27-year-old environment activist Rob Greenfield went a whole year without taking a shower. A man-made shower, that is. Instead, he spent the year bathing in natural water resources – lakes, rivers, rain and waterfalls. And when natural water wasn’t accessible, he used a bucket filled with water from leaky faucets and fire hydrants.

Here’s the surprising bit – while the average American consumes about 100 gallons of water a day, Rob used less than 2 gallons a day that whole year. That’s eight Nalgene water bottles. Now, that’s quite a difference. It really makes you wonder about how much water we actually need to survive. Rob said that he got the idea to live with less water during a long bike ride across America to promote sustainability and eco-friendly living.

“I set a bunch of rules for myself to follow to lead by example. The rule for water was that I could only harvest it from natural sources or from wasted sources. And I kept track of exactly how much I used, with an aim of showing just how little we need to get by.” After the 100-day bike ride without showering was over, Rob decided to continue his streak. He went ‘showerless’ for the next 6 months and then decided to extended to a year. And it turned out to be a whole lot easier than he thought.

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A New York artist has been combining his love for staples and Star Wars to create stunningly intricate works of art. 40-year-old James Haggerty makes pictures of iconic Star Wars characters using tens of thousands of multi colored staples in organized patterns. Some of his most notable works are Darth Vader (made from 10,496 staples), C-3PO (33,580 staples) and Greedo (21,458 staples).

Haggerty’s work is incredible meticulous – he starts out with a thoroughly organized plan. He first creates five to ten ink drawings and picks his favorite one. He transfers that one onto a painted board, about 40 x 32 inches in size. He then patiently punches each staple on to the board. The dark background of the board fills in some of the negative spaces, while the metallic staples form the highlights, adding shine and depth to the picture.

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In Southern France, the medieval art of jousting is still practiced by modern knights, only with a big twist – they use no horses and face each other on water The sport is officially called Water Jousting or Marine Jousting and although the practice can be traced back to the ancient Egyptian civilization (as far back as 2300 BC), the French have embraced it as their own since the Middle Ages. Back then, water jousting tournaments were staged for a royal audience at local festivals. The sport is still taken seriously today, and is played on rivers and canals all over France.

The jousters fight as they balance themselves on long wooden boats, powered by 8 to 10 rowers and a helmsman. A wooden platform, called tintaine, extends off the boat about three meters above the water. The jousters stand on this platform at the back of the boat, while carrying a 28-inch wooden shield and a 9-foot lance. The liveries worn by the rival boats and teams are always red and blue – blue for bachelors and red for the married. At the stern of each bark, an oboist and a drummer sporting flat-brimmed straw hats play medieval tunes that help the oarsmen stay synchronized.

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Rina Nanase, a 25-year-old Japanese idol has put herself through so much plastic surgery that she now sort of looks like Dobby the Elf from the Harry Potter films. The resemblance is uncanny – the large eyes, long nose, and pointed chin. The weirdest part is the once beautiful girl is actually proud of her new look…

In her original photographs, Rina looks like a sweet, normal young girl with a cherubic face. But in the past year, she underwent all sorts of transformations – all of which she chronicled on her Twitter account – that she seems like a totally different person. She has made several changes to her eyes, nose and chin that left her looking strange to many of her former fans. Still, Ms. Nanase was surprised to receive such negative reactions to her facial enhancements, as she doesn’t seem to think her looks have changed that much.

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John Reid, a balloon artist from New York, built the world’s largest balloon sculpture (made by a single person) last Friday. He got to work on Thursday morning at the Salt Lake Comic Con FanXperience event and spent the next several hours inflating thousands of colored balloons at his booth.

42 hours later he had put together a 50-foot tall Transformers robot, ‘Poptimus’ Prime, using 4,302 purple, green, white, black and gray balloons. It was so tall that it actually couldn’t fit upright in the convention center. Reid and 10 other volunteers had to struggle a bit to bring it into a kneeling position. The robot is said to be invincible, except for one weakness – needles!

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58-year-old Ludvik Dolezal is considered to be the dirtiest man in Europe. He’s homeless, he has no access to a shower, and he’s been sleeping in a pile of hot ash every night for the past year.

Ludvik spends his days  in an abandoned old farmhouse in Novy Bydzov, Czech Republic surrounded only by ashes of what were once his personal belongings. “A year ago I simply decided to quit my job. Since then I’ve been staying here with the fire,” he said. He burnt all his material possessions at the time, even his mattress and duvet, to achieve the perfect mound of ash to sleep in. Now, he just burns whatever he finds to create his ash-bed. “Every night I lay down with hot ash in my clothes and cover myself to keep warm. I look like hell then.”

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