It’s hard to imagine boxing and painting combined to create something artistic. But Dutch boxer Bart van Polanen Petel demonstrates that it’s really quite possible to mix a brutal sport and a delicate art form. He puts on his boxing gloves, dips them in paint, and throws punch after punch at a blank canvas wrapped around a punching bag until it is completely covered in chaotic color patterns.

“If life is ultimately a Darwinian struggle for survival, then boxing at least has the virtue of being open about it,” says the philosophical boxer. Inspired by its primal nature, painting is Bart’s way of paying tribute to the sport of boxing. “Instead of crushing bones and shattering teeth, I use my fists to create,” he explained.

Bart says that when he’s boxing, he feels a deep connection with the men of the Stone Age and the Middle Ages. He feels a certain animal within him, an aggression that he learned to curb in boxing. But with painting, he’s able to let out all that aggression on to the canvas.

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Let’s face it – gas masks might be incredibly useful in case of a catastrophe, but they’re not the most fashionable accessories and often make it difficult for users to interact with other people. But Israeli industrial designer, Zlil Lazarovich, is trying to change the way people perceive gas masks. She has created the world’s first ‘Social Gas Mask’ which not only looks sleek and stylish, but also allows for seamless social interactions.

With the new Social Gas Mask, you can enjoy movie nights on your couch, go outside without having people stare at you, and pretty much do everything you normally do. “The large window allows to show a greater range of facial expressions by exposing the upper cheeks, eyebrows and full width of the eyes area,” Lazarovich says. “The wide, cheeky shape of the filters gives the impression of a wide, healthy and happy face instead of a long, skeleton-like one. As opposed to current masks that often hide the user’s face, restrict communication and facial expressions, and look like an alien, the Social Gas Mask has a number of features designed to offer an empowering image and a positive experience.”

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The city of Trondheim in Norway is the first and only one in the world to have a lift specially designed to help cyclists travel uphill. The contraption is called ‘Trampe’ and it can get you up a very steep hill with practically no effort on your part.

Trampe was first opened in 1993, and quickly turned Trondheim into a very popular tourist destination for cyclists. Over 200,000 cyclists have used it to go up a 130-meter hill, with no accidents reported so far. In 2012, the original lift was dismantled and replaced with a more industrialized version in 2013, called the CycloCable.

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When 26-year-old New Yorker Jen Glantz got to be the bridesmaid at four of her closest friends’ weddings this year, she realized that she had a real flair for the job. Her story is incredibly similar to Katherine Heigl’s character in the movie 27 Dresses, where she’s always the bridesmaid but never the bride. But Jen has decided to make the most of her situation by turning pro – she posted an ad on Craigslist offering her services to brides all over the world. She’s even written a book about her experiences as a professional bridesmaid called All My Friends are Engaged.

“This year alone, I’ve been a bridesmaid four times,” she wrote in the ad. “That’s four different chiffon dresses, four different hen parties filled with tequila shots and guys in thongs twerking way too close to my face; four different pre-wedding pep talks to the bride about how this is the happiest day of her life and marriage, probably, is just like riding a bike: a little shaky at first but then she’ll get the hang of it. So let me be there for you if you don’t have any other girlfriends.”

The ad also mentions the bridesmaid stuff that Jen is exceptionally good at: “Holding up the 18 layers of your dress so that you can pee with ease on your wedding day,” “Catching the bouquet and then following that moment up with my best Miss America-like ‘Omg, I can’t believe this,’ speech,” “Doing the electric and the cha cha slide,” and “Responding in a timely manner to pre-wedding email chains created by other bridesmaids and the Maid of Honor.”

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Walking on all fours might be fun for some, but for the members of one Turkish family, it’s the only way to move around. Five siblings of the 19-member Ulas family, from Hatay Province, suffer from a rare disability – they lack the balance and stability required to stand up straight, forcing them to move on all four limbs. The family was discovered in 2005 – 14 of them appeared to be completely normal, while five suffered a quadrupedal gait. Scientists have been baffled by the condition ever since.

The Ulas siblings were featured in a BBC documentary film, The Family That Walks On All Fours, in 2006. The film revealed that of the five siblings, two sisters and a brother have only walked on all fours since birth. Another brother and sister sometimes manage to walk upright. “It’s amazing as an example of a strange, strange aberration of human development,” said Professor Nicholas Humphrey, who visited the family twice during the documentary. “But their interest is how they can live in the modern world.”

