The huge statue of a defecating giant was put up at the Maremagnum Shopping Center in Barcelona, Spain in December 2010. It recently snagged the Guinness Record for the largest caganer in the world.

In case you’re wondering, this isn’t unusual in Barcelona at all. In fact, the caganer is a common sight around Catalonia. It is generally in the form of figurines that appear in nativity scenes. They are often placed to the side of these traditional scenes. While the origins of this tradition are unknown, the practice has been in place since at least the 1700s. Traditional Catalonian Christmas decorations consist of  large models of the entire city of Bethlehem, instead of just they typical manger scene of the English-speaking world. The central setting consists of a farmhouse with the child in a manger, surrounded by washerwomen by a river, women spinning, along with the shepherds and the three wise men. The caganer is invariably found in a corner of the scene.

Read More »

Contests and competitions have been used for a very long time now as a marketing tool. Some of these competitions have been quite unusual. But it doesn’t get more unusual than this – a championship for paint-watchers!

The paint-watching championship is being organized by Localtraders.com, an online resource for finding reliable local tradespeople in the UK. Normally, the website works by having people submit details of a job they need done, and several tradespeople bid over the project. Now, they’ve come up with this innovative idea to attract new customers. The “Watching Paint Dry Championships”  is truly a test of patience, mental strength and physical endurance. The way it works is that interested participants should send in a photograph of themselves watching paint dry, along with the longest time they’ve stared at the wall of paint without looking away. They’re also asking for a short write-up about your favorite paint color and why you like it.

Read More »

People do a lot of crazy things to modify their cars to their liking. But very few could have gotten as crazy as Paul Stender, who actually strapped a cruise missile to the roof of his car.

The 44-year-old from Indianapolis, along with his wife Therese, 29, has converted a 1967 Chevrolet into a jet-powered car, with the simple addition of a cruise missile. He took the help of their team at Indy Boys Inc, who are known to create the most bizarre and fastest vehicles ever. The result? A car that’s barely ever crossed 100mph, can now easily touch 300mph. And that’s not all, the Jet-Impala 67 even fires out flames up to 30 ft behind it and leaves massive clouds of smoke in the air.

Read More »

Chocolate Wonderland Opens in Shanghai (Sky News)

Real-Life Magneto Sets Spoon-Balancing Record (Reuters)

Guinness Names World’s Shortest Woman (TIME)

Brutal Modern-Day Jousting (Environmental Graffiti)

Japanese Create $130,000 Swarovski Crystal Toilet (Born Rich)

Dutch Airline Offers Miles-High Dating via Facebook (Big Pond News)

Facebook to Sue Israeli Mark Zuckerberg (Stuff.co.nz)

Old Man Turns Scooter into Funny Rolls Royce Replica (Metro)

Man Eats Light Bulb in 33.86 Seconds, Sets New Record (Record Setter)

10 Incredible Sunken Ships (Environmental Graffiti)

Although he tried his best to turn his old Pontiac Fiero into a beautiful Ferrari 355, a businessman from Agrigento, Italy, has recently been accused of trademark and patent violations.

There aren’t many car enthusiasts out there who can honestly say they wouldn’t like to have their own Ferrari. It’s the most iconic sports car brand in history, and all of its creations are widely recognized as engineering masterpieces, but unfortunately few of us can actually afford one. Case in point, an Italian businessman who wanted an iconic Ferrari 355 so bad he decided that if he couldn’t buy it, he was going to build it himself. But rather than starting from scratch, he turned his old Pontiac Fiero into an almost perfect replica of the vehicle designed by Pinifarina. He did a wonderful job both on the outside and the inside, and only a real connoisseur could actually spot any differences from the original, only he forgot one small detail before venturing on the open road in his fake Ferrari, the car’s registration.

Read More »

Many women dream of being carried away on a white horse, by their knight-in-shining-armor. But what if the so-called knight turned out to be an abductor, forcing a woman to elope with him?

That is exactly the case with bride kidnappings that take place in Kyrgzstan, Central Asia. Parodied in the 2006 film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, the practice is a harsh reality of the region, more prevalent in Kyrgzstan than Kazakhstan. In the film, Pamela Anderson was kidnapped by the main character for marriage. In real life unfortunately, the stories are never funny. Although precise statistics are unavailable, it is commonly believed that more than half of Kyrgyz wives are married in this manner. It is even seen as a matter of pride, a means for a man to prove his manhood. Often, the families of the groom participate in the abduction, they help in planning the ‘capture’ of their son’s would-be wife. A white scarf is placed, often forcibly, on the woman’s head, signalling her acceptance. Once kidnapped, the bride’s family urge her to accept her situation and her new husband, for fear that she would never find another suitable mate again.

Read More »

Zlatko Salaj, a 67-year-old Croatian, has created a ‘Christmas Story’ for himself. Not a story to tell, but one to show the world. His Christmas Story is actually his home, which he decks up in lights and colors every year around the holidays.

The former telecommunications engineer owns a country estate in Grabovinca, located in central Croatia. The entire estate is decorated at this time of year. Thousands of visitors come by to view the spectacle created by Salaj and his family. When he started this practice in 2002, Salaj had a modest 70,000 light bulbs that were put up on all the shrubs and trees across his 17-acre estate. When people asked him how many he would put up the next year, his reply was a 100,000. In this way, the lights and decorations kept growing in number. This year, the number has upped to 1.2 million Christmas lights. Not just ordinary ones, he has lights shaped like Santa Claus and reindeer. The festive spirit of his decorations is contagious and attracts children and adults alike from all over the region.

Read More »

When Pablo Escobar died in 1993, the people of Medellin, Colombia, sighed in relief. But little did they know that the world’s most notorious criminal at the time would become one of their country’s most popular tourist attractions.

