A so-called blind dating cafe in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, has come under fire for installing a one-way window that allows men to see the girls they are talking to, but not vice-versa. On June 1st, a blind dating cafe in Ho Chi Minh’s District 1 went viral for a controversial reason. According to multiple reports, Mina Cafe features two different rooms for men and women, separated by a glass wall. The controversy lies in the fact that the wall is advertised as a mirror when in reality it is only a mirror from the women’s side. The men’s room is dark and they can clearly see the person on the other side. Basically, the blind date part is only valid for the women, as the men can freely admire their potential partners like items on display. Read More »

A Japanese food restaurant in Singapore recently attracted criticism online for serving a bizarre-looking dish consisting of a raw octopus egg sack. Known as tako tamago, the strange dish that landed Singapore restaurant Koji in hot water with social media users isn’t the most appetizing food we’ve ever featured on Oddity Central. It’s basically a large white sack with a very flexible membrane that conceals hundreds of oblong octopus eggs swimming in a viscous fluid. The sack is served raw and melted with a blow torch to release the eggs inside onto the plate. The eggs are usually served with soy sauce and have a taste similar to that of salmon roe. Read More »

An Illinois man made history last week when he set a new world record for the most number of squats in 24 hours, a whopping 26,100. Tony Piraino of Decatur, Illinois, began his daring record attempt at 5 a.m. on April 5th and ended it at the same time on April 6th. He set out to do 26,000 squats during that 24-hour interval, thus beating the world record set by Joe Reverdes of Rhode Island in 2020 by 1,000 squats. To ensure that he had the stamina and energy to fulfill his goal, Piraino took 30-second breaks every 22 squats and made sure to take a few longer breaks throughout the day. He also made sure to have plenty of energy drinks and snacks rich in carbohydrates, and despite telling reporters that he was getting tired halfway through the attempt, he managed to beat his own expectations. Read More »

For the last 12 years, Chinese professional actor Lu Jingang has been making a living by playing a poor beggar in a popular scenic spot and collecting money and food from kindhearted citizens. Seeing Lu Jingang on the job, you’d think he was nothing but a poor beggar looking to make ends meet, but that’s only because he is really good at his job. Lu is a professional actor who has been playing the role of a beggar at the Qinming Shanghe Garden scenic area in China’s Henan Province for the past 12 years. With his dirt-covered face, sad puppy eyes, and modest clothing, he has perfected the art of getting tourists to dig deep in their pockets and help a poor guy out. Only he is very good at pretending to be poor because, in reality, he is anything but that. The talented actor reportedly earns up to 70,000 yuan ($9,730) per month, plus more food than he could ever hope to eat. Read More »

An 80-year-old German man has been dubbed the world’s most frugal millionaire for living off food and stuff found in dumpsters despite owning several properties worth millions of euros. Heinz B. looks like a homeless person with nothing to his name, but appearances can be deceiving. The German man may only have €15 euros ($16) in his bank account at the moment, but that’s only because he just withdrew 700,000 euros ($756,000) to buy a new home, his tenth. The 100,000 euros left over was transferred to a fixed-term deposit to generate interest. He might not look like much, but the octogenarian is worth several millions of dollars and knows how to increase his fortune. Besides, he claims to have been frugal his whole life, so he doesn’t really need money to get by. He is more than happy living on food found in dumpsters and hoarding all sorts of things other people throw away. Read More »

A young tattoo artist from St. Petersburg, Russia, was recently detained for insulting religious believers with controversial tattoos featuring Jesus Christ, the cross and other Christian symbols. Daria Krichker is facing up to one year in jail for her crimes. According to the Orthodox activist group that filed a complaint against her, she has committed “repeated gross blasphemous acts against Christ, the Mother of God, and the saints of the Church,” which “cannot be tolerated on Russian soil. It all started earlier this month when photos of a tattoo reportedly inked on Krichker’s own calf went viral on social media. It showed Jesus on the cross having an orgasm, which isn’t the kind of creative work that religious people would appreciate. It’s weird, many would describe it as disgusting, but in Russia, such a tattoo can literally land you behind bars. Read More »

A 64-year-old Japanese woman from Tokyo’s Katsushika Ward has admitted to counterfeiting luxury bags and wallets in the comfort of her own home and selling them in her small shop as originals. The unnamed woman’s story began a few years ago when she opened a small bag shop in Katsushika where she tried to sell her original bags. Unfortunately, business wasn’t very good, especially on weekdays, and things only got worse when the pandemic hit. But, as it often happens in our darkest moments, the woman came up with a solution to her problem at the peak of the pandemic. She was watching TV when she saw a segment on the popularity of designer bags and accessories and decided that riding that same wave was her way to success. After doing a bit of research, she found branded fabric and synthetic leather online, ordered some, and began making luxury bag knockoffs using her sewing machine. Read More »

Diaper-wearing adults looking for a safe space to role-play as babies can now head to the new Diaper Spa in Atkinson, New Hampshire, that caters to the needs of all diaper lovers. Set up by physician Dr. Colleen Murphy, the Diaper Spa seeks to serve all diaper-wearing individuals above the age of 21 looking for acceptance and care, or simply for a safe space to engage in ‘richly immersive experiences’ that involve adult diapers. Activities listed on the venue’s website include playtime, story time, nap time, cuddle time, changing time, coloring, nursery rhymes, and sing-a-longs. Prices start at $100 per hour and go all the way up to $1,500 for a 24-hour stay at its bed & breakfast. The recently opened Diaper Spa has sparked controversy in Atkinson because of its unusual services, but Dr. Murphy claims that her brainchild is not about weird fetishes, but about dealing with trauma. Read More »

