Authorities in Cairo, Egypt, have come under fire for approving the construction of an “essential” highway bridge literally half a meter from several apartment buildings.

Egyptian social media has been abuzz over a new high-speed bridge currently under construction in Cairo’s Al-Haram district, for the simple reason that it is being built right next to a number f residential buildings on Nasr El-Din Street. And when we say “right next to”,  we mean that in the most literal sense, as the bridge is just 50 centimetres away from people’s homes. However, in a surprising twist, authorities announced that the bridge had all the necessary permits, and that it was the residential buildings that had been built without a permit. Therefore, an order for their demolition has already been issued.

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A Chinese family recently sued Chinese gaming giant Tencent after their two children were left fighting for their lives a after jumping off of a building to see if they would come back to life like their favorite video game characters.

The two siblings, aged 11 and 9, reportedly became addicted to popular video games Mini World and Game of Peace during the lockdown caused by the spread of the SarsCov-2 virus. Their parents had bought them a smartphone, and they would spend up to eight hours a day playing the two mobile games at the family home in Handan, China. On March 22, the two children jumped off of the family’s 50-foot-tall residential building to see if they would come back to life, just like their video game avatars. The pair were critically injured, breaking numerous bones, and required several surgical procedures.

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Idaho’s natural environment is famous for many things, including breathtaking beauty and fascinating wildlife, but perfect geometry isn’t among them. That’s why this photo of a forest area along Priest River taken from the International Space Station has been getting a lot of attention online.

In January of 2017, astronauts aboard the International Space Station shared a picture of what resembled a near-perfect chessboard pattern located in an area around Whitetail Butte in northern Idaho’s Bonner County. Apparently, the squares in this landscape are the result of a forest management technique dating back to the 1800s, where alternate one-square-mile parcels of land were granted to the US Government to the US Railroad and various other companies. This method ensured the sustainability of forest areas while also enabling logging operations.

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“A group where we all pretend to be ants in an ant colony” has to be one of the most popular and at the same time strange Facebook groups ever created. It’s basically 1.8 million people pretending they are ants and worshiping their queen.

Being stuck at home for weeks on end makes people do crazy and unusual things, and the rise of Facebook’s now famous “ant group” is a perfect example. Created in June of 2019, A group where we all pretend to be ants in an ant colony numbered a respectable 100,000 members in march of 2020, but then the Covid-19 pandemic started wreaking havoc everywhere prompting social distancing and isolation measures, and the number of members skyrocketed to over a million in less than two months. At the time of this writing, the Facebook group where everyone “worships the Queen and do ant stuff” has over 1.8 million members.

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Last month, South Korean television featured the bizarre case of a shoe repairman from Seoul who has been conditioning his body by banging his body and his head against a tree for the last five years.

Would you ever pick on a man after seeing him violently banging his forehead against a full-grown tree trunk? I myself would, steer away immediately, which is just what the hero of our story is betting on. Back in April, South Korean TV show X SBS WOW featured a shoe repairman from Seoul’s Sinchon neighborhood famous for banging his head and body against a tree every day. You’d think they had made up such a preposterous story, but this man has the forehead callus to prove that he has been doing a lot of head banging for quite some time.

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Looking at photos of Chinese cosplayer CROME拉面猫就是星空萌 dressed up as some of the most famous anime heroines, you would never guess that the person under all that makeup and female clothes is a man.

A former art teacher, CROME拉面猫就是星空萌 now works as a full-time cosplayer, regularly posting new photos and updates for his legion of online fans, attending events and working on new costumes. He reportedly started trying on women’s clothes in secret, in 2007; it was nothing fancy, he didn’t experiment with makeup at the time, and he didn’t tell anyone about it, but he considers those days the true beginning of his female cosplaying career. It wasn’t until 2012 that he was comfortable enough to go out in public dressed as one of his favorite anime characters.

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A 35-year-old Russian influencer got a lot of backlash after announcing her upcoming marriage to the 20-year-old stepson she helped raise for 10 years.

Marina Balmasheva, who rose to fame in Russia for documenting her weight-loss adventure online, is getting a lot of attention these days, because of her controversial new romantic relationship. Shortly after divorcing her 45-year-old husband, to whom she had been married for 1o years, the Instagram influencer announced that she was romantically involved with her 20-year-old stepson, Vladimir. The couple reportedly plan on tying the knot in the near future and having children of their own…

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Lee Su Jin, a 51-year old dentist from South Korea, has amassed quite an impressive online following thanks to her incredibly youthful looks.

The first time we featured Lee Su Jin on Oddity Central was back in 2016, when photos of her went viral on Asian social media, along with the heart-to-believe information that she was 48-years-old. It turned out her age was correct, and we subsequently learned that she was already popular in her native South Korea, having already appeared on several television shows. She has since solidified her reputation as a “goddess of eternal youth”, as the years keep rolling by, but she simply refuses to age.

