A Russian man has surprised the medical community by claiming that a liver transplant from an African-American donor has made his skin darker!

It all started when 65-year-old Semen Gendler, an inventor from Krasnodar, was diagnosed with hepatitis C and cancer. He was told that his only hope of survival was a liver transplant, so he decided to fly to the United States for the procedure. “Doctors made it quite clear to me that if I didn’t have a liver transplant I would not live,” Gendler revealed.

“I do a lot of business in the US with partners in New York, and I asked him to help me arrange for the operation where if you have enough money it is possible to do it more quickly than in Russia,” he added. “Fortunately, I was able to afford the cost of the $500,000 operation. In Russia, I would have had to wait too long for a donor.” During the course of the operation, Gendler received the liver of a 38-year-old African-American man. He says that the transplant has saved his life, but then his friends and family began to notice something odd. As he recovered from his illness, his skin was turning darker.

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A homeless man in Moscow has steadily been building himself an army of followers online ever since he started video blogging in May. The self-confessed ‘bum-blogger’ says his videos are so popular because they “show you the Moscow you have not yet seen “.

Many of the homeless blogger’s videos have gone viral in Russia, and his YouTube channel – where he goes by ‘Zhenya Yakut’ – now has over 35,000 subscribers. His most-viewed videos have nearly half a million hits, and he has over 3,000 followers on Instagram. Yakut, 43, says he’s been homeless for five years now. Through his videos, he tries to give people the low-down about life as a homeless man in Moscow, including “where to eat for free, to sleep, to wash up, where to go, what to see.”

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Natalia Trukhina is a professional powerlifter from Russia. At just 23-years of age, she has already accomplished more than other athletes do in their entire careers, setting multiple bench press and armlifting world records as well as earning several world champion titles.

Natalia discovered her passion for powerlifting when she was 14 years old. She had always liked power and combat sports and was a very active child. However, she weighed only 40 kilograms at the time and started hitting the gym in order to gain a few extra pounds. The rest, as they say, is history. Now 23, Natalia Trukhina has grown from a scrawny girl into one of the most muscular women in the world. Her impressive figure and strength put most men to shame.

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Grigory Mamurin, grandson of Russian multi-millionaire Igor Neklyudov, is making waves for his bizarre display of wealth. The 16-year-old made a video of himself asking people to perform humiliating tasks like stripping in public and drinking his urine in exchange for huge sums of money. Most people walked away while some accepted the challenge, but one man was so angered by the suggestion that he punched the rich kid in the face.

The short video, shot in Moscow’s Gorky Park, has gone viral with over one million views on YouTube. It starts with Grigory sitting in his expensive Mercedes limousine, talking to his audience. “Today we have come to Gorky Park in order to find out how much humiliation people are ready to experience for the sake of money,” he says.

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While Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) matches generally incorporate striking and grappling techniques from a variety of other combat sports and martial arts, the use of medieval fighting techniques is unheard of. Until now, that is. St. Petersburg based MMA promotion M-1 Global plans to introduce a new kind of MMA events featuring sword-wielding knights in armor, called M-1 Medieval.

It all started when M-1 had the brilliant idea of staging medieval sword fights as filler during MMA events last year. The response was so phenomenal that they decided to make this unique form of mixed martial arts a permanent fixture. The first official M-1 Medieval division fight took place on April 10 in Moscow. “I liked the fans’ reaction when we did it for the first time in St. Petersburg at M-1 Challenge 50,” said M-1 president Vadim Finkelchtein. “They seemed to really like it. They were impressed and supported the knights. So, I thought it was worth continuing.”

“At the time, the knight-fight was to fill the pause between the undercard and main card fights,” he added. “If we find enough fighters to make enough fights, we will have a separate medieval show with its own weight categories, title fights and champions.”

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Located in the city of Chelyabinsk, in Russia, is a unique house built almost entirely of champagne bottles. The architectural oddity is the handiwork of a local resident, 52-year-old Hamidullah Ilchibaev. Fondly referred to as ‘Palace Oz’, the place is now a popular landmark in the region.

The idea for the house was not a random one – Hamidullah has always been interested in constructing things out of beer and vodka bottles. His children had always admired his work, and encouraged him to build a house someday. But he always thought it was impossible to do.

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If the claims of a group of Siberian entrepreneurs are to be believed, their new product might just give Viagra a run for its money. They aren’t selling another expensive pill, just a can of fresh air!

According to Vladimir Makuta, head of the local Tashtagol district, air from Azasskaya Cave and its surrounding area, which is where the fabled Yeti (a.k.a Bigfoot) was supposedly sighted on more than one occasion, is crystal-clear, full of goodness, and has a healing effect. It can apparently help strengthen immunity and positively impact mental state. But most importantly, it is said to works wonders for people who want to perform better in bed.

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Alexander Zhuikov, a student from Novosibirsk, Russia, was recently in the news for his highly realistic snow sculpture of a life-size tank. It took him a month to create the frozen masterpiece, which he later entered into a contest held by the makers of popular online game World of Tanks.

Alexander, 20, began his project by downloading various tank drawings from the internet. He chose a spot in his grandmother’s garden and with the help of his friends, he cleared the place by shoveling  about 20 tonnes of snow. He then set about building the snow machine and making a shield to protect it from the sun, using simple tools like spades, knives and trowels. He even created a self-propelled cabin that can be accessed through a hatch. Everything is made of snow, except for the rope, barrel, and other small parts.

