But in other parts of the world, the likes of sharks and whales are far more common.

And while one kayaker in Chile was ‘swallowed’ whole by a humpback whale, another was hunted by a massive great white shark in a life-threatening encounter.

Matt Wells went through a terrifying eight minutes as the giant animal stalked him. We might think that sounds pretty scary, but the fisherman simply reckons the shark was just toying with him.

Not intending to catch a shark, the Kiwi had simply been hoping to catch himself some yellowtail kingfish. And he’d gotten pretty excited when he saw some splashing going on behind him, thinking he was about to hook a biggen.

But the splashing grew and a dark shadow approached his kayak, getting bigger and swimming faster.

And, understandably, the lad’s panic became pretty clear as it could be heard in his voice as he repeatedly said: “Great white… great white shark.”

Paddling faster, he continued: “F**k me, there’s a huge great white behind me.

“Please don’t attack me bro.”

With the shark coming right up behind him so clear to see in the clear blue waters, Wells said: “How do I get him to leave me alone?

“I have lost sight of him, I don’t like that, I’ve lost sight of him – please keep me safe, keep me well and keep that shark from me.”

Wells eventually made it back to shore but the footage truly is unnerving and it’s impressive how he managed to stay as calm as he did.

Speaking to Today, he admitted he’d gotten over the ordeal ‘pretty quickly’ and it’s ‘in the past now’ as he’s been back out fishing already.

He did however say that he ‘was a bit in shock’ as it played out.

“It was a whole lot of emotions hitting at once,” Wells said.

“I was terrified, shocked, excited and well, just sort of in awe of the size of the animal that I’d just seen.”

But while it did cross his mind that he could be attacked, he isn’t convinced it was ‘hunting’ him.

“They can attack you, but they’re a curious animal more than anything and really, I think he was just giving me a fright and having a bit of fun,” Wells explained.

Rhoades began her career as a pornographic actress at the age of 19 in 2016 and would go on to become one of the most searched-for names on platforms such as PornHub.

She would eventually leave the industry at the end of the following year and has since done a complete U-turn in her opinions on porn, even revealing that she wishes all of her videos could be deleted.

“Towards the end of it, I started having panic attacks before scenes because I really didn’t want to do them,” she explained in a podcast interview with Curious Mike, adding: “I didn’t know how to say ‘no I don’t want to do this.”

Since moving away from the industry Rhoades has launched her own successful podcast 3 Girls 1 Kitchen and built up a following on OnlyFans. She has also made the transition into more traditional modelling more recently, sharing images of herself in various fashion campaigns with her 15 million Instagram followers.

And it would appear the decision to leave porn is one which has turned Rhoades into a millionaire.

“In the industry, I did not get paid s**t. I probably had $100,000 (roughly £80,000) when I quit shooting porn, now I’m a multi-millionaire,” the 28-year-old revealed, Rhoades had previously disclosed that she’d earned as little as $1,200 (£972) per scene while working as an adult star.

She went on to explain that moving to OnlyFans, where she is in control of the content created, has been particularly lucrative for her.

“It’s much smarter to go into Instagram or just do an OnlyFans,” Rhoades added.

However, the actress did warn that fans shouldn’t be expecting to see anything particularly graphic or X-rated on the platform and even joked that her account was ‘really disappointing’.

“I’m going to be honest, my OnlyFans is really disappointing, I probably post on it like once a month,” she said. “I just don’t care… It’s just like lingerie.”

Rhoades hasn’t publicly disclosed how much she’s made since leaving the industry, however, estimates of her net worth range anywhere from $1 million to a whopping $24 million (£19 million) online, which means she certainly isn’t strapped for cash.

As they often have no evidence to back up their accounts of what they went through, a lot of people find it hard to believe.

But luckily for this bloke, a photo corroborated exactly what he saw when he had a brush with death as a teenager.

Others have claimed to have ‘swapped souls’ with aliens or that they were brought back from the brink by a ‘spiritual guide’ – but according to Zach, he felt like he was surrounded by ‘liquid love’.

