Indonesian Man Is Best Friends with a 400-Pound Bengal Tiger

What started out as a simple job turned into an amazing friendship between a man and one of the most efficient predators on Earth. 10 years ago, Abdullah Sholeh became a “nanny” for a 3-month-old tiger cub, but they eventually became so close that even after the tiger matured, they spend almost every minute of the day together, and sometimes even sleep in the same enclosure.

Mulan Jamillah, a beautiful Bengal tigress, was donated to the Islamic school in Malang, Indonesia, when she was just 3-months-old, and then 25-year-old Abdullah Sholeh became her full-time caretaker. Her previous owner was unable to take care of her, but the young student was more than happy to dedicate most of his time to the adorable cub. The only problem is that what started out as a temporary job eventually turned into a full-time friendship, with Abdullah having to spend almost 24-hours with the tiger, which earned him the nickname “The Nanny”.

 

Read More »

Disabled Pensioner Dedicates His Life to Building Secure Mountain Roads for Isolated Village, Out of His Own Pocket

76-year-old Zhang Jiwen is almost completely deaf, but he has two able hands and a strong desire to help those less fortunate. Ever since 2012, he has been carrying building materials up a mountain in Fuling Forest Park, near the city of Chongqing, and building safe walking paths leading up from the modern road at the base all the way to an isolated village near the top. He has already completed a safe path a few hundred meters long and has started work on another leading to the water source of the village.

Zhang grew up in a village in the forests of Fuling, and even though he moved to the big city as an adult, he never forgot about his roots. When he heard about an isolated mountain village whose children had to come down precarious slopes in order to reach their school, he decided that he just had to help. For the past five years he has been taking a bus from his home in Chongqing to Fuling Forest Park to work on a better road for the village located on a mountain there.

Read More »

Swedish Tech Company Implants Microchips in Employees’ Bodies to Make Their Lives Easier

Epicenter, a technology startup hub in Stockholm, Sweden, has been offering employees the chance to have a small microchip implanted in their hand, ever since 2015. So far, 150 of its 3,000-strong staff have taken bosses up on their offer, and they couldn’t be happier with their decision.

Implantable microchips the size of a grain of rice have been around for a while now, but they are usually used as virtual identification plates for pets, or as tracking devices for deliveries. Up until a couple of years ago, when Epicenter started offering its employees the chance to have them implanted into their hands, these tiny devices had never been used to tag humans on a large scale. For many people, having a chip inserted into their body sounds like something out of a dystopian future, or, at the very least, raises privacy questions, but the 150 Epicenter employees who have had them implanted say the technology just makes their life easier.

Read More »

Russian Model Protests Poor Road Conditions with Professional Pothole Photo Shoots

In an effort to draw attention to the poor state of roads in her home city of Saratov, a Russian model organized a professional photo shoot at one of the largest water-filled pot holes in her neighborhood, posing in a Baywatch bathing suit with a large inflatable flamingo.

Model/Fashion Blogger Anna Moskvicheva originally intended to have the photo shoot in the town of Mirny, where her aunt lives, but after heavy rains created giant road puddles right in her own city, she changed plans and had the photos taken on Tverskaya street, in Saratov. She put on a red Baywatch-style bathing suit, put on a large summer hat and stepped out into the flooded street to pose on a giant inflatable pink flamingo. The resulting photos have been shared on Russian social media thousands of times, with most people congratulating her on the original protest.

Read More »

Don’t Freak Out, But Those Digital Adverts at the Shopping Mall May Be Watching You

A pizzeria in Oslo, Norway, recently came under fire after it was revealed that its digital adverts were actually filming passers by, analyzing their facial features and displaying different adverts according to a variety of factors.

The monitoring system was accidentally revealed at the beginning of May, when the system crashed and software code was displayed on screen instead of the usual ads. Linus Tech Tips forum user “Nepturion” happened to be passing by Peppe’s Pizza, in an Oslo shopping center, when he noticed the bizarre code generated on the digital advertising banner. A closer look revealed a small camera concealed in the wooden frame of the advert, and after watching the screen for a few minutes, Nepturion realized that the messages generated by the computer were describing him, and changed every time a different person passed by.

