The Welsh village of Cyffylliog was “invaded” by bargain-hunting shoppers looking for a non-existent Aldi supermarket that internet trolls added to Google Maps as a prank. The “add a missing place” feature on Google Maps can be very useful when used correctly, but when abused by pranksters, it can cause headaches for entire communities. Case in point, Cyffylliog, a quiet Welsh village in Denbighshire whose inhabitants have seen a flood of confused shoppers looking for a “phantom Aldi supermarket” that only exists as a pin on Google Maps. Believed to have been added by a local internet troll, the listing has so far led thousands of people to a grassy field, tens of miles away from the nearest checkout lane. After a milk truck became stuck on a narrow village truck trying to deliver its cargo to the phantom Aldi, locals said that they have been visited by vans trying to deliver groceries and bread to the non-existent supermarket, as well as confused shoppers led there by their smartphones. Read More »

Russian police have been enforcing the country’s controversial anti-LGBT legislation by arresting people for dressing in ways that made them “look too gay”. “Trying to arouse interest in non-traditional sexual relations” has been considered a crime in Russia for over a decade, but the law was usually enforced against individuals and organizations that published and promoted LGBT “propaganda”. However, a recent analysis of court documentation by an independent news outlet revealed that the Kremlin’s strategy to promote ‘traditional values’ now includes detaining and fining people for “looking too gay”. The Russian news website Verstka revealed an incident that occurred back in February of last year but was never covered by the media in which eight individuals were detained by police for wearing clothing that promoted “non-traditional sexual relations”. Read More »

An Uzbek zookeeper tragically lost his life after going into the lion’s enclosure at a private zoo to film himself petting the large felines only to get mauled by them. On December 17, 44-year-old F. Iriskulov was working the night shift at a private zoo in Parkent, Uzbekistan, when he decided to impress his fiancee by filming himself going into the lions’ enclosure to pet three full-grown African felines. A short clip retrieved from the man’s phone shows him unlocking the lion’s cage and casually walking in while talking to the lions and addressing them by name. At one one point, the felines, which had been lounging on wooden pallets, become alert and approach the zoo keeper who continues to film, seemingly unaware of the danger he is in. The video cuts off with Iriskulov screaming as one of the lions attacks him. Read More »

A landlord in northern France is trying to force his tenants to leave in the middle of winter by removing the doors and windows on his property. In France, as in many European countries, it’s illegal to evict tenants in wintertime, even if they are behind on rent. However, one landlord in Pas-de-Calais, a department in northern France, is trying to skirt around the law by forcing his tenants to vacate the property without actually asking them to leave. On December 20, a team of workers arrived at the property and started disassembling the doors and windows under the pretext of replacing them. However, the tenants claim that they just loaded up the old doors and windows in a car and drove away, leaving them to brave the cold and face potential intrusion at all hours of the day and night. Read More »

A team of Texas high school students is being sued for allegedly forcing players to do up to 368 pushups in under an hour during a grueling training session that put their lives at risk. Former Rockwall-Heath High School coach John Harrell and a dozen assistant coaches stand accused of having junior varsity football players do nearly 400 pushups with no rest and no water breaks in a 50-minute training session that landed some of them in the hospital for several days. According to a lawsuit filed by one of the players’ parents, on January 6th, 2023, dozens of junior varsity players hoping to make the varsity team were punished for every mistake made during their 50-minute training session with 16 pushups. There were 23 mistakes counted, so they had to do a total of 368 pushups. Following the grueling workout, 26 players were diagnosed with or had symptoms of rhabdomyolysis, a potentially deadly medical condition that causes muscle tissue to break down and enter the bloodstream. Read More »

A 32-year-old Indian man admitted to cutting off four fingers on his left hand to avoid having to continue working as a computer operator at a relative’s company. Learning to say ‘no’ sounds easy, but for some people, it can be harder than crippling themselves for life. Case in point, a Gujarat man who staged an “accident” that left him missing four fingers on his left hand to avoid having to tell his boss that he wanted to quit his job. Earlier this month, Mayur Tarapara showed up at a police station in his native city of Surat to report that four mingers were missing from his left hand. He claimed to have been riding his motorcycle to a friend’s house when he suddenly felt dizzy and passed out on the side of the road. When he woke up 10 minutes later, four fingers on his left hand had been chopped off. Police initially believed that the man’s fingers had been stolen for black magic rituals, but their investigation found huge holes in Mayur’s story. Read More »

An Indian devotee who accidentally dropped his iPhone into the collection box at a Hindu temple while making a donation was told that the phone was now the deity’s property and could not be returned. Last month, a Chennai man who was visiting Arulmigu Kandaswamy Temple in Thiruporur with his family to offer prayers, felt his iPhone slip out of his pocket and into the hundial – a metal donation box – just as he was making offerings to the temple’s patron deity. The man, referred to only as Dinesh, approached temple officials and explained the incident, demanding that his handheld be returned. To his surprise, they refused, claiming that rules did not permit them to return anything placed into the hundial, willingly or accidentally, because it is the deity’s property. Read More »

A three-inch jawbreaker candy managed to live up to its name after causing a 19-year-old woman to literally break her jaw by trying to bite into it. Canadian student Javeria Wasim had seen videos of people biting into small jawbreaker candies, but she had never seen anyone successfully bite through a big three-inch jawbreaker, so she decided to try it. It turned out to be the worst decision of her life because she only managed to dent the outer layer of the hard candy when she felt a piercing pain in her lower jaw. The young woman’s friend then pointed out that one of her teeth was chipped and when Javeria checked it herself, she realized that another tooth felt wiggly when touched. At this point, the 19-year-old student could barely open her mouth without screaming in pain, so her friend called an ambulance. An X-ray later showed that the reason her tooth was wiggly was that she had fractured her mandible in two places trying to bite into the jawbreaker.

