The woman was strolling through a Milan park with a 74-year-old friend when a boy crashed his bicycle into her causing her to fall and hit her head on the pavement. Although the pensioner claimed to be alright, the boy’s father, who was teaching him to ride a bike and had seen the crash, insisted that he call an ambulance. Unfortunately, the woman’s condition abruptly changed for the worse and, despite the efforts of the paramedics, she tragically lost her life. Read More »

Frank Tavares was born a man in the Dominican Republic, but for 22 years of his life, he lived as Sister Margarita in two different convents, posing as one of the nuns there without anyone suspecting anything. The unusual story of “nun-man”, as Frank came to be known following his shocking reveal, began when he was only four years old. He and his family were involved in a serious car accident that claimed the lives of his parents. His grandparents were too poor and ill-equipped to deal with a child, so he was placed in the care of nuns at a Dominican convent. Tavares recalls that, as a young boy, his genitals were so small that even he had trouble finding them, which is probably why he was raised as a girl at the convent. He wore girl’s clothes, adopted the habits of the nuns there, and became fully engaged in the daily activities of his new home. It wasn’t until age seven that he realized he was a man, but he continued living as a girl, to avoid being cast out. Read More »

At age 16, Pavel Stepchenko joined the school of Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs as a student, and by age 23, he had already retired, becoming the country;s youngest pensioner. Retirement is traditionally associated with old age, and while today’s youth dream of retiring young to focus on living their best lives, that usually means retiring by age 40 or so. Well, one Russian youth managed to do something most of us can only dream of – retire with a full pension in his early 20s. Pavel Stepchenko’s story is an unusual one. He enrolled in the educational institution of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs at age 16 and after five years of diligent studies, he began working in the territorial division of the internal affairs system. The young man from Donetsk only worked there for two years, because at age 23, he officially retired, taking full advantage of a special provision stating that for each month of service during a period of martial law, a person received three months of credited length of service. Read More »