Woman Loses $820,000 Injury Insurance Claim After Winning Christmas Tree Throwing Contest

A woman who had filed an insurance claim of $820,000 claiming that she had suffered debilitating injuries in a car accident has had her claim dismissed after it was proven that she won a Christmas tree-throwing contest a year after the accident.

On February 3, 2017, Kamila Grabska was involved in a car accident on her way to work in the Irish town of Ennis. The car she was a passenger in was rear-ended, which allegedly left her with debilitating physical trauma. The 36-year-old mother of two recently told insurance company RSA Insurance for damages, claiming that the chronic pain in her back, neck, and thoracic spine made her unable to work, which resulted in a loss of income of more than €500,000 ($542,000). She told a High Court in Limerick that her pain kept her in bed on bad days and prevented her from carrying relatively light loads, like bags of groceries. However, they didn’t stop her from participating in, and actually winning Christmas tree throwing contests.

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Man Goes to Hospital for Gallbladder Surgery, Walks Out with Accidental Vasectomy

An Argentinian man got the shock of his life after undergoing what he thought was surgery on his gallbladder, only to later learn that the doctors had performed a vasectomy instead.

Earlier this week, 41-year-old Jorge Baseto went to the Florencio Díaz Provincial Hospital in Cordoba, Argentina, for a gallbladder surgery. The operation was scheduled for Tuesday, February 28, but due to circumstances out of his control, Jorge’s procedure was postponed to Wednesday. That is apparently the small detail that caused a viral malpractice scandal that has engulfed the whole country. On the day of the surgery, hospital staff came into the patient’s room, laid him on a stretcher, and without asking him a single thing or even checking his chart, they took him to the operating room. The doctors didn’t bother checking his chart either, so they just performed the type of surgery they had scheduled for the day, vasectomy.

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Skilled Chinese Makeup Artist Renders People Unrecognizable

A Chinese makeup artist known as Tuzi (Rabbit) has been getting a lot of attention on social media for her ability to completely transform her clients to the point where they are impossible to recognize.

Tuzi runs the Starlight Rabbit Portrait Studio in Yunan Province, but she gets most of her clientele from social media, particularly Douyin (China’s version of TikTok) where she regularly posts clips of impressive makeup transformations, where she either makes her subjects look decades younger than they actually are, turns them into heroes of Wuxia tales, or simply makes them unrecognizable. Over the years, she has had collaborations with fellow influencers and celebrities, including celebrities, actors, and singers.

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Man Impersonates Police Officer to Help Sister Cheat on Exam

An Indian man was arrested for wearing a police uniform and impersonating a police officer to help his sister cheat on her 12th standard exam.

The Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) exams, a pivotal moment for students across India’s Maharashtra state began on February 21, and we already have a viral cheating scandal. A 24-year-old man entered the Shahbabu Urdu High School in the town of Patur wearing a khaki police officer uniform with a very clear goal – to help one student pass the tough exam by passing her cheat sheets. Anupam Madan Khandare thought he had it all figured out when he got his hands on a realistic police uniform. He planned to infiltrate the examination center under the pretext of supervising the students and give his sister the information needed to pass the exam. Only things didn’t really play out as planned.

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Rare Disease Renders Mother Unable to Bear the Sound of Her Beloved Children’s Laughter

An English woman suffering from a rare condition known as painful hyperacusis says that everyday noises, such as her children’s laughter, her friends’ voices, and even music cause her paralyzing pain.

Until 18 months ago, Karen Cook worked as a cabin crew and lived a perfectly normal life with her husband and their two boys. But then she started experiencing something strange and painful. Most of us shudder at the thought of losing our sense of hearing, but what if that same sense was amplified by orders of magnitude, making everyday sounds, no matter how soothing, impossible to bear? That’s what Karen started experiencing in 2022 when her hyperacusis suddenly set in. All of a sudden, sound became torture for her. The voices of loved ones, chatting with friends, or listening to her favorite music caused her unbearable headaches to the point where she began to isolate herself just to make them stop.

