When a Ukrainian family returned to their war-ravaged home in Hostomel after four months, the last thing they expected to find was their beloved pet husky, Belyi.

In March of this year, when Russia started targeting Hostomel’s strategically important airport with its artillery, 35-year-old Kateryna Tytova and her family had to make a heartbreaking decision. Kateryna, her husband Olexandr and their two young children fled the city and left their white husky, Belyi behind. It sounds cruel, but those were desperate times. Russians were advancing, there was shelling around the airport, and there was no time to plan their escape. A photo of Kateryna holding her 5-year-old’s daughter as they run from artillery shelling has made international headlines. But despite leaving Belyi behind, the family always hoped he would be waiting for them when they came back.

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A Vietnamese street food stall owner has become known for his fascination with gold jewelry. Every day, he walks around Ho Chi Minh City with up to 5 kilograms of gold on his body.

34-year-old Đỗ Ngọc Thuận, aka ‘Seven Ball’, has been fascinated with gold for as long as he can remember. When he became an adult, he started buying his own bling and flaunting it on the street. Having people stare at him as he walked on the street or when he stopped at traffic lights only encouraged him to up his jewelry game so he invested most of his money in it. Later on, when he opened his own hotpot and snack stall in Ho Chi Minh, he put on an absurd amount of gold to attract more attention to his business, and with the advent of social media, he gained even more attention from the masses.

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A Zimbabwean man spent several months in the hospital recovering from a vicious attack by no less than three or four crocodiles at a fishing pond near the town of Nyamhunga.

The incident took place in January, as Alexander Chimedza arrived at the Nyamhunga sewer ponds to look for some red worms. He planned to use them as bait to catch Kariba bream, after his wife told him that she had had enough of the tigerfish that he usually brought home. Unfortunately, as soon as he approached the weed-covered banks of the pond, Alexander was attacked. He claims one crocodile tried to grab his left hand, but he instinctively pulled it away, before another crocodile managed to bite his right hand.

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A convicted Italian mafia member who has been on the run for almost two decades was recently arrested after being spotted by chance on Google Maps in a small Spanish town.

Gioacchino Gammino, a convicted murderer listed among Italy’s most wanted gangsters, had been on the run for nearly 20 years when he was arrested in Galapagar, a town near Madrid, last month. He had escaped Rome’s Rebibbia jail in 2002 and in 2003 he had been sentenced to life in prison for a murder committed years earlier. A European arrest warrant was issued in 2014, and authorities had managed to track Gammino to Spain, but it was a Google Maps screenshot of two men chatting outside a fruit and vegetable shop that helped police confirm his exact location and make the arrest.

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Red-winged parrots in Western Australia’s Kimberley region are reportedly “flying under the influence” and acting bizarrely after feasting on fermented mangoes.

We may be putting on another layer of clothes in the northern hemisphere, but Down Under it’s the end of the mango season, and red-winged parrots are reportedly taking full advantage of the last available orange fruits, even if they’re a little overripe. The problem is that mangoes are particularly sugar-rich, and can produce relatively high levels of alcohol as they ferment. Humans are unlikely to consume fruits that have reached a certain fermentation point because they have a mushy texture and a taste that is no longer considered pleasant. But to red-winged parrots, a mango is a mango, even if the ethanol level in it is likely to get them drunk.

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The people of Shenlongwan, a once-isolated village in the mountains of China’s Shanxi Province, spent 15 years carving through rock with chisels and hammers to connect their home to the world and escape poverty.

Benefiting from a very favorable climate, Shenlongwan has always been famous for its exquisite walnuts and pears, but getting their harvest to market used to be a serious challenge for the locals. That’s because until the year 2000, to reach the county seat of Changzhi City, they had to either detour through eight townships in three different provinces, or risk their lives climbing dangerous narrow ladders to reach a steep mountain pass. One day, the villagers decided that things had to change, and if the authorities wouldn’t build a road to their village, then they just had to do it themselves.

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A 30-year-old man from Guidonia, a town on the outskirts of Rome, found living at home with his wife so intolerable that he begged police to put him in prison.

Staff on duty at the Tenenza Carabinieri barracks in Guidonia thought they were the target of a prank on October 23, when a man casually walked in and confessed to breaking house arrest on purpose, so he could be thrown in jail. The unnamed Albanian man had apparently been fighting with his wife and decided that rather than living in the same house as her, he’d be better off behind bars.

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Walking through the streets of Sweden Hills, with its traditional read-and-white Swedish houses, Swedish flags and traditional Swedish outfits, you’d never guess you were on the island of Hokkaido, in Japan.

Located in Tōbetsu, about 30 kilometers from Sapporo, the largest city on Hokkaido, Sweden Hills (スウェーデンヒルズ) was inspired by the visit of a Swedish ambassador in the area. During their visit, the Swedish diplomat remarked how similar the climate and landscape were to his native land, and that inspired developers in the area to build a settlement modeled on idyllic Swedish towns. Planning started in 1979, and the actual construction began in 1984. Today, Sweden Hills or Suēden Hiruzu is home to about 400 permanent residents, as well several hundred who only vacation here. It’s safe to say they are all massive fans of Swedish culture.

