A 71-year-old man from Brazil’s Tocantins region was pronounced dead in 1995, based on the testimony of his ex-wife and two witnesses. He spent the next 28 years of his life legally dead…

On August 16, Manoel Marciano da Silva finally had his death certificate annulled after a two-year-long court battle. To the Brazilian authorities, he had been dead and buried in the public cemetery of Augustinópolis, in Tocantins, for 28 years, but this only became a problem for the man himself about two years ago, when he couldn’t collect his pension and couldn’t get access to free healthcare, based on his insurance. That’s when he started investigating his ‘death’ and learned that it had been his ex-wife and two witnesses who had declared him dead to authorities.

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An 8-year-old Bolivian boy ended up in the hospital after allowing himself to be bitten by a dangerous black widow spider in order to become like his favorite superhero, Spider-Man.

The incident occurred in the municipality of Vichuloma, near the city of Oruro, in Central Bolivia. The 8-year-old child, whose name has not been revealed by the media, was reportedly playing near a river close to his house when he turned a big rock and discovered a black widow spider. Without realizing the consequences of being bitten by a highly-poisonous spider, he grabbed the arachnid and put it on the back of his hand, in the hopes of being bitten. He got his wish, and then headed home, where he began experiencing symptoms like body aches and intense muscle spasms. Initially, the boy didn’t say anything to his mother about the spider bite, but after about three hours of agony, he said that he had been bitten by a colorful spider.

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A Chilean man was kicked out of the house by his family after the Civil Registry Office mistakenly registered him as the father of two Venezuelan children whom he had never even met.

Up until the beginning of this month, Leonardo Sepúlveda Rodríguez, a middle-aged man from Santiago, Chile, had enjoyed a peaceful and fulfilling life alongside his wife of 30 years and their two children. However, everything came crashing down on July 5th, when his son went to the local Civil Registry Office to get some documentation required for Family Court and learned that Leonardo had recognized two Venezuelan children as his own. The son called Sepúlveda Rodríguez to confront him, but he was just as dumbfounded. He had never even traveled abroad, let alone conceived two children in Venezuela, but despite his best attempts to prove his innocence, his wife asked him to move out of the house.

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Four siblings, aged 13, 9, 5, and 1, miraculously survived a plane crash in one of the most remote areas of Colombia, and then 40 days alone in the Amazon jungle.

On May 1st, 2023, a small Cessna 206 airplane en route to San Jose de Guaviare suffered an engine failure and crashed deep in one of Colombia’s most remote and dangerous regions. Three adults, including the pilot, died in the crash, but the four children on board miraculously survived. However, they were stranded with little to no supplies, in a jungle filled with dangerous snakes, spiders, and mosquitoes, where members of the ex-Farc military group are still active. For 40 days, thousands of volunteers searched for the siblings, and the hope of them being found alive kept millions of Colombians on the tip of their feet. Last week, the miracle everyone was waiting for materialized – the children were found alive and well in a jungle clearing.

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An extremely jealous woman in Argentina was recently arrested for keeping her boyfriend a prisoner in her house for three days to make sure he didn’t cheat on her.

On Saturday, police in the Argentinian city of La Plata rescued a 29-year-old man from a locked room in his girlfriend’s house. He claimed to have been locked in there for over 72 hours following an argument with his girlfriend of six months, who happened to be extremely jealous. After uninstalling WhatsApp from his phone and then smashing it against the floor to prevent him from talking to other women, the unnamed woman reportedly locked the man in a room. She kept him there for three days straight, until he was somehow able to steal her phone and text a friend for help.

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A trio of Peruvian thieves managed to make international news headlines after pulling off one of the dumbest heists in history – 220 sneakers from various brands, all for the right foot.

The hilarious crime occurred on April 30th, at a sports goods store in Huancayo, central Peru. At around 03:30 am, three men managed to cut the padlocks at the back of the store and steal three large crates filled with sneaker boxes from various brands. What the thieves didn’t realize was that all the shoeboxes they stole only contained sneakers for the right foot, as the owner had prepared the three crates to have the footwear displayed at a local sports goods fair. Authorities suspect that the thieves have hidden their haul, as there is no way that they can sell the sneakers on the black market without their pairs.

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A Colombian woman has spent the last 4,000 days of her 39-year existence in excruciating pain because of a surgical needle forgotten in her belly after an operation.

María Aderlinda Forero’s decade-long nightmare began in 2012, soon after the birth of her fourth child. The housewife, who lives in the village of San Isidro, in the rural area of ​​El Retorno, decided to undergo tubal ligation surgery to close her fallopian tubes as a form of birth control. The operation was performed in the town of San Jose del Guaviare and seemingly went without a hitch. Maria left the hospital a few days later and return home to take care of her children. However, a few days later, she started experiencing severe pain in her abdomen, but every time she went to the doctor, they would just prescribe her paracetamol for the pain.

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A Brazilian mayor sparked massive controversy earlier this month after legally marrying a 16-year-old girl and then appointing her mother Secretary of Culture and Tourism.