The life coach and personal trainer explained that after being diagnosed with leukaemia, which is a cancer of the blood that affects bone marrow, doctors put him on a steroid called prednisone.

Speaking to YouTuber Shaman Oaks, Zach explained that although prednisone is ‘helpful for treatment’, it also ’causes the bones to become a little brittle’.

As a result of this, he suffered a number of small fractures in his spine while he was in hospital and medics sent him off to get a back brace to give him some support.

Zach, who is based in Reno, Nevada, said he attended the appointment with his dad and his younger brother, who was four at the time, but he began to ‘feel a little fuzzy’ while the brace was being fitted.

“I was probably there about 15 minutes, and this fuzziness just started getting heavier and heavier and heavier and heavier,” Zach said.

“I was kind of rushing at this point to get to my dad’s truck, which is probably about 50, 60 yards away. I finally take a seat.

“I’m like, ‘OK, just calm down, just relax, you’re gonna be OK’. And I looked at my dad [who was] probably about 30, 40 meters away, and I said, ‘Dad, I’m going to…’ And then I went black.”

Zach explained that he then opened his eyes to find that he was in a tunnel filled with ‘luminescent, goldy, silvery, white, flowing energy’, while he also spotted a ‘shadowy figure’ who was wearing a trench coat.

He continued: “I just was enamoured in this space, like, whoa, what is this? Feeling completely at peace. No concern, no worry. I didn’t even think of my body.

“One minute I was there and the next minute I was in this beautiful tunnel. So I looked forward and the shadow figure is just kind of waiting for me. Immediately I thought to myself, ‘Oh, that’s grandpa!'”

He explained he then had an ‘inaudible conversation’ with his dad’s late father, who had died seven years earlier.

“He just told me, everything’s gonna be OK, you’re gonna get through everything, you just have to keep going’,” Zach said. “It felt like we just were in this space for forever.”

But the then-teenager says he was suddenly ‘sucked back’ into his body, to find that he ‘couldn’t move’ due to passing out after the brace appointment.

Zach said: “I opened my eyes and there’s my dad [with a] terrified face, just like, ‘Whoa, what the heck?’ And my little brother, who’s just four years old, is just terrified as could be.”

He decided to keep the details of his near-death experience to himself for a couple of weeks, as he didn’t want to panic his ‘worry wart’ father.

But he later recounted the strange tale to his dad, recalling how he had seen his grandfather in the ‘tunnel of light’ – and inevitably, the parent had some questions for his son.

Zach added: “Immediately, his eyes kind of opened and went the other way. And he goes, ‘What did he tell you? What did he say? What did he look like?’

“And I go, I don’t know, but he was wearing a trench coat. I was like, ‘That is weird’. I’ve never seen grandpa wear a trench coat before, because I only knew him until I was seven.”

Months later, Zach claimed that his dad stumbled across a picture of his grandfather in Prague in his late twenties… looking the ‘exact same’ as he did during his near-death experience.

“He was a professional man. He was a chemist and stuff like that. So I think he wore more professional suits, not a trench coat.

“But in his younger years, when he was this young, dapper man, he was wearing this big trench coat.”

Cohen remains best known for the 2006 mockumentary film, in which he stars as fictional Kazakh TV journalist Borat Sagdiyev. Although highly successful upon release, Borat also has a fairly complicated legacy.

The film was initially denounced by Kazakhstan – though the Central Asian nation later warmed up to the film and used ‘Very Nice’ in travel ads – faced censorship in certain countries, and received backlash from extras featured in the film.

And it seems they weren’t alone in their distaste for the Borat either.

It turns out that Kid Rock also had a negative reaction to the film and the inclusion of his then wife Anderson.

Anderson and Ritchie were married for around a year but would ultimately go their separate ways in 2007 and, according to Cohen, it was partially due to Borat.