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An English vicar stands accused of ruining Christmas for a class of Year Six students by saying that Santa Claus didn’t exist and their parents were the ones putting presents under the Christmas tree. Last week, Rev Dr Paul Chamberlain was supposed to speak about the birth of Jesus in front of Year Six pupils from the Lee-on-the-Solent Junior School in Hampshire, England, but he somehow ended up talking about the existence of Santa Claus, a topic that many of the children weren’t ready for. He casually told the class that Father Christmas was not real and that it was their parents buying them presents and eating the cookies they left for Santa. Apparently, all this came as a shock for many of the kids, who started sobbing and later told their parents about the traumatic experience. The minister has since been forced to apologize to the children, their parents, and the school for his revelations. Read More »

Pet vending machines have been sparking heated online debates in China for months, but this controversial “unmanned economy” model seems to have an even darker side than meets the eye. We first featured China’s live pet vending machines back in May of this year when they were spotted in busy cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Back then, people were furious about having cats displayed in transparent containers barely large enough for them to turn around in, but according to recent reports by several Chinese news outlets, this business model has an even darker side. It’s hard to resist an adorable kitten meowing at you from inside one of these vending machines like it’s begging you to take it home, but it’s even harder when doing so costs nothing. That’s right, the cats in these ‘adoption boxes’ are free, even specimens of coveted breeds that would otherwise cost a few hundred dollars. But there’s a catch! Read More »

A 24-year-old Chinese man who got a skull tattoo on his face six years ago has been trying to get a job ever since. The unnamed man, referred to only as Mr. A by Chinese media, was recently featured by Morning Star News and shocked the entire country with his unusual look. The 24-year-old man claims to have been a rebellious youth who also struggled with depression and found refuge in his tattoos. He first started getting tattoos on his body, but six years ago, he made the radical decision to get a skull tattoo on his face. The design featured dark holes around his eyes and on his nose, teeth around his mouth, and a brain pattern on his shaved head. He was happy with it at the time, but quickly realized that the design was going to make it very hard for him to lead a normal life. Read More »

In a case that recently scandalized the Karnataka High Court, a woman filed a cruelty case against her husband, claiming that he cared more about their pet cat than about her. An Indian woman was scolded by judges in Bengaluru for filing a frivolous cruelty complaint against her husband in which she mostly complained that the man pays more attention to their pet cat than to her. Justice M. Nagaprasanna observed that no specific allegations of cruelty or harassment were made in the complaint. Instead, the plaintiff focused on the husband caring for their feline more than for her, claiming that whenever she confronted him about his behavior, they ended up arguing and hurling insults at each other. The wife apparently also complained about the cat attacking and scratching her several times and the husband doing nothing about it. Read More »

An Austrian couple who married and divorced each other a total of 12 times in the last 43 years is currently under investigation for financial fraud. Police in Vienna, Austria, are currently investigating the bizarre case of a couple who got married and then divorced 12 times over a period of 43 years in order to take advantage of a legal loophole that allowed them to receive substantial amounts of money. The elderly couple is suspected of having arranged every divorce strictly on paper so the wife could receive the 27,000 euro ($28,300) severance pay she was awarded after her first husband’s death in 1981. They took advantage of a loophole in Austrian legislation that allowed widows to retain the severance pay as long as she wasn’t married. Every two and a half years, she was to receive 2.5 times her annual widow’s pension, so every three years or so she and her second husband would divorce so she could receive the money, and then they would remarry. Read More »

A 22-year-old man spent three days trapped at the bottom of a 12-meter-deep well because villagers who heard his cries for help thought he was a wailing ghost and wouldn’t approach the well. It’s unclear what Liu Chuanyi, a young Chinese national, was doing in the forest on the border between Thailand and Myanmar, but he somehow fell into an abandoned well on the outskirts of a small village. Authorities believe he was trekking through the woods when he fell into the 12-meter-deep hole, sustaining serious injuries, like a fractured wrist and cerebral concussion. At first, he started shouting for help as loudly as he could, but as the hours passed, he realized he would exhaust himself quickly and diminish his chances of being rescued. He was right, he spent the next three days and three nights at the bottom of the well, with no food or water, and had he not saved his energy, he would have probably died there. Read More »

A Japanese man was recently admitted to trespassing onto other people’s properties over 1,000 times as a hobby because he found it thrilling and exhilarating. A couple of weeks ago, Fukuoka Prefectural Police arrested a 37-year-old man on suspicion of trespassing onto a couple’s property in the city of Daizafu. Little did the police know that this had hardly been an isolated incident and the man was a serial trespasser who had done it countless times for his personal enjoyment. During questioning, the man, identified as Yuta Sugawara, not only admitted to trespassing onto the couple’s property when he thought they were away but casually told investigators that this was a hobby of his and that he had trespassed onto other people’s properties over 1,000 times. Sugawara was apprehended by the victims of his latest trespassing attempt, who saw him on their land and chased after him when he ran. The man managed to immobilize the culprit while his wife called the police. Read More »