Read More »

Thai Dessert Shop Makes Realistic Puppy Puddings, Divides Internet

Coconut cream puddings are very popular in Thailand, but while they usually come in flower shapes, one dessert shop in Pathun Thani, north of Bangkok, decided to shake things up a bit by using puppy-shaped molds instead. Photos of the realistic-looking edible puppies made quite an impact online, sparking a heated debate.

Within six hours of posting photos of their new treats on Facebook, Thai dessert shop Wilaiwan had already gotten over 10,000 shares and hundreds of comments. But that was only the beginning, as the photos soon started making the rounds on blogs and news sites, and even attracted the attention of international news networks. Some people loved them and said that they would love to eat a slimy puppy, while others said they looked too much like their pets, and couldn’t even think about sticking a spoon in one.

Read More »

Farmer Buries His Faithful Truck After 48 Years of Service

Alcides Ravel, a farmer from Uruguay, bought his Ford F-350 in 1969, when he was 35 years old. Recently, the 83-year-old man finally put his faithful vehicle to eternal rest, after 48 years of service, by burying it on his farm.

For most people, trucks are mere tools to be used and sold when they outlive their usefulness, but that’s not the case of Alcides Ravel. Although his old truck had been broken down for over four years and mechanics had told him that it was beyond fixing, he couldn’t bring himself to sell it to the scrapyard. Instead, he kept it safe from the elements in a shed on his farm, near the town of Barker, until he was finally ready to part with it. Three weeks ago, he buried his faithful companion on his land, a “small gesture” in honor of nearly five decades of service.

Read More »

Woman Who Broke Her Neck Sneezing, Five Years Ago, Does It Again While Laughing

One morning, in 2011, Monique Jeffrey, of Rose Bay, Australia, was at home, in her bed, checking her emails. She sneezed and her head suddenly jolted forward, collapsing the C1 and C2 vertebrae in her neck. She had broken her neck in what experts called a “freak accident”, but the chances of something like this happening twice to the same person were apparently “slim to none”. And yet, last month, Monique suffered the same ordeal, this time while laughing with some colleagues at work.

“I texted Sam (her husband) just saying ‘help!’ and he called me and I answered on speaker phone, because I couldn’t put the phone to my ear,” Monique recalls about the bizarre accident she suffered over five years ago. “He came home and called an ambulance. It was pretty scary and it was such a strange sensation. I was in so much pain after just one little sneeze.”

Read More »

New World’s Hottest Chili Is Deceptively Tiny, Could Send You Into Anaphylactic Shock

When Welsh fruit grower Mike Smith set out to create a novelty chili pepper for a national grower’s show, he had no idea he would accidentally end up with the world’s hottest pepper. Called Dragon’s Breath – a tribute to its Welsh heritage – the record-breaking pepper scores a whopping 2.48 million units on the Scoville scale of hotness.

Intended to be a tiny thing of beauty, the Dragon’s Breath pepper turned out to be a sensory beast that can’t really be consumed unless you’re willing to put your life at risk. Just to put into perspective how hot this thing is, the Scotch bonnet, a chili usually eaten as a challenge, scores between 100,000 and 350,000 Scovilles, military-grade pepper spray registers at 2 million units on the same scale, and the previous world’s hottest pepper was rated at a maximum 2.2 million units. Dragon’s Breath blows them all away with an impressive rating of 2.48 million Scovilles.

Read More »

Austin Man Sues His Date for Texting During Movie

Brandon Vezmar, a 37-year-old man from Austin, Texas, has become an overnight celebrity after he decided to sue his first date for texting too much during a screening of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2. He is asking for $17.31, which is how much he paid for her ticket.

