The Shiziguan Floating Bridge, also known as the Bridge of Dreams, is an innovative 400-meter bridge that allows cars up to 2.8 tonnes to drive across the surface of the Qingjiang River in China. Nestled between the forest-covered mountains of Enshi Prefecture, in Hubei Province, the Shiziguan scenic spot is one of China’s most breathtaking natural attractions. However, what really separates it from other impressive sights is the experience of taking in the beautiful scenery while driving along a bridge made of floats and placed directly on the water. Built using German technology to prevent rollovers, the Shiziguan Floating Bridge has been operational since 2016 for both vehicular and pedestrian traffic. The bridge is made from high-density polyethylene floats filled with water for extra stability, so if the drivers respect the imposed speed limit of 20 km/h, they should only feel the gentle sway of the river beneath. Read More »

Goon Ten, or Dancing Shrimp, is a popular Thai street food made with live freshwater shrimp that jumps off the plate when marinated alive. A bunch of small, translucent shrimp trying to wiggle their way out of being eaten alive doesn’t sound like the most appetizing meal, but in Northern Thailand, it’s actually all the rage. Usually sold from double-basket carts, goon ten consists of live freshwater shrimp wriggling in a spicy marinade of ground chili, lime juice, fish sauce, mint, sliced shallots, and lemongrass. It is most often served with a variety of sticky rice. Often described as one of the freshest foods money can buy, dancing shrimp salad will literally jump off the plate, as the live critters try to escape the spicy marinade. It sounds barbaric to eat such a dish in this day and age, but most of those who have tried it were blown away by its texture and complex flavor combination. Read More »

A 57-year-old man had to be hospitalized and put on morphine so he could endure the pain of 240 wasp stings after being attacked by a swarm of enraged wasps. On August 18, Andrew Powell went outside his family home near Brecon, Wales, to inspect the fields, as he usually did, only to see a large swarm of wasps heading his way. He suspects that someone, maybe another farmer, messed with their nest because they came straight for him and started stinging him. Unable to defend himself against what he suspects were thousands of angry wasps, Powell ran toward his house while fighting off the insects as best he could. The insects followed him into the house, attacked his wife as well, and managed to land over 240 stings on the 57-year-old man, leaving him in agony and in need of medical attention. Read More »

An Indian teenager was accused of emotional blackmail after going on a hunger strike for three days to pressure his poor mother into buying him an iPhone. A short video shot by a smartphone shop owner in India went viral last week for featuring a teenage boy who confessed to going on a hunger strike for three days to convince his mother to buy him a new iPhone. The woman, who reportedly makes a living by selling flowers outside a temple, is also featured in the video and has a facial expression that pretty much says everything about her inner struggle. Shared by Indian journalist Abhishek on X (formerly Twitter), the video has been viewed over a million times and has sparked a heated debate about gadgets as a status symbol and the entitlement of younger generations. Read More »

A Chinese woman suffered vision problems and subsequent depression following a botched double eyelid surgery in which her eyeball was accidentally sewn to the corner of her eye. In 2021, Ms. Zhang, a woman from Weifang, in China’s Shandong Province, underwent a double eyelid surgery at the Weifang Kuiwen Lirendu Medical Beauty Clinic to correct an unevenness of the corners of her eyes. The woman claims that she felt discomfort during the actual surgery but pushed through it only to discover that her left eyeball and the corner of that eye had been stitched together. At first, the doctor who operated on her told her that everything was fine, but then Zhang started experiencing blurry vision and limited eye movement, and despite attempts to correct the damage, she is still struggling with physical and mental issues more than two years after the procedure. Read More »

Founded in the year 578, Japan’s Kongo Gumi construction company is recognized as the oldest continuously operating company in the world. Thousands of companies are founded and liquidated daily around the globe, many of which only operate for a few years, maybe even months. The world’s most valuable companies have only been around for a few decades and with technology changing the business landscape at breakneck speeds, who knows how long they’ll be around. Today, there are only a few thousand companies older than 200 years, and even those seem relatively new compared to the world’s oldest continually operating company, Kongo Gumi. Founded in the 6th century by a Korean carpenter specializing in Buddhist temple construction, the Japanese construction company has been operating for a whopping 1446 years. Read More »

A 49-year-old German woman who had been posing as the empress of a non-existent kingdom and rubbing shoulders with Italy’s elite had been accidentally unmasked as a fraud. Sandra Nicole Martinez, who had adorned herself with titles like ‘Her Royal Highness’ or ‘Her Imperial Highness”, had become a regular at exclusive parties and social events in Italy’s capital city after being introduced to them by legendary Italian socialite Guya Sospisio a few years ago. Apparently, no one questioned her claims of being the Empress of the Imperial House of Glodeni, a royal house with headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon, even though a simple Google search would have revealed that Glodeni is actually a town in the tiny Eastern European country of Moldova. Martinez was eventually unmasked as a fraudster completely by accident. Read More »

If you thought pineapple-topped Hawaiian pizza was a culinary crime, wait until you hear about Sweden’s take on the Italian staple, a pie topped with curry, pineapple, and banana. Sweden’s fascination with bananas is well documented, but that doesn’t really explain the culinary oddity known as Tropicana Pizza or simply Swedish Pizza. No one knows exactly who came up with the idea for this unusual pizza, but according to a 2017 tweet by the Curators of Sweden, an X (Twitter) account created by the Swedish Institute and VisitSweden, Tropicana pizza was already known as the “most Swedish pizza there is”. For some reason, many Swedes find the combination of curry, pineapple, and banana paired with the smoky, savory flavor of smoked ham irresistible, making banana-topped pizza one of the most popular pizzas in Sweden. Read More »

