Ana di Pištonja, also known as Baba Anujka or the Banat Witch, was an accomplished amateur chemist who used her skills to kill as many as 150 people in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Baba Anujka’s origins are shrouded in mystery. Some sources claim that she was born in 1838, in the Banat region of modern-day Romania, but her life was tied to the Yugoslavian village of Vladimirovac, in the Voievodina Province of present-day Serbia. As the daughter of a rich cattleman, she is said to have had a comfortable childhood and good education, but became a misanthropist in her early 20s, after being seduced by an Austrian officer who eventually left her with a broken heart and a syphilis infection. She found refuge in the field of chemistry and became known as a local healer and witch who could make anyone “disappear’ for the right price…

A 65-year-old man from Saudi Arabia recently became the talk of the town after it was revealed that he married no less than 53 different women in his search for emotional “stability”.

Abu Abdullah married his first wife when he was only 20 years old. She was six years his senior, and for a time, she was all he needed. They had children together and everything was going well, but then problems started appearing in his life and he decided to marry again. At the age of 23, he informed his wife that he planned to take a second wife and became a polygamist. Then, as problems started arising before his two spouses, he took on a third wife, and then a fourth. However, things only got worse, so he divorced his first and second wives, and then did the same with the third and fourth, as they had also started arguing. But his quest for stability continued…

Japanese researchers have created smart kitchenware that relies on electricity to make food saltier and tastier without adding any extra salt.

Salt makes food taste so much better, but it’s also a very dangerous ingredient that, consumed in excess, can cause serious health problems like high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke. But what if we could make food taste salty without using any salt? That’s what scientists at Meiji University and developers Kirin Holdings have been working on for several years now. Back in April, we featured their first breakthrough creation – a pair of smart chopsticks – but now they have a couple of commercial products ready to hit the shelves.

The world of contact sports is about to be taken by storm by one of the craziest creations in human history – armboxing, a weird take on the art of boxing.

The world is full of weird and wacky sports, but when it comes to downright crazy inventions, the Russians definitely take the cake. After the insanity that was ‘car-jitsu’ – basically jiu jitsu in a car – the brilliant minds in Mother Russia have come up with something even more insane. Known only as ‘armboxing’, this new contact sport sees two fighters standing opposite each other being chained to a podium with their lead hands glued together and the other hand free to do damage.

A 40-year-old man has been dubbed ‘South Africa’s dumbest criminal’ after walking into a police station to get a job there despite being on a wanted criminal list.

Thomas Ngcobo had been on the run for the last seven years, after stealing hardware products worth more than $1,200 while working as a delivery man in 2015. He reportedly diverted deliveries to other addresses without the owner’s consent or knowledge, and went on the run as soon as his manager realized that some invoices were missing and several products had been delivered to the wrong addresses. Ngcobo’s name was added to the police’s wanted criminal list as soon as his employer filed a complaint against him, but he managed to avoid capture for seven years. And then he walked right into a police station like he didn’t even have a criminal record…

If you think scorching hot potato chips are bold, these new pus*y-flavored potato chips recently launched in Lithuania will probably leave an interesting taste in your mouth.

According to recent research young people are three times less likely to fall in love than their parents were at the same age. Social media and our transition to virtual lives are partly to blame, but one Lithuanian potato chip company is trying to reverse the trend with a controversial line of chips aimed exclusively at 18-year-olds and older. The CHAZZ potato chip line features flavors like mussels and white wine, or Bloody Mary cocktail, but it’s the “pus*y flavor” that has been attracting the most attention…

At just over 200 square feet in size and a yearly yield of 29 bottles of wine, Via Mari 10 is considered the world’s smallest vineyard.

Located on the rooftop of a 16th-century palazzo in the heart of Reggio Emilia, Via Mari 10 – named after the name and number of the street – is not your average vineyard. Not only is it incredibly small in size, it also has an extremely modest yearly yield of wine. However, the most peculiar thing about the Via Mari 10 wine is that you’re not supposed to drink it. The owner of the vineyard considers the 29 or so bottles of wine produced every year as works of art that should be collected and admired rather than consumed. That’s kind of a problem, considering that you are expected to pay 5,000 euros ($5,000) for a bottle of wine you’re not even supposed to drink.

A woman in India is accusing her husband of stealing and then selling one of her kidneys on the black market without her consent.

Ranjita Kundu, a middle-aged woman from Kodameta, a village in India’s Odisha state, claims that her husband stole and sold one of her kidneys four years ago. She only recently came to know about his actions, after seeing a doctor for abdominal pain and learning that she only had one kidney. The woman claims that in 2018, under the pretext of taking her to a hospital to undergo an operation to remove kidney stones, her husband arranged for one of her kidneys to be removed so he could sell it on the black market.

