Meet Ganesh Baraiya, the World’s Shortest Doctor

23-year-old Ganesh Baraiya is living proof that nothing is impossible. Despite facing discrimination because of his short stature, he managed to become the world’s shortest doctor.

Ganesh Baraiya was born in the Talaja Thaluka area of Gujarat, India, and faced adversity from a very young age. He was born normal, but at the age of four, his parents noticed that his head was outgrowing his body, so they took him to a doctor. They learned that the boy suffered from an incurable condition and there was nothing anyone could do. Wanting to help her son, Ganesh’s mother put a tub-like helmet on his head to prevent it from growing and give his body a chance to catch up. In school, he was often ridiculed because of his large head and short stature, but he also had friends who stuck by him and he was able to focus on his studies.

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The Tale of Frank Hayes, the Only Jockey to Win a Horse Race While Dead

Frank Hayes is believed to be the only jockey in history to win an official horse race while dead. He suffered a heart attack while competing at New York’s Belmont Park in 1923.

According to Frank’s mother, the young stable boy and apprentice jockey had always been fond of hoses and dreamed of one day becoming a full-time race jockey, so when finally given the chance to prove himself in a 2-mile, 12-jump race at Belmont Park, he leaped at the opportunity. Frank Hayes loved training horses, and one of his favorites was Sweet Kiss, a 7-year-old unremarkable mare that wasn’t well thought of even by her owners. She had 20-1 odds in the big race and wasn’t expected to pull off anything extraordinary, but Frank believed she could win, so Sweet Kiss’ owners gave him the chance to prove it. This would be their only race together, but one that would be remembered a century later.

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Scubadiver Has Been Friends with a 15-Foot-Long Tiger Shark for Over Two Decades

A Florida scuba diver claims he has been best friends with a 15-foot-shark named Emma for almost 23 years now, describing her more like a playful dog than an apex predator.

Jim Abernethy and Emma first met in 2001 when he removed a fishing hook from her mouth, and they’ve been inseparable ever since. Every time Jim goes into the water in the area of Tiger Beach, in the Bahamas, she comes around and rubs heads with him as a sign of affection. It’s not the kind of behavior most people expect from a huge, 15-foot-long tiger shark that could easily tear a human apart, and that’s exactly what makes Emma the perfect poster girl in Jim Abernathy’s ongoing mission to change people’s perceptions of sharks.

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India’s Teenage ‘Slum Princess’, a Real-Life Cinderella Story

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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Autistic Boy Wins National Golf Tournament After Playing Only Three Rounds His Whole Life

12-year-old Bayleigh Teepa-Tarau has become the talk of the town in his native New Zealand after winning a national golf tournament despite having played just three rounds of golf his entire life.

Playing with borrowed clubs and wearing basketball sneakers, Bayleigh Teepa-Tarau managed to score an impressive 87 Stableford points during his three nine-hole rounds at this year’s Association of Intermediate and Middle Schools (AIMS) Games. His feat is even more impressive when you consider that he had previously only played three full rounds of golf his whole life. A few months back, his teacher-aide noticed that the 12-year-old autistic boy loved swinging a stick all the time, so he suggested he tried golf. Bayleigh said ‘ok’, and despite having only completed three rounds of golf, he managed to beat everyone at the recent AIMS Games and take home the gold.

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Sailor and His Dog Miraculously Rescued After Two Months Adrift in the Pacific Ocean

An Australian sailor and his loyal dog were recently rescued after surviving two months adrift in the Pacific Ocean by eating raw fish and drinking rainwater.

54-year-old Tim Shaddock and his dog Bella left Mexico for French Polynesia back in April, but a few weeks into their 6,000 km journey, Tim’s catamaran was severely damaged in a storm, and they were left with no way to sail. The storm also knocked out all the electronics, so the Sydney-based man had no way of contacting anyone for help, or even cooking his supplies. The last time Shaddock saw dry land was in early May as he sailed out of the Sea of Cortez and into the Pacific during a full moon. He and his canine have been drifting in the Pacific ever since, taking shelter from the sun under a canopy, eating raw fish, and drinking rainwater.

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Fisherman Forms Touching Bond with 4-Meter-Long Crocodile

An Indonesian fisherman claims to have shared a friendship with a four-meter-long saltwater crocodile for over 20 years and calls the reptile part of the local community.

59-year-old Ambo, a fisherman from Bontang City, in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan, has become somewhat of a celebrity in his country because of his unusual friendship with a giant saltwater crocodile named Rizka. The giant reptile has been a constant part of Ambo’s life for the past 26 years, ever since he first laid eyes on her in the waters of Pupuk Kaltim. She was only about one meter in size back then, and he didn’t pay much attention to her as she swam past his boat, but when he noticed that she had followed him home, Ambo grabbed some food and tossed it in the water. That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship spanning 26 years and who knows how many more going forward.

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Four ‘Miracle Siblings’ Survive 40 Days in the Amazon Jungle After Plane Crash

Four siblings, aged 13, 9, 5, and 1, miraculously survived a plane crash in one of the most remote areas of Colombia, and then 40 days alone in the Amazon jungle.