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Man Tries to Hide Stolen Horse in His Third-Floor Apartment

A 19-year-old man faces three months to five years in prison for stealing a horse and trying to hide it in his apartment on the third floor of a residential building.

When police officers in Wejherowo, Poland, received an emergency call about a man trying to lead a horse to the upper floors of a local apartment building, they thought it was a clever prank. However, the person on the other end of the line was not laughing. They insisted that there was a grown horse on the staircase of their building making its way up, and the residents needed police assistance. Police reluctantly sent out a crew to investigate, but they were shocked to find that the caller’s story checked out. There was indeed a full-grown horse being led to the upper floors of the apartment building by a young man who appeared to be arguing with disgruntled neighbors trying to stop him.

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Company Creates Miniature Sports Cars Models That Cost More Than Real Cars

UK-based company Amalgam specializes in miniature models of iconic sports cars that feature all the features of their full-size inspiration down to the tiniest elements and have a price tag to match.

Founded in 1995 in Bristol, UK, Amalgam has built a reputation for building the most detailed miniature car replicas in the world. By maintaining close relationships with top manufacturers like Ferrari, Lamborghini, or Aston Martin, the company has access to the original CAD data and engineering drawings of the vehicles they replicate, as well as to their paint codes and color samples. Amalgam also uses high-resolution photos and digital scans to recreate each vehicle perfectly. Every one of the company’s 1:8 scale replicas takes between 250 and 450 hours of painstaking work to complete, hence the eye-watering price tags which can reach $30,000, depending on the model.

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Polish Mint Creates World’s First Levitating Coin

UFO MP-1766 is the world’s first levitating legal tender. It was commissioned by the Cameroon National Bank and created by Mennica Polska, the Polish Mint.

The name of this innovative coin was inspired by its likeness to a flying saucer and its ability to slowly rotate in the air like an alien spacecraft. The number 1766 reflects the founding date of the Polish Mint as well as the coin’s denomination, 1,766 Cameroonian francs ($2.91). As you can probably guess, although it can be used in Cameroon as legal tender, the value of this tiny wonder of engineering is considerably higher than its official denomination. With a limited mintage of only 510 units worldwide, the UFO MP-1766 has a pre-order price of over $1,000. The prototype coin was unveiled at last week’s Technical Forum in Berlin and will be available this upcoming spring.

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Suni and the Seven Princesses, South Korea’s Rapping Grandmothers

Suni and the Seven Princesses is a popular rap group made up of South Korean grannies in the 70s and 80s trying to take the entertainment industry by storm.

A group of elderly women from rural Chilgok, a county in South Korea’s North Gyeongsang province, is making international headlines for their meteoric rise as rappers. Suni and the Seven Princesses only debuted in August of last year, but the unusual rap group is now known all over the world. It makes sense if you think about it. After all, it’s not every day that you see a bunch of grandmother wearing baggy clothes and chains around their necks, and rapping about their rural lifestyle, especially in rural South Korea.

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Man Allegedly Pays Someone to Cut Off His Legs for Insurance Fraud

A Missouri man allegedly tried to commit insurance fraud by paying someone to cut off both his legs and stage a tractor accident to cover it up.

The Howell County Sheriff’s Office recently investigated the most bizarre case in its history. In November of last year, a 60-year-old man from Willow Springs lost both his legs after allegedly suffering a brush hog accident. The brush hog is a rotary mower usually attached to tractors, and the man claimed to have had both legs accidentally cut off by one. However, there were a few holes in the man’s story. First of all, he had literally lost his legs, as in they were nowhere to be found, which was bizarre for this type of accident. Then there was the fact that the man’s wounds were too clean to have been caused by a brush hog. And finally, the man was a known paraplegic, which raised questions about how he had managed to find his way in the way of a tractor-operated brush hog.

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Gang of Senior Armed Robbers in Their 60s and 70s Arrested in Italy

A gang of six alleged armed robbers led by senior citizens in their 60s and 70s have been arrested in Italy after carrying out several armed burglaries at post offices in Rome.

