For nearly three decades, Gubbio, a small medieval town at the foot of Mount Ingino in Italy’s Umbria region, has held the Guinness Record for the world’s largest Christmas tree.

In 1981, the 750-meter Christmas tree spread over the slope of Mount Ingino was lit up for the first time. Every year since, on the 7th of December (the Eve of the Immaculate Conception), the over 700 giant lights that make up the tree are turned on, and they remain active throughout the holiday season, until the day of Epiphany, on 6th January. Created in honor of the local Patron Saint Ubaldo, the Christmas tree of Mount Ingino was recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the ‘world’s largest Christmas Tree’ in the year 1991. Since then, no one has even come close to challenging its record.

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Just Room Enough Island, is an aptly-named private-owned island with literally just enough room for its owners’ house, a couple of trees and a miniature beach with a pair of bench chairs.

Part of the Thousand Islands archipelago on the border between the U.S. and Canada, Just Room Enough Island measures about 3,300 square feet (310 m²), which makes it the world’s smallest inhabited island. It was purchased by the Sizeland family in the 1950s, as a comfortable retreat, but they never expected it to become an internationally-recognized tourist attraction.

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Square Off, the world’s smartest, most connected chess board, gives the centuries-old sport of chess a 21st century touch by allowing players halfway around the world to interact with physical pieces without actually touching them.

Chess has been available as a digital game for years, but true fans know that there’s nothing like playing on a high-quality physical board. That’s hard to do when your opponent is thousands of miles away, or at least it was until someone came up with away to allow people halfway around the world to play chess on a physical board made of rosewood. It looks like a magical set out of a Harry Potter movie, but it’s actually a wonder of technology that harnesses robotics and internet connectivity to make the impossible possible.

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Dutch brand Vollebak recently unveiled what it calls the “world’s strongest jacket”. With an exterior made out of 100 percent dyneema, the strongest fiber known to man, the Indestructible Puffer can allegedly withstand whatever abuse you subject it to and last a lifetime.

Adventure clothing brand Vollebak has been creating cutting edge adventure sports clothes for years, and has become known for making some of the toughest garments on the planet. In the past, we’ve featured their virtually indestructible hoodie and a pair of pants designed to last at least 100 years, so we know than when they say their latest creation, the Indestructible Puffer, is the strongest jacket ever made, they mean it! Its outer layer is said to be 15 times stronger than steel and 40% stronger than high-strength aramid fibres, which makes it impervious to shearing, tearing, and blunt-force traumas.

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Artisans at London-based design studio Bompass & Parr teamed up with scientists at the Aerogelex laboratory in Hamburg, Germany, to transfer the properties of the world’s lightest solid material into an edible dessert.

Aerogel was invented in 1931, by American chemist Samuel Kistler as part of a bet he made with fellow scientist Charles Learned over who could replace the water in gels with air, without causing shrinkage. With an air content of  95% – 99.8%, aerogel is recognized as the lightest solid in the world, so it made sense for designers at Bompass & Parr to try and emulate the making-of process of aerogel to create the world’s lightest dessert.

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If you’re ever in Bangkok, Thailand, and you;re a fan of unicorns, ponies or just colors in general, there’s a place you simply must visit. It’s called “Unicorn Cafe” and, just like you’d expect, it’s full of plush unicorns, rainbows and lots of other colorful treats.

To say Unicorn Cafe is a colorful place would be an understatement. There’s colorful and there’s this place where even the food, including a multi-layered cake and spaghetti, come in all colors of the rainbow. There are plastic chandeliers and plush unicorns hanging from the ceilings, multi-colored couches, and tiny My Little Pony Toys decorating the tables. Did I mention you can put on a unicorn onesie to really get into a magical mood? It’s the kind of place you’d think only existed in someone’s acid trip, or in a pastel fantasy dream.

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The owner of McKamey Manor, dubbed by many the world’s most terrifying haunted house, is promising anyone who can survive its scariest tour yet a prize of $20,000.

Many haunted houses claim to be the most terrifying, but there’s a general consensus among cheap thrill enthusiasts that  McKamey Manor is really the scariest of them all. And if its current reputation wasn’t enough, owner Russ McKamey is upping the ante by offering a prize of $20,000 to anyone brave enough to make it through a tour that can last up to 10 hours and takes participants to their physical and mental limits.

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The male white bellbird, a 250-gram-heavy bird native to South America, produces the world’s loudest bird sound, according to a new scientific study.

Biologist Jeff Podos at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Mario Cohn-Haft of Brazil’s Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazonia recorded the mating call of the male white bellbird, aka Procnias albus, and concluded that it was a good nine decibels louder than the sound of the previous holder of the title “world’s loudest bird”, the screaming piha, also a species native to the Amazon rain forest. Peak sound levels recorded during the bird’s mating call reached a whopping 125.4 decibels, way above the human pain threshold and equivalent to the sound made by a pile driver.

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Just outside the city of Atlanta, in Georgia, lies one of the strangest, most disturbing hiking trails in the world – Doll’s Head Trail. Faithful to its name, this 1.5-mile course is lined with creepy doll heads that seem to be following you with their gaze as you walk by.

