Category: Lifestyle

If you can’t make it to one of Celine Dion’s residency shows in Paris, there’s a new way to honour the Canadian icon.

Barbie has released a signature doll in homage to her most memorable musical appearance of all time.

At the 1998 Academy Awards, Dion famously wore a navy long-sleeved Michael Kors dress to perform hit Titanic theme song ‘My Heart Will Go On’.

Not missing a beat, Dion’s doll can be seen in a replica dress, accessorised with the ‘heart of the ocean’ necklace inspired by the cult 1997 film.

Speaking about the launch, the songstress said, “It is a true honour to join the Barbie legacy with a doll inspired by one of the most meaningful moments of my career.

“I hope this doll inspires everyone to express themselves with confidence, follow their dreams and believe in the power of their own voice.”

The limited edition Celine Dion Barbie is now available on Smyths for £69.99 here.

It’s not the first time Barbie has immortalised a legendary hitmaker either.

Over the last couple of years, Mattel has launched other dolls inspired by the likes of Whitney Houston, Kylie Minogue and Marilyn Monroe.

You can shop your favourite Barbie signature dolls below:

What can fans expect from the new Celine Dion Barbie doll?

The Barbie doll is inspired by Celine’s 1998 Oscars appearance, where she took to the stage in a navy Michael Kors dress.

A collector’s item, the box comes with a doll stand and certificate of authenticity.

You can find a full list of what to expect inside below:

• One Celine Dion Barbie doll
• One turtleneck gown
• One necklace inspired by the ‘Heart of the Ocean’ seen in the Titanic film
• One pair of heels
• A doll stand
• A certificate of authenticity

Can you still buy tickets for Celine Dion’s Paris residency?

The 58-year-old pop icon returned to the stage in September 2026 for a 26-show residency at Paris’ La Plenitude Arena.

Due to overwhelming success, Dion has announced extra tour dates, and the show will now run until spring 2027.

The concert showcases her most renowned hits in both English and French with creative direction from show designer Willo Perron.

You can purchase Celine Dion tickets on the following UK sites:

A 16-year-old boy needed a tooth removing from the unusual location of his eye socket, a strange place for a tooth to be, after it started poking through his skin.

There had been a swelling on his eye socket for about a month but he hadn’t been in any pain, then two points started to poke through his skin and a scan revealed they were part of a fully formed canine tooth growing there.

This is something known as an ‘ectopic tooth’, where one of your chompers begins growing in a place it shouldn’t, and in this unfortunate instance it was the teenager’s eye socket where the tooth grew and pushed through.

It’s a very rare condition and most of the time they grow in the space behind your cheekbone, but various studies have found that they can develop in the nasal cavity, palate, chin, jaw joint and of course the eye socket.

Researchers presenting this finding said the teenager, from India, had ‘no history of trauma’ but was experiencing ‘a painless swelling of the left upper eyelid for one month’.

Doctors saw ‘two hard, well-defined whitish projections’ which further investigation turned up as a ‘well-defined hyperdense structure with crown–root morphology’.

In other words, this was the tooth.

They didn’t know why he’d developed an ectopic tooth in his eye socket but the surgery to get it out was successful and his eyes are now not in danger of being poked by the roots of a tooth that shouldn’t be growing there.

While surgical removal is the solution for many ectopic teeth since they can cause infection, a cyst or block an important passage in the head, sometimes they are better left alone.

If the grown tooth is not in the way of anything and not doing any harm then Dr Saroash Shahid explained in The Conversation they might be best left alone.

Fortunately for the teenager his tooth didn’t cause him pain or discomfort, and it was out pretty quickly.

That’s not the case for everyone, as a 38-year-old man who had breathing problems for years had to wait a long time to learn the truth about it, he had an ectopic tooth growing in his nose.

Scans found the tooth in the floor of his right nostril and he needed to go in for surgery to get it taken out.

It turns out having the misplaced tooth taken out of his nose worked wonders for clearing up his breathing problems.

Canine teeth are the most common kind of ectopic teeth to develop somewhere else in the skull other than the mouth.

On 26 January 1972, Vesna Vulović would make history as the first person to fall 33,000 feet out of the sky and survive.

An air hostess for Yugoslav Airlines, Vulović was one of 27 onboard a flight from Stockholm to Belgrade when tragedy struck. A bomb, believed to have been placed onboard the aircraft by Croatian nationalists, exploded while the plane was cruising above a village in the north of the Czech Republic.

The aircraft subsequently broke into three pieces before tumbling to the ground near the Czech village of Srbská Kamenice.

While the rest of the aircraft’s crew and passengers either perished in the explosion or impact, Vulović was found alive in the middle of the aisle in the rear section of the aircraft.

Aged just 22 years old, Vulović was severely injured – suffering from a fractured skull, broken legs, broken ribs and a fractured pelvis – and spent months in hospital, but ultimately survived.

Vulović is one of just three people, excluding military pilots, to survive a crash in which a plane fell out of the sky.

How did Vesna Vulović survive the JAT Flight 367 crash?

Before you take Vulović’s story as a sign that surviving a plane exploding at 33,000 feet is a typically survivable event, it’s worth noting that the Serbian national was saved by a variety of favourable factors.