65-year-old Hissam Hussein Dehaini, the mayor of Araucária City, in southern Brazil, recently married a girl 49 years his junior the day after she turned 16, which is the legal age that someone can get legally married. This alone sparked controversy in the South American country, but the controversial union was also shadowed by serious accusations of nepotism and corruption. The Prosecutor’s Office in the Brazilian state of Paraná is investigating the appointment of the young bride’s mother to the position of Secretary of Culture and Tourism in Araucária just a day after the mayor’s wedding.

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Every year, visitors of Peru’s Vilcanota mountain range are treated to a unique natural phenomenon, a river running blood red through the pristine rocky valleys of Cusco.

Located approximately 100 kilometers from the city of Cusco, near the well-known Palcoyo Rainbow Mountain, the red river is known as Palquella Pucamayu by the locals. It only runs red for about 5 kilometers before mixing with other streams and small rivers in the area, at which point the color becomes diluted, losing its unique hue. The best time to see the red river in person is during the rainy season (December – April), because the color of the water is directly influenced by the level of precipitation. For most of the year, Palquella Pucamayu is a muddy-brown color, but during the rainy season, large quantities of soil rich in iron oxide are carried down from mountains and color the water bright red.

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A Colombian woman who lost her husband at the hands of a local crime boss, spent years planning her revenge, seducing him and gathering evidence to have him arrested for multiple crimes.

In what sounds like the script of a Hollywood blockbuster, a Colombian woman managed to do what the police and the military could not – avenge the death of her husband and bring a dangerous criminal to justice. The unnamed woman was hailed as a hero by police and journalists in Cordoba, Colombia, after spending years getting close to a cunning criminal and gathering enough evidence to have them prosecuted. But she was no crime fighter, just a grieving widow getting revenge on the man who had had her husband assassinated years before…

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The small village of Coyllurqui is famous for a controversial “blood festival”, the highlight of which is a symbolic battle between a condor and a bull.

The Peruvian Blood Festival known as the Yawar Fiesta is a big deal in Coyllurqui, a small mountain village a nine-hour bus ride away from the city of Cusco. It’s pretty much the only place in the South American country where tourists can experience the traditional bird vs. bull fight anymore. Formally known as ‘Turupucllay’ (Game of the Bull), it used to be held in cities like Cusco centuries ago, but animal rights activists managed to get it banned in Peru years ago. However, in remote rural settlements like Coyllurqui, enforcing the law is tricky, especially when that goes against the economic interest of the locals.

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A Colombian man had the misfortune of being thrown in jail three times in the last 13 years because he has the same name as a wanted drug cartel leader.

46-year-old René Martínez Gutiérrez is a peaceful family man with no criminal record to his name. The problem is he shares the same name with a Peruvian drug dealer with several national and international arrest warrants, and for this reason he has been arrested three times in the last 13 years. The last time occurred earlier this month when the man returned to his native country of Colombia to see his sick father. He was arrested as soon as his plane touched ground in Bogota and he has been in jail ever since…

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Bolivia’s state airline has become the target of ridicule after hiring an “interspecies communicator” to track down a passenger’s missing pet cat.

The disappearance of Tito the cat has been a matter of state business in Bolivia for about a month, ever since the feline was lost by staff of Bolivia’s state-owned airline. Tito’s owner, a woman working in Ireland, was taking the feline from Tarija to Santa Cruz to have it certified as a therapy animal, but was told that the cat had to go into the cargo hold. When the plane landed, she was shocked to see Tito’s cage empty. Airline staff admitted to losing Tito prior to takeoff and the cat’s disappearance became the number one news story in Bolivia. Recently, the Ministry of Justice even hired a self-proclaimed interspecies communicator in hopes of finding the cat.

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Police in Santa Marta, Colombia, recently attracted criticism for publishing a wanted poster of alleged cartel members with no actual photos or names.

On January 2nd, the Santa Marta police department published a poster of 12 of the most wanted criminals in the Colombian town, asking the general public for help in apprehending the alleged criminals, who were all members of the “Los Pachenca” drug cartel. All 12 individuals were also suspects in a series of criminal acts committed in Santa Marta in recent months, so it made sense to ask locals for assistance in catching them as soon as possible. The only problem was that the published poster only mentioned the suspects’ nicknames instead of their actual names and the same generic graphic where their photos should have been…

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Argentina is known for a lot of things, from tango to its love of football, but you probably didn’t know that it’s also home to the world’s drunkest drivers.

Back in March of this year, Argentinian media reported that a young man in the town of Plottier, Neuquén province, had broken the world breathalyzer record, after scoring an unprecedented 5,79 grams of alcohol per liter of breath when tested by police, after crashing his car in a ditch. Despite suffering minor injuries to his face and arms because of the crash, he refused medical assistance and did not cooperate with the police. However, he would not get to brag about his unusual record for too long, because just last week, a fellow Argentinian broke it again.

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