Western Poland’s Notecka Forest is home to one of the country’s most controversial buildings, a medieval-style complex known as Stobnica Castle.

The construction of Stobnica Castle began in 2015, but it didn’t start attracting nationwide attention until 2018, when people started wondering what this gargantuan structure rising up at the edge of a well-known nature reserve, on what looked like a man-made island on Lake Stobnica, was. Aerial photos of a 15-storey medieval-like castle rising up in the middle of a pristine natural paradise about 50 km from the city of Poznan started going viral online and piqued people’s curiosity. What was this building, who was the owner and how had they obtained a building permit for it, considering its location at the edge of a Special Protection Area for Birds (20 species) within the Natura 2000 network?

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Ruki, a tributary of the Congo River, has recently been dubbed the darkest river in the world, with water so dark that you can’t even see your face in front of you.

In what is considered the first-ever scientific study of the African river, scientists concluded that the dark-colored water is caused by the high levels of dissolved organic matter from the surrounding rainforest. Scientists found that the color is caused by carbon-rich compounds leached out of rotting plant matter and washed into the Ruki River by rainwater and floods. Dr Travis Drake, lead author of the recently published study, said that the Ruki is “essentially jungle tea” in which carbon-rich plant matter is brewed. The resulting coloration of the water makes the Ruki darker than the Rio Negro.

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Pterocarpus angolensis, commonly known as wild teak or bloodwood, is a species of tree native to Southern Africa known primarily for the dark red sap it secretes which looks like blood when the tree is cut.

Well-known in tropical Africa, where it is used to make high-quality furniture and musical instruments, wild teak is resistant to termites and has a nice, spicy fragrance. It is also resistant to fire so trees are sometimes planted around structures that need to be protected from flames. But outside of southern Africa, bloodwood is most known for its unique dark red sap. Its resemblance to blood has made some people speculate about the tree’s magical healing powers in blood illnesses, none of which have been proven by conventional medicine.

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A popular restaurant in Tokyo, Japan, sparked controversy for claiming to dip its delicious pork skewers in a sauce jar that has not been cleaned in over half a century.

Abe-chan, a famous pork skewer eatery in Tokyo’s Azabu Juban shopping district, was recently featured on a popular Japanese television show where it was revealed that one of the secrets to its success was a rather dubious-looking jar covered in a gelatinous mass. Apparently, this was the same sauce jar that pork skewers have been dipped in for the last sixty years, and the dark brown mass around the jar is the sauce that spilled over and hardened over the decades. According to the third-generation owner of Abe-chan, the jar has never been cleaned in the last six decades, which apparently contributes to the rich taste of the sauce.

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Maleesha Kharwa grew up in Mumbai’s infamous Dharavi slum, but thanks to a chance encounter with an American actor, she became one of India’s most popular teenage models.

At just 15 years of age, Maleesha Kharwa has already graced the covers of international fashion magazines like Vogue and Cosmopolitan, become the face of a luxury skincare brand, and amassed over 300,000 followers on Instagram alone. She is one of the most recognizable faces in India, and it’s almost impossible to believe that only three years ago she was just another girl in the slums of Mumbai. It was only thanks to a lucky encounter with Step Up 2: The Streets and Grey’s Anatomy actor Robert Hoffman that her life changed drastically and she got the chance to live out her childhood fantasy of one day becoming a fashion model.

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In the foothills of Shenyang, an industrial city in northeastern China lies the mysterious State Guest Mansions project, a real-estate complex of more than 250 luxury mansions, all of which are abandoned.

The story of State Guest Mansions began in 2010, when business in the Chinese real estate sector was booming. Property giant Greenland Group bought up hectares of land in the foothills around Shenyang and began work on what was supposed to be a retreat for the region’s rich and powerful. 260 European-style villas began rising out of the ground, complete with marble floors and gilded chandeliers hanging from the ceilings, but for some strange reason that has yet to be revealed, development stopped in 2018 and the place has been a ghost town ever since.

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A Hungarian man temporarily became a rich man, after the company he worked for accidentally paid him 367 times more than he had actually earned. And when the employer asked for the money back, he refused to pay.

The unnamed man, who hails from Hungary’s Somogy County, briefly worked for a company in Kaposvár but his employment was terminated during the trial period. For his short stint at the company, he stood to earn 92,549 forints, which amounted to 238 euros ($260), but in a feat of incredible generosity, his employer wired him 367 times that amount. Actually, it was just a huge mistake caused by the fact that the man had provided an Austrian bank account, so the salary had to be paid in the local currency, euros. Only instead of converting the forints to euros, they sent the lucky man 92,549 euros instead…

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A team of Dutch researchers has discovered that magpies and crows are using metal spikes designed to keep them away from certain urban areas to reinforce their own nests and keep intruders at bay.

Scientists have known for a while that magpies and crows are some of the most intelligent birds in the world, but even they were baffled by their amazing ability to adapt to hostile urban environments. It’s not unusual for birds to use human trash and debris as tools and building materials for their nests, button see them use the very things we humans use against them was nothing short of baffling for researchers at the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam and the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, in the Netherlands.

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The German city of Dresden is famous for the Baroque architecture that runs along the banks of the Elbe River, but there is one exception that stands out like a sore thumb – the iconic Yenidze building, aka the ‘tobacco mosque’.