Swinging Bridge, a simple yet hard-to-master game that has been around for about a decade, has been growing in popularity all over China. Ever try to keep your balance on a wobbly rope bridge as someone else was purposely shaking it to make you fall off? Welcome to Swinging Bridge, the competitive balance game that really puts players’ body coordination and balance to the test. It is usually played by a dozen or so players split into two teams on opposite sides of a wobbly bridge above a shallow pool filled with water or soft mattresses to cushion the fall of those who can’t keep up with the rhythm. Each team tries to swing the bridge from one side to the other to put the other team off balance until one side remains standing. It’s a simple premise, but staying on your feet as the bridge moves at dizzying speeds requires perfect balance and coordination. Read More »

Raku Inoue is a talented Canadian artist who specializes in carefully arranging flower petals, leaves, and other plant parts to recreate pop culture characters, animals, and pretty much anything else you can think of. Inoue’s journey into painstaking floral art began one windy day in 2017. He was in his Montreal home watching the strong wind shake dozens of pink petals from a rose bush in his backyard. Seeing these beautiful, delicate petals on the ground, he thought to himself “What a waste!” and went to pick them up. Looking at his ephemeral haul, the Japanese-born artist came up with the idea to actually use the petals to create art. He arranged them in the shape of a beetle with small twigs for legs, and his little project turned out so well that he kept at it. Today, Raku Inoue is famous for his impressive portfolio of plant art, which includes original recreations of popular characters like Super Mario or Godzilla, various insects and animals, and even brand logos. Read More »

This year, the Beijing University of Chemical Technology (BUCT) printed its admission letters on an innovative carbon fiber composite material that is just 0.2 millimeters thick but as sharp and strong as a knife. While most university admission letters are usually put away in a cupboard after students learn they have been accepted, freshmen accepted by the Beijing University of Chemical Technology have been busy using their admission letters as a multi-tool. Many of them have been sharing videos of themselves using the sturdy admission letters to cut all kinds of fruits, even melons, mincing pieces of meat, and holding them over open flames to prove they don’t burn or melt. After several of these videos went viral, a spokesperson from the Chinese university went public to clarify that this year’s admission letters were made out of an innovative material developed at the learning institution. Read More »

The town of Kudrovo, in Russia’s Leningrad Region, is home to the country’s largest residential building, a giant oval-shaped monstrosity featuring 3708 apartments and 35 different entrances. Completed in 2015 as part of the massive ‘Novyy Okkervil’ residential complex on the outskirts of Kudrovo, Russia’s largest residential building got its first international coverage in 2021 when aerial photos of it made it to the first page of Reddit, getting over 50,000 upvotes and thousands of comments. People were equally fascinated and freaked out by the enormous building, and many compared it to a human anthill. The comparison is not as farfetched as it might seem, because the concrete oval of Kudrovo is home to between 11,000 and 18,000 people (reports from Russian media vary) all technically living under the same roof. Read More »

Animal lovers and animal rights activists the world over are asking for a boycott of the Bully Cat, a hairless breed becoming increasingly popular among people fascinated by extreme body shapes. The bully cat is a relatively new feline breed that takes the characteristics of the hairless sphynx to a whole new level while adding other problematic features. This particular hairless breed has stubby short legs and heavily wrinkled skin that animal experts claim is prone to horrifying health problems. Believed to have originated in the United States only a few years ago, the bully cat quickly became popular overseas as well, particularly in the UK where animal welfare organizations recently began sounding the alarm about what they are calling a designer fad with painful consequences for the animals being exploited by unscrupulous breeders. Read More »

Crocs teams up with DC Comics to create a surprisingly cool-looking version of its ubiquitous Classic Clogs inspired by arguably the best Batmobile ever designed. The Croc brand has always been associated with comfort, but rarely with style. Nevertheless, the company has always come up with ways of surprising its faithful fans, teaming up with various other brands for intriguing collaborations. Its latest such venture resulted in the recently-released Batman x Crocs Classic Clog “Batmobile”, a limited-edition version of its Classic Clogs inspired by the design of the Batmobile featured in the 1989 Batman movie and its sequel, Batman Returns. Read More »

A Chinese company recently published a series of texts between its customer service and a woman who claimed her daughter had become pregnant after wearing underwear bought from the company. The unnamed company made the allegations made by an alleged customer public as a warning that such stunts could put entrepreneurs out of business. Apparently, a woman claiming to have purchased underwear from the company on Taobao, one of China’s largest online retail platforms, contacted customer support to complain that her daughter had become pregnant after wearing a pair of brand-new underwear. Despite staff’s attempts to convince the disgruntled woman that such a thing wasn’t possible, she insisted that it was the only way her daughter could have gotten pregnant and demanded an explanation. All attempts to convince the woman that her theory was physiologically impossible failed, so in the end customer service told her that its factory staff consisted exclusively of women and their boss had gotten a vasectomy, so the girl’s pregnancy had nothing to do with the company. Read More »