July 24, 2026

RIDDLE OF THE DAY

What has a tongue but no mouth?

The answer is revealed below

Quince

“Ready” looks effortless on you

Anyone can get dressed. With Quince, it’s second nature.

Throw on this 100% European linen shirt and tapered trousers, and you’re done. No mirror checks. No adjusting.

Premium materials, sourced from the same locations as luxury brands. It’s quality and ease without the markup.

Shop Quince’s essentials today

THE POP STAR WHO LOST EVERYTHING TO ONE BOTCHED LIP INJECTION

Pete Burns was unlike anyone the music world had ever seen. He showed up to school at 14 with bright red hair, no eyebrows, and a massive earring. The principal sent him home. He dropped out and never went back.

Instead, he found music. He worked at a Liverpool record shop, threw customers' selections back at them if he disapproved, and eventually formed Dead or Alive. In 1985, "You Spin Me Round" hit number one.

Pete Burns was an 80s icon overnight.

But fame terrified him. He spent his first paycheck on a nose job, and a surgeon accidentally removed half his nose. Burns wore an eyepatch to hide it and accidentally created his signature look.

Then in 2004, during a lip procedure, his surgeon ran out of filler mid-injection and suggested a substitute he called "similar." Burns trusted him.

During a performance with the Scissor Sisters, his lower lip began to burn. When he got off stage, it had formed a massive boil. The surgeon held him down on the operating table, punched two syringes in, and drained what Burns described as "at least a pint and a half of yellow steaming fluid."

Burns followed a reconstructive surgeon to Genoa, Italy. He stayed there for two full years, underwent hundreds of surgeries, and by the time he returned to England, he had spent every penny he had ever earned.

He believed the worst was behind him.

But what that single injection eventually cost him went far beyond his face.

RIDDLE HINT: YOU HEAR IT ONLY WHEN IT MOVES.

THE LAST EMPRESS OF CHINA DIED SCREAMING FOR HER BABY

Wanrong was 16 when Emperor Puyi chose her as his bride. His first choice had been another girl entirely, but his advisors rejected her, so he settled for Wanrong.

Then married his first choice anyway, on the same day, as a secondary consort.

He had no interest in Wanrong, and when she grew anxious, he encouraged her to smoke opium because it made her easier to “manage” while she was still a teenager.

Years passed, the empire fell, and they barely spoke. Wanrong sank deeper into addiction and loneliness until she found comfort in the arms of one of Puyi's aides.

In 1940, she discovered she was pregnant. She confessed everything to Puyi and begged him to let the child live. But the moment her baby girl was born, he had her taken from Wanrong's arms and killed.

When the Soviets invaded in 1945, Puyi chartered a plane out and said there was no room for the women, abandoning her and never looking back.

She was captured fleeing to Korea and thrown into a prison cell. Her opium ran out, and people came from miles around to watch her hallucinate through the bars. Guards said she wasn't worth feeding.

In her final days, she kept screaming for her daughter and died at just 39 years old.

But when Puyi heard about her death three years later, what he felt revealed the darkest truth about who he always was.