Despite failing the dreaded gaokao university entrance exam 25 times in a row, a 55-year-old man in China is still not giving up on his dream of attending college. At age 55, Liang Shi is the owner of a successful building materials company in Chengdu, the capital of southwestern China’s Sichuan province. He has enough money to do whatever he wants, but he doesn’t fell completely fulfilled. That’s because he has been dreaming of getting into Sichuan University ever since he was a teenager, and he has yet to achieve his goal. At an age when most people are starting to think about retirement, Liang Shi is only focused on studying hard for this year’s gaokao university entrance exam. It will be his 26th attempt to pass it, and hopefully the last. Read More »

In an attempt to get the coveted six-pack abs in time for the summer holidays, a man who hates going to the beach got himself a hyper-realistic six-pack tattoo. It’s the same old story every spring. You try flexing your abs in the mirror only to find them covered by a thick layer of fat that you’ve been trying your hardest to ignore for months. You jump on the scale and are shocked to see you’ve put on a few pounds since last summer and with only a few weeks left until the beach season, you start to panic. It’s time to hit the gym, hard, but that’s just such a chore. If only there was a way to permanently turn that flabby belly into the chiseled physique of a bodybuilder. Well, as long as you’re not afraid of needles, there’s one goofy trick you may want to try. Read More »

Inspired by the comfort of the classic dog bed, a couple of university students designed Plufl, the world’s first dog bed for humans. If you’re thinking that the Plufl is just an oversized dog bed, you’re technically right, but according to its creators, University of British Columbia students Noah Silverman and Yuki Kinoshita, it’s also much more than that. Apparently, the Plufl was engineered “to provide the optimal napping experience” and “maximize comfort and foster a sense of security, delivering relief for those who have ADHD, stress, and anxiety-related issues.” Read More »

Japanese Shinto shrine sells low-tech IT amulets that promise to keep computers from freezing and restarting randomly, as well as free from viruses and malware. Kanda Myojin, a popular Shinto shrine in Akihabara, Tokyo sells a variety of amulets and prayers, but none as intriguing as the “computer function amulet”. Consisting of a small, CPU-shaped sticker meant to be stuck onto the gadget in need of divine protection and a larger piece of cardboard meant to be worn by the computer operator, the amulet is one of the most popular items offered by Kanda Myojinm. If used correctly, the amulet will allegedly protect your machine from viruses, malware and random errors, as well as keep it from freezing up. Read More »

A London bachelor is taking extreme measures to increase his chances of finding a wife – renting subway advertising banners in the English capital to get as much exposure as possible. If you’ve passed through the Oxford Circus subway station in London during the last few days, you’ve probably seen a couple of unusual advertising banners plastered on the walls. They show a man in a pink suit who is apparently looking for a suitable wife. That man is 31-year-old Jeevan Bhachu and he wants everyone to know that he is not kidding. He really is looking to get hitched, and since the pandemic has made conventional dating problematic, he decided to go for a more straightforward approach. Read More »

A woman in Shanghai, China, made her pet rooster somewhat of an overnight internet sensation after doing its manicure and posting photos of it online. Yi Yi, a chicken owner from Shanghai recently decided that her beloved pet’s nails needed some attention, so she took ithe bird to a nail salon.  However, the staff there refused to do its nails for fear that it would affect the image of the salon among human clients, so the woman ended up doing the chicken’s nails herself. It took more than an hour, but at least the bird’s feet ended up looking fabulous. Read More »

Three African men were recently arrested in Algeria for allegedly disguising themselves as Arab women in order to reach the wealthy country of Dubai. In a scene reminiscent of the cult comedy film “White Chicks”, three black with half their faces covered in thick makeup foundation can be seen posing for mug shots in Algeria. The sad-looking trio were reportedly apprehended in Algeria, after officials noticed that they were not who they claimed to be – Arab women wearing traditional clothing, including niqab face covers. They had gone through the trouble of covering the exposed parts of their faces with a thick layer of foundation and used black eyeliner to increase their chances of passing off as women, but it wasn’t enough. Read More »

A security guard got so bored on his first day at work that he ruined a million-dollar avant-garde painting by drawing eyes on the faceless figures depicted in the artwork. Anna Leporskaya’s Three Figures, an artwork painted between 1932 and 1934, was on display at the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center in Ekaterinburg as part of an exhibition when someone noticed something strange about it in December of last year. The three figures depicted in the avant-garde piece were originally faceless, but now two of them had small dots for eyes. The vandalism was first noticed on 7 December by two visitors who alerted the Yeltsin Center staff about it, and a search for the perpetrator began. One thing that no one expected was for the security guard paid to prevent such things from happening to be the vandal… Read More »