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A group of hardcore pain addicts have taken Russian Roulette to the next level, by playing the game with tasers that shoot out 10,000-volt electric darts. Several pictures posted on Russian forums and social media pages show the competitors holding taser guns to each other’s heads or their own, ready to fire. Obviously, the goal of this bizarre new game is avoid getting shocked until only one competitor is left standing.

The game is named Perm, after the industrial city on the edge of Russia’s Ural Mountains, where it is currently practiced. Apparently, it was invented by former champion fighter Valery Eschenko while he was in the hospital, recovering from an injury.  Just as traditional Russian Roulette, Perm is a game of chance. Initially, each of the gun-like tasers contains only one live cartridge in the barrel of seven chambers, so there is a one-in-seven chance of a player experiencing a 10,000-volt shock, which players describe is a lot like getting punched really hard.

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A water main burst during an ice cold storm in the small Siberian town of Dudinka, causing the streets to promptly freeze into solid blocks of ice. The water that had burst out of several broken pipes flooded the streets, and subsequently froze as temperatures dropped to -40C during the night. When residents emerged from their homes after the storm was over, they found their town had completely frozen over.

Although several homes had no water or electricity during and immediately after the storm, many of the 22,000 Dudinka residents still had access to the internet, so they were able to share shocking images of their frozen streets on social media. Some of the photos show vehicles encased in four-foot thick ice, with only the tops visible, while others show massive icicles clinging to building exteriors.

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Although breathtakingly beautiful, Russia’s Lake Karachay is probably the last place on earth you’d want to choose for a lakeside retreat. Just standing next to the picturesque shore for an hour would give you a radiation dose of 600 roentgen, more than enough to kill you. At its height, the lake was putting out more than 200,000 times the normal amount of radioactivity, due to poor waste disposal practices.

Nestled deep in Russia’s Ural Mountains, close to the modern Kazakhstan border, Lake Karachay falls within the Mayak Production Association, one of the country’s largest (and leakiest) nuclear facilities. Built in the 1940s, immediately after World War II, Mayak was one of Russia’s most important nuclear weapons factories and was inaccessible to foreigners for 45 years. But when President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree in 1992 that opened up the area, visiting scientists who gained access immediately declared it the most polluted area on the planet. It seems that in its long period of obscurity, Mayak was the site of numerous nuclear-related accidents, some almost as devastating as the Chernobyl meltdown.

Nuclear engineers at Mayak apparently dumped radioactive waste into the nearby Techa river quite regularly. The watered down waste that they discarded rather carelessly was a mixture of radioactive elements such as Strontium-90 and Cesium-137, each with a half-life of approximately 30 years.

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Russia’s newest taxi is unlike any other you’ve ever seen – it’s actually an armored reconnaissance vehicle that’s been modified to roam the streets of St. Petersburg just like any other cab. Although it has been painted red, its military design and deactivated turret gun machine can hardly be camouflaged and the vehicle never fails to grab attention every time it passes by.

The BRDM-2 Combat Command and Reconnaissance Vehicle was manufactured in the Soviet Union between 1963 and 1989. Well known for its ability to negotiate any kind of terrain, the BRDM was armed with a 14.5 mm Vladimirov heavy machine gun and a 7.62 mm Kalashnikov’s tank machine gun.

The BRDM’s current owner has long since wanted to use it as a taxi, but city authorities refused to grant a permit at first. After a long licensing campaign, the authorities finally gave in, with certain conditions. They asked that the vehicle’s camouflage pattern be changed to something more civilian. That’s why the owner chose red, in order to differentiate it from the standard yellow taxi color. The BRDM taxi is also prohibited from entering certain streets in the historical center of St. Petersburg, owing to its large size and weight.

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Every day, heartbroken Masha, a brown dachshund, waits in vain at a Siberian hospital for her owner who died a year ago. Her sad tale mirrors that of the famously loyal Japanese dog Hachiko who waited for his master at a train station for 10 years. Owing to the similarities between the two dogs, Masha has earned the nickname ‘Russia’s own Hachiko’.

The sweet little dog has been visiting the Novosibirsk District Hospital Number One for the past two years, ever since her owner – a pensioner from the village of Dvurechie – was admitted. Masha was his only visitor – she would go away at night to guard their house and return to the hospital in the morning to keep the man company.

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On November 18, giant sinkhole measuring 100 ft across was discovered about two miles away from a mine in Russia’s Perm region. The gaping chasm is believed to have already swallowed up several homes and locals in Solikamsk now fear that the same could happen to their whole town.

The hole is believed to have appeared after the nearby Solikamsk-2 mine was flooded. Luckily, workers were evacuated and operations were halted before the appearance of the chasm, because of the inflow of saline water. Thousands of miners have now been asked to stay away as geologists assess the situation.

Uralkali, the company that owns the Solikamsk-2, is assuring people that there will be no catastrophic effects for the company or for the locals. Regional authorities agree that the hole could get bigger, but it would still be of no danger to the people. But that hasn’t stopped the crazy rumors – locals claim to have spotted missiles and even falling angels near the sinkhole.

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Believe it or not, the most happening party club in St. Petersburg is a bus! Well, not just any bus. The Barbus Maxi is a one-of-a-kind vehicle that’s been completely transformed to resemble a nightclub. It is Russia’s largest and most expensive party-bus, complete with a dance floor, lounge, fully stocked bar, and even a toilet.

In its previous life, Barbus was just an old Ikarus 280 public transportation vehicle. A few Russian entrepreneurs decided to give it a new lease of life – they completely took it apart, leaving only the frame intact. Then they proceeded to cover the exterior with a film of black-and-white images of pin-up models and urban landscapes of London and New York. The interiors were designed with a pop-art theme.

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