The Viimsi Shopping Center in the Estonian town of Haabneeme is famous for having a giant boulder square in the middle of it.

There are many things one expects to find in a supermarket, but a giant rock is definitely not one of them. And yet, in one Estonian supermarket, a giant rock with a circumference of 22 meters and a height of roughly 6 meters (including the part buried in the ground) is one of the highlights of most people’s shopping trips. The rock has been there long before the owners of the shopping center drew up plans for their business venture – about 10,000 years, to be more precise – but they only discovered it when digging the foundation,  in September of 2014. Workers initially intended to blow it to smithereens, but the locals opposed the plans, and it was later discovered that the giant boulder was actually an “erratic boulder” eligible for conservation status.

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Ever wish you could talk to someone more experienced about your problems, or have them prepare you a delicious home-cooked meal? Well, that’s what Japan’s OK Grandma service is for!

Client Services is a Japanese company that specializes in a wide variety of convenience services, from cleaning and housing services to childcare and pet-sitting services. However, it’s their unique services that really get people talking about them. These guys can have someone attend events on your behalf, apologize on your behalf, and even quit your job so you don’t have to deal with the awkwardness of the situation. One of their most popular offerings is the OK Grandma service, which allows anyone to rent a female senior between the ages of 60 and 94 for a base fee of 3,300 yen per hour.

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A young inmate recently managed to escape a prison in Lyon, France, by taking advantage of a fellow inmate’s release, hiding in their luggage, and waiting to be carried out of the maximum security facility.

The escape of 20-year-old Elyazid A. from Lyon-Corbas prison last Friday made national headlines all weekend, bringing into question both the prison’s security system and its notorious overcrowding. But what really caught the public’s attention was the manner in which the young inmate, who was serving several prison sentences for crimes connected to organized crime, managed to effortlessly leave the maximum security prison. According to inside sources cited by French media, the daring escape was made possible by the release of a fellow inmate who simply carried Elyazid out the front gate of the facility to a car waiting for him. It took the guards 24 hours to realize he was missing.

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A 55-year-old grandfather of three stands accused of eloping with the 22-year-old fiancée of his teenage son and taking his family’s savings and gold jewelry with him.

They say the heart wants what it wants, and in the case of an Indian man, if this happens to be his son’s fiancée, then so be it! Shakeel, a 55-year-old father of six from Rampur, a village in India’s Uttar Pradesh state, recently shocked his family by running away with Ayesha (pseudonym), a 22-year-old woman from a neighboring village, who was initially supposed to marry his son. According to Shabbana, Shakeel’s wife, he had insisted on arranging the marriage of their son, Aman (pseudonym), to Ayesha, despite her protests concerning financial reasons and their child’s young age (17). Still, despite Shabbana and Aman’s opposition, he remained adamant about the marriage until one day when he called from Delhi to tell his family that he had married Ayesha himself.

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In order to keep dust and noise pollution to a minimum, Chinese authorities in the city of Jinan have installed the world’s largest inflatable dome over an area of 20,000 square meters.

Urban construction is a dirty business that affects large areas around the construction site, but a unique project in Jinan, China, is proof that large construction projects can be isolated to reduce noise and pollution, helping to protect nearby communities and the environment. All you need is a giant inflatable balloon! The first of its kind in China and reportedly the largest in the world, the inflatable dome of Jinan is 50 meters high and covers an area of 20,000 square meters. It uses negative pressure and advanced air filtration systems to prevent dust from escaping into nearby areas, but also to ensure that air remains breathable for the workers inside.

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In 2010, thousands of cars came to a standstill along the China National Highway 110, creating the now-famous China National Highway 110 traffic jam, which lasted 12 days and stretched over 100 kilometers.

Identifying the longest traffic jam in history is tricky because it depends on the factors considered. For example, according to Guinness World Records, the longest traffic jam ever reported occurred in 1990, on the East-West German border, and involved 18 million cars crawling to a halt. If we’re talking about distance, a traffic jam that occurred in February of this year in Uttar Pradesh could qualify as the longest ever. It reportedly stretched for 300 km across several districts of Madhya Pradesh and kept motorists crawling at a snail’s pace for about 48 hours. But, if we factor in time, there is no beating the China National Highway 110 traffic jam, which lasted for a whopping 12 days and even created a makeshift economy.

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The Shrinking Mill of Port Colborne, in Ontario, Canada, is an intriguing optical illusion that makes a giant grain elevator shrink the closer you get to it.

Usually, things tend to appear smaller in the distance and grow in size the closer you get to them, but that rule does not apply to the grain elevator located in Port Colborne’s Sugarloaf Marina. As motorists turn left onto Lakeshore Road west from Cement Road, they have their view filled by this massive concrete building in the distance. It’s so big it literally fills the horizon, but as you drive forward, instead of getting even bigger, it starts to shrink, and by the time you make the left-hand bend, it’s just an average industrial building in the distance. The mind-bending optical illusion has such a strong effect that nine out of ten people who see it for the first time drive back to get another look.

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There’s nothing strange about adding a bit of milk or cream to a cup of coffee, but in northern Sweden, they prefer a different kind of dairy with their coffee – cheese.

