One night, 3 architecture students living in Brooklyn decided to stuff a mattress into a hole cut into a wall & listed it for rent. To their surprise, they had potential takers!

So Mr. Freeman posted an ad on the Web site Craigslist: "$35 — elevated mattress-sized space between rooms." He used a minimalist pitch. "Opening between hall and room available for long/short-term use, accessible by ladder, sheets and pillows not provided." The ad went up around noon, and by the end of that day, Mr. Freeman had a dozen potential takers.

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On display at the Takashimaya Department store in Tokyo: a $1.72 million Christmas cake:

A total of 223 diamonds including a 5-carat, heart-shaped stone adorn the double-layer, marzipan-coated fruitcake, designed by Tokyo-based sweets chef Jeong Hong-yong.

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A sure way to bring people to your church: have an image of Jesus appear on the door.

People from across Indiana have come to the Reigning Light of the Healing Chapel in North Vernon to see the door. Congregation members say they can see a likeness of Jesus in the wood’s patterns.

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University of Idaho grad student Yaniria Sanchez-de Leon found this giant 6-inch white Palouse earthworm.

Early observers reported the giant Palouse earthworms could grow 2- to 3 feet long, big but modest compared to relatives from Australia that can reach 10 feet long.

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Upider Bhalla from the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India and colleagues discovered that rat smell in stereo:

Researchers in India have discovered that a single sniff is enough for a rat to locate the source of an enticing aroma.

Their work shows that rats can effectively smell in ’stereo’: their two nostrils work independently in much the same way as our ears, with contrasting signals to the brain creating a spatial understanding of sensory information.

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A species of wasp called Ampulex compressa seems like your normal wasp, except when its female takes control of the mind of its prey and turn it into a zombie!

The wasp slips her stinger through the roach’s exoskeleton and directly into its brain. She apparently uses sensors along the sides of the stinger to guide it through the brain …

From the outside, the effect is surreal. The wasp does not paralyze the cockroach. In fact, the roach is able to lift up its front legs again and walk. But now it cannot move of its own accord. The wasp takes hold of one of the roach’s antennae and leads it–in the words of Israeli scientists who study Ampulex–like a dog on a leash.

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