We’ve had our fair share of clickbait articles these past few months, and most of us don’t believe news is true if it has a sketchy title. Intrigued? Yes, but is it believable? Highly unlikely. It’s a good way to get clicks though. However, some stories are unexpectedly true even when they are so bizarre. For example, would you believe a strip club in Miami sold a stolen Russian military submarine to a Columbian drug cartel? No? Unfortunately, it’s true, as Cracked details: 

Together with a part-time Cuban spy and full-time cocaine trafficker named Nelson Yester-Garrido, they hit on a brilliant plan: The Soviet Union had just broken up and corrupt Russian military officers were selling Red Army equipment cheap. It was a golden period for arms dealers, when you couldn't even walk down the street in Moscow without a guy in a trenchcoat offering to sell you a mechanized infantry division, with a cybernetic bomb-sniffing dolphin thrown in to seal the deal. Tarzan suggested using his Russian connections to obtain military hardware for cocaine traffickers. Which is how Porky's, the strip club with the dildo car, wound up under investigation for selling a Soviet military submarine to the Medellin Cartel. 

Check out more unbelievably true crime stories here. 

image via Cracked

A long, thin cloud was spotted by the Visual Monitoring Camera attached to Mars Express, a satellite that’s been orbiting Mars since 2004. The appearance of the cloud isn’t a surprise to scientists, as it is a recurrent feature on the planet. The cloud is composed of water ice, as Gizmodo detailed: 

The cloud is a recurrent feature on Mars, appearing annually above Arsia Mons, a 12.4-mile-high (20-kilometer) volcano located near the Martian equator. The cloud resembles a volcanic plume, but it’s not associated with any kind of volcanic activity. Composed of water ice, the cloud arises along the volcano’s leeward slope, that is, the side not facing the prevailing winds.

The Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud, or AMEC, as it’s called, can reach about 1,110 miles (1,800 km) in length. Incredibly, it can get big enough to be spotted by telescopes on Earth, according to the ESA.

image via Gizmodo

It’s not like animals are allowed inside the Australian pub. This pub in Queensland has placed a notice on its door that emus are no longer welcome in their establishment. The owners of the pub even instructed their patrons to go through the “emu barrier”! But what made The Yaraka Hotel go through such measures? The answer comes in the form of two particular emus, named Carol and Kevin, as Oddee details: 

It’s too bad then that Carol and Kevin seem unable to behave themselves at the local watering hole. Gerry Gimblett, owner of the Yaraka Hotel, said that she was left no other choice but to banish the birds.

“They’ve been stealing things from the guests, especially their food. They’d stick their heads in and pinch toast out of the toaster,” Gimblett bemoaned to the Guardian.

But the main reason the birds are no longer welcome is their leavings.

“They’re enormous, very large and very smelly, and they created great stains,” said Gimblett. “We love them as part of the Yaraka community, but they’re not welcome inside anymore.”

image via Oddee

The holder of the Guinness World Record for the world’s tallest living giraffe is a male giraffe named Forest. Forest has a height of eighteen feet and eight inches and is currently residing at the Australia Zoo. Besides being recognized for his height, did you know that he has  fathered 12 calves as part of the zoo’s giraffe breeding program? 

image via UPI

Japan is home to the most unexpected products in the market. It isn’t a big surprise when you find out that they’re selling an ice cream flavor based on a very special type of sushi. Special, yes - but also very pungent. The funazushi is a specialty of the Shiga Prefecture. The fish used in the special sushi is heavily fermented and left to age in wooden barrels for years. Dubbed as the “stinkiest sushi in the world,” this sushi is now a rare ice cream flavor sold at Koko Shiga in Nihonbashi. While we can’t really travel all the way to Japan right now to taste it, SoraNews24 has us covered: 

 it tasted more like Mascarpone cheese. The piquant tang of a fermented something was definitely there, but it blended so well with the ice cream that it ended up tasting more like cheese than stinky fish.