70-year-old Italo De Witt, nicknamed “the German”, Sandro Baruzzo, 68, and 77-year-old Raniero Pula look more like harmless grandpas than hardened criminals, but appearances can be deceiving. Italian prosecutors claim that they were the leaders of a ruthless gang of armed robbers that specialized in Rome post offices. The gang had a very clear structure, with the three elderly gentlemen at the top, and three other experts, a key maker (66) to breach the various locks, and two bricklayers (51 and 56 years old) who handled “the hole” through which the gang entered the post offices. All members had criminal records, but the leaders had particularly impressive records that went back all the way back to the 1970s. Apparently, some people never change.

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World’s Most Frugal Millionaire Rummages Through Trash Cans for Food

An 80-year-old German man has been dubbed the world’s most frugal millionaire for living off food and stuff found in dumpsters despite owning several properties worth millions of euros.

Heinz B. looks like a homeless person with nothing to his name, but appearances can be deceiving. The German man may only have €15 euros ($16) in his bank account at the moment, but that’s only because he just withdrew 700,000 euros ($756,000) to buy a new home, his tenth. The 100,000 euros left over was transferred to a fixed-term deposit to generate interest. He might not look like much, but the octogenarian is worth several millions of dollars and knows how to increase his fortune. Besides, he claims to have been frugal his whole life, so he doesn’t really need money to get by. He is more than happy living on food found in dumpsters and hoarding all sorts of things other people throw away.

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Thai Students Advertise Ghost-Free Home Certifying Service

A couple of enterprising students from Thailand have come up with an innovative business strategy – sleeping in problematic houses and apartments to certify that they are free of ghosts and paranormal phenomena.

21-year-old Wifei Cheng, a Thai-Taiwanese student at Rajamangala University of Technology Lanna in Chiang Mai province, knew about the problems realtors had selling properties where deaths had been reported in the past, and decided that there was a market for ghost-free home certifiers. And who better for the job that himself and his colleague and associate, 22-year-old Sretthawut Boonprakhong? The pair recently started advertising their services on social media, offering to sleep in problematic houses and apartments and then issue ghost-free certificates to put buyers’ and renters’ minds at ease.

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Russian Tattoo Artist Detained for Hurting the Feelings of Christians with Her Tattoos

A young tattoo artist from St. Petersburg, Russia, was recently detained for insulting religious believers with controversial tattoos featuring Jesus Christ, the cross and other Christian symbols.

Daria Krichker is facing up to one year in jail for her crimes. According to the Orthodox activist group that filed a complaint against her, she has committed “repeated gross blasphemous acts against Christ, the Mother of God, and the saints of the Church,” which “cannot be tolerated on Russian soil. It all started earlier this month when photos of a tattoo reportedly inked on Krichker’s own calf went viral on social media. It showed Jesus on the cross having an orgasm, which isn’t the kind of creative work that religious people would appreciate. It’s weird, many would describe it as disgusting, but in Russia, such a tattoo can literally land you behind bars.

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Woman Fakes 17 Pregnancies to Collect Maternity Benefits and Skip Work

An Italian woman stands accused of faking no less than 17 pregnancies – 12 natural abortions and 5 false births – over the last 24 years, to receive 110,000 euros ($120,000) in maternity benefits.

50-year-old Barbara Ioele has had an unusual number of pregnancies over the last 24 years, which have resulted in years of maternity leave and a small fortune in state-paid benefits. According to documents filed by the woman, she went through 17 pregnancies, 12 of which unfortunately couldn’t be carried to term. The other five allegedly resulted in the birth of healthy babies named Benedetta, Angelica, Abramo, Letizia, and Ismaele, only there is no record of them ever being registered, and no one has ever actually seen them. Barbara allegedly birthed her youngest child in December of last year, but now authorities claim she had been under surveillance throughout her late pregnancy and they have proof that she was never pregnant. They are also accusing her of having faked all 17 declared pregnancies to receive over 110,000 euros in benefits and get time off from work.

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