For as long as he can remember, 57-year-old Jim Dunbar has never been able to make it to appointments on time. His friends and family always thought he was making excuses, but after a recent doctor’s appointment, for which he was a half-hour late, Jim was diagnosed with incurable lateness.

Jim Dunbar used to always tell people it wasn’t his fault he couldn’t make it on time for anything, but they never took him seriously. Even as a five-year-old he remembers constantly being late for school, football matches and holidays. As an adult he has left women waiting for him on first dates, lost several jobs, turned up to meals with his friends hours after the set meeting time and even showed up for funerals long after they had started. Recently, Jim tried to catch a movie at the local cinema, in Forfar, Scotland, and knowing his lateness might get in the way, he gave himself an 11-hour head start to make sure he got there on time. Dunbar knew the movie started at 7 pm, but despite his best efforts, he arrived 20 minutes late. After going through countless similar experiences, he finally decided to talk to a doctor about his problem. He was a half-hour late for his appointment at a Ninewells hospital, but he finally got an answer to the question that had been bugging him for a lifetime – “Why can’t I be on time?”

Read More »

Kyle Kandilian, a 20-year-old student from Dearborn, Michigan, has a very unusual hobby – he enjoys raising cockroaches as pets. His bedroom walls are decked with boxes and crates which hold around 200,000 roaches he breeds for fun and profit.

Kyle’s passion is probably going to bug a lot of people, seeing as most people tend to freak out if they so much as hear the word “cockroach”. But Kyle is not most people. Ever since he got to see and hold some Madagascar hissing roaches during a tech day exhibit at the University of Detroit Mercy, he has been fascinated with them. He came home that day and asked his mother if he could have one as a pet, but his mother looked him in the eye and said “Kyle? You are never bringing cockroaches into this house.” Today his bedroom is home to around 200,000 cockroaches from 130 varieties, and his parents are very supportive of his passion. Maybe “supportive” is pushing it a little, but Kyle agrees they are “very tolerant of his enthusiasm”. He is aware that cockroaches are usually a taboo topic, but says he has never tried to hide his hobby, instead talking openly and enthusiastically about bug passion in an attempt to change people’s perception of them. He claims only about a dozen of the 4,000 known species of roaches are actually pests, but they manage to give all of them a bad name.

Read More »

Architectural wonders erected on the rooftops of skyscrapers seems to be the latest constructions trend in China. Just days after the scandal involving a mountain villa built on the roof of a Beijing apartment building, a microblogger from Shenzen discovered a traditional private temple located atop a similar residential building.

According to several Chinese media reports, the mysterious temple constructed on the roof of a 21-storey luxury apartment building in the Nanfang district of Shenzen has been around for at least three years, yet nobody, not even the tenants know who it belongs to. The rooftop structure is surrounded by foliage, has glazed golden tiles and features traditional upturned eaves decorated with carvings of dragons and phoenixes. A fingerprint scanner, security cameras and dogs barking on the other side of a locked door prevent access to the temple, but neighbors say it’s often used for traditional Chinese religious practices, as indicated by the ashes of burned offerings that float down from the roof. The private temple, suspected to be yet another illegal rooftop structure, jeopardizes the structural integrity of the entire building, but tenants say their complaints have so far landed on dead ears.

Read More »

Sprayable Energy is a patent-pending invention that allows people to get all the energy benefits of caffeine without the dreaded coffee aftertaste. The spray is absorbed through the skin and distributed through the body over a period of several hours, giving the user a long-lasting caffeine buzz.

21-year-old Ben Yu and his partner Deven Soni have recently launched a campaign on crowdfunding platform Indiegogo for an innovative product called Sprayable Energy. The small plastic can contains an unscented, colorless formula that gives users that much needed boost of energy without the jitters and sudden caffeine crash. “Coffee didn’t work for me,” Yu told Inc.com. “When I ingest it, it’s like roller coaster ride of energy.” He decided to work on an alternative to the popular beverage in October 2012, while trying to get a degree in biochemistry. He started researching how nicotine patches worked, and like any young inventor, used himself as a test-subject for his experiments. His father, who holds a PhD in chemistry, also helped out, and after a lot of hard work, Ben came up with a special formula containing water, a derivative of the amino acid tyrosine, and caffeine that could be sprayed on the skin and offer the same energy buzz of coffee without the nasty taste and side-effects. Now all they needed was an extra $15,000 to develop the product line.

Read More »

A photo showing students of a renowned Bangkok university wearing strange headgear complete with side flaps to thwart cheating during a midterm exam caused quite a stir after it was uploaded to Facebook as a joke.

Teachers at Kasetsart University in Thailand have recently come under fire for making their students wear horse blinder-like devices made of paper to prevent them from cheating on their exams. A photo showing around 100 students wearing the rudimentary anti-cheating hats was recently posted on Facebook by the KU student board, where it got so many negative reactions that it was eventually removed. Unfortunately for the Thai learning institution the photo had already been picked up by the media and the negative responses just kept on coming. However, it appears the students were not pressured into wearing the paper blinders, in fact they were the one who suggested it. ‘‘It was an agreement between us. No student was forced to wear a hat. Instead, all were happy to do so and thought it was fun. They felt more relaxed during the test,’’ Nattadon Rungruangkitkrai, a lecturer at Kasetsart University, said during in a press conference.