Featuring clear oriental architectural elements of mosques and the famous Alhambra Palace of Granada, the Yenidze has been towering over Dresden’s Friedrichstadt neighborhood for over a century. At 62 meters (203 ft) tall, featuring 600 windows of various styles, and boasting an impressive glass dome, it would be one of the largest mosques in the world, but despite its appearance, the Yenidze is not, and has never been a mosque. For most of its existence, the Yenidze has operated as a tobacco factory and its unusual design was chosen both as homage to the Oriental origin of the tobacco processed here, but also a clever way to vend the rules on architectural restrictions in Dresden’s city center.

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Stott Hall Farm is the only farm in the world built right in the middle of a busy motorway, with crash barriers and a fence around it to keep livestock in and out-of-control vehicles out.

The M62 motorway connecting the cities of Liverpool and Hull in Northern England is famous for having an inhabited farm right in the middle of its roadways in Calderdale.  The unique farm is one of the ten best-known sights on the UK motorway network, and there are various stories and myths about its existence, the most popular of which claim that the motorway was split because the owners, Ken and Beth Wild, refused to sell. These stories would have you believe that Stott Hall Farm is essentially a ‘nail house’ the likes of which we’ve featured several times in the past. However, the reality of this infrastructural oddity is very different.

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The judges of the prestigious Gilbert et Gaillard international wine competition were duped into awarding this year’s gold medal to a €2.50 ($2.70) supermarket wine they deemed “exceptional”.

Ever wonder how the average person chooses wine at a supermarket? Well, it turns out that having one or more medals plastered on the bottle can increase sales by up to 15 percent, so it’s no wonder that wineries take wine-tasting competitions very seriously. But does winning such medals actually reflect the quality of the wine, or are these contests simple money-making events that charge winemakers hefty sums for participation and the chance to increase sales? Eric Boschman, once named Belgium’s best sommelier, and the team at On n’est pas des pigeons, a Belgian consumer magazine and television program, decided to find out by taking the worst supermarket wine they could find and registering it in a prestigious wine competition.

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An Iranian man claims he stopped consuming food one day in 2006 and has relied solely on sweetened fizzy drinks for energy ever since.

58-year-old Gholamreza Ardeshiri claims that the mere sight of food makes him nauseous and that he has been surviving on water and fizzy drinks like Pepsi and Coca-Cola for the last 17 years. It all started one night in 2006, when he woke up with a strange feeling in his mouth, one that he just couldn’t get rid of, no matter how many doctors he visited. In the end, he decided to shun food permanently and has been living a perfectly normal life ever since. His family doesn’t eat in front of him, because just seeing them makes him sick, and he gets all his energy from carbonated drinks. He drinks three large bottles of soda per day and insists that he never feels hungry.

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Russian-born bodybuilder and fitness model Vladislava Galagan has been dubbed ‘Kendal Jenner on steroids’ and ‘real life She Hulk’ because of her pretty face and incredibly muscular body.

Old sayings like ‘seeing is believing’ or ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’ perfectly expressed the belief that one had to see something before believing it to be true. It used to be like that, anyway, before advanced digital tools made us not trust our eyes anymore. In an era of life-like AI-powered news anchors and men posing as beautiful women with the help of phone apps, it’s hard to believe anything you see these days, especially when it looks too good to be true. Case in point, Vladislava Galagan, a 27-year-old fitness model who rose to prominence on social media thanks to the ‘perfect mix’ of an attractive, feminine face, and an impressively muscular body. While boasting hundreds of thousands of fans, Galagan also has plenty of doubters who accuse her of digitally altering her photos for attention, or using AI-powered tools to ‘beautify’ herself.

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Japanese luxury ice cream brand Cellato recently set a new Guinness record for the world’s most expensive ice cream with a decadent treat priced at a whopping 880,000 yen ($6,700) per portion.

On April 25, a Guinness World Records representative certified Byakuya, Cellato’s new protein-rich ice cream, as the most expensive in the world. It consists of a velvety base made with milk, two types of cheese, egg yolks, and sake leek, and is topped with Parmigiano cheese, white truffle, truffle oil, and gold leaf. The ‘highest grade’ gelato has a faint sweetness, complex taste, and a luxurious, smooth texture. It comes packaged in a stylish black box. It includes a hand-made metal spoon created by Takeuchi craftsmen in Fushimi, Kyoto, using techniques and materials used in the construction of temples and shrines. One 130ml Byakuya ice cream is currently available on the Cellato website for 880,000 yen ($6,700).

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The Tokyo Shimbun newspaper recently sparked controversy in Japan with an article on consuming raw crow meat, a practice that experts say could cause serious health problems, even death.

Last month, the Tokyo Shimbun, one of the most-read newspapers in Japan, published an article on the consumption of so-called ‘crow sashimi’ (raw crow meat marinated in various sauces). The journalist basically described their experience eating crow meat both cooked and raw at a gathering of crow meat lovers in Ibaraki Prefecture, claiming that the crow sashimi was both refreshing and easy to chew, compared to the grilled meat which was extremely tough and dry. The article caused a lot of confusion online, and the Japanese Health Ministry ultimately posted a message on its official Twitter account warning people not to indulge in raw crow meat, as it could cost them their lives.

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