They say time heals or wounds, but that’s definitely not true. Just ask Paul E. Donovan Jr., who admitted to repeatedly vandalizing the tombstone of a childhood friend against whom he had been holding a grudge for over five decades.

69-year-old Donovan, of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of institutional vandalism of a cemetery, last week. He had been arrested and charged with theft and vandalism in November 2015, after police identified him as the perpetrator of “at least four” acts of vandalism against a single tombstone in the Saint Matthews Cemetery in Whitemarsh.

The investigation in this truly bizarre case began in march of 2014, when a woman reported that her father’s tombstone had the name “John” written over it in orange spray paint, according to the criminal complaint. On April 29, 2014, the same tombstone was vandalized again with the same name in the same color spray paint, the woman told Whitemarsh police. Then, in December, a third complaint revealed that someone had poured a “tar-like substance” over the tombstone, which prompted police to set up hidden cameras to catch the vandal in the act.

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According to an increasing number of YouTube videos and social media posts, one of the easiest, most effective way to whiten your teeth is to brush them with pitch-black activated charcoal. It sounds like somewhat of a paradox, but some users claim a single brushing can have amazing results.

Activated charcoal has long been used in medical settings to treat poisonings and drug overdoses. Unlike the charcoal we use for barbecues, this stuff is created when carbon is treated with an oxidizing agent, which results in a fine dust with millions of pores and an immense surface area. It’s these pores that give activated charcoal its sponge-like qualities, reducing the body’s absorption of toxic substances by an estimated 47 percent. It’s not the most specific absorber of substances,though, meaning it will absorb both good and bad substances in your stomach, but as long as you consume lots of water after ingesting it, you should be fine.

But while the toxin-absorbing properties of activated charcoal are well documented, its recent uses as an edible food ingredient and teeth whitening agent are not. No charcoal-based teeth whitening products have been evaluated and accepted by the American Dental Association (ADA) until now, but that hasn’t stopped proponents from recommending it as an excellent all-natural way to get a shinier smile.

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Convinced that smartphones are ruining our social lives as well as the pub experience, the owner of a newly-opened bar in Brighton, England has decided to get people socializing the old-fashioned way by disabling their cellphone reception.

Instead of texting, checking emails or browsing the internet, patrons of the Gin Tub bar will have to pass the time by actually interacting with their friends, dates or even complete strangers. Owner Steve Tyler could have simply asked guests not to use their phones in his bar, but instead of banning them, he opted to disable them completely. The Gin Tub has a Faraday cage built into its ceiling, which makes getting a reception inside the venue impossible. He says it was the only exception in Britain’s 2006 Wireless Telegraphy Act that otherwise outlaws the use of signal blockers. So yes, it’s 100% legal.

“Mobile phones have killed pubs. When you go out socially, you don’t need social media,” Tyler says. “Rather than telling people they can’t use they phones we’ve basically disabled them.” He makes sure to clarify that the Faraday shield doesn’t jam phone signals, as that would be illegal. Instead the 19th-century device prevents the signal from getting inside.

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Located 6,463 feet above sea level in the middle of the Swiss Alps, the Null Stern concept hotel takes the minimalist approach to the extreme, removing the walls, roof, basic amenities like toilets and leaving guests with just a king-size bed and a stunning 360-degree view to admire.

It might seem rudimentary, but setting up the Null Stern hotel room way up in the mountains actually required a bit of work. A construction crew, including an excavator, had to first flatten the terrain, before the bed, nightstands and bed lamps could be installed. I suspect having them transported through what looks like very rough terrain was no walk in the park either. So why go through the trouble?

Null Stern hotel co-founder Daniel Charbonnier says the goal was “to put the guest at the center of the experience and to focus on the intangible by reducing everything else to the minimum.” So they skipped building the walls and roof of the room, as well as the bathroom. That last one may be a big problem for a lot of people, but Null Stern mentions that there is a public bathroom available 10 miles down the mountain.

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A group of political activists known as The Satanic Temple has announced its intention to establish After School Satan Club programs in public elementary schools in the United States, in an effort to compete with after school religious programs supported by various Christian evangelical groups.

And before you flip out, Satanic Temple leader and co-founder Doug Mesner assures parents that the already controversial after-school program will involve no demon summonings, Satan worshiping or any kind of satanic rituals. After School Satan Club meetings will include a healthy snack, literature lesson, creative learning activities, a science lesson, puzzle solving and an art project. Sounds pretty tame, and Mesner explains that the whole point of the program is to offer young kids an alternative. “It’s critical that children understand that there are multiple perspectives on all issues, and that they have a choice in how they think,” said Mesner, a.k.a Lucian Greaves.