At only $2,600, the Robeta electric fire truck may just be the world’s most affordable fire truck. Not to mention you can buy it on Alibaba!

Fully decked-out fire trucks usually cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, but municipalities, businesses, or even individuals looking to protect themselves against fire on the cheap now have a truly affordable and environment-friendly option. The Robeta fire truck is a one-seat full-electric vehicle with a range of 31-37 miles (50 – 60 kilometers) and a decent fire-fighting arsenal. It’s certainly not the most impressive fire truck ever made, but for $2,600, you have to keep your expectations in check.

Mayor Olajide, a 19-year-old artist from Nigeria, has taken the hyperrealistic art world by storm with his photo-realistic charcoal pencil portraits.

We’ve featured some really gifted hyperrealism artists on Oddity Central over the years, true masters like Anna Halldin Maule, Hirothropologie, or Dru Blair, but it’s rare to see that kind of talent in someone as young as 19. And yet, here is Mayor Olajide, a 19-year-old Nigerian artist who has been attracting attention with his hyperrealistic pencil drawings for at least a couple of years now. He apparently started drawing when he was only 5 years old, and by age 15, he was already selling his art pieces and taking commissions to contribute to the family budget. Today, he is considered one of the world’s most promising hyperrealists.

A Japanese restaurant in the city of Ota, Gunma Prefecture, has gone viral for selling a unique type of noodles with a complete Buddhist Sutra printed on them.

Nittanosho Kanzantei, a small eatery in Ota, has been getting a lot of attention for a product that is not even on the menu. Its so-called “sacred noodles” are only available as a souvenir, for cooking at home or giving away as a gift, but they’re so eye-catching that people can’t seem to stop talking about them. Cut into thick, rectangular sheets, these unique noodles feature large, caligraphy-like characters printed on them with edible ingredients that remain visible even after cooking. So you can actually read your food as you’re eating it!

A Spanish woman was recently arrested on the Spanish island of Tenerife after conspiring with her boyfriend’s family to trick her mother into thinking she had been kidnapped and paying a sizeable ransom.

Earlier this week, Guardia Civil, one of Spain’s two national law enforcement agencies, released a disturbing video that appears to show a blindfolded woman with blood stains on her face, strapped to a chair, and with a large knife at her throat. The young woman is sobbing and telling her mother that she has been kidnapped and that she needs to pay a 50,000 ransom to the kidnappers if she ever wants to see her alive again. However, not everything is as it appears to be…

The ransom video described above is very real, but the kidnapping itself is not. According to Spanish police, the “victim” shown in the footage faked her own kidnapping with the help of her boyfriend’s family solely to trick her own mother into paying the 50,000 euro ransom.

A 25-year-old woman from Madhya Pradesh, India, is being hailed a hero after she reportedly fought a tiger with her own hands in order to save her toddler son.

They say a mother’s love for her child is like nothing else, and Archana Choudhary a young woman from rural Madhya Pradesh, recently proved it when she risked her own life to save that of her 15-month-old son. The two were walking through a field on the outskirts of the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve on Sunday, when a full-grown tiger leaped out of the bushes, sunk its teeth into the boy’s head and started dragging him away into the jungle. Completely disregarding her own safety, Archana attacked the large feline with her bare hands in order to save her son.

An Indian woman was recently arrested after allegedly spiking a soft drink and offering it to one of her daughter’s classmates as payback for performing better than her in school.

In a shocking case that recently rocked Indian society to its core, a 42-year-old woman is being accused of poisoning a 13-year-old boy purely out of jealousy that he was outperforming her in school. The disturbing events took place last Friday, after a rehearsal for an annual day function at a school in Karaikal, India’s Puducherry territory. Upon returning home at around 12.30 pm, the victim told his mother that he started feeling sick after drinking a soft-drink offered to him by the school guard. He said that he had assumed the drink came from her, but in reality, it had been given to the guard by the mother of a classmate and wasn’t really meant to quench his thirst…

Chinese metaverse company NetDragon Websoft recently made history by appointing an AI-powered virtual humanoid robot as its CEO.

The new AI-powered CEO, known as ‘Ms Tang Yu’, will reportedly be at the forefront of  Fujian NetDragon Websoft’s “organizational and efficiency department”, overseeing operations at the technology company valued at almost $10 billion. The board of NetDragon Websoft apparently believes that artificial intelligence is the future of corporate management, and the appointment of Ms. Tang Yu is a symbolic commitment to embrace the use of AI and change the way the company does business.