Recalling Anderson’s role in the film during an interview with the Last Laugh podcast back in 2019, Cohen revealed that he’d texted Anderson to see how a screening she and her husband attended had gone.

“She texted back that they were getting divorced,” Cohen revealed.

Revealing that he initially thought the message was a ‘joke’, he continued: “A few weeks later they got divorced and they put as a reason for divorce: Borat.”

The musician has never spoken publicly about his opinion on Borat, however Anderson did confirm that Cohen’s anecdote was in-fact true in her 2023 memoir Love, Pamela.

Revealing exactly what went down during the fateful screening, Anderson wrote that her plan to surprise Ritchie with her appearance had backfired and led to him storming out of the screening.

“I didn’t tell Bob I was in the movie, because I wanted to surprise him,” she explained in an interview about her book with Rolling Stone.

“I forgot about the part in the film that referenced the ‘sex tape.’ Bob stormed out, calling me a w***e and worse. He was embarrassed, and his reaction was not thought through.

“We broke up,” she added. “I didn’t stay in touch with Bob.”

Whether it be When Harry Met Sally, Pretty Woman, or Friends – everyone has a film or TV show they think when they think about how they love, love.

What many won’t think about, however, is Netflix’s Love is Blind.

The reality series, which released its newest season today on Netflix, features groups of single men and women who talk to one another from ‘pods’, where they can only hear each others voice and nothing else.

Many watching wonder how legitimate the proposals, and the ensuing marriages are.

Sarah Jane Boon, Partner at law firm Charles Russell Speechlys, said of whether the marriages are legally binding: “In short, the answer is yes.

“Despite taking place very quickly, the marriages are legally binding, and so there are a number of legal factors that the contestants should be considering before they choose to say I do.

“We’re all hoping that every couple’s marriage works out, but if the relationship breaks down, couples need to have been legally married for at least 12 months before they can get divorced in England and an annulment will only be possible if they have not consummated the marriage.”

While the newest season of Love is Blind is American, the show debuted its first British season last year, and Love is Blind: UK will be getting a season two later this year.

Sarah went on to say of the couples in the process: “If the couples choose to eventually divorce, they will need to confirm that the marriage has broken down irretrievably.

“The good news is that the divorce process was simplified in 2022, so couples can now apply for a divorce (any time after the initial 12 months of marriage), without having to “blame” the breakdown of the marriage on one person’s unreasonable behaviour or adultery.”

In the whole issue of the show, there was one thing Sarah suggested that any singletons considering the process keep in mind: “Another issue to bear in mind is pre-nups.

“The show does not share information about the participants’ financial circumstances but, if there is a discrepancy or one party has or is due to receive a large inheritance or has business interests they would wish to protect, then they would be well advised to enter into a pre-nuptial agreement.

“If couples marry on Love is Blind, as the marriages are legally binding, as soon as they are married, they will automatically have financial claims against each other in the event of a divorce, and a pre-nup could help to protect the wealth they had before the marriage as well as any inheritances or business interests.”

Considering last season saw a cheating scandal, secret children, and one of the most awkward proposals of all time, it’s definitely one to consider.

And sometimes it’s only in that kind of love that someone can get away with absolutely ripping into you. Like when Matt Damon claimed Cillian Murphy is the ‘worst dinner companion imaginable’.

I mean, I can’t lie, I’d be pretty miffed if one of my mates or colleagues said this about me but the Peaky Blinders actor responded and it seems he gets it.

The Hollywood pair starred in Oppenheimer together before working alongside one another on Small Things Like These.

And being decent mates outside of work, it seems Damon can get away with saying this about Murphy.

The Irishman was appearing on 60 Minutes when Scott Pelley shared what his co-star had said about having dinner with him.

“What he meant by that was that when you’re working on a film, when you’re being the character, there’s very little room in your head for anything else,” the host explained.

Murphy said he thinks he’s ‘always been like that’ as he went on to add: “It’s because, to me, you have the time on set, which is a short enough time. You have 10 hours, maybe. And then the other part, if you’ve got a significant part, you’re having to keep your lines fresh.”

