A team of students from the Harbin Engineering University have created a small paper bridge able to sustain more than 25 times its own weight.

The young undergraduates spent an entire month designing and building the bridge, and finally presented it to the world,on November 7. Now, building a paper bridge model doesn’t sound that remarkable, especially when the builders are attending an engineering institute, but their creation is much more than a simple paper model. The 3.8-meter-long, 1.2 meter-tall bridge weighs just 58 kilograms, but it is able to sustain up to 1,500 kilograms, and the group of 11 students proved it by standing on the bridge at the same time.

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After carefully folding it on the banks of the Thames, artist Frank Bölter jumped into his origami boat and sailed it under the surprised gazes of passers-by.

Named “To The World’s End”, Frank Bölter’s paper boat was part of the Drift 10 art exhibition, in London. It was created out of giant sheets of paper that he and the public at the Canary Wharf Docks folded, using origami techniques. Reinforced with metal poles, the unusual sailing craft didn’t seem to sink, and its creator was so relaxed that he laid back and read a newspaper, while the public stared at him in awe.

This is not Frank Bölter first strange boat. In 2007, he put together a boat out of Tetrapack (the aluminum plated cardboard that milk cartons are made of) and sailed in it around Lauenburg harbour, in Germany. Just like “To The World’s End”, it was folded using origami techniques.

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A group of cash-strapped Czech students have created Crazy Cleaning, a cleaning service performed by naked boys and girls.

The economic crisis has taken its toll on everybody, and young Czech students make no exception. Strapped for cash, they’ve come up with all sorts of ideas to get their hands on some, but none as crazy as Katka Kopecka’s, who decided to recruit some of her friends and open up a nude cleaning agency. The 21-year-old founder says she had to come up with something shocking to get out of a long-term financial slump, and since most people hate to clean, but love to stare at a nice naked body, a naked cleaning service was her best choice.

Crazy Cleaning currently offers 15 naked cleaners to choose from, and customers can opt for them wearing underwear, going topless or getting completely naked. An hour of complete cleaning service costs $240 and clients can just sit comfortably and watch the naked students do all the cleaning.

Now, before any feminists decide to complain about how women are discriminated and used as pieces of meat, you should know Crazy Cleaners offers both male and female nude cleaners. While Katka Kopecka understands how some people might consider this kind of service a form of masked prostitution, she says her business has nothing to do with that. She claims Crazy Cleaners receives many calls from business people with hectic schedules, who just like to come home and relax by looking at a nice naked body cleaning the house. Read More »

Kim Do-yeon, a 21-year-old woman from South Korea, has become an overnight celebrity in her native country, after admitting to being a chocolate addict on live television.

On November 2nd, Kim Do-yeon made an appearance on a Korean TV show, where she confessed to consuming large quantities of chocolate every day. You couldn’t tell by her slim figure, but the young Korean says she has eaten over 1.2 tons of chocolate in the last six years alone. As she demonstrated in the television studio, Kim Do-yeon loves chocolate in all its forms. Whether she’s drinking it from a glass, eating it mixed with noodles or steamed rice, she just can’t get enough of it. To quench her craving for chocolate, Kim Do-yeon says she melts small pots of chocolate every day and mixes with everything she eats, even meat.

Her TV appearance scored a record audience, and chocolate addict Kim Do-yeon became a real overnight celebrity.

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German artist Ralf Schmerberg has created a bizarre-looking igloo, in the middle of Hamburg, to send a message about the country’s uncontrolled waste of energy.

Entitled “Wastefulness is the biggest source of Energy”, Schemerberg’s igloo aims to raise awareness to the amount of energy people are wasting nowadays. A huge electrical meter set up outside the igloo shows passers-by how much electrical energy the 322 old fridges would consume, and is meant to inspire them to think carefully about how much energy they are wasting every day. According to recent studies, Germany could save up to 40% of its energy, if everyday people would use electricity more efficiently.