Despite its name, The Satanic Temple doesn’t encourage the worshiping of the fallen angel, in fact it doesn’t even believe in the existence of a supernatural being that other religions refer to as Satan, or Lucifer, or Beelzebub. The group rejects all forms of supernaturalism and instead promotes scientific rationality. So why use Satan? Simply as a metaphor, a symbol against all forms of tyranny over the human mind. Yes, that obviously includes organized religion.

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The California pipevine swallowtail is considered by many experts to be one of the most magnificent butterflies in North America, but the massive development around San Francisco has caused it to slowly disappear. However, one man’s DIY conservation efforts are bringing this beautiful creature back.

Tim Wong, a young aquatic biologist at the California Academy of Sciences, spends his free time raising butterflies, a hobby he fell in love with as a young boy. “I first was inspired to raise butterflies when I was in elementary school,” Wong told VOX.com. “We raised painted lady butterflies in the classroom, and I was amazed at the complete metamorphosis from caterpillar to adult.” Tim used to spend his days in the open meadows outside his home catching, raising and breeding any butterflies he found.

When he got older and learned about the pipevine swallowtail becoming increasingly rare in the San Francisco are, Wong made it his goal to do something about it. Researching the species, he found that while in caterpillar form, it feeds only on a single plant – the California pipevine – which, he realized, had become equally rare around San Francisco.

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Wang Xiaojiu, a 31-year-old barber from Jilin city, China, doesn’t simply sweep shorn hair off the floor of his hair salon and dump it in the trash. At least not before painstakingly arranging it to create highly detailed works of art.

Seen from a far, Wang’s masterpieces look drawn with a pencil or charcoal, but a closer inspection reveals that they are made out of carefully arranged clipped hair. The talented barber told China Daily that he always thought throwing away leftover hair seemed like a pity, so one day he decided to do something creative with it instead. Armed with a hair brush and a plastic card, he started the piles of sheared hair on the floor of his salon into intricate portraits of popular cartoon and comic characters and, mythological heroes, and more.

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A man from the Russian city of Perm recently made national headlines for cutting his own eyes in search of micro surveillance equipment and posting a video of the gruesome procedure online.

Alem Kulakhmedov’s story sounds like the topic of a modern cyber-surveillance thriller. A few months ago, he started experiencing bizarre symptoms like eye pains, stomach sickness and extreme tiredness. Alem says he went to see a doctor, but he couldn’t find anything that would explain his symptoms. This gave him some peace of mind and for a while, he managed to ignore his problems, but only until they started getting worse. The man recently told REN TV that he began losing consciousness for more than a day at a time. Whenever he woke up, he would find multiple scars on his body that looked like healing cuts.

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At just 26 years old, Tony Greenhand is considered the master of artistic joint rolling. From smokable renditions of Pokemon and popular superheroes, to birds and dinosaurs, there is virtually no shape that he couldn’t roll a joint into.

Greenhand has been a crafty guy for as long as he can remember, but he wasn’t always good at rolling joints. His first attempt, as a teen living in rural Washington state, was a total disaster. It was supposed to be a basic cone-shaped joint, but after living too much saliva on the rolling paper, it turned out hideously deformed. He remembers feeling pretty humiliated, but he didn’t let the experience bring him down. He bought an ounce of weed and spent an entire weekend rolling up every last bit of it. By Sunday night, he had mastered the conical joint, but that was only the beginning.

After dropping out of high-school, Tony became more involved in the underground weed business, and his reputation for perfect rolls made him the go-to guy for joints among his grower friends. He soon started experimenting with more complex shapes, and he says that his first creation was a “non-spectacular” rocket. Soon he was creating alligator or dragon-shaped joints, and after a friend urged him to post a photo of a pipe-shaped joint on Reddit – a site he had never even heard of – he managed to blow the minds of potheads who never knew artistic joint rolling was actually a thing.

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41-year-old Peter Cirk, from Holland, was recently hospitalized after spending 10 days at Changsha Airport, China, hoping to meet a Chinese girl he had met online.

Cirk had met his 26-year-old love interest known only as Zhang on a social network, 2 months ago. The two apparently hit it off, and sick of having 4,500 miles between them, the Dutchman decided to apply for a Chinese visa and go meet Zhang for the first time. He told her he was coming, and even sent her a photo of his travel papers, but when he arrived at Changsha airport, she was nowhere to be seen.