According to Vulović’s entry in the Guinness Book of World Records, the explosion had led to her becoming pinned underneath a food trolley, which prevented her from being sucked out of the aircraft.

Vulović also suffered from low blood pressure, which caused her to pass out, meaning that she was not at risk of her heart bursting upon impact with the ground.

Additionally, the wreckage landed upon thick snow, cushioning the aircraft upon impact.

Vulović was also found by a villager who happened to have been an army medic in World War II, who was able to administer life-saving first aid.

Forget claims about not breaking a bone meaning you’re guarded by angels, as Vulović clearly had some sort of divine protection that day.

Either that or she was extremely lucky. Especially when you factor in that she wasn’t even meant to have been working that day.

What happened to Vesna Vulović?

After spending 10 days in a coma and being temporarily paralysed from the waist down, Vulović was able to recover. She did however, live with permanent injuries from the crash, walking with a limp due to a twisted spine.

“I was broken, and the doctors put me back together again,” she told the New York Times in 2008, adding: “Nobody ever expected me to live this long.”

After suffering amnesia due to the head injuries she sustained, Vulović never remembered the crash, instead learning about the incident from others.

She later passed away at her home in December 2016, at the age of 66.

A photographer who takes photos of people digitally removes their tattoos and gives them a picture of what they’d look like without the ink.

Steven Burton is the artist behind the Skin Deep Project, where he photographed former gang members and showed them the difference between their appearance with the tattoos and without.

The photographer said that the subjects of his photography were ‘rebuilding their lives beyond the identities written on their skin’ and that’s what he captured.

“The project explores how quickly we make assumptions based on appearance, by showing people with and without their tattoos, so viewers see the person first, then reconsider their perception,” Burton told LADbible about the Skin Deep Project.

“It became quite personal – many tattoos mark pivotal life moments.”

When they were shown their photos many of the men said it was ’emotional’ to see the difference and marvelled at how much their appearance was transformed from not having the tattoos.

Marcos Luna said the tattoos reminded him of ‘the homies‘, but also ‘a lot of death, sadness, hate, destructive, sick, just out of control’ memories back.

He was grateful to see the difference though, telling the photographer ‘the person you see in this picture is a human being, just like you’.

When Dennis Zamoran saw his own pictures he was shocked and said ‘that is what I could have looked like’, saying it was ‘crazy’ and he felt like he’d messed up his ‘whole life’.

Dennis said he felt ‘bad’ looking at the pictures because they reminded him of what he’d done, with the picture of him covered in tattoos reminding him of time he’d spent in prison.

He added that he was looking forward to showing his mum the one of him with his tattoos removed.

Francisco Flores remembered that ‘the first tattoos began when I was little’ when there was ‘nothing else to do’, saying he got addicted to getting tattoos and had the rest when he was in prison.

“It was more like a shout for help when I didn’t want to accept that I needed it,” he said.

“I was like ‘somebody look what I’m doing, I’m destroying myself, somebody come help me out’. Then it was just like I got addicted to them and it’s just like one after another after another and they just start piling up.

“Next thing I know I have no more space.”

A succession of former gang members photographed by Steven and shown how they’d look without any tattoos were amazed at the results.

David Pina said he looked ‘younger’ and couldn’t help but say ‘damn, that’s me’ when he saw the difference between the two pictures.

He remarked on how much more he looked like his brother and his dad, and wished that his mum had been able to see the photo of what he would look like in his 30s without tattoos before she died.

David Williams said looking at his other self made him think ‘that’s the guy I should have been’.

He wanted to change because he had a son of his own and felt like he should become a better man because of it, though he said he would still ‘die for my hood’ because of what they’d given him in his life.

Vaping for just a few days can cause lasting lung damage, new research has revealed.

According to a new study published in the scientific journal JCI Insight, tooting on a vape for just a brief amount of time has been linked to injuries in the ‘deepest and most delicate regions of the lung’.

The study also found that prolonged exposure could also contribute to chronic lung disease, caused by sustained cellular injury and disruption of normal repair.

“Some effects persisted after exposure ended and altered the immune response to a subsequent viral infection,” Dr Irina Petrache, senior study author and researcher at National Jewish Health, said.

Usage of vapes and e-cigarettes has exploded in the past decade as younger people picked up the habit as an alternative to smoking. According to one ONS survey, vaping has now overtaken smoking in popularity, with 5.4 million adults using vapes while 4.9 million prefer a traditional cigarette.

However, the research is yet to fully catch up with the trend, meaning that many people are inhaling a substance without a clear idea of the long-term impact it has on their bodies.

According to the latest guidelines from the NHS, vaping is considered a safer alternative for people who already smoke cigarettes.

This is because vapes have removed the toxic chemicals found in cigarettes – such as tar, carbon monoxide and arsenic – which have been linked to several health conditions, such as lung cancer, stroke and heart disease.

However, this does not mean that vaping is completely safe, with healthcare guidance stating that people who’ve never smoked or vaped should not pick it up.