Plus, getting some decent shuteye is a ‘big thing’ for the star and so, it’s something he very much prioritises.

“I just love sleeping and I need sleep,” he explained. “I’ve had lots of lovely dinners with Matt Damon since the movie finished and we’ve been out promoting it and stuff.

“But at the time [of filming], you just don’t have the room in your head and you want to have as much sleep as possible.”

Well, to be honest, fair enough, you probably need a good kip when you’re working on a mega Christopher Nolan flick.

Set over Christmas in 1985, it’s based on the book of the same name, written by Irish author Claire Keegan.

The film reveals truths behind Ireland’s Magdalene laundries – the ‘horrific asylums’ run by Roman Catholic institutions from the 1820s until 1996, supposed to reform ‘fallen young women’.

It describes unstable atoms emitting energy in the form of radiation, and unfortunately, this stuff does a lot of harm.

Exposure can be deadly – and at the very least, seriously damaging – for humans, while animals, plants and materials also aren’t immune to it’s effects.

So when you hear a place is radioactive, the best course of action would be to avoid it like the plague.

Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant takes the unenviable crown as being the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident, which took place in 1986.

A number of civilians and workers in the area died from severe radiation poisoning, while others died from other health issues and terminal illnesses from the unsafe levels of radiation put into the atmosphere.

It is still by far and away the worst nuclear disaster in human history, reportedly costing governments around $700 million (£532 million) to deal with, while the area remains uninhabitable.

However, last year scientists found that one unlikely animal had managed to defy the death sentence, which radiation exposure usually brings.

Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Plant, Japan

Japan’s Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Plant was the site of a major incident in 2011, when an earthquake and tsunami caused havoc.

The natural disasters had damaged the power station’s backup energy sources, meaning the reactors were unable to cool down properly after being shut off.

This resulted in a containment of radioactive materials being breached, seeing this horrible stuff leak into the Pacific Ocean.

In wake of the incident, the Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Plant was shut down and an exclusion zone was put in place.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) announced the plant would be decommissioned in July 2019 – however, experts say this process could take 44 years.

The Hanford Site, United States

Alongside the Columbia River in Washington State sits The Hanford Site, which is an integral part of the US’ history with nuclear weapons and nuclear energy development.

It was established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, and was home to the the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world, as well as being an integral research base during the World War II and the Cold War.

The Hanford Site produced almost two thirds of the radioactive metal used in Uncle Sam’s nuclear weapons stockpile, with about 60,000 being made there – including the bomb which was dropped on Nagasaki in 1945.

After the US had enough plutonium to sink a battle ship, the nine nuclear reactors and five large plutonium processing complexes were all shut down by 1971.

Still, there are 177 underground storage tanks which hold approximately 56million gallons of radioactive and chemical wast at Hanford.

The US Department of Energy (DOE), Washington State Department of Ecology and US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have just hashed out an agreement on how to clean up the stuff, according to Nuclear Engineering International (NTI).

Semipalatinsk Test Site, Kazakhstan

The Soviet Union’s favoured testing site for nuclear weapons was the Semipalatinsk Test Site back in the day, which was otherwise known as The Polygon.

Situated in the Abai region of Kazakhstan, a whopping 456 nuclear tests took place at this complex between 1949 and 1989, including the first atom bomb and first air-tested hydrogen bomb.

The fallout from this has been horrific, according to experts, as it is estimated that 1.5million people were exposed to radiation.

A BBC report from 2010 stated that one in 20 children in Semipalatinsk are born with genetic defects, while about 200,000 locals developed cancer.

The Semipalatinsk Test Site was shut in August 1991 and is under the jurisdiction of the National Nuclear Center of the Republic of Kazakhstan who are ‘involved in civilian activities and conversion of the site to non-defence uses’, according to The Nuclear Threat Initiative.

Mailuu-Suu, Kyrgyzstan

The mining town of Mailuu-Suu in Kyrgyzstan sits on top of a lot of uranium, which the Soviet Union mined a lot of during the Cold War, producing about 10,000 metric tonnes of the stuff.