We were relieved that the amount of funazushi used was perfectly suited to the ice cream, creating a delicious flavour that makes us understand why a lot of people pay high prices to enjoy fermented sushi. The smell and pungency may be dialled down in the soft-serve version, but the essence of the fermentation still shines through

image via SoraNews24

Look, there are certain game mechanics that seem cute at the beginning of your playthrough, but it gets annoying the longer you play a game. Personally, Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ (ACNH) crafting mechanic is one of them. Watch CK Production’s reenactment of this gameplay in real life, and be the judge. Listen, ACNH devs, I just want to craft in bulk. Is that too much to ask? 

There are specific places readied for different kinds of structures. But some will go outside the box and build houses in unorthodox (not to mention dangerous) locations, such as cliffs and steep mountain slopes! If you’re interested in browsing through some of the most unusual locations where structures are built, check out Edgy Architecture: Architecture in the Most Impossible Places! The book contains 60 case studies, all carefully curated by the authors. 

image via The Independent

De Castilla 23 is a building complex in Milan that has special special self-cleaning, anti-odor, anti-pollution and antibacterial surfaces  that can counteract nitrogen oxide. It’s “not” a literal building that chomps the smog in the atmosphere. The structure is a new project from Fiandre Architectural Surfaces that combines sustainability, innovation and functionality, as World Architecture News details: 

Fiandre Architectural Surfaces designed customised solutions including the use of active photocatalytic ceramics from the Core Shade collection, in the Cloudy Core Active and Sharp Core Active textures.

The Chemistry Department of the University of Milan has estimated that the 16,088 square metres of special active tiles, installed for this project, can counteract 59 kg/year of nitrogen oxide, equivalent to more than 200,000 square metres of green space.

These numbers are the reason why De Castillia 23 is referred to as the “smog-eating” building.

image via Architecture News

The US Olympic and Paralympic Museum in Colorado is as grand as the history it holds. The structure is wrapped in a steel structure that is almost like an Olympic athlete’s costume stretched over the museum. The steel structure is composed of 9,000 diamond-shaped panels! Not only is the outside beautiful and well-thought of, but so its interior. The galleries of the museum are built around a spiralling ramp to make it accessible to everyone, as Dezeen detailed: 

Located in downtown Colorado Springs, the museum is composed of four steel-covered volumes arranged in a pinwheel formation that contain the galleries, an auditorium and events space.

The metalwork is composed of 9,000 diamond-shaped panels that are marked in the middle and lift up in the centre to create a play of light and shadow across the facade

"The folding of the diamond into triangles was just the initial idea," Gilmartin continued.

"But then we played with the shaping, we did a lot of model testing, digital studies and things like that and found that it has a really nice reaction to light. The kind of fold in the panels makes a kind of highlight with the upper part that's tilted towards the sky, and a kind of a shadow to where it tilts down on the lower half," he added.

"We saw [the] possibility for the kind of diamond scales or elements across the surface to really animate the surface as the light changes in Colorado Springs throughout the day."

image via Dezeen

It’s like the International Space Station, but underwater. PROTEUS, introduced as “the world’s most advanced underwater scientific research station and habitat to address humanity’s most critical concerns,” is designed by Yves Behar and fuseproject. The station will have state-of-the-art labs and a livable space for scientists who will work there for long periods of time, as ArchDaily details: 

Designed by Yves Behar and his team at fuseproject, the project is a permanent underwater station that will advance scientific and oceanic research. In fact, PROTEUS enables the discovery of new species of marine life, creating a better understanding of how climate change affects the Ocean and allowing for testing of advanced technologies for green power, aquaculture, and robotic exploration.