The refrigerator igloo was sponsored by a German energy provider and will be exhibited in Hamburg’s Gänsemarkt until November 9th. The bizarre installation is 5.6 meters high and 11 meters in diameter, and was built using 322 old refrigerators and 1,718 meters of wire. On the inside, visitors can admire a funny electrical installations made up of colorful blinking lights.

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30-year-old Chen Wei-yih is set to defy Asian perception of single independent women as failures, by marrying herself, on November 6.

The young Taiwanese from Taipei has been dreaming about getting married ever since she was just a little girl. Now that she’s all grown up, she’s ready to put on the traditional white dress and veil and finally tie the knot…with herself. Like many other Asian women, Chen Wei-yih focused most of her attention on her career and hasn’t been able to find a suitable partner. While other girls go as far as stripping in public to find husbands, Chen decided it’s more important to first love herself before she loves others, and asked her own hand in marriage.

The wedding ceremony is set to take place on November 6, when Chen Wei-yih will put on her wedding dress and go out for a gourmet meal with family members and 30 of her closest friends. After the wedding, Chen and her beloved self will leave on a romantic honeymoon to Autralia.

Chen-Wei-yih courage to challenge social perception in such an original way has inspired many, and her Facebook wall has been assaulted with messages of encouragement and appreciation, sent mostly by young Asian women like herself.

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Dieter Kapsch, a 38-year-old Austrian flight attendant has managed to collect 1,760 airplane spoons from 447 airlines.

The young flight attendant started gathering airplane spoons 13 years ago, after going on a holiday in Spain, with his sister Gunda. While they were flying towards their destination, she suggested they take one of the spoons, as it may prove useful on their vacation. After returning home, he ended up with the spoon, and every time he used it, it reminded him of his nice time in Spain. From there on he decided to collect as many airline spoons as possible, and he stayed true to his goal.

Dietrich says his family and friends have been very supportive and have added to it every time they got the opportunity. He is now the proud owner of 1,760 different airline spoons, some dating back to the 1920s and 1930s, when companies like Pan Am were still around. While some of his spoons are of unknown origin, he relies on the Internet to solve the mystery of his collectibles. Check out his Flickr stream and see if you can recognize any of the logos from his yet untraceable spoons.

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Two die-hard Iron Man fans chose the streets of London as the best place to show off the cool homemade costumes they worked so hard to complete.

32-year-old John Bekkensten, from Norway, is an established sculptor for the movie industry, with works featured in blockbuster hits like “Gladiator”. “Braveheart”, “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” and others. But John is also a big fan of Iron Man, so apart form his official projects, he spent over a year replicating the costumes of the popular hero and his sidekick, War Machine, out of fiberglass and plastic.

John ended up wearing the much cooler War Machine costume, while his buddy got the chance to be Iron Man. Together they got on double decker buses, took picture with London guards and managed to stun pretty much everyone they passed by.

If you’re interested in cool movie props, be sure to check out John Bekkensten official site.

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You might think you had your hands full with this year’s Halloween Pumpkin, but American sculptor Scott Cully had to carve his way through a 1,800-pound giant pumpkin.

Scott Cully has made a name for himself by carving overgrown pumpkins, and he even held the previous record for the world’s largest jack o’lantern, but this year he managed to beat his own record and get another mention in the Guinness Book. It took him two days, working at a pace of 100 pounds per hour, to work his way through the giant pumpkin, grown by Chris Stevens, from Wisconsin, but he managed to do it just in time for the big Halloween party. The event took place at the New York Botanical Garden, and it’s probably still on display, so you can check it out, if you’re in the Big Apple.

Scott Cully started carving pumpkins in 1988, when he and his wife got his hands on a 400-pound pumpkin, and, inspired by a few bottles of quality English hard cider, they began carving it into a jack o’lantern. Then he just kept on creating new designs, into bigger and bigger pumpkins. Using just a handful of