Brandon and 35-year-old Crystal met on online dating app Bumble and went on their first and only date on May 6. Vezmar bought two tickets for the 3D screening of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2, and he says everything was going good until 15 minutes into the movie, when his date took out her phone and started texting. At one point, it got too much for him to bear, and he asked the woman to either stop texting or go into the lobby of the theater. She left, and never came back, leaving without a ride home, as they had both arrived at the Barton Creek Square theater in her car. He later texted Crystal to ask for his money back, and when she refused to pay the $17.31 price of the ticket, he had no choice but to take her to court for it.

Read More »

This Uninhabited Tropical Island Has the World’s Highest Density of Plastic Pollution

One of the last things you would normally expect to find on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific is plastic, and yet the beaches of Henderson Island are riddled with nearly 40 million pieces of plastic, ranging from toothbrushes to shopping bags and bottles.

According to a recent report published in the in “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” journal, Henderson Island currently has zero inhabitants and around 17 tonnes of plastic trash, with around 13,000 pieces washing up on its shores every single day. The tiny patch of land has been found by marine scientists to have the highest density of debris recorded anywhere in the world.

Read More »

Zimbabwean Pastor Claims to Have God’s Direct Phone Number

Paul Sanyangore, a controversial pastor from Zimbabwe claims that he received God’s phone number from the Almighty Himself, and often receives calls from Him on how to best help his congregates.

Sanyangore, who also goes by the name “Pastor Talent”, first made the outrageous claim in February, after a video of him allegedly talking on the phone with God during a service at his church, Victory World International Ministries, went viral on social media. In an interview with Zimbabwean news site H-Metro, he revealed that he was indeed on the phone with the Almighty, adding that he was surprised to see people so shocked about the whole thing.

Read More »

Chinese Boss Pays Employees $15 for Every Kilogram They Shed

Wang Xuebao, the head of a investment consulting firm in Xian City, China, recently made international news headlines after he set up a cash reward system to motivate his employees to lose weight.

The employees of Xian Jingtian Investment Consulting in Xian, China’s Shaanxi Province, have the opportunity to earn 100 yuan ($15) for every kilogram of body weight they lose, as part of a reward system implemented by their boss. Wang Xuebao came up with the idea after realizing that both he and his staff were spending most of their time behind a desk and weren’t moving around enough. That, coupled with an unhealthy diet had caused many of them to put on excess weight.

Read More »

Peruvian Family Claims Possessed Doll Has Been Terrorizing Them for Years

A seemingly harmless doll has been dubbed the “Peruvian Annabelle” after the family that owns it claimed that they have been terrorized by it for the last seven years.

In a YouTube video that recently went viral, the Nunez family, in Callao, Peru, explain that they have witnessed various paranormal events connected to “Sarita”, a blonde, blue-eyed doll that they received seven years ago. Mother-of-three Ivonne Nunez said that it was a gift from a niece that has since died, and even though strange things started happening soon after the girl passed away, she just couldn’t bring herself to throw away the doll. It’s the last thing reminding her of her niece and sister-in-law, the latter of which reportedly took her own life in the same house they live in today.

Read More »

Vietnamese Woman Claims to Have Invented Safe Plant-Based Herbicide, Drinks a Bottle to Prove It

Phung Thi Hung, chair of Hanoi-based Cat Tuong Technology and Import/Export Company, recently shocked people in her home country after consuming a bottle of what she called a very effective plant-based herbicide, to prove that it was safe for humans.

The unusual demonstration took place on April 21, during a workshop on controlling pests and protecting plants with biological methods in green agriculture. Phung Thi Hung was presenting her company’s latest products, a line of herbal herbicides that are very effective in preventing the growth of weeds while being completely safe for humans. To prove her claims, the female entrepreneur took a bottle of red fluid, which she said was one of her new herbicides, and gulped it down in front of the audience. She was joined in her demonstration by Dr Nguyen Dang Nghia, director of the Southern Research Center for Soil, Fertilizer and Environment, who also drank a whole bottle of the stuff. They are both reportedly still breathing.

Read More »