Long haul truck driving is generally seen as a man’s job, but Rino Sasaki, a young female truck driver from Japan, is challenging this stereotype and conquering social media in the process. Rino Sasaki grew up in Kochi Prefecture as the daughter of a long haul truck driver, but never really considered the idea of becoming one herself until seven years ago, when her father became sick. He continued working, but she couldn’t stand the thought of her father all alone on the road, thousands of miles away from home, with no one to care for him. So 21-year-old Rino, who worked as a traditional dance teacher at the time, got a truck driving license and decided to join her father on his long haul trips. She tried teaching her dance classes as well, but soon learned that driving thousands of miles around the country meant that she might not always be back home on schedule, so she eventually abandoned her old career and became a full-time truck driver. Read More »

Can you imagine wearing only one color every day for three and a half decades? Abou Zakkour, a 68-year-old man from the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo has become known as the Yellow Man after wearing only yellow for the last 35 years. The story of the Yellow Man of Aleppo started on January 25, 1983, when Abou Zakkour made the decision to only wear yellow, because in his eyes the color represented love. It’s unclear what he did with his old wardrobe, but from that day forward, Zakkour only wore yellow garments, including underwear and accessories like neckties and hats, as well as yellow footwear. Even his umbrella and smartphone cover are yellow. And when he couldn’t find something to match his attire, he simply took a bottle of yellow nail polish and painted the differently-colored item to fit his Yello Man persona. Read More »

33-year-old Alena Kravchenko, a real-life Rapunzel from Ukraine, had her last haircut at age five, 28 years ago. Today, Alena’s hair is around two meters long and the young Ukrainian claims that she sometimes trips on it. Alena’s mother had always told her that a woman’s feminine beauty stems directly from her hair, and she took her words to heart. The last time she allowed anyone to cut her blonde locks was 28 years ago, and today, even though her extremely long becomes problematic, she is still convinced that her mother was right. “There is nothing more beautiful in the world than a woman with natural, flowing hair,” Alena says. Read More »

Seeing Zhang Ziyu towering over her classmates at the Cultural East Road Primary School, in Jinan, China, it’s hard to believe that they are all in the sixth grade. The 11-year-old already measures 6ft 7in (210 cm), and many believe she is the tallest girl in the world. Zhang’s parents are both former professional basketball players, and they are both over 2 meters tall, so it’s pretty clear that genetics played an important role in her physical development, but reaching 210 cm by age 11 is still very unusual. Zhang has always been taller than all the other children, and one of her colleagues remembers that in the first grade, she already stood at 1.6m (5ft 3in) tall. That’s already considerably taller than the average Chinese sixth-grade girl (4ft 6in or 1.38m). Read More »

A 12-year-old boy from Thailand has managed to reach celebrity status and make enough money to build his family a new house by showing off his makeup and cross-dressing skills on Instagram. Nes (@nes_tyyy), a boy from Thailand’s Phang-Nga province, reportedly started playing with his mother’s makeup at a very young age, but instead of discouraging him, his parents not only supported his hobby, but also started giving him tips. Today, the 12-year-old boy has over 280,000 fans on Instagram alone and is able to support his family by posting makeup tutorials and photos of himself cross-dressing as a girl on the popular photo sharing platform. He recently made news headlines all over Asia after posting a photo of the new house he managed to build for his parents. Read More »

Pope Francis is generally considered the supreme leader of the worldwide Catholic Church, but to David Bawden, a conservative Catholic from Topeka, in Kansas, Francis and the five other popes who cam e before him are nothing more than frauds or ‘antipopes’. Interestingly, Bowen considers himself the one true pope of the Catholic Church. David Bawden was elected pope on July 16, 1990, in Belvue, Kansas, by a conclave of six people that included himself and his parents. He became Pope Michael, the self-proclaimed one and true pope of the Catholic Church, and he has spent the last 28 years attracting followers and performing his duties as the religious leader of billions of Catholics around the world, which includes holding prayer meetings and the performing the Stations of the Cross. To make himself known to the world, Pope Michael maintains his own website, is active on social media and has even appeared in a feature-length documentary. Read More »

Mariam Nabatanzi, a 40-year-old woman from Uganda’s Mukono District has been dubbed the African country’s most fertile woman after it was reported that she has given birth to 44 children. In her home village of Kabimbiri, central Uganda, Mariam Nabatanzi is known as Nalongo Muzaala Bana (the twin mother that produces quadruplets) and that nickname is well-earned. In the 18 years that she spent being pregnant throughout her 40 year life, the woman has given birth to six sets of twins, four sets of triplets, three sets of quadruples, as well as a few single births. Out of the 44 children that she brought into this world, 38 are still alive today, most of them still living at the family home. Mariam is a single mother, and although providing for such a large family, she somehow manages to put enough food on the table for everyone. Read More »

33-year-old Cai Yanqiu has spent the last three years of his life traveling through his home country in China with the sole purpose of helping homeless people in any way he can. Cai Yanqiu’s decided to dedicate his life to helping homeless people three years ago. He had set up a small stall in Zhanjiang, China’s Guangdong, and he was waiting for customers when he saw a barefooted homeless man pass him by. That man reminded him of the devastation caused by the loss of his brother, over two decades ago. In 1994, Cai’s brother who suffered from epilepsy, disappeared from the family home, and when he was finally found, 3 days later, he was in such a bad condition that he passed away in his family’s arms. Cai remembered his mother lying in bed for days morning the loss of his brother, and after doing some crying of his own after seeing the homeless man, he decided that he couldn’t just stand by and allow other families to go through what his did. Read More »