Convinced something was holding Zhang off, but that she would eventually arrive to meet him, Cirk decided to wait for her in the airport. Photos gone viral on Chinese social media show the Dutchman patiently waiting on one of the benches, barefoot and with his baggage by his side. With each passing day, his hopes of meeting his Chinese sweetheart deteriorated, and so did his health. After 10 days spent in Changsha airport, Peter Cirk was exhausted and had to be hospitalized. One photo shows him being taken away in a wheelchair with an IV drip in his arm.

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Pedro Luca, a 79-year-old man from Argentina is what you would call a 21st century caveman. He has been living in a grotto high up in the mountains of Tucuman Province for the last 4 decades.

Pedro says he had always wanted to live isolated in the middle of nature, even as a young boy. He was born and raised in San Pedro de Colalao, a small town about three-hours walking distance from his current home, but left home at 14 to make a living by transporting coal to Bolivia. When he cam back, 40 years ago, he decided to go through with his childhood dream, and set up camp in a mountain grotto, where he has been living ever since.

“Alcohol and violence can ruin a man,” Pedro says, remembering his days spent in civilization. “I prefer the wild. Now my only family are the animals.” He shares his cave home with 11 chickens and 2 goats who roam the mountainside all day long and return to the cave at nigh, seeking shelter from mountain lions and other predators living in the area.

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Jarvis Chimenes Pavao, considered one of the most dangerous drug traffickers in South America, was serving an 8-year sentence in Tacumbu Prison, when police raided his cell to find it was actually a luxury suite.

Pavao was due to complete his sentence for money laundering next year, at which point he was likely to face extradition to his home country of Brazil, but Paraguayan police recently learned that he planned to escape by blowing a hole in the prison wall. To prevent Pavao from pulling an “El Chapo”, they raided his cell only to find that instead of an austere room, he was living in a luxurious three-room suite complete with air-conditioning, private bathroom, conference room, kitchen, library and multiple flat-screen TVs.

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The SymGym may look like a combination between a rowing machine and a stair stepper, but it’s actually a revolutionary video game controller that allows gamers to get a full body workout while doing what they love most.

Chicago-based startup SymGym describes its innovative device as “a resistance-based game controller and gaming platform” that adjusts the level of resistance according to gameplay. The joysticks and buttons are replaced with levers and pedals that you have to either push or pull to play the game. For example, if you have to walk uphill in a video game, pushing the pedals is going to be significantly harder than when walking on flat terrain. Picking heavy objects in the game is also going to require more strength when operating the levers than say pushing a door open.

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In the Western world, when a wife finds out her husband is having an affair she they either confronts him directly about it asking him to stop, or just gets a divorce. But things are a bit more complicated in China, due to the social stigma and financial burden associated with divorce, so an increasing number of women are turning to companies specializing in driving away mistresses. Introducing the “mistress dispellers”.

It’s not uncommon for Chinese businessmen and high ranking officials to signal their status by maintaining a mistress, and with the country’s economy growing at a rapid pace, it’s no wonder that “mistress dispeller” services that combat cheating are becoming very popular. For a considerable fee – typically starting in the tens of thousands of dollars – these companies will coach scorned wives how to strengthen their marriage while employing a variety of tactics to drive away the problematic mistress.

While it may sound like a scam to cheat the poor wives out of serious sums of money, mistress dispellers, or “xiaoshan quantui”, are apparently very good at what they do. Shu Xin, director of  Weiqing International Marriage Hospital Emotion Clinic Group, a mistress dispeller company based in Shanghai, says that every case starts with thorough research on the mistress. An investigation team will analyze her family, friends, education, job and daily habits looking for any information that could help them meet their goal.

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Hypnosis has been used to treat conditions like anxiety and pain, but Los Angeles hypnotherapist and mother of three Lisa Machenberg says it can be a very effective parenting technique. She’s even given her unusual method a name – hypno-parenting.

Machenberg first started using hypnosis on her children to help them get through the night without wetting the bed, but has since then used the clinical technique to aid them deal with things like performance anxiety or focusing difficulties. The Malibu-based therapist also admits to using hypnosis on her kids and husband in order to make sure things run smoothly around the house. “I hypnotize my children and my husband to do things for my benefit all the time,” she recently told Barcroft Media. “We have a household to run. Many times, I exert influence so my children are able to get their chores done, so this house runs efficiently.”

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