On May 1st, 2023, a small Cessna 206 airplane en route to San Jose de Guaviare suffered an engine failure and crashed deep in one of Colombia’s most remote and dangerous regions. Three adults, including the pilot, died in the crash, but the four children on board miraculously survived. However, they were stranded with little to no supplies, in a jungle filled with dangerous snakes, spiders, and mosquitoes, where members of the ex-Farc military group are still active. For 40 days, thousands of volunteers searched for the siblings, and the hope of them being found alive kept millions of Colombians on the tip of their feet. Last week, the miracle everyone was waiting for materialized – the children were found alive and well in a jungle clearing.

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Man Claims to Have Survived on Soda Alone for the Last 17 Years

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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Woman Returns to Civilization After Spending 500 Days Isolated in a Cave

A Spanish extreme athlete who voluntarily isolated herself from the world by entering a cave in November 2021 recently emerged from her self-imposed exile after a record 500 days.

When female climber Beatriz Flamini entered an isolated cave in the Spanish region of Granada on November 21, 2021, the world was still in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia had not invaded Ukraine, and Elon Musk had not yet become the tzar at Twitter. Falmini was 48 years old when she entered the cave, but she had turned 50 by the time she stepped out of it and had no idea what had occurred in the outside world in the last 500 days. Although she did not make contact with any other humans, Beatriz was carefully observed by a team of scientists, including psychologists and speleologists, in what is considered a first-of-its-kind experiment.

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Wild Crane Refuses to Leave the Side of Man Who Saved Its Life

An Indian man has become somewhat of a celebrity in his home state of Uttar Pradesh thanks to his unusual best friend, a wild crane that follows him everywhere he goes.

30-year-old Mohammed Arif, a harvester operator from Mandka village, in Uttar Pradesh, was working in a field in February of last year, when he saw an injured sarus crane in dire need of help. It was bleeding from one leg and seemed in a lot of pain, so the young man picked it up and took it home where he started nursing it back to health. It took a while, but the red-necked crane made a full recovery. Only instead of flying away the moment it was set free, the majestic bird stuck by its benefactor, accompanying him everywhere.

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Boy Playing Hide and Seek Hides in Shipping Container, Ends Up in Another Country

A Bangladeshi boy can consider himself lucky to be alive after hiding in a shipping container while playing hide and seek and getting locked inside for six days.

On January 17, while unloading containers off of a Bangladeshi vessel, staff at Malaysia’s Port Klang were shocked to see a confused and emaciated boy step out of one of the containers. He didn’t speak the local tongue so the port authorities couldn’t get any information out of him, but they suspected that he was the victim of a human trafficking crime organization, so they immediately called the police. It turned out, that the young boy had been playing hide and seek with friends in his home city of Chittagong, Bangladesh and chose a shipping container as a hiding spot. He got locked inside and spent the next six days on a ship to Malaysia.

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Hero Dog Leads Rescuers to 84-Year-Old Owner Who Had Been Missing for a Week

Gregorio Romero, an 84-year-old man from Mexico’s Sonora state, owes his life to his pet dog, El Palomo, who led rescuers to him after becoming lost in the desert for a week.

On November 27, Gregorio Romero left his home in Moctezuma to go for a walk, but he didn’t come back. His family wasn’t concerned at first, as the octogenarian sometimes used to visit nearby villages in the area and return a few days later. However, after four days, the man’s niece, Ramona, alerted the authorities about his disappearance, and a search party was put together. They searched the area around Romero’s home, but a week after his disappearance, the octogenarian was nowhere to be found. In the end, it was the man’s faithful pet dog that saved the day.

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Hansel Enmanuel – The One-Armed Point Guard Making Waves in College Basketball

Hansel Enmanuel lost his left arm when he was only a child, but that didn’t stop him from pursuing his dream of becoming a professional basketball player.

19-year-old Hansel became an online sensation last year when a highlight video of his high-school basketball exploits went viral. People love underdog success stories, and Hansel Enmanuel’s is particularly special. He was only six when a pile of cinder blocks fell on him, crushing his left arm so badly that doctors had no choice but to amputate it below the shoulder. It was a devastating blow to Hansel and his family, but it only made him work harder in order to fulfill his dream of playing basketball at a professional level.

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Man Spends 8 Years Carving 400 Stone Steps to Hilltop Temple

An Indian man has gained the admiration of millions of devotees after spending eight years carving over 400 stone steps to a hilltop Hindu temple using only a hammer and chisel.

The Baba Yogeshwar Nath temple in Bihar, Eastern India, was famous among devotees of Lord Shiva, but very difficult to reach because of its location at the top of a steep 1,500-foot hill. Able-bodied people spent hours climbing the hill every day, while the elderly, children and disabled people had virtually no way of reaching it without assistance. Trekking up and down the steep, rocky slopes was risky, and people often injured themselves trying to reach the holy temple. So one day, eight years ago, a local mason decided to make every devotee’s life a little easier by carving stone steps from the bottom of the hill all the way up to the temple.

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