Read More »

The things people will do to shed a few unwanted pounds. A woman from Iowa has reportedly swallowed a tapeworm she bought from the internet in order to drop a few pounds, thus proving the tapeworm diet is more than a myth.

You can buy a lot of crazy things online these days, and apparently the tapeworm is one of them. Back in 2009, reports surfaced that dieters in Hong Kong were ingesting giant intestinal roundworm eggs in a desperate attempt to lose weight, and according to a number of sources, tapeworm pills are legally available at a number of clinics in mexico. The tapeworm diet is officially banned in countries like the U.S. and Britain, but as a recent case revealed by Dr. Patricia Quinlisk, the medical director of the Iowa Department of Public Health, proves, that doesn’t mean it’s not still practiced by extreme dieters. According to Today.com, a woman from Iowa went to her doctor and told him she had bought a tapeworm pill from the internet and swallowed it to lose weight. Unsure of what to do in such a situation, the physician contacted the state’s public health department for advice. In her weekly email to state public health workers, Dr. Quinlisk provided a treatment option and talked about the dangers of this bizarre practice.

Read More »

Brent Sr. believes the apocalypse will be triggered by a strong electromagnetic pulse, or an EMP, that will take out the entire power grid, plunging mankind back into the Dark Ages. To prepare for the inevitable, he and his family are building a fortified castle complete with a drawbridge, portcullis and an underground bunker.

Atop a large foothill deep in the woods of North Carolina, a family of doomsday preppers are getting ready for the impending end of days. They are learning to use medieval weapons like crossbows and catapults, and building a fortified castle that will protect them from marauders and scavengers. Brent Sr., a retired infantry officer, got into doomsday prepping back in 1999, convinced that the predicted Y2K computer glitch would unleash chaos and bring about the end of civilization as we know it. Worried that the computers which controlled everything from electricity to natural gas would go down, he wanted to ensure his family’s safety if everything went dark. When that didn’t happen, Brent put the whole thing out of his mind for a couple of years because he didn’t want people to think he was crazy, but he eventually got back to the original plan. Only this time he has his whole family helping him.

Read More »

If you’ve ever wanted to drink your own face, now’s your chance. Taiwanese cafe chain, Let’s Cafe, uses a special latte printer that creates portraits of customers directly on their delicious caffeinated drinks.

Let’s Cafe is a chain of small kiosks offering “fast but good coffee” to shoppers on the go all around Taiwan. Faced with the challenge of competing with larger more established cafe chains, they had to come up with a truly original gimmick in order to attract customers. Let’s Cafe needed something not even big players like Starbucks could compete with, and they found it in the ridiculously accurate coffee printing machine. All users have to do is upload a photo from their mobile phone to the coffee dispenser machine and after the cup has been filled with the caffeinated beverage of their choice, the incorporated printer uses edible ink to sprinkle their photo on the milk foam. While talented latte artists do a great job of creating beautiful designs using rudimentary tools and a steady hand, there are certain limitations to their techniques, whereas this coffee printer is able to produce photo-realistic images.

Read More »

A Korean and American capital company in Honduras is being accused by union leaders and former employees of forcing its workers to wear diapers in order to increase their productivity. Company representatives have denied the allegations but an investigation is already under way.

Last Saturday, Daniel Duron, Secretary General of the General Confederation of Workers, denounced the violation of labor rights by Kyungshin-Lear Honduras Electrical Distribution Systems, accusing the company of forcing its employees to wear adult diapers to avoid going to the bathroom for their physiological needs. He added that the employer doesn’t actually supply the diapers for its workforce, but that the employees, especially the women, buy them themselves to avoid leaving their work posts and risk losing their jobs. Duron based his accusations on testimonies made by Kyungshin-Lear employees and urged authorities to investigate.

Read More »

Recently unveiled by Australian design firm Sibling, the Walking Shelter is a one-person tent stored within a pair of sneakers. The human shelter is neatly packed in a netted compartment covering the footwear and can be used pretty much anywhere.

They may not be the most fashionable sneakers out there, but you have to admit these tent shoes are pretty ingenious. Designed as a concept for shoe company Gorman, they are meant to provide instant shelter wherever and whenever it’s needed. “The Walking-Shelter is a human shelter stored within a pair of sneakers. Stored compactly in integrated net pockets within the shoe, the shelter expands out and around the body to form an enclosure that relies on the human frame as a supporting structure,” the shoes’ designers say. “The shelter accommodates for the body in a variety of ways and can be customized by the user to adapt to a variety of contexts and environments. This project was developed as a one-off prototype and auctioned off, with all proceeds going towards Little Seeds Big Trees.”