Living in the modern world with a quadrupedal gait is no easy task. The siblings are often ridiculed for their disorder, and the family tries their best to protect them. The sisters remain indoors most of the time, spending their time crocheting. One of the brothers, on the other hand, is more adventurous – he travels to the local village and interacts with other people.

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Boyhood is a groundbreaking coming-of-age film created by American film director and screenwriter Richard Linklater. While other coming-of-age films use different actors to play the protagonist at various ages, Boyhood uses the same boy to tell the fictitious tale of a child growing into a young adult.

The experimental film was shot over a span of 12 years and  lead actor Ellar Coltrane was chosen for the part of Mason in 2002, when he was only 7 years old. Since then, the cast of the movie had reunited every summer to shoot a new phase of the Mason’s life.

Cast alongside Ellar were actors Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette – Mason’s parents – who also aged naturally throughout the film, adding to the realism of the story. Mason’s sister is played by Linklater’s real-life daughter Lorelei, who grows from a young girl to an adult before our very eyes, as the movie progresses.

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Vin Los, a 24-year-old model from Montreal, wants to be the most famous man in the world. That sounds like an ambitious goal, but I’d say he’s taking way to seriously. Vin has actually tattooed the word ‘fame’ right across his forehead along with another 23 words  designed to make him stand out. The man’s face, neck and torso are haphazardly covered in an assortment of tattooed words and phrases.

If you’re able to ignore the tattoos, you’d notice that Vin is actually quite a handsome man with a perfectly chiseled body. Which is why I believe the tattoos are doing the opposite of what he intends – they’re actually taking away from his natural good looks. The fact that he’s covered his body with so many weird words like ‘lick’, ‘scream my name’ and ‘guilty’ is so unbelievable, that people actually thought the tattoos were fake.

So Vin recently created a video to prove that his tattoos were indeed real. In the footage, he is seen rubbing makeup off of his body using a wet rag, revealing the real tattoos underneath. His own name is revealed on his stomach in huge letters, along with words like ‘sex bomb’, ‘iconic’, ‘Tokyo’ and ‘New York’ on other parts of his body. He also has hair tattooed on his chest and stomach.

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Inakadate village, located near Hirosaki city in Japan’s Aomori prefecture, is one of the few places in the world where farming and art go hand-in-hand. The village is renowned for its unique form of landscape art created in paddy fields. These artistic paddies are so popular that they attract over 200,000 tourists a year.

For centuries, farming has been the main source of income for the people of Inakadate. The amount of farmland available to the relatively small population of 8,000 villagers is massive. Paddy fields make up over fifty percent of the entire village land. The soil in these lands is so fertile that the yield from the rice crop has consistently been higher than any other village or town in Japan.

In the early 1990s, archeologists discovered that the rice strains of Inakadate were over 2,000 years old. To celebrate this fact, and to make the village more attractive to visitors, the local tourism office hatched a plan – to make use of their abundant production of rice to attract more tourists. And that’s how their amazing rice paddy artworks were born.

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Contrary to its name, Grundhofer’s Old Fashioned Meats carries a rather interesting and unique range of sausage meats. Their website boasts of 50 different flavors of fresh brats, including a few regulars – Turkey, Chicken and Three Cheese – and a few strange ones – Bloody Mary, Cherry Kool-aid and Blueberry. But the world-famous Gummy Bear brat has got to be their funkiest one yet.

Spencer Grundhofer, who founded the business in 1983 in his hometown of Hugo, Minnesota, says his love for meat developed quite early. “I started when I was 11, working at a local grocery store down the road.” Spencer quickly gained a reputation in the region as an expert in high-quality cuts of meat.

And his passion for meat took a weird turn a few years ago, when his friend decided to play a prank on him. Joe Berglund, a mechanic who works at the shop across from Grundhofer’s, gave Spencer a few friendly suggestions of what flavor brats to try. “So I gave him a list,” said Joe. “One of them happened to be Gummy brats. And he told me, ‘I’m not making those.’”

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More and more young couples in Hong Kong are turning to McDonald’s fast-food restaurants to fit their shoestring wedding budgets. With prices starting as low as $350 per wedding, the place is pretty much a steal – the deal includes the venue, decorations, audio equipment, food, gifts and invitations. The dream wedding has only one drawback – years later, couples will have to tell their kids that they got married at McDonald’s.

Surprisingly, not many couples are bothered by this. The demand for McDonald’s weddings is growing in Hong Kong – the wedding party program that was started in three locations in 2011, has now been extended to 15 branches. And, believe it or not, it’s not just about the money, there’s a sentimental value associated with getting hitched at McDonald’s.

