Mihailo Toloto was a Greek monk who spent his entire 82-year life on Mount Athos without ever laying eyes on an actual woman.

Born in the year 1856, Mihailo Toloto faced adversity from the moment he came into the world. His mother died just four hours after his birth, and with no father to claim him as their own, he was abandoned on the steps of a monastery located on Mount Athos, the center of Orthodox monasticism. The monk there took him in and the monastery became his permanent home. Raised and educated within the walled monastery, Mihailo became a monk and reportedly never ventured off the mountain until his death, in 1938. And since women are not permitted to set foot on Mount Athos, Miahilo Toloto died without ever seeing a woman.

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A 37-year-old Japanese man has built a successful career by renting himself out to do nothing. For some reason, he is inundated with requests from people who just want him by their side.

In just two years, Shoji Morimoto has gone from being just another unemployed middle-aged man in Tokyo, to a minor Japanese celebrity, with over 270,000 Twitter followers, appearances on national television, interviews in magazines, and even his own books and manga on Amazon. That’s quite surprising, considering Shoji has built his success on a service that requires him to basically do nothing but meet random people, listen to their stories or just physically be there for them. He basically rents himself out to strangers, letting them know beforehand that he can do nothing but eat, drink and hang around.

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We all love coupons and vouchers, but can you imagine living on them almost exclusively for almost four decades? A Japanese man claims to have been doing it for the last 36 years, adding that he hasn’t spent a yen of his own money during that time.

71-year-old Hiroto Kiritani is a minor celebrity in his home country of Japan. His ability to live comfortably on coupons without spending any money unless he really has to is legendary, and he has been invited on numerous television shows and events over the years. Kiritani says that he gets by without spending real money except for utilities and rent. But he’s not as frugal as you might think. He just manages to live comfortably on the coupons he receives from companies he invested in over the years.

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South Korean media recently reported the disturbing case of a high-school teacher who scolded and humiliated a student in front of the class, causing him to take his life that same day.

On April 26th, 2020 ethics professor at Youngshin Middle School in Pohang City referred to only as “A”, for personal privacy reasons, was convicted of child abuse and sentenced to 10 months in prison and had his teaching license suspended for 5 years. His crime: shaming a 9th grade student in front of the whole class after catching him reading a light manga novel, and causing him to end his own life, because of the humiliation. The teacher’s sentencing sent shock waves through South Korean social media, with some users accusing the teacher of bullying, and other expressing fears that the case set a precedent that will put fear into other teachers, preventing them from being strict when they need to be.

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Marie McCreadie was just 13 years old when she lost her voice to what doctors could only assume was a freak virus. 12 years later, she was shocked to discover that her sudden loss of voice had been caused by an old coin stuck between her vocal coins, which prevented them from vibrating. This is an old story that is once again getting a lot of attention because of Marie McCreadie ‘s newly published book, “Voiceless”, in which she details the traumatic experience of losing her voice at a young age and regaining it after 12 long years.

When 13-year-old Marie  – then Marie Heffernan – suddenly lost the ability to speak one day in 1972, doctors put it down to a bad bout of bronchitis, but even after recovering from the illness, she still couldn’t utter a sound. They performed all kinds of tests but nothing appeared to be wrong, so they eventually put it down to a virus and told the 13-year-old girl to just go back to school and lead a normal life, as a mute. She was frightened and confused, and her parents didn’t really know how to handle things in the beginning either. Luckily, Marie and her friends started finding new ways of communicating, like passing written notes to each other, which was fun and made getting used to a voiceless life easier. Things got worse as time went by and her voice didn’t recover, but the other children’s reactions were nothing compared to the treatment she got from her teachers.

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52-year-old Simon Lee has been sleeping rough on the streets of Hong Kong for the last seven years, but unlike most homeless people, he didn’t just wind up there after some tragic, life-altering event. He actually chose to be homeless, giving up on his material possessions and a comfortable office job for a carefree, stress-free life.

You couldn’t really tell by looking at him, but Simon Lee graduated from university with a degree in chemistry, and until 1997 he had a steady office job. But one day he decided he didn’t need the stress of a white-collar job, so he quit and moved to neighboring Macau. He made a living tutoring children for a few years, but in 2004, he moved again, this time to Zhuhai, where he lived off of his savings, before going back to Macau two years later. The casinos were starting up and rich gamblers were more than happy to share a tiny fraction of their winnings with someone less fortunate than them, so Simon decided to live on the street and survive off casino hand outs.

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In an effort to spare her young daughter from being ostracized by other children for not having a father, a Japanese single mother made the controversial decision to hire an actor who has been posing as the girl’s father for the last 10 years.

Megumi was only a baby when her parents separated and he father disappeared from her life. The mother, Asako, remembers that the girl started asking where her father was very early, but that her father’s absence didn’t seem like a big deal until she was about 10-years-old. That’s when Asako noticed a change in her daughter’s behavior; she stopped talking to her, became withdrawn, and eventually stopped going to school. Her mother soon learned that she wasn’t just blaming herself for her father’s absence, but she had also become a victim of bullying at school, as it often happens with children of single parents in Japan. Asako was heartbroken, and after appealing to Megumi’s teachers for help, she also decided to give her daughter the thing she wanted most, even if it meant lying to her.

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