A Frenchman who spent the last 8 years assembling over 700,000 matchsticks into a 23-foot-tall replica of the Eiffel Tower has been denied the Guinness World Record because he didn’t use commercially available matchsticks. Imagine putting your heart and soul into a project for almost a decade only to have your dream shattered at the very end due to a detail that never crossed your mind. That’s what 47-year-old Richard Plaud went through when he was denied the chance to have his name mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records after building the world’s tallest matchstick Eiffel Tower. He started working on the complex model in 2015 and poured roughly 4,200 hours of work into it over the last 8 years, painstakingly gluing 706,900 matchsticks into 402 panels that he then assembled into the impressive structure. But last year, as he was getting ready to complete the project, Plaud learned that his Eiffel Tower model wasn’t eligible for a Guinness Record. Read More »

Chinese researchers have sparked controversy in the scientific community after publishing a study on a mutant coronavirus-related virus that reportedly caused a 100 percent death rate in infected humanized mice. The origin of the Covid-19 virus is still unknown, but conspiracy theories surrounding an out-of-control Chinese lab experiment are once again gaining traction online thanks to a controversial study recently published by Chinese scientists in Beijing. They apparently experimented with a mutated strain of GX_P2V, a coronavirus “cousin” discovered in Malaysian pangolins in 2017, three years before the Covid-19 pandemic, using it to infect genetically modified mice engineered to reflect similar genetic makeup to people. The controversial study is the first of its kind to report a 100% mortality rate in mice infected by the GX_P2V, far surpassing the findings of previous research. Read More »

For the past eight months, a mysterious man dubbed ‘Flexman’ by his motorist fans has been disabling speed cameras in several Italian regions by cutting their supporting metal poles with an angle grinder. The angle grinder was invented in 1954 by a German company called Flex, and even today, in many European countries, the angle grinder is popularly known as a ‘flex’. Little did the creators of this useful tool know that many decades later, the flex would inspire the nickname of a vigilante specializing in disabling speed traps on the roads of Italy by taking an angle grinder to the metal poles supporting them. Flexman first made news headlines in May of last year, when he took down his first speed trap on a road near Bosaro, in Italy’s Rovigo region. Since then, he managed to disable at least seven other cameras in Rovigo and Veneto using his signature angle grinder, and authorities still have no idea who he is or how to stop him. Read More »

A Brazilian man tragically lost his life by plunging down a deep shaft he had dug in his kitchen after dreaming that there was gold buried deep under his house. 71-year-old João Pimenta da Silva’s dream of enrichment ended as a nightmare that claimed his life. His lifeless body was found at the bottom of an exceptionally deep well he and his neighbors had dug under his kitchen in Ipatinga, a municipality in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state. The man had reportedly dreamt that there was gold deep under his home, and that all he had to do was dig to get to it. He even told his neighbor about his dream and even though he was laughed at in the beginning, da Silva was actually able to convince the man to assist him with the digging. Unfortunately, the treasure hunt ended in disaster when the 71-year-old plunged to his death while trying to exit the 40-meter-deep hole. Read More »

Carmen Dell’Orefice is known as the oldest working model in the fashion industry. She was discovered on a bus when she was only 13 years old, and she is still working today, at age 92. Carmen Dell’Orefice’s first contact with the fashion world was a flop. After being approached by the wife of photographer Herman Landschoff while riding a bus to ballet class when she was only 13 years old, Dell’Orefice saw her test photos go nowhere fast. But she was destined for greatness, and just two years later, at age 15, she graced the cover of Vogue Magazine for the very first time, after becoming a favorite model of photographer Erwin Blumenfeld. Last year, at age 92, Carmen Dell’Orefice was featured on the cover of Vogue Czechoslovakia, this time as the oldest working model in the world. Read More »

Nicolas Puech, an heir to the legendary Hermès fashion house, recently stunned the world by announcing his intention to legally adopt his former gardener and leave him his $11 billion fortune. 81-year-old Puech, who is unmarried and without children, ranks among Switzerland’s wealthiest individuals with a net worth estimated between $10.3 billion and 11.4 billion. Despite a fallout with his famous family following the 2014 takeover of a substantial stake in Hermès by rival luxury conglomerate LVMH, Puech still owns a considerable share in the $220 billion company, and his move to leave it all to his former gardener and family man has sparked controversy. The unnamed gardener, who comes from a “modest Moroccan family”, is reportedly married to a woman from Spain and has two children of his own. Read More »

A California-based book club has recently finished its first reading of James Joyce’s ‘Finnegan’s Wake’, a notoriously difficult book that it started reading 28 years ago. James Joyce once said that the demand he makes of his reader is that he “should devote his entire life to reading my works,” and some people actually took those words to heart. For example, the members of a California book club have spent the last 28 years of their lives decyphering Finnegan’s Wake page by page, in an attempt to figure out its many mysteries. This is a book so difficult to read that no one person can truly say they ‘get it’, which makes it perfect for community reading. It’s apparently written in a convoluted mix of reinvented words, puns, and allusions, referencing about 80 languages, and people can’t even agree on where the book is set or who the characters are. Read More »