Long before it became home to the world’s creepiest hiking trail, Georgia’s Constitution Park was a huge 19th century brick laying site. But that shut down half a century ago, giving nature the chance to reclaim it, along with the deep clay pits which have since been flooded with rain water and created the network of ponds known as Constitution Lakes. And despite being located just a few miles from downtown Atlanta, this natural haven is home to several species of wild birds and even big game like deer. But the thing Constitution park is most famous for is its unique hiking trail, Doll’s Head Trail.

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There are hundreds of grape varieties cultivated in japan, but only one so coveted that it can sell for several hundreds of dollars per grape (that’s individual grape, not bunch). The Ruby Roman was developed in Japan’s Ishikawa Prefecture and is considered one of the world’s most expensive fruits.

The story of  Ruby Roman began in 1995, when Ishikawa grape farmers appealed to the Prefectural Agricultural Research Center to create a large red grape variety. 400 experimental vines were planted into a test field, and two years later, they started bearing fruit. However, out of the 400 vines, only 4 turned out to be red grapes, and only one of them was deemed large enough to meet the farmers’ expectations. Over the next 14 years, researchers selectively bred this grape variety, constantly enhancing its size, taste, color and ease of cultivation, and today Ruby Roman is considered a “treasure of Ishikawa”.

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Mangayamma, a 74-year-old woman in India’s Anthar Pradesh state, recently became the oldest woman in history to give birth, after successfully delivering twin baby girls following an IVF procedure.

The Indian woman had married Yaramati Sitarama Rajarao, a farmer from Nelaparthipudi village, back in 1962, but despite visiting countless doctors and temples, the couple were unable to bear children for 54 years of their marriage. Mangayamma remembers people looking at her as if she had committed some kind of sin, and some calling her cursed, but luckily her husband stuck by her and gave her the strength to move on. Even after reaching menopause some 25 years ago, the woman still had a strong desire to give birth, and last year, after seeing a 55-year-old neighbor become pregnant via in-vitro fertilisation, she and her husband decided to undergo the procedure as well.

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If we were to make a global top 100 ice cream flavors list, hot-dog probably wouldn’t make the cut, but that hasn’t stopped American processed meat giant Oscar Mayer from announcing the launch of a hot-dog-flavored ice cream sandwich.

Shaking up the hot-dog scene seems like a tall order, but Oscar Mayer is willing to try with its soon-to-hit-the-shelves hot dog ice cream sandwich. Made up of sweet hot-dog cream, candied hot-dog bits, and spicy Dijon mustard gelato, all squeezed between two soft cookie buns, the upcoming treat is advertised as the best way to enjoy a hot-dog in ice cream form. It’s not clear if this is just a one-time marketing stunt or a permanent addition to the Oscar Mayer family of products, but one thing is for sure, hot-dog ice cream sandwich is a real thing.

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48-year-old Jimmy De Frenne, from Belgium, recently set a new world record for the longest time spent sitting on a toilet, after spending five days on a toilet bowl in a bar.

After breaking the world record for the longest time spent ironing non-stop (82 hours) in 2016, Jimmy De Frenne recently set his sights on another bizarre world record attempt – the longest time spent sitting on a toilet bowl. There was no official record to break as Guinness World Records had no such category, but De Frenne had heard of a man who had allegedly spent 100 hours sitting on a “throne” and thought he could do better. He set himself a goal of 168 hours and spent almost five days last week sitting on a toilet bowl at Filip’s Place bar in Ostend, but had to quit after only 116 hours as his body just couldn’t handle it anymore.

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It may be cute and tiny, but Lil’ Nitro is no joke. Sporting a Scoville rating reashing well into the millions of units, this chewy treat is 900 times hotter than a Jalapeno, making it the world’s hottest gummy bear.

After the world’s hottest lollipop and world’s hottest candy, the devious minds at Flamethrower Candy have created the world’s hottest gummy bear. Don’t be deceived by its cute and appealing appearance, as this little guy is holding a dynamite stick for a reason. It’s made with a special chili pepper extract that’s 900 times hotter than a Jalapeno pepper, and several times hotter than the Carolina Reaper, Dragon’s Breath and Pepper X, which are generally regarded as the hottest peppers on the planet.

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Located on a jungle-covered hillside in Malaysia, the new 1,140-meter-long water slide being built at Penang’s Escape Theme Park will most likely be declared the longest in the world when it opens, in August 2019.

The current Guinness record for the world’s longest water slide has been held by the 605-meter slide at Action Park, in New Jersey, since 2015, but in just two months time it will be claimed by a new water slide currently under construction in the Malaysian state of Penang. Already 65 percent complete, the slide already measures 705-meters-long, and when finished will take thrill-seekers on an epic 4-minute ride from the top of a hill, through a lush jungle before, dropping them into a large swimming pool at the bottom. Escape Theme Park announced that the remaining 435-meter section of the water slide will be completed in time for its August inauguration.

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