A Taiwanese man died of suspected lead poisoning after using the same rusty thermos for over ten years, despite visible signs of metal degradation.

Taiwanese media recently reported the tragic death of a man whose severe lung infection was exacerbated by heavy metal poisoning. The man reportedly started experiencing health problems about a year ago, and blood tests showed that he was suffering from heavy metal poisoning. While trying to discover the source of the contamination, doctors learned that the man had been using the same thermos on a daily basis for the last 10 years. Upon examining the container, they discovered rust had formed inside of it, which hadn’t prevented the patient from using it to store acidic beverages like coffee, tea, and juice. Read More »

A 35-year-old American man has been found guilty of impersonating a flight attendant at least 120 times in order to avoid having to pay for plane tickets.

Federal prosecutors accused Tirone Alexander of entering the secure area of an airport under false pretenses and committing wire fraud at least 120 times between 2018 and 2024. The 35-year-old man reportedly took advantage of a common airline policy that allows flight attendants and pilots from other airlines to fly for free. Alexander, who allegedly had worked as a flight attendant for regional airlines between 2013 and 2015, would go to various airline websites and check the “flight attendant” option during the online check-in process. The form required applicants to provide their employer, date of hire, and badge number, and Alexander used falsified information that apparently no one bothered to check. Read More »

A 14-year-old English boy recently won a legal battle against his parents, whom he accuses of tricking him into flying to Ghana and then preventing him from returning home.

The unnamed teen and his lawyers told a London Court of Appeal that in March of 2014, he was tricked by his parents into flying to Ghana under the pretext of visiting a sick relative, only to be enrolled at a boarding school in the African country. Despite the 14-year-old’s best efforts to return to his home country, he was prevented from doing so by his parents, so he found some lawyers and took them to Court. Initially, the High Court in London ruled in favor of the parents, who claimed to have had the boy’s best interests in mind when they shipped him to Ghana under false pretenses, but a Court of Appeal recently revoked that verdict and sided with the teen, considering that his freedom of choice had been infringed. Read More »

After falling for the local undertaker, a Brazilian woman spent two years attending funerals in her community in hopes of catching the man’s eye. Daniela Signor and Apollo Scariot surprised a lot of people when they arrived at their wedding venue in a funeral hearse, but to those who knew their unusual love story, the choice made perfect sense. Daniela first laid eyes on Apollo in early 2023, while attending the funeral service of a deceased relative, and immediately knew she had to do everything she could to draw his attention. He was the funeral director and seemed to be too focused on his job to notice her, but she didn’t let that discourage her. Every three months or so, she would attend funerals in her community just to see Apollo and hopefully get seen by him. It took a while, but her strategy actually worked. Read More »

A growing number of young Chinese looking for low-maintenance companionship are turning their attention to jars of activated yeast that only need flour and water. So-called static pets such as stones, mango pits, paper boxes, and even toothpaste have become very popular with Chinese youths looking for low-commitment companionship to compensate for their stresfull daily lives and careers. However, one such static pet has been seeing massive popularity in the Asian country, “pet yeast”. Nicknamed “face worm” by netizens, the yeast can be “raised” in a simple container by feeding dry yeast with flour, water, and a bit of sugar. After stirring the ingredients, all you need to do is wait a few hours to see the yeast grow into a sticky, bubbling mass that emits a typical wine-like aroma. Apparently, this is enough for young people looking for easy companionship. Read More »

A seasoned paraglider miraculously survived a rare and dangerous phenomenon that saw him being sucked up by clouds to an altitude of 28,210 feet (8,600 meters). Photos and videos of Chinese paraglider Liu Ge trying to keep his cool (pun intended) as he experienced dangerously low levels of oxygen and temperatures as low as -40 degrees Celsius (-40° Fahrenheit) went viral on social media this week. In them, the experienced paraglider’s clothes and face are covered with ice, and he struggles to breathe and keep from passing out because of the low oxygen. On May 24th, Liu Ge took off from about 3,000 meters in the Qilian Mountains, on the border between western Gansu and northeastern Qinghai, but as he was paragliding, a cumulonimbus cloud appeared behind him and he ended up being lifted higher and higher, above the clouds. Read More »

A Texas rheumatologist was sentenced to 10 years in prison for a cruel health care fraud scheme that involved diagnosing hundreds of healthy people with chronic diseases that required expensive and dangerous treatments. Jorge Zamora-Quezada M.D. of Mission, Texas, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud, several counts of healthcare fraud, and conspiracy to obstruct justice and received a sentence of 10 years behind bars and three years of supervised release. For years, the 68-year-old rheumatologist falsely diagnosed patients with chronic illnesses to bill for tests and treatments that they didn’t need, for his own enrichment. Evidence presented by prosecutors showed that his fraud scheme involved over $118 million in false claims and the payment of over $28 million by insurers, which allowed him to fund an incredibly lavish lifestyle. By profiting off of innocent victims, Zamora-Quezada was able to amass a sizeable fortune, including 13 real estate properties, a jet, and a Maserati GranTurismo. Read More »