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Imagine enjoying a hot cup of java or your favorite soft drink in the middle of a pond filled with beautiful koi fish that you can actually hand-feed and you get an idea of what Vietnam’s koi fish cafes are like.

When it comes to fish-themed cafes, Ho Chi Minh City has a leg up on pretty much every other city in the world. Back in 2018 we featured Amix Coffee, a flooded cafe that allowed patrons to enjoy their favorite drinks with dozens of small fish literally at their feet, but this was apparently not the only cool fish-themed venue in town. In fact, the bustling metropolis apparently has about a dozen cafes that double as koi ponds, where the popular fish swim among patrons.

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Xavier Bouget, an 80-year-old pensioner from France’s Brittany region, and Blanchon, a majestic white pigeon, have been best friends for two years, ever since the Frenchman rescued the bird from becoming a cat’s lunch.

Xavier first met his unlikely companion two years ago, while walking to his house in the town of Gommenec’h. He noticed this small, almost featherless pigeon chick fall out of its nest, in a desperate attempt to escape a hungry cat. He didn’t think to help it at first, but when he got home and mentioned it to his wife, Marie-Françoise, she asked him why he didn’t pick it up. So he went back to get the small pigeon chick, which had miraculously managed to escape the purring predator until his return. Xavier came home with the frail bird in his bird, not knowing that it would soon become his best and closest friend.

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The “Golden Arches” McDonald’s logo is one of the most recognized commercial symbols in the world, but there is one place where the arches are actually blue instead of yellow.

On the inside, the McDonald’s fast-food restaurant in Sedona, Arizona, looks just like the thousands of other McDonald’s eateries around the United States, but step outside and you’ll notice something odd. The iconic Golden Arches logo is blue instead of yellow. It’s actually the only McDonald’s in the world that doesn’t have a yellow logo, and it’s all because of the stunning natural beauty, particularly the red rock formations that surround Sedona.

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Knee makeup isn’t really a thing, but a century ago it was the hottest trend in the beauty industry. It started out as knee rouging and eventually turned into full-on knee painting.

Fashion has always been a reflection of the spirit of the times, and the knee makeup and painting of the 1920s was no exception. The “flappers” were wearing skirts shorter than ever before (hemlines just under the knee were the ’20s version of a miniskirt), they were rolling down their stocking bellow the knee or giving up on them altogether, and knee rouging became just another way to attract attention to an area of the female body that had never been as visible before. Women of the generation had a number of blush formulas to choose from including cream, powder, and liquid formulas, which they used for an added “look at me” effect.

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Two cousins from the Dutch town of Nieuw-Lekkerland recently received an award for turning an old water tower into a modern and stylish home for their respective families.

Sven and Lennart de Jong grew up in a house right next to the old water tower of Nieuw-Lekkerland, and used to paly in it as kids, so in 2011, when they heard it was being put up for auction, they decided to place a bid. The approximately 200,000 euros they bid proved to be enough and the two became the owners of an abandoned building from 1915. Sven and Lennart knew that they had their work cut out, but they dreamt of making the water tower their home in a decade’s time, and managed to pull it off. For their achievement, the two received the 2020 Water Tower Award, a distinction for the best conversion of a historic water tower.

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Chinese media recently reported the fascinating story of a young boy who, after witnessing his father’s murder at the hands of a neighbor, when he was 9-years-old, spent the next 17 years trying to catch the culprit.

Looking back on that fateful day of August 9th, 2000, Xiang Mingqian wishes he had never thrown that stone that eventually got his father killed… He was only 9 at the time, playing with his neighbor, Zhang Jun in a ditch, by the side of an old road in Changba Town, Zhenxiong County. Jun had thrown a stone into a puddle, and the splash had hit Xiang Mingqian, so he decided to return the favor by throwing an even bigger stone into the water. It was just a childish game, but the quarrel that erupted between the two boys would eventually involve both boys’ families and result in a tragic death…

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Most chicken farms nowadays consists of hangar-like facilities where chickens are cooped up by the thousands with hardly enough space to move around and, in some cases, no sunlight. It’s sad, but it’s also the only way food corporations can keep up with the increasing demand for cheap meat and eggs. However, one farmer in northern Italy runs a very different type of poultry farm – he is raising over 2,000 chickens in a patch of pristine Alpine forest.

48-year-old Massimo Rapella claims he became a chicken farmer by accident. He and his wife used to run an education NGO in the town of Sandrio, in northern Italy’s Valtellina valley, but when the 2008 financial crisis hit and the Italian government cut funding for social enterprises, they decided to move to the nearby mountains. They got a few chickens to provide eggs for their own consumption and soon noticed something interesting. The domesticated birds loved venturing into the nearby chestnut forest, but instead of building a fence to prevent them from doing so, the Rapellas actually encouraged this behavior. Today, they own around 2,100 chickens who spend their days rummaging and laying eggs in a 2-hectare patch of Alpine chestnut forest.

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