A 50-year-old Moroccan man was recently acquitted of sexual assault charges after impersonating a muscular Italian man on Tinder to sleep with a woman.

In one of the most bizarre legal cases we’ve ever covered, a Belgian man of Moroccan descent allegedly deceived a 47-year-old woman into sleeping with him by posing as a muscular Italian man named ‘Ben’. In 2018, the accused and his “victim” met on the popular dating app Tinder and agreed to engage in consensual sexual relations inspired by the hit book and movie series Fifty Shades of Grey. The woman agreed to be blindfolded during their encounter to better recreate the Fifty Shades of Grey atmosphere, but at some point, she felt like something was off, so she took off her blindfold to discover that the Italian hunk she had met on Tinder was a Moroccan man with a visible belly.

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The CEO of a Dutch weather forecaster recently suggested that Belgian wind farms are inadvertently “stealing” wind from his own country’s wind farms in the North Sea.

In an interview with Belgian broadcaster VRT, Remco Verzijlbergh, the CEO of Dutch weather forecasting service Whiffle, claimed that Belgian wind farms in the North Sea have an advantage over Dutch ones because of their placement, adding that they are effectively “stealing” Dutch wind. Verzijlbergh claimed that Belgian wind farms are taking up to 3 % of wind energy from Dutch installations, adding that wind speeds measured behind a wind turbine are measurably lower. He clarified that the phenomenon is purely accidental because of the location of the wind turbines, pleading for better coordination between countries in the near future.

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Tiffany and Grégory, a couple from Belgium’s Wallonia region, have been sharing their home with Oscar, a rescued wild boar, for more than a year now.

It all started about a year ago, during a hunting trip, when Grégory Guiot brought home a 700-gram boar cub that his dogs had found. It was December 6th, Saint Nicholas Day, and Gregory didn’t have the heart to just leave the helpless animal in the wild, where it would have likely perished on its own Instead, he took hit home to his partner, Tiffany Pierre. Neither of them even entertained the idea of keeping the boar at first, instead focusing on caring for it until they found another arrangement. However, Tiffany and Grégory found themselves becoming more and more attached to the little bundle of joy with each passing day, so when they finally decided to take little Oscar to an educational farm where he would be well taken care of, they both had tears in their eyes…

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A Ghanaian man living in Belgium became so frustrated with constantly failing the theoretical part of the driving test that he paid a lookalike to take the test in his place.

Serge, a Ghanaian immigrant living in Grammont, Belgium, had been struggling to pass his driving license exam for over a year. The man had already obtained a license in his home country, but he couldn’t use it to drive a car in Belgium, and the theoretical part of the exam had been giving him some serious headaches. Serge had tried and failed the test 12 times, but he couldn’t just give up, as having a driver’s license opened up some very lucrative options for him in Belgium. In the end, he decided that cheating was his best bet, so he started looking for someone with similar looks to take the test on his behalf.

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A Belgian company has developed a water processing installation that allows it to convert pig’s blood into water fit for human consumption.

Based in Zwevezele, West Flanders, Veos specializes in producing animal proteins for the food industry by processing animal blood and collagen into high-quality protein powder used in human and animal food products. Until recently, the company relied solely on large quantities of groundwater to clean the massive tanks it stored pig blood in, but, thanks to a €2 million investment in a state-of-the-art water purification installation, Veos can actually use the stored pig blood to make drinkable water.

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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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Imagine going from having nothing to your name to winning over a quarter of a million dollars only to be unable to claim it due to a lack of ID. That’s exactly the problem an Algerian undocumented immigrant in Belgium is facing right now.

A few ago, the lottery winner, whose name has not been disclosed for obvious reasons, went into a shop in Zeebrugge, a Belgian port city and popular transit point for migrants and refugees, and bought a lottery scratchcard. he paid 5 euros for it and ended up winning a whopping 250,000 euros ($270,000). He was so stunned that he had a friend verify the prize, and then they both double-checked with the shop owner. He had won 250,000 euros and his life was about to change for the better. Or so he thought…

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A couple in Belgium has become famous for giving their 11 children first names based on different variations of just four letters from the alphabet – A, E, L, and X.

Gwenny Blanckaert and Marino Vaneeno are the proud parents of eleven children – seven girls and four boys – all of whom have four-letter names, the same four letters, in fact. Despite having 26 letters in the alphabet to work with, after making their first to children Alex and Axel, the two parents had a revelation and decided to use just the letters A, E, L, and X to name their other kids. And because they both wanted a big family, they ended up having to use variations of those four letters to name their next nine children as well, and plan to do the same when their twelfth child is born next year.