A group of squatters who illegally took over a house on the outskirts of a village in Spain’s Burgos Province has installed an alarm system to prevent others from breaking into their illegally occupied home. The people of San Miguel de Pedroso, a neighborhood in the village of Beldorado, are on high alert because of squatters who not only took over an unoccupied house in their community but also installed an alarm system there to prevent others from breaking in like they did. According to some local residents, “they have placed a sign belonging to the company that installed the alarm in the building” to prevent what happened to the owner of that house from happening to them. Some locals suspect that the squatters had been eyeing the property for some time, and after learning that no one had lived there for about two decades, they decided to move in. Now people are afraid that their houses could be at risk of being illegally occupied by strangers. Read More »

The CEO of a Dutch weather forecaster recently suggested that Belgian wind farms are inadvertently “stealing” wind from his own country’s wind farms in the North Sea. In an interview with Belgian broadcaster VRT, Remco Verzijlbergh, the CEO of Dutch weather forecasting service Whiffle, claimed that Belgian wind farms in the North Sea have an advantage over Dutch ones because of their placement, adding that they are effectively “stealing” Dutch wind. Verzijlbergh claimed that Belgian wind farms are taking up to 3 % of wind energy from Dutch installations, adding that wind speeds measured behind a wind turbine are measurably lower. He clarified that the phenomenon is purely accidental because of the location of the wind turbines, pleading for better coordination between countries in the near future. Read More »

A UK woman started suspecting her husband of cheating after checking the data on her electric toothbrush companion app and noticing that they were brushing at odd times of the day. Paul Jones, a British private investigator with over a decade of experience, recently recounted one of his most unusual cases. Catching a cheating partner in the act is rare, but rarer still is catching them cheating with the help of an electric toothbrush. And yet, it can happen! One of Jones’ clients, a married mother-of-two who was trying to improve her children’s brushing habits by monitoring their electronic toothbrush use via a smartphone app, noticed that the brush was being used at strange times of the day when her kids were supposed to be at school and her husband at work. After making sure her kids were indeed at school, she confronted her husband, who claimed to have been away at work all day. Read More »

A Mexican bank has been accused of lacking sensitivity after insisting that a bed-bound 96-year-old woman be brought to a physical branch to confirm her identity in order to release her pension. Photos and video clips of an elderly woman being transported to a BBVA (Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria) bank branch in Oaxaca, Mexico, on an ambulance stretcher have been going viral on Mexican social media and sparking outrage among the general public. 96-year-old Fidelia Vásquez Nuño cannot move due to her advanced age and various illnesses, but despite her son’s attempts to file the necessary paperwork with the bank to verify her identity, she had to be brought to a local branch to correct a glitch in her biometric registration that had prevented her from cashing her pension for six months. Read More »

A 47-year-old woman from Western France has been speaking with a distinctively English accent ever since she had her tonsils removed 14 years ago. Laetitia, a cashier from Montval-sur-Loir, in France’s Sarthe Department, doesn’t speak English. She only knows some basic words that she learned in school decades ago, but hearing her speak in her native tongue would have you believe she was born in England. For 14 years, Laetitia has been speaking with an English accent that makes most people think she is Anglo-Saxon. But the truth is much stranger – the 47-year-old woman has been stuck with her English accent ever since she woke up from a tonsil removal surgery. Her children had gone through the same procedure before, and they talked in a nasal voice, but it went away after a few days, so she wasn’t too worried in the beginning, but as the weeks passed, her weird accent remained just as strong. Read More »

A well-respected family in the UK was recently awarded compensation of $100,000 by a restaurant that had publicly accused them of leaving without settling the bill. In July of last year, Peter and Ann McGirr, along with their children Peter Jr and Carol, visited The Horse & Jockey Inn in the Peak District, England. It was a pretty uneventful affair; the family ordered ribeye and gammon steaks and washed them down with ales and lagers before leaving for their home in Omagh, Northern Ireland. Only shortly after their departure, The Horse & Jockey Facebook page posted a video of the McGirrs’ allegedly leaving the establishment without paying the £150 ($200) bill. The family was soon making national headlines for allegedly dining and dashing, which negatively impacted their otherwise great reputation, so they found themselves with no choice but to sue the inn to clear their name. Read More »

A 68-year-old Swiss woman was taken to Court by her neighbor, who claims that the pensioner systematically fed her pet cat for months, despite being notified in writing to stop. This unusual story takes place in Zurich, where a woman stands accused of luring her neighbor’s cat with food for a period of 10 months with the intention of stealing it away. The plaintiff claims to have notified the woman repeatedly, even in writing, to stop feeding her pet, Leo, but to no avail. Not only did the accused continue to feed Leo, but she also installed a cat flap on her door so the feline could come and go as it pleased. As a result, after a while, the cat stopped returning to its original owner, and they were left preparing meals for it in vain. The pensioner’s neighbor filed a criminal complaint against the woman, and the public prosecutor’s office ordered the accused to pay a fine of 800 Swiss francs ($950) and also issued a suspended fine of 3600 francs ($4,273) for unlawful appropriation. But the 68-year-old woman refused to pay, so the case ended up in Court. Read More »

A UK woman whose co-workers compared her to Darth Vader after taking an online personality test on her behalf has been awarded £30,000 in damages. Darth Vader is an iconic villain, and being compared to him by workmates is apparently insulting and traumatic enough to warrant compensation. At least that was the decision of a UK court in the case of an NHS blood donation worker who claimed that the association with the Star Wars character caused her to feel unpopular at work and ultimately quit her job. The judge concluded that being told she has the same personality type as the infamous sci-fi villain was a workplace “detriment”,(a negative experience) that required compensation. Read More »