A hospital in China attended to a bizarre emergency on 16 August.

A five-year-old girl was brought to the Beijing Children’s Hospital after she accidentally swallowed a 50-gram gold bar while playing, South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported. An X-ray of the patient’s abdomen showed the gold bar, measuring 4 centimeters and weighing 50 grams, lodged in her stomach, according to SCMP.

Doctors operated on the girl to remove the object, which could have damaged the delicate digestive tract lining. An endoscope with a snare was passed through the girl’s mouth and esophagus until it reached her stomach. The device then grasped the gold bar and pulled it up very carefully along the digestive tract.

The entire process took only a few minutes, according to SCMP.

Meanwhile, a woman ate so many noodles at a 100-year-old Japanese restaurant known for its fast-paced “Wanko Soba” or noodle-eating challenge on 12 August.

Tabeta Neru ended up setting a new record at the Azumaya restaurant in Morioka, Iwate Prefecture, consuming 755 bowls of soba, two bowls more than fellow competitive eater Ako Ono ate in 2024, The Standard (TS) reported.

A photo of Neru behind the piles of red bowls accompanied the TS report. Fifteen bowls are equivalent to one regular serving of soba, meaning that Tabeta consumed the equivalent of more than 50 standard portions, according to TS.

According to Azumaya, the previous male record holder of its Wanko Soba challenge consumed only 500 small bowls.