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Asking to get the coronavirus might sound crazy anywhere but in Kibera, Kenya’s biggest slum, where a new hairstyle inspired by the spiky look of the SarsCov-2 virus has become a big hit.

With client numbers dwindling and their income collapsing, hairstylists in Kibera had to come up with ways to stay relevant, including finding solutions relating to the problem. In the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, some stylists found inspiration for new hairstyles in the shape of the deadly virus seen under a microscope. But it’s not just about the design; the new hairstyle is also cheaper than other popular styles – it costs less than $1, making it an attractive option for cash-strapped clientele.

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Most of us have to trim our toenails as soon as they become even slightly uncomfortable, but for “long nail beauties” like Arinda Storm Weaver that’s not an option, as their nails are the objects of desire for thousands of people around the world, and a valuable source of income.

The 58-year-old from Ohio used to work as an account manager at a manufacturing plant, but she accidentally discovered the world of LNBs (long nail beauties) 14 years ago and she never looked back. Weaver was blogging about her journey battling breast cancer in 2006, when she noticed that some of her readers were paying a bit too much attention to her long fingernails. She had always liked to take good care of her talons, growing them as much as possible, but she had never realized that there was a full fledged community of long nail enthusiasts willing to pay for the chance to admire them freely. Arinda eventually quit her job in 2008 and has been making a living selling videos of her six-inch-long toenails ever since.

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If you’re the kind of person who thinks drinking Coke every day is a sure way to an early grave, this 74-year-old woman who has been basically living on the popular soft drinks for four decades would like a word with you…

Back in February, South Korean YouTube channel X SBS featured the unusual story of a pensioner who has allegedly been drinking nothing but Coca Cola for the past 40 years. Interestingly, she isn’t one of those people who just can’t stand water, or who has been drinking Coke from a young age and could never be weaned off of it. Her Coke addiction is related to a traumatic event – the loss of her husband, the love of her life, at the age of 34. The woman said that she turned to Coke the way other people turn to alcohol to drown their sorrows, and only became more addicted to the drink even more after also losing her son in a traffic accident.

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Medical face masks may lower the risk of contacting the novel coronavirus, but they apparently also make it easy for people to pull a fast one on authorities by faking their identities.

This past weekend, 28-year-old Quintin Henderson was set to be released from the Cook County jail for a narcotics charge, but he instead decided to give his personal information to another inmate, 21-year-old Jahquez Scott, in exchange for a promise of $1,000. As all inmates were required to wear face masks to prevent infection with the SarsCov-2 virus, jail staff say it was easy for Scott to use Henderson’s full name and personal information as his very own ‘get out of jail free card’.

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A Chinese woman claims she has had to use a strip of tape to sleep at night after botched double eyelid surgery left her unable to completely close her eyes.

The woman, referred to by Chinese media only as Ms. Ma, reportedly paid 20,000 yuan ($2,800) for a double eyelid surgery at the Jimei Plastic Hospital in Zhengzhou, Henan province, in September of 2018. The cosmetic procedure artificially creates the Western style creases on the upper eyelids, and is very popular among Asian women who don’t naturally have them. Unfortunately, in Ms. Ma’s case, the procedure didn’t turn out as well as she expected it to, so she went under the knife for second time, only to have this procedure turn out even worse than before. The woman was shocked to realize that she was no longer unable to close her eyes completely.

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Andrea Emilova Ivanova, a 22-year-old woman from Sofia, in Bulgaria, has quadrupled the size of her puckers after undergoing her twentieth lip filler injection.

The young woman, dubbed a “real-life Barbie”, has already spent thousands of dollars on lip fillers, but claims she still wants to increase the size of her pout. She isn’t sure if hers are already the biggest lips in the world, but she admits that they must be among the biggest. Although she sometimes gets negative comments on social media because of her oversized lips, Andrea says she ignores the criticism, because hers is the only opinion that matters. And right now, she wants even bigger lips.

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Stunning-looking luminescent plants have become popular in science-fiction and fantasy films in recent years, but if the recent achievement of an international team of scientists is any indication, self-sustaining bioluminescent plants are already a reality.

In 2017, MIT researchers announced an important breakthrough in their quest to make plants that glow in the dark a reality, but their Plant Nanobionics only made watercress leaves dimly glow for about 3.5 hours. Late last month, a team of 27 scientists published a groundbreaking study documenting their ability to genetically tweak virtually any type of plant and make it sustainably luminescent throughout its entire life cycle. By inserting DNA obtained from bioluminescent mushrooms into the DNA sequence of plants, they managed to create plants that glow orders of magnitude brighter than previously possible.

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