In the study conducted by National Jewish Health, researchers focused on how tissues in the distal lung – the deep, delicate region where oxygen passes into the bloodstream – reacted when exposed to either e-cigarette vapour alone or a combination of e-cigarette vapour and a respiratory virus (either influenza A virus or SARS-CoV-2).

The findings showed that within 24 hours, e-cigarette vapour damaged the protective barrier of the distal lung, triggered cellular stress, impaired cells’ internal process for clearing damaged components, slowed cell growth and repair, and increased cell death.

Signs of lung stress persisted 10 days after just a five-day exposure period ended, the study noted.

Researchers also observed lasting changes in barrier function, tissue remodelling, and Th1 immunity – a branch of the immune system critical to fighting viral infections.

Previous vaping exposure also increased the quantity of SARS-CoV-2 – the virus responsible for Covid-19 and suppressed several antiviral genes following infection.

“The findings, which will need to be confirmed in future studies in people, point to biological mechanisms that may help explain why vaping has been linked to lung injury and greater susceptibility to respiratory infections,” Petrache added.

Dr Kiana Aran has found a new appreciation for life after spending five days in complete darkness.

In November 2024, the bioengineering professor at the University of California was left alone in a dark, silent cave in Poland to investigate how sensory deprivation affects the human body and mind.

Her plan, initially, was to see whether removing light, sound and everyday distractions could calm her constantly racing thoughts.

“As a faculty, my mind has been always racing. I have tried yoga, meditation to just calm my brain down, because I’m constantly thinking of, ‘Okay, what’s next, what’s next, what’s next.’ I cannot sit still, and sometimes it gets too much,” she told The Scientist.

While having sensors on throughout the experiment to track changes in her body, she had a bed, bathroom and shower, but no light, entertainment or contact with other people.

Food was delivered once a day at unpredictable times, making it difficult to tell whether it was day or night.

During the experiment, she experienced several disturbing psychological and physical effects:

Vivid hallucinations

Dr Aran saw her mother, cousin and grandmother, who had died years earlier, sitting together watching an iPad.

She couldn’t tell whether she was dreaming or hallucinating.

Psychological distress

By the second day, Dr Aran found the isolation particularly difficult, becoming increasingly restless and desperate to leave.

“How am I going to stay another three days here? Because I was doing nothing,” she said.

Dr Aran called it ‘a torture, sort of’, adding: “I just couldn’t wait to come out.”

Heightened taste and seeing ‘objects’

Food flavours and textures became unusually intense, as tests later revealed increased levels of taste receptors in her saliva.

And despite being in complete darkness, she began perceiving outlines of objects.

Researchers also detected alterations in her immune response, gut microbiome and internal body clock.

Lasting emotional changes

After leaving, she reported feeling more grateful, patient and compassionate.

“I still carry [that feeling] with me,” she admitted.

“I appreciate everything I have right now all around me.”

Writing in Nature, Dr Aran added: “When I finally emerged from the cave on the fifth day, I embraced those waiting anxiously for me; the colleagues, the friends, the ones who had made this opportunity possible. In that moment, wanting to feel everything at once, I ran to the frozen lake nearby and dove in. The icy water bit into my skin, but after five days of darkness, it was the most vivid reminder that I was alive.”

On 20 November 2021, Beatriz Flamini headed down into a cave in Granada, Spain. And she did not come back out for 500 days.

You might not be totally surprised to hear that during this time in the 70m deep cave, the Spanish extreme athlete suffered a rather terrifying side effect.

Flamini entered the age at the age of 48 while being monitored by a group of psychologists, researchers and speleologists. But she had no contact with humans for the whopping 500 days.

You might think that would have felt like forever, but she actually told reporters after that she had quickly lost her sense of time – she believed she’d only been there for about 160-170 days when the support team went to retrieve her.

During the experiment, Flamini documented her experiences in order to help scientists understand the effects of extreme isolation.

And at one point, she experienced auditory hallucinations.

“You are silent and the brain makes it up,” she described following after emerging in April 2023.

The extreme athlete had asked the team to send down a device so she could record the sound as she insisted it was ‘not hallucinations’.

Some of the team felt that these ‘apparent auditory hallucinations’ suggested distress and were concerned about her stability.

But sports psychologist Débora Godoy Izquierdo told the New Yorker that she did not share the worries for Flamini.

Instead, she endorsed that the idea that the team should send more books and puzzles to help her focus. The psychologist believed Flamini had dealt with the hallucinations appropriately ‘even if they might be strange experiences for most people in their daily lives’.

During her time in the cave, she exercised, drew and knitted woolly hats while getting through 60 books and 1,000 litres of water.

“I’m still stuck on November 21, 2021. I don’t know anything about the world,” she said after exiting the cave.

Flamini told the New Yorker that tests at the hospital afterwards came back positively but she continued to suffer problems with her balance.

With 500 days down in the cave with normal walking impossible, she was walking unevenly with a ‘stooped’ posture. She also wore sunglasses for a while as her pupils hadn’t readjusted to the bright light.

Flamini added to the New Yorker that her short-term memory had suffered and she had lost much of her peripheral vision.

Speaking shortly after leaving the cave, she described her experience as ‘excellent, unbeatable’.