Hosts are considered the modern version of geishas in Japan. They are charming women who engage in a carefully choreographed performance designed to make clients feel like the most important person on Earth. But in certain clubs around Tokyo’s Kabuchiko district, the tables have turned; here it’s male hosts who cater to the needs of female clients, and there’s no one better at it than Roland, the so-called emperor of Japan’s male host industry. Like their female counterparts, male hosts work in specialized host clubs in Tokyo’s red lights district and have a very specific goal – to entertain their clients and encourage them to spend as much as possible on drinks. That’s how they earn a living and it’s also how they are ranked. Some clubs actually have posters of their male hosts displayed outside based on how much they managed to convince clients to pay the previous month. This usually involves a lot of drinking on their part as well, but Roland, the 25-year-old head manager of the Platina club and the hottest male host in the business, is a rare exception. He gets clients to spend huge amount of money without having to get drunk himself. Read More »

They are known as “McRefugees” or “McSleepers”, homeless or lonely people in Hong Kong who spend their nights at 24h McDonald’s restaurants, and their number is apparently growing at an alarming rate. Hong Kong is notorious for its obscenely expensive housing market and the inhumane cage-like dwellings that some of the island’s inhabitants are forced to sleep in. Some of these housing units lack basic amenities like running water and private toilets, not to mention air conditioning, so it’s no wonder that some people prefer to spend their nights at 24/7 McDonald’s restaurants. There were around 256 such “McRefugees” in Hong Kong in 2015, but data released earlier this year shows that their number has grown by 50% in the last three years and is predicted to keep on growing. Read More »

“The Lord of the Rings” is widely regarded as one of the most influential intellectual properties of all time. The fantasy genre as we know it today was almost single-handedly inspired by Tolkien’s epic novels, and has generated many fans across the globe. But Kimberel Eventide of Illinois has taken her love of Tolkien’s fantasy world to a whole new level. After reading and watching “The Lord of the Rings”, Kimberel began to identify as an elf. She is part of a growing community that describes themselves as “Otherkin”, or people who identify as something other than human. She also refers to herself as a Pleiadian Starseed. Not only does she believe she is an elf, but Kimberel also believes that she was sent to the earth to act as a “spiritual guide” for humans. Because she lacks elven features, Kimberel makes up for it with clothing and prosthetics: Read More »

In 1980, Portugal was shocked by the story of Maria Isabel Quaresma Dos Santos, a 9-year-old girl who had spent her entire childhood in a chicken coop, deprived of any human interaction and affection. Because of the effects growing up with chickens had on her behavior, Isabel became known as “Chicken Girl”. According to an article published by the Diário de Notícias newspapers in 1980, Maria Isabel Quaresma Dos Santos was born on July 6, 1970, on a farm in Tábua, in Portugal’s district of Coimbra. When she was only one year old, her mother, who doctors would later diagnose with severe mental problems, locked her away in the chicken coop, because she didn’t consider her as part of the family. Maria Isabel would spent the next 8 years of her life in this place, surrounded only by chickens and surviving on the same food as the birds – grains, cabbage leaves and whatever leftovers the family would feed them. Interestingly, Maria Isabel’s older brothers did not share her fate. They lived normal lives, slept in the family home, went to school and interacted with other children from the local community. It was later revealed that everyone in Tábua knew about the girl growing up in the Dos Santos’ chicken coop, but no one ever denounced the family to the authorities or try to help her in any way. Tábua was a small rural community in those times, and people focused on working in the fields instead of getting mixed up in the affairs of their neighbors. Read More »

Kalaca Skull, a 22-year-old tattoo artist from Colombia, has been making headlines all over South America for undergoing extreme surgical procedures to make his face look like a skull. Born Eric Yeiner Hincapié Ramírez, the young tattoo artist claims he had been fascinated by skulls ever since he was a child, but only started turning his face into one after his mother’s death, two years ago, because she didn’t approve of the idea. First, he had the lower half of his nose removed, because, well, skulls don’t have noses. They don’t have ears either so he had most of his ear lobes cut off as well. But his transformation didn’t stop there. After splitting his tongue and tattooing it to an unnatural blue-grey color, he had large black eye-sockets tattooed around his eyes, as well as large teeth and even the hollow space between the mandible and maxilla tattooed around his mouth. Read More »

Moses Lanham, a 57-year-old man from Michigan, has become known as ‘Mr. Plastic’ for his unusual ability to turn his legs along with his knees 180 degrees and walk backward. Mr Plastic discovered his superhuman ability when he was only 14-years-old. He was climbing a rope in gym class when he lost his grip and crashed to the floor, landing awkwardly. At first, he thought something was dislocated, but he soon realized that he could easily turn his lower legs 180 degrees and back again without experiencing any pain. Medical tests revealed that he was able to do this thanks to of double cartilage in his hips, knees and ankles. He has been using this gift to freak people out ever since. Read More »

When faced with hardships in their lives, many people find them too challenging and give up, especially on their life dreams. But not for Gabriel Heredia. Gabriel is a 20-year-old Argentinian barber who was born without hands. Despite his handicap, he was able to grow up happy and independent. He also always had the support of friends and family, never feeling discriminated at all by his schoolmates. In fact, his inspiration for such a line of work was his mother, who is a hairdresser. At the tender age of 14, he started working as a barber, and learned all the techniques to perfecting both haircuts and beard trimmings. Although he first saw it as a hobby, Gabriel quickly determined that this was the profession he wanted to work in. Read More »