Oddacity News
Homebuyer's big surprise, a snake for pizza deal, ants for dessert
Welcome to Oddacity News, your source for the weird, unusual and offbeat news of the world.
Cool crib: Japan has introduced human-sized refrigerators to help people cool off on the country’s increasingly common hot days, reports CNN. The appliance, with a glass door and a seat, is aimed at providing short-term relief to people who work outside, such as construction workers. Japan is experiencing a rise in daily high temperatures over 104 degrees Fahrenheit, which it officially calls “cruelly hot days.”
Welcome home: A real estate investor who bought a Connecticut house at a “sight unseen” foreclosure auction found the home came with some extra features: Three dead bodies. According to The Wall Street Journal, Edward Marchion paid $525,000 for the four-bedroom home, a seeming bargain for a property valued at $650,000. But once he had ownership, Marchion found the “skeletal remains” of three people inside.
Said a neighbor: “I don’t know if I’d want the house after that.”
Switched at birth: A Christmas gift selected at random has led two men to discover that they were sent home from the hospital with the wrong parents soon after birth 38 years ago, reports AP. Kyle Bylin received a DNA test in a Christmas gift exchange, leading to the discovery that the people he knows as his mother and father are not his biological parents. Soon, the families of Bylin and Jeremy Morrison learned that the two of them — the only two babies born on Jan. 26, 1988 at a North Dakota hospital — had been switched. “My mind was just completely blown,” Bylin said.
Reward: At a pizzeria in Florida, you can get a free pizza if you bring in a captured burmese python, reports the CBC. "You get any python, you get a free specialty pizza, large pizza of your choice," said Dusty Crum, owner of Wildman's Pizza, Pasta and Pythons in Everglades City, Fla., Burmese pythons, typically about 16 feet long, are an invasive species in Florida and the state encourages people to capture and humanely kill them. “Especially the local kids,” said Crum. “They catch them. They don't know what to do with them. They're hungry. They want pizza."
Special ingredient: The owner of a Michelin-starred restaurant in South Korea is facing a possible one-year jail sentence after serving a dessert topped with dried ants, reports Yonhap News Agency. Prosecutors say the restaurant violated food safety laws by serving the ant sherbet 12,200 times since 2021, using approximately 49,000 ants. The owner did not deny the accusation, but said the number of ants used was exaggerated. "The menu featuring ants is only a very small part of the 15-course meal,” the restaurant said.
Voices carry: Residents in the Toluca Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles have recently been hearing piercing screams “like someone is getting murdered” all day long, reports the Los Angeles Times. In fact, it is riders on the new Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift roller coaster at Universal Studios, a high-speed thrill ride. Notably, both the park and residents agree that the coaster itself is quiet. “That’s nice,” said one neighbor. “But you can’t put tape over people’s mouths.”