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A Belgian woman has been issued a ban by the Antwerp Zoo, because of her close “relationship” with a male chimp that she had been visiting frequently for years.

Adie Timmermans has been visiting Chita, a 38-year-old male chimpanzee, for at least four years, and claims that they’ve developed a very powerful bond that can be described as a “relationship”. However, the animal caretakers at Antwerp Zoo believe this relationship has been causing social problems for Chita within her group of chimps. Because he is so close to Adie, Chita is ignored by the other primates and is not considered part of the pack. To improve his relationship with his own kind, the zoo recently issued a contact ban, forbidding Timmermans from getting too close to Chita’s enclosure, and instructing her to avoid making eye contact with the animal. 

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Doctors at KU Leuven University in Belgium recently reported the bizarre case of a 54-year-old woman who was convinced she was a chicken and temporarily behaved like one.

The married woman, whose name was not revealed, reportedly had a stable job at a pharmacy and had no history of drug or alcohol abuse before the strange episode. One day, her brother stopped by and found her clucking, blowing her cheeks and crowing like a rooster. Not knowing what to do, the woman’s brother took her to a nearby hospital, where the 54-year-old told doctors she thought she was a chicken and described feeling a new sensation in her legs.

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The Andler Hillclimb is an annual dirt bike competition that has dirt bikers from around Europe try to reach the top of a treacherous hillside course in Belgium. It’s been held every year for the last two decades, but so far no one has been able to reach the top.

The so-called “impossible climb”, starts out as rough gravel and then switches over to a washboard of rough cliff face designed to throw riders off and send them and their bikes tumbling back down to the base of the hill. It’s not the angle of attack that’s the problem, according to most riders, but the sudden change of ride surface that makes keeping control of the bike and reaching the top so damn hard. Some fly off their bike early during the climb, while others get painfully close the the finish line, but in the end they all succumb to the power of gravity before reaching their goal.

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Seeing the pizza deliveryman at your doorstep is usually a cause for joy, but one Belgian man claims that he starts shaking whenever he hears a scooter, thinking it’s yet another delivery he never asked for. They’ve been coming for the last nine years, and he has had enough.

Jean Van Landeghem, a 65-year-old man from Turnhout, in Belgium’s Antwerp province, has been pizzas delivered to his home for nearly a decade, but the funny thing is that he has never actually ordered any of them. At first, he thought it was just a mix-up of orders, so he didn’t think much of it, but then other deliveries of pizza and foods like kebabs or pittas started flowing in. He never had to pay for them, as he always refused to take them, but having people knocking on his door at all hours of day and night has become extremely frustrating.

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A 45-year-old Belgian man claims that he has eaten only potato fries and a fricadelle – Dutch hot dog – for dinner every day ever since he was 13.

Rudy Gybels, a resident of Schaffen in Belgium’s Flemish Brabant province, has had the same food for dinner every evening since he was a teenager. It all started when he was 13, when his mother, desperate to get him to eat more fruits and vegetables, came up with a compromise solution. Rudy would eat healthy food at lunch, and he was free to enjoy his favorite food – potato fries – for dinner. And he has been sticking to that deal ever since, eating only fries for dinner every evening for the last 32 years.

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To highlight a new type of water purification system, a restaurant in Kuurne, Belgium, has started serving its customers free drinking water recycled from its sinks and toilets.

The water served at the Gust’eaux restaurant in Kuurne these days is the same as any other potable water – it has no smell, no taste, no color – so it’s impossible to tell that it’s source is actually the restaurant’s toilets. By using a complex, five-step purification system, Gust’eaux is able to turn its sewage into a water so pure that it has to be enriched with minerals before being served to clients.

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Stealing elaborate beer glasses has become an increasingly popular trend among patrons of Belgian beer bars, so much so that in recent years owners of such establishments have started implementing all sorts of safety measures. For example, one bar in Ghent asks visitors to hand over one of their shoes as collateral.

Belgian beer is famous the world over, so it’s no surprise that tourists flock to beer bars when visiting the European country, but lately many of them have developed a habit of leaving with a souvenir. Philip Maes, owner of The Beer Wall bar in Bruges, said that he loses over 4,000 beer glasses a year, which can get pretty expensive, as many of these glasses are elaborate works of art custom made for his establishment. A beer glass can cost up to 50 euros ($55) so having thousands of them stolen adds up to a significant financial loss. So Maes and other bar owners have implemented security measures to discourage beer glass thefts.

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