The legacy of Escobar lives on in Medellin, in a different and slightly unusual manner. The man and his life are now sold as a tourist attraction to visitors; this has proven to be quite popular. Escobar, who was responsible for several acts of terrorism such as blowing up the Government’s Security Ministry, assassinating a Presidential candidate, bombing a civilian airliner, and waging a war in which thousands of people were killed, would have least expected that the memories he left behind would one day serve as a means to attract tourists to Colombia.

Read More »

A true designer can make a dress out of literally anything, even car parts! As a part of the month-long event celebrating 100 years of Ford in Britain, the company commissioned two young British designers to create a dress and jewelry fashioned from Ford components.

The unique ‘car dress’ was designed by Judy Clark, who is a nominee for Scottish designer of the year and has also worked with Alexander McQueen. She accepted the challenge to make the dress using Ford car parts within 1 week. The materials she worked with included various parts from a Ford Focus, along with Chiffon, Silk, Tweed, Lace, Leather and Spray paint. On her blog, Clark describes the entire designing and dress-making process from beginning to end. The parts first arrived at her place in big boxes. The components sent to her included keys, dashboard functions, rear lights, car seat covers, radio players, window buttons and more.

Read More »

The grass is always greener on the other side, to quote the cliche. Those who have glasses don’t want them, and those who don’t, will wear them with no lenses!

This is the latest fad in Hong Kong and several other Asian countries. It’s common to find people sporting empty plastic frames, in a variety of bright colors that match their outfit or their hair. It might confuse you as to why anyone who didn’t have to wear glasses would want to. But they seem to have reasons of their own. According to popular radio host Chu Fun, the empty glasses are great because they match her outfits, but they are also practical. When she doesn’t have time to put on makeup, the lensless glasses are great to cover up dark circles, she says. They also don’t blind her by fogging, or get stuck to false eyelashes or mascara. Chu has four pairs already, in black, pink, red and purple.

Read More »

We’ve seen countless videos on the Internet of the disastrous effects of Coke mixed with Mentos candy, but someone actually thought of putting the phenomenon to good use. Presenting – the Coke and Mentos powered car.

Developed by Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz from Maine, Mark II is a single-seat rocket car. When powered by 54 bottles of Coke Zero and 324 Mentos, it is able to travel 239 feet. This is an improvement over Mark I which traveled 230 feet last year, using up to double the fuel. According to Voltz, the car they’ve invented works on the simple mechanism of piston-and-cylinder. The car is quite powerful, he says, and warns people from trying the experiment at home.

Read More »

We now have one more reason to visit Japan – private Karaoke rooms.

Do you find yourself wishing that you could have had a little more practice before getting up to karaoke before all your friends? Or are you just a bathroom singer who prefers to sing alone, along with just music and lyrics? Either way, private karaoke rooms could be just as fun and exciting for you. The single-person karaoke room, also known as ‘1Kara’ in Japan, was launched late November, and has been gaining in popularity. The store is located in front of Kanda station in Tokyo and offers small, solo rooms, equipped with a table, chair, microphones, headphones and a small screen.

Read More »

What Swiss business man Ueli Anliker calls the car of his dreams, could very well be the one of your nightmares. He’s taken the classy, exclusive Mercedes McLaren SLR, and created a monster.

Anliker was apparently not satistfied with what the car had to offer, and so set out on a mission to transform it into his vision of the perfect SLR. A team of thirty five people worked on it, spending 30,000 hours and over £ 3.5 million ($5.5 million) . The transformed vehicle is called the Anliker McLaren SLR 999 Red Gold Dream. He’s made changes to the paintwork, wheels, interiors and even the engine. Twenty-five layers of red paint with 5kg of gold dust were used on the body of the car. The wheels, headlights and door sills are all covered in 24 carat gold. The indicators inside the car are jeweled, the seat covers and interiors gold trimmed, and the switchgear is covered in rubies. The power on the existing 5.4 litre engine has been boosted to 999bhp from 640bhp. This has caused the top speed to increase to 210 mph. A total of 600 rubies have been used in re-decorating the exclusive Mercedes.

Read More »

Qu Zhibo, a chef from Zigong City, China’s Sichuan Province, spent three years and just 4,000 yuan ($628) building his own knockoff Jeep. His efforts have made him somewhat of an Internet celebrity, in China.

I was convinced Chinese car enthusiasts can be very resourceful when it comes to building their own dream cars after seeing photos of a young man working on his home-made Lamborghini, so Qu Zhibo’s achievement just comes as a confirmation. Because he was busy running his own restaurant, Qu Zhibo took three years to complete work on his 2-meters-long, 1.5-meters-high Jeep, but he did use just 600 bucks to do it. The car, which many Chinese netizens called a “knockoff Hummer” was actually inspired by an American military vehicle, and even though right now it pretty much looks like a pile of junk on wheels, a bit of camouflage paint could go a long way.

Read More »

The Royals of ancient times wore clothes that were studded with precious stones and metals. Now you can too, if you are ready to pay an arm and a leg, that is. Or just five million rupees ($97,500).

This pricey shirt was created by an Indian designer, Amitabh Chandel. A descendant of a royal family himself, he says he wanted to create a shirt suitable for today’s royalty. What makes the shirt so expensive is the fine silk it’s made of, and the diamond buttons, set in gold. The shirt is in fact part of an entire collection, the price range starting at around 50,000 Rupees ($950). He says that modern royal men, as well as commoners are welcome to place orders for the shirts. Mr. Chandel says claims these shirts are a perfect blend of the practical and the royal. Since traditional royal attire cannot be worn every day, these shirts allow a sense of richness to pervade regular clothing.

Read More »