At 4,000 square feet, PROTEUS will be three or four times the size of any previously built submarine habitats. Open to hosting academics, private companies, scientists, and NGOs that are involved in ocean exploration and research and development, PROTEUS can hold up to 12 people at the same time, for a 30-day period, more than any underwater station ever built.

image via ArchDaily

Look, it’s summer. It’s hot, and sometimes you’d want to consume ice cream to ease the heat. However, it isn’t a great experience if the ice cream melts before you finish it, right? Ice cream tastes better cold or frozen, and this bowl can keep your ice cream cold while you savor it. HOST’s Ice Cream FREEZE is a plastic bowl insulated with a cooling gel that keeps its contents cold for hours. Just make sure to store it in the freezer for at least four hours before you use it! 

image via Mental Floss

Some people spend huge amounts of money to get the orthodontic treatments they need to realign some parts of their teeth. Having a metal wire attached to your teeth is both a pain and a nuisance, but braces are a guaranteed method for fixing one’s crooked teeth. With all the pain and money people pour into treatments that can make your appearance look better, one can’t help ask the question, “is it really necessary to undergo these treatments?” According to history, orthodontic treatments weren’t to prevent health problems, but to create a more attractive profile, as Slate details: 

Norman Kingsley, considered one of the early fathers of orthodontics, was a classically trained sculptor. During his day job as a dentist in New York, he applied his understanding of facial symmetry to the faces of patients, diagnosing what he referred to as “irregularities” and “deformities.”

“This was probably the cornerstone of the medicalization in orthodontics,” said Alexander Spassov, an orthodontist and researcher in Greifswald, Germany. Angle’s criteria gave orthodontists a measure that could supposedly identify which bites needed treatment and which didn’t. Still, the transformation of orthodontics into a medical specialty was gradual and hard to trace back to a specific moment in history, Spassov said. For example, although Angle did help establish the specialty by founding both the first orthodontic school and the American Society of Orthodontists (today the AAO), he made no mention of health benefits, Spassov added. It was only later, perhaps after World War II, that orthodontics began to be seen as a preventative treatment for various ills, Ackerman said.

image via Slate

Help him scratch his ear, quick! Watch this short video posted by Twitter user @minoovo of a cat happily lying down on the couch. Poor cat was trying to punch itself in the face! It took me a few times of replaying the clip (without reading the original caption) that it was trying to scratch his ear. 

he doesn't realize he can't scratch his ear while lying down pic.twitter.com/lR17ph2VM3

— ياسمين (@minoovo) July 26, 2020

image screenshot via Twitter

The retro handheld console FunKey S is small but powerful! The console can run Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, SNES and PlayStation titles, but you’ll need to get used to its very small screen. The FunKey S has the dimensions of 42.5 x 44.5 x 13.8 mm, and is built around open-source hardware and software. The novelty gadget is being sold for £57. Would you purchase one? 

image via nintendolife

Seventeen-year-old Brynjar Karl Bigisson from Iceland spent 700 hours building the largest LEGO Titanic replica in the world. He used a whopping 56,000 LEGO bricks to build the seven-meter(26-feet)- long model. This project decided to build this project as a homage to the famous liner when he was ten years old, as Bored Panda detailed: 

“LEGO has been an important part of my life since a very early age,” Brynjar told Bored Panda. “Because of my poor social and communication skills, I was always on my own, playing by myself, so LEGO bricks became my best friends.”

“While building with LEGO, I was using and developing my imagination and creativity. I don’t remember feeling lonely, I was too busy building something.”

“My mother helped me to set up a crowdfunding page, so I was able to raise the money I needed to buy the LEGOs. Also, I was offered space in a warehouse to build the model and I came every day after school and built for 3-4 hours for 11 months until I finally finished my LEGO Titanic model.”

Brynjar said he feels really thankful that his story is an inspiration to other kids and parents who are going through autism diagnoses and are scared about the future.

“I know that my family was worried and that is completely normal because they only had the Rain Man stereotype to compare their experience to. Today, we know much more about autism,” Brynjar explained.

image via Bored Panda