Read More »

Rahul, a three-month-old baby from Villupuram, India, is believed to suffer from a rare condition known as Spontaneous Human Combustion, which causes his body to burn without any external source of ignition. Only 200 similar cases have been reported around the world in the last 300 years.

Just nine days after he was born, Rahul was found burning by his mother, Rajeswari, who scampered to douse the flames. “People thought I set him on fire deliberately,” she told reporters, but since then her baby to suffer three more similar accidents. Instead of supporting the family, the community ostracized them, and Rahul’s father says they have lost everything as a result. Luckily, the district collector called the Kilpauk Medical College Hospital after hearing their story, and the baby was admitted last Thursday, and is being treated for severe burn injuries. His parents said they visited other hospitals before, but no one could tell them what causes his body to burst into flames for no apparent reason. Dr. R. Narayana Babu, head of pediatrics at KMC says “It has been scientifically documented that concentrated combustion air excreted from the body could result in such episodes. In elderly persons, heavy drinking could lead to the body excreting alcohol-like substance which could get ignited.” Due to an unknown mechanism, these substances are escaping the body without breaking down to non-combustible forms.

Read More »

Dr. Emil Chynn, a successful ophthalmologist who runs a Park Avenue LASEK eye surgery practice, is offering to fix up the face of whoever manages to fix him up with the girl of his dreams. There is a small catch, though – Chynn is probably the pickiest bachelor in New York.

Even after paying tens of thousands of dollars to various high-end matchmaking services, and even offering to make a $10,000 charity donation in exchange for a romantic introduction, Emil Chynn has yet to meet his dream girl. But he’s not the type to give up easily, so now he has come up with another outrageous compensation plan for would-be matchmakers. The New York doctor promises to offer his professional services to whoever manages to fix him up with girls that match his strict criteria. He recently attended a networking event where he exchanged business cards with virtually all the participants. After compiling an extensive mailing list he sent a mass email to his new containing the details of his bizarre reward system and the dating parameters matchmakers must abide by.

Read More »

40 years ago, during the Vietnam War, Ho Van Thanh was seen running into the woods with his then-infant son Ho Van Lang. They hadn’t been seen since, until a few days ago when two villagers accidentally stumbled upon their bamboo hut deep in the forests of Vietnam’s Quang Ngai province.

No one imagined Ho Van Tranh could have survived for 40 years, after he disappeared into the jungle in 1973. A bomb exploded in his home during the war with the United States, killing his wife and two other children, and eye-witnesses reported seeing him grab his two-year-old sun Ho Van Lang and running into the forest. But just a few days ago, the impossible happened. Two villagers from the Tay Tra district who had ventured 40 kilometers into the lush jungle looking for firewood noticed a strange bird-nest-like hut built in a small clearing, near a stream. Curious about its origin they decided to investigate and found two men living inside. The weak 82-year-old man could communicate in the in the Cor ethnic minority language, but his 41-year-old son, who was wearing a loin cloth made from tree bark, only spoke a few words. The villagers alerted the authorities who later confirmed the two mysterious jungle dwellers were indeed Ho Van Tranh and Ho Van Lang.

Read More »

Some folks seem to think blind people can barely perform the most mundane tasks without needing assistance, but Thomas Graham, a blind man with a vision, is proving them all wrong by building his dream house.

Thomas Graham, from Bullard, Texas, was blinded by a shotgun blast to the face when he was only 18 years old. He was in a dark place for a long time after that, until a neighbor gave him an old cane and with it the hope that he could still live a happy life and fulfill his dreams. He attended a rehabilitation institute in Austin, and took a class called Industrial Art, where a blind teacher taught him everything he needed to know about building things. “I noticed when I shook hands with him that he had all of his fingers so I figured it was okay to learn from him,” Graham remembers about his teacher. He had always had a hand for construction, but he didn’t have the eyes to go with it anymore, so he had to learn how to use all the usual construction tools without hurting himself. This April, after being laid off from his job at the East Texas Lighthouse for the Blind, Thomas finally decided to fulfill his lifelong dream of building his own home, and in just a month and a half he finished the entire wooden skeleton of the house.

Read More »

It’s not every day you get to see people dragging vegetables on a leash in the street. Unless you live in Japan, that is. Over the last year, photos of a well-dressed man walking all kinds of produce through Tokyo like they were pets have been surfacing on various social networks. Known as “Cornman”, he has become one of the human attractions of Japan’s capital city.

Until recently, no one really knew who Cornman was or why he was walking produce on a leash. The first known photo of him dragging an ear of corn outside a subway station was tweeted in May of 2012, and ever since then people started sharing pics of the elusive character with all kinds of produce, from cauliflower to radishes. There was a lot of speculation surrounding Cornman and the motives of his bizarre habit. Some people said he was crazy, others that he was just looking for attention, and there were those who claimed he was the loser of a batsu game (a competition or a bet where the loser has to do something embarrassing), but no one knew for sure. Then, a few days ago, Cornman appeared on a Japanese TV show and talked about himself and his produce pets.

Read More »