While doing this between 1946 and 1947, they also left behind a host of heavily contaminated waste.

This radioactive material was dumped both above and below the surface in the country in Central Asia, and the ramifications of this remain ongoing.

Residents reported being ‘full of illness’ and told how ‘many people have cancer and leukaemia’, The Guardian reported in 2015.

Locals complained that there hasn’t been any action taken about the deadly waste, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

In a 2010 report warning Mailuu-Suu was in dire need of a clean up, the International Atomic Energy Agency said: “Production targets usually took precedent over environmental, health and safety standards.”

Siberian Chemical Combine, Russia

In Seversk, Russia, there is the Siberian Chemical Combine which was built as a site to create nuclear weapons components.

Producing plutonium and highly enriched uranium, the complex was a valuable asset during the Cold War but production ceased after the conflict ended in 1991.

The last plutonium production reactor was shut down in 2008, NTI explains, but added that ‘studies suggest it remains a major site for the storage and handling of weapon-usable fissile materials and nuclear weapons components’.

These days, the Siberian Chemical Combine supplies Russia’s low enriched uranium fuel needs.

It is one of the biggest sites that stores low and intermediate level nuclear waste from reprocessing, with more than 30 million cubic meters stored via deep-well injection.

Sellafield, UK

Although a lot of Brits aren’t aware, the coast of Cumbria houses a large multi-function nuclear site which was used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Previously known as Windscale, this place is the largest nuclear site in Europe, which experienced a horror incident in 1957 when there was a fire in Windscale Pile number one.

This released radioactive waste into the environment, which is believed to have caused cancer in hundreds of people.

These days, it manages more radioactive waste in one place than any other nuclear facility in the world as it is used for nuclear fuel reprocessing and decommissioning.

A National Audit Office report published last year described Sellafirled as the ‘UK’s most complex and challenging nuclear site’ which ‘holds a legacy of contaminated buildings, untreated waste and ageing facilities’.

The Somali Coast, Somalia

Although idyllic, the Somali Coast has been polluted with all kinds of toxic waste over the last few decades, including the radioactive kind.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) reported that barrels of unknown material washing up on shores in 2004, which have drastically affected locals health and livelihoods, but this could have been going on since the 1990s.

Five years later, UNEP spokesman Nick Nuttall told Voices of America that the coastline has essentially been used as a dumping ground.

“There’s uranium radioactive waste, there’s leads, there’s heavy metals like cadmium and mercury, there’s industrial wastes, and there’s hospital wastes, chemical wastes, you name it,” Nuttall said.

“It’s not rocket science to know why they’re doing it because of the instability there.”

He claimed that it costs European companies £190 per ton to get rid of waste on their own continent, while it’s just £1.90 to do it on Somalia’s coast.

Karunagappalli, India

Thanks to the levels of thorium – a radioactive metal that occurs naturally in soil, water, and rock – in Karunagappalli, this small coastal village in India is pretty radioactive.

It reportedly has the world’s highest level of natural radioactivity in a densely populated area and a large study of all 385,103 residents was launched in the 1990s to investigate the health effects on them.

The research found that after more than a decade, 1,379 cancer cases including 30 cases of leukaemia were identified, however ‘no cancer site was significantly related to cumulative radiation dose’.

Still, other scientific investigations have suggested that there is still a higher reading of radiation per person in Karunagappalli, due to the excess of thorium there.

In some areas, the median outdoor radiation levels are more than 4 mGy/yr, while it’s as high as 70 mGy/yr in some spots on the coast.

Goiás, Brazil

Back in 1987, chaos unfolded in Goiás, Brazil after an unsecured radiotherapy source was stolen from an abandoned hospital in the city.

After reportedly passing through multiple hands, the machine was opened and the lead capsule containing the alkali metal caesium was removed.