A Spanish woman got the shock of her life when she received a $570 fine from a town she visited six months ago, for failing to pick up her dog’s poop from a sidewalk. The unnamed woman from Paterna, in Spain’s Valencia region, had all but forgotten about that time when she chose not to pick up her Bull terrier’s poop while vacationing in Benalmadena, last August, when she received a fine for it last month. So how did authorities in the seaside town located 650 kilometers away, in the province of Malaga, know about it after all this time? They clearly knew it was her dog, as the notice she received in the mail featured the street that the excrement had been found on and the date, August 26. Little did she know that her “crime” had been discovered thanks to advanced DNA analysis… Read More »

Two LAPD police officers ended up losing their jobs after ignoring calls about a robbery so they could drive around hunting pokemon in the augmented reality mobile game Pokemon Go. Last week, California’s court of appeals upheld a previous decision according to which officers Louis Lozano and Eric Mitchell were rightfully terminated from the Los Angeles Police Department almost five years ago. Court documents showed that in April 2017 the two men were driving in their patrol car and discussing Pokemon Go, when they were asked to respond to a robbery in progress with “multiple suspects” at a Macy’s in southwest LA. The officers chose to ignore the call, with Mitchell reportedly saying ‘Aw, screw it,’ choosing to hunt for a nearby pokemon called a Snorlax instead. Read More »

A Gujarat man who ran for a decision-making position in his village during last month’s local elections made international headlines for receiving just one vote despite having at least two dozen family members eligible to cast a ballot. Santosh Halpati ran for the position of Sarpanch in the Chharwala village of Vapi district, and even though he wasn’t really expecting to win, he certainly didn’t expect to receive just one vote, his. The middle-aged man broke down near the counting center when he heard the news, telling reporters that he had 12 close family members who were eligible to vote but either didn’t bother to cast a ballot or chose to vote for someone else. Read More »

For the last 11 years, “Turkey’s first and only stress coach” has been making a living by letting people punch him, without ever punching back. Hasan Riza Gunay started working as a human punching bag in 2010, after finding inspiration in Turkish director Kemal Sunal’s classic movie “Sark Bulbulu” (Eastern Nightingale), in which the protagonist voluntarily allows himself to be beaten. He realized that while some people relieve stress by exercising, meditating or sleeping, other need to let off some steam by screaming, or better yet, hitting someone. So he turned his realization into an unusual business, allowing himself to be punched by strangers, for money. He has been working as a “stress coach” for a decade now and hopes to train others to pick up his role before he becomes too old to take a punch. Read More »

In an attempt to keep artificially-enhanced camels out of official beauty pageants, Saudi authorities recently disqualified 43 camels over the use of Botox and other cosmetic procedures. Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz Camel Festival is one of the several annual events that features a camel beauty pageant. As funny as that might seem to us westerners, it’s no laughing matter in the Middle East. In fact, these sort of competitions is such a big deal that some breeders reportedly resort to Botox injections and other cosmetic touchups to make their animals prettier. The Saudi Press Agency recently reported that over 40 camels were disqualified from this year’s King Abdulaziz Camel Festival pageant because of Botox injections and other cosmetic procedures. Read More »

A 50-year-old Italian man was caught trying to get a coronavirus vaccine certificate without actually getting the shot, by using a fake arm instead of his own. Today, Italian media reported the bizarre case of a man who visited a vaccination center in Biella, northwest Italy on Thursday evening, claiming he wanted to get a dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. Everything went smoothly until the 50-year-old man, whose name was not made public for privacy reasons, was asked by the nurse to lift up his sleeve. He only partially revealed his upper arm, which the nurse thought was a bit odd, but she was only certain that something was wrong when she touched his skin and felt that it wasn’t quite the wrong texture… Read More »

Woodmere Avenue in Watford, UK, has become world-famous for an “evil” width restriction made up of six steel bollards after videos of cars crashing into it started going viral online. On the 24th of March 1980, local authorities in Watford decided to combat rat-running through the city’s residential area by installing what would eventually become the most hated width restriction in the United Kingdom. Made up of six beefy steel bollards, this “abomination” limits the width of vehicles that can pass through it at 7 feet (2.1 meters), which, for a lot of motorists has proven too narrow, despite their vehicles being nowhere near 7-feet-wide. Despite countless complaints from local residents fed up with the mayhem of cars getting stopped in their tracks by the bollards, and motorists afraid they’ll suffer the same fate if they pass through, the width restriction has endured and recently achieved worldwide notoriety. Read More »