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At an age when most people begin their business careers, German Sterligov was already a millionaire. He was only 24 years old when he founded the company that would make him one of the richest men in Russia. The financial empire he built – with offices in London and New York – ensured a lifetime of comfort for the young man. But his life today is the opposite of everything you’d imagine – after 15 years of fame and riches, he gave it all up in for the quiet life of a peasant living in the woods.

Sterligov’s life story is as interesting as it is unusual. Inspite of having been a very rich and powerful man, the 47-year-old feels that he is now far better placed to withstand the global economic crisis than most of the other Russian oligarchs. “I’m in clover compared to them,” he said in an interview, a few years ago. “I’m free here. I don’t depend on anyone and we’re totally self sufficient. Most of my friends thought I had taken leave of my senses but I think I have been proved right.”

In the early 1990s, as the Communist era was fading, Sterligov set up Russia’s first commodities exchange. The business grew quickly, and he soon became Russia’s first legal millionaire since the 1917 Revolution. At one point, he had over 2,500 employees and was getting along quite well with the Americans as a ‘new type’ of Russian. In the mid-2000s, at the helm of his success, he stunned the world by announcing his intention to run for the Russian presidency.

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Each time we feature hyper-realistic paintings on OC, I think, “This is the best I’ve ever seen.” But then we get to see another artist’s work, and I’m amazed all over again. This time it’s the work of New York-based Israeli painter Yigal Ozeri. I’m still having a hard time believing that these paintings aren’t actually photographs of women.

Seriously, there’s no denying the fact that Ozeri’s taken hyperrealism to a whole new level. You can’t spot a single brushstroke in these photograph-inspired paintings, that’s how perfect his work is. He starts each piece by photographing beautiful women in nature-themed sceneries, while staying hidden at a safe distance from his models. Back at his studio, he alters the shots with Photoshop and prints them out. Using the prints as a reference, Ozeri then spends days recreating them with oil on canvas

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The Americana municipality, in São Paulo, Brazil, is home to a very unique subculture – the Confederados. The members of this culture are the descendants of 10,000 Confederate refugees who chose to leave the United States after they lost the American Civil War. Today, the Confederados make up 10 percent of Americana’s population; they’ve managed to preserve the unique culture and traditions belonging to the Confederate South of the 19th century.

When the war ended in 1865, many former Confederates were unwilling to live under the rule of the Union. They were unhappy with the destruction of their pre-war lifestyle that included slavery. So when Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil sent recruiters to the Southern States of Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina and Texas to pick up experienced cotton farmers, many disgruntled Southerners jumped at the opportunity.

Slavery was still in existence in Brazil at the time, which greatly attracted the Southerners. Combined with their humiliating defeat at the hands of the Union, many felt that moving out of America was the only option available to them. Dom Pedro, who wanted to encourage the cultivation of cotton, made an offer they could not refuse – he offered them a package of tax breaks and grants, as well as a section of the Brazilian forest that they could call home. It was more than they could ever ask for – a chance to start over and create a new community with Southern values.

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Tokyo used to have one of the best nightclub scenes in the world, but all that has changed dramatically ever since the local police started enforcing a very old law that had been ignored for at least half a century. According to this law, commercial establishments cannot host dance parties unless they have a valid license.

In order to obtain such a license, venues must have at least 66 square meters of unobstructed floor space for dancing. They also need to make sure that all dancing stops at 1 am, which the law says is the curfew. Failure to comply with the rules could get club owners into serious trouble, including getting thrown in jail for weeks, or having their businesses closed down.

“Dancing is not a crime,” pointed out Ryo Isobe, a music writer from Tokyo. “But the current situation can easily make people believe that dancing is a crime. Under this law, there are almost no legal nightclubs in Japan. All-night dance parties are against the law.”

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Last winter, when Jeremiah Heaton’s daughter Emily asked him if she could be a real princess, the doting father didn’t have the heart to refuse. Even though he didn’t want to raise her hopes or make any false promises, he found himself agreeing to the outlandish request of a six-year-old.

“Over the winter, Emily and I were playing, and she has a fixation on princesses,” he said. “She asked me, in all seriousness, if she’d be a real princess someday. And I said she would.”

So Jeremiah spent hours scouring the internet for a suitable piece of unclaimed territory. He focused his search on the Latin term ‘terra nullius’, which means ‘land belonging to no one’. After several months of searching, he has now managed to locate an 800-square mile desert in Africa, thousands of miles away from his home in Abingdon, Virginia.

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