An Indian politician who drank a glass of water straight out of a polluted ‘holy river’ to show locals that it was safe to drink was reportedly airlifted to a hospital a couple of days later. On Sunday, July 17, while visiting Sultanpurlodhi, Bhagwant Mann, Chief Minister of Punjab, pulled off a rather daring publicity stunt, one that reportedly cost him an emergency hospital visit. Accompanied by reporters, local officials and Sikh elders, Mann at one point bent down, scooped water right out of the Kali Bein rivulet and downed it to show everyone that it was safe to drink. That got cheers and applause from those around the politician, but they probably had no idea how dirty and polluted the river actually was. Read More »

A blood-filled mosquito squashed in a burgled apartment in China’s Fujian Province helped investigators catch the mysterious criminal. It sounds like the plot of a CSI episode, but according to Chinese news sources, authorities in Fuzhou, East China’s Fujian Province managed to bring a burglar to justice by analyzing the blood stain left on a wall by a squashed mosquito. While examining the crime scene – a burgled apartment in a high-rise residential compound – police noticed that the burglar, who appeared to have breached the home after climbing onto the balcony, may have spent the night there, and after finding a blood stain left by a squashed mosquito on a wall, they decided to have the blood tested for DNA. Read More »

An international network of scammers was recently dismantled after allegedly creating a fake version of India’s Professional Cricket League, with farmers posing as players, and broadcasting games live to unsuspecting betting enthusiasts. When it comes to betting scams, the one recently dismantled in Gujarat’s countryside sounds pretty hard to beat. A criminal group coordinated by a “mastermind in Russia” allegedly created a fake version of the Indian cricket IPL, with farmers and unemployed men posing as players of teams like the Chennai Super Kings, Mumbai Indians or the Gujarat Titans in games broadcast live on YouTube to unsuspecting betting punters in Russia. The games looked real, but the players acted on command, hitting a six, a four, or getting out as directed. Read More »

Police in Nigeria recently released 77 people, including young children, from the basement of a church where they had been waiting for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ for several months. The raid on the Whole Bible Believers Church in the Valentino area of Ondo Town came after a local mother approached police about the disappearance of her kids and told them that she suspected they had gone to the church. When they entered the place of worship, policemen found 77 people being kept in the basement by the Pastor and his deputy, who had told them that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Authorities claim that the church encouraged people to “stay behind” and wait for the Rapture, and some of them are believed to have lived in the church for several months. Read More »

A number of people in Bangkok, Thailand were shocked to find that an old man they saw floating in a dirty water canal turned out not to be a corpse, but a meditating person. Imagine walking by an urban water canal and spotting a stiff body floating in the dirty, garbage-filled water. You most likely expect the worst, so no one can really blame the people who witnessed this scene at the end of last month for calling the police. But before authorities could get there, some of the people on the banks of the canal tried shouting at the floating body to make sure it was truly dead. One brave young man even went down into the dirty water, navigating through the garbage and the mud on the bottom, and when he touched the body, it sprung to life… Read More »

A Bolivian woman was recently arrested for throwing hot water on her sleeping husband’s genitals because he was allegedly dreaming of another woman. The shocking incident happened last week in the Bolivian city of La Paz. According to the scorned wife’s testimony, her 45-year-old husband was sleeping and allegedly declaring his love to another woman in his sleep. Enraged, the woman went into the kitchen, brought a pot of water to a boil and then simply threw it on his genital area for his “transgression”. According to police sources, the man was hospitalized with second-degree burns on his privates as well as on his arm and back. Read More »

Tired of seeing his family’s money being donated to the local church, an exasperated Russian man set the place of worship a blaze in a feat of rage. On the morning of June 26, a fire broke out at the Church of St. Basil the Great in the village of Pargolovo, Russia’s Saint Petersburg district. The fire quickly engulfed the wooden roof and walls of the building, and the entire place would have probably burned to a crisp until the firefighters arrived, if the parishioners didn’t put the fire out themselves. Still, the damage was considerable, and local news outlets reported that many of the locals had tears in their eyes as they looked at their local place of worship. But that sadness quickly turned to anger directed at the man responsible for the devastation. Read More »

A Chilean man who was accidentally paid 286 times his salary last month resigned from the company and vanished after promising to return the money paid in excess. Someone in the human resources department of Chile’s largest producer of cold cuts, Consorcio Industrial de Alimentos (Cial), must be sweating profusely right now. By accident, they paid an employee 165,398,851 Chilean pesos ($180,000) last month, instead of the 500,000 pesos ($542) they were entitled to, and now that person apparently doesn’t want to give the money back. They have resigned from their position and vanished without a trace, leaving the company no other option but to lawyer up and try to recover their losses. Read More »