Kaffeost is a combination of hot coffee and a particular type of cheese called leipäjuusto, which loosely translates to “bread cheese”. But there’s no bread involved in this unusual combination, just cheese and coffee. The name most likely comes from the cheese’s absorbent quality, which allows it to take on a surprising amount of coffee flavor after soaking for only a few minutes. The spongy texture may not be for everybody, but the taste is said to be more than worth it. Leipäjuusto is noticeably sweeter than your average block of cheddar, so adding a few pieces to your cup of coffee is surprisingly similar to adding cream, or milk and sugar to it.

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A 62-year-old man in France put police on high alert after calling emergency services to report that he had forgotten his wife at a highway gas station and couldn’t remember which one.

On July 5th, a Paris man left on vacation for Morocco with his wife and daughter in the family car. They made several stops at gas stations along the way, but during one of these breaks, something peculiar happened. At around 4:30 in the morning, the man, whose name has not been revealed by the media, left the gas station without realizing he had forgotten his wife there. He only realized his mistake about 300 km (186 miles) later, and quickly called emergency services for help. It was a very bizarre conversation, as the man not only had to explain how he could have forgotten his wife at a gas station, but also had trouble remembering which gas station it was.

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A 37-year-old woman from Jilin, China, has gone viral after revealing that she hadn’t properly removed makeup in over two decades, which ultimately caused a severe rash on her face.

Known only as Gao, the Chinese woman took to social media to share her story as a warning to others to properly cleanse their face regularly after putting on makeup. She herself allegedly failed to do so for over 20 years, which ultimately led to a serious allergic reaction that left her face inflamed. Gao said that she becme fascinated with her mother’s lipstick in her early teenage years and started wearing makeup when she was 15. However, she found removing the makeup “too troublesome,” instead going by the principle, “why bother removing the makeup if you’re going to put it back on the next day?” So she only rinsed her face with water before going to bed and applied more makeup the next day.

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A Chinese football club has been fined 30,000 yuan ($4,100) for attempting to channel evil spirits by placing paper talismans in the opponent team’s locker room.

Changchun Xidu FC, who play in China League Two, have been found guilty of placing “a number of feudal superstitious items in the away team’s dressing room” before their match on June 28, in a bid to increase their chances of winning. Photos widely shared on Chinese social media showed yellow paper charms inscribed with messages like: “By decree, Shanxi Chongde Ronghai must be defeated.” Known as ‘fu’, the use of paper charms is a Taoist practice believed to use spirit energy to bring good fortune, but it can also be abused to cause harm and misfortune to others.

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AI-generated Psych-rock band The Velvet Sundown didn’t exist two weeks ago, but today they boast over half a million listeners on Spotify and are getting to put out their third album.

The Velvet Sundown is either the hardest-working and most inspired rock group ever, or they are simply playing by different rules. The psych-rock band appeared out of nowhere two weeks ago, but managed to put out to albums and has already announced that the third will be released on Spotify soon. They already boast a respectable 500,000 monthly listeners on the popular music streaming platform and show no signs of slowing down. But the overnight success and record-breaking album release schedule drew attention to the band this week, with many accusing The Velvet Sundown of being an AI-generated gimmick. And, truth be told, all the signs point to that being the case.

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Italian police recently discovered two siblings, ages 6 and 9, raised on an isolated farm in Piedmont by their virus-obsessed father.

During the flood that affected the Italian province of Piedmont in April, local carabinieri visited an isolated farm in the foothills of Lauriano, a small comune near Turin. They were there to issue a temporary eviction notice for the safety of the residents, but what they found shocked them – a 9-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl in diapers, both unable to speak, read, or write, who didn’t show up in any local registers. Their Dutch parents, a metal sculptor and a stay-at-home mom, claimed that they were home-schooled and otherwise had everything they needed, from food to toys and books, but the children were ‘ghosts’ who didn’t show up in any Italian records and seemed completely cut off from the outside world.

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A 33-year-old Chinese man who showed up at the emergency room with severe abdominal pain turned out to have a foot-long live eel in his abdominal cavity.

Yesterday, Chinese newspaper Huaihua Daily reported the unusual case of a Hunan man who showed up at the First Affiliated Hospital of Hunan Medical University with a pale face, sweating profusely, and complaining of stomach pain. A CT scan of the man’s abdomen showed a foreign object that seemed to have pierced his stomach and ended up in his abdominal cavity. The man’s abdomen was already as hard as a board, and fearing a potentially fatal peritonitis, doctors decided to perform laparoscopic emergency surgery. While exploring the man’s abdomen, they were shocked to discover a live eel swimming among his organs.

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An 8-year-old boy in Thailand’s Uttaradit Province, who had been neglected for years by his drug-addicted mother, spent most of his time with dogs and started communicating by barking.

Paveena Hongsakul of the Foundation for Children and Women learned about an 8-year-old boy in a drug-infested’ red zone of Uttaradit Province who had been neglected by his mother and older brother for so long that he started behaving like the dogs he spent most of his tie with. The disturbing case had been pitched to her by a school principal in Lap Lae district who claimed that the boy’s mother had brought him to school once only to collect benefits, but had never enrolled him. The child had not been in kindergarten either and had been emotionally abandoned by his mother and brother. He had found the love and attention he craved from a pack of dogs, and instead of talking like a human, he began to bark like them.

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