Some forms of this soft, silvery-white metal that can be found in nature and in nuclear waste are radioactive – and this was, so those who handled it exposed themselves.

Four people died as a result of this, while a whopping 112,000 people had to be examined in case they had also been contaminated, which 249 of them had been.

The IAEA described it as ‘one of the world’s worst radiological incidents’ in history.

The clean up job was a mammoth one, involving the demolition of several houses, the destruction of contaminated possessions and several sites had to have topsoil removed too.

Running for over two decades on Sky Sports, Soccer AM was the perfect blend of football and comedy which allowed celebrities to put their best foot forward in front of goal while Premier League players dished the dirt on their teammates.

However, the series also had its fair share of eyebrow-raising moments prior to its untimely end in 2023, most notably the poorly-aged ‘Soccerette’ feature which saw young women in football shirts asked about their age and relationship status.

Definitely a segment which wouldn’t make it out of a production meeting room nowadays.

There was also the moment where former footballer and guest presenter Chris Kamara – of viral ‘I don’t know Jeff’ fame – was ‘caught’ in a hotel room with a scantily clad woman.

Airing on the show back in 2002, the skit occurred while Kamara was showing presenters Tim Lovejoy and Helen Chamberlain around a suite at the now-shuttered West Ham Hotel, which allowed super-fans the opportunity to wake up to views of the pitch at Upton Park.

While explaining how the hotel rooms are turned into conference rooms in just ‘six minutes’ on a match day, a woman appears behind Kamara in just a towel and asks if he has time to rub her back – a moment which brings plenty of laughs from the team back in the studio.

“I can’t believe my eyes,” Chamberlain responds, before questioning how the presenter knows the woman’s name despite claiming to have to not know ‘where she’s come from’.

“It’s funny that he’s never seen her before in his life but he knows what her name is,” Chamberlain says, to which Kamara insists: “I don’t know where she’s come from!”

The moment is certainly something you wouldn’t see aired nowadays on mainstream television, with several viewers surprised to see how unfiltered programmes used to be.

“When football programs were actually enjoyable. Simpler times,” one person replied to the clip, which had been shared on X.

“Absolute Gold,” a second wrote.

“I remember watching this live, was creasing,” another added.

I mean, we’ve all used the ‘do it for the gram’ phrase before and unfortunately, the consequences aren’t always so aesthetic.

And pretty tragically, this woman had her hands bitten off by a shark after she reportedly ‘tried to take a photo of the animal’.

Named in local reports as Nathalie Ross, the Canadian was in the shallow waters off Thompson’s Cove Beach on the Turks and Caicos Island in the morning of 7 February when the attack took place.

It’s believed the 55-year-old tourist’s husband attempted to fight off the shark before people managed to bring her to shore.

Photos online show her lying on the beach as others surround her and attempt to stop the bleeding.

“On Friday 7 February a tourist was injured by a shark in the waters adjacent to Blue Hills, Providenciales,” The Turks & Caicos Islands Government said in a statement.

“The individual was taken to Cheshire Hall Medical Centre where she was stabilised and later flown off island for further medical care.”

Government officials then closed the beach ‘in an abundance of caution’ until 9 February once it had been determined that the shark had moved on to deeper water.

“The shark was estimated to be approximately 6ft in length, however the species is yet to be confirmed,” the statement added.

It continued that after investigation, it had been determined that the woman ‘had attempted to engage with the animal from the shallows in an attempt to take photographs’.

The statement then concluded with a stark warning: “The DECR would like to urge the public to always be aware of your surroundings, follow local advisories, and respect marine life.

“Swim in designated areas, avoid murky waters, never swim alone, and do not attempt to feed marine wildlife under any circumstances.”

These waters surrounding the Turks and Caicos are home to a number of shark species.

Visit Turks and Caicos Islands says there have been four shark attacks between 2021 and 2025, with all victims surviving. It adds that sharks are ‘generally quite rare’ at the more popular beaches and while the occasional shark is sighted in those areas, it’s typically ‘a very docile shark’.