A young Australian woman is allegedly being denied access to a $12 million inheritance because she refuses to fulfill her late father’s condition – getting a steady job. Clare Brown is entitled to a $12 million fortune, but is famously being denied access to her inheritance because she has yet to fulfill the requirements laid down by her late father in his will. Apparently, she has to get a permanent job and “contribute something to society” in order to gain access to get access to the millions, but she refuses to do so, calling the conditions unrealistic because of her health condition. Meanwhile, she is living on welfare and is “constantly broke”. Read More »

Kokenawa Inc., a startup based in Nagoya, Japan, produces the Pocketoilet, the world’s smallest portable toilet and a real life-saver when nature calls. When you gotta go, you gotta go, but what if there’s nowhere to go? We hardly ever give the humble toilet a second thought in our day-to-day lives, but most of us could hardly imagine our lives without it. In war-torn regions and areas affected by natural disasters toilets are among the most sought-after amenities, but apart from insufficient portable toilets and unhygienic latrines, there aren’t too many options. Actually, there is also the Pocketoilet, a packet measuring 7 centimeters tall and 6.5 cm wide that can fit in virtually any pocket or purse. Read More »

A North Carolina pest control company is offering to pay homeowners $2,000 if they agree to let it release 100 American cockroaches into their households so it can test a new extermination technique. If you live in the continental United States and want to make a quick couple of grand, go to The Pest Informer website and sign up for their ongoing experimental program. The pest control company is looking to test a new cockroach extermination technique in real-life conditions, so it wants to release 100 roaches into people’s homes, so it can try to exterminate them all for 30 days. The deal requires the written approval of the homeowner to have 100 cockroaches released on their property and to have the entire experiment filmed by technicians. Read More »

An Australian couple is seeing their retirement plans threatened by a 130-year-old deed error that makes it impossible to sell their property. Peter and Cheryl Plowman have been living in the same house on Bega Street, in Candelo, on the New South Wales South Coast for 20 years. A few years back, they purchased the house next to them from their neighbor with the intention of fixing it up and selling it for a profit to fund their retirement. Now, after investing their savings in it, the Plowman’s were shocked to learn that they won’t be able to sell their property to anyone, because the paperwork drafted over a century ago, when the lots were first registered, states that their new house is built on a different lot. Mr. and Mrs. Plowman live in the fourth house along their street, which would logically make it Lot Four, only in the original deed it is marked Lot Three. When the lot deeds were originally drafted, sometime in the 1800s, the five lots on Bega Street were numbered ‘one, two, four, three, five,’ but the Plowmans had never bothered to check. Read More »

A Thai man recently underwent emergency surgery to have a spiky fish removed from his throat, after it allegedly jumped out of the water and straight into his open mouth. It sounds like the plot of a scene in a goofy comedy, but according to Thai news sources that have since been picked up by international media outlets, an angler fisherman almost choked to death after a small fish randomly jumped into his open mouth and got lodged in his throat. The unnamed man was reportedly spearfishing in a river, and just as he came up for a breath of air, a spikey Anabas fish randomly jumped out of the water and straight into his mouth. As he was in the process of inhaling, the fish got all the way into his throat where it became lodged. Read More »

A Brazilian man has been accused of kidnapping his ex-girlfriend and tattooing his name on the side of her face, as revenge for breaking up with him. Tayane Caldas, an 18-year-old woman from the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, was on her way to school last Friday, when she was approached by her ex-boyfriend, Gabriel Coelho, who forced her to get into his car. Afraid she would be attacked if she didn’t comply, the young woman got into the vehicle and was taken to her ex’s home in the municipality of Taubaté. There, the 20-year-old Coelho tattooed his full name on the girl’s right side of the face, from her ear, down to her chin. Although he doesn’t deny doing the tattoo, Gabriel Coelho claims that Tayane was more than happy to let him do it. Read More »

A number of Taiwan sushi fans who legally changed their name to include the characters for the word ‘salmon’, as part of a restaurant promotional stunt, have now become stuck with it. Taiwanese legislators are currently debating the possibility to change a law that only allows citizens to legally change their names a maximum of three times as a way to mitigate the aftermath of an event known as “Salmon Chaos”. In March of 2021, international news outlets covered the bizarre promotion of Taiwanese restaurant chain Sushiro, which offered sushi at discounted prices or totally free to people who legally changed their names to include the characters for ‘salmon’. Over 300 people reportedly took Sushiro up on their offer, and while most managed to switch back their old names days after taking advantage of the promotion, some have been stuck with hilarious names like ‘Handsom Salmon’, ‘Dancing Salmon’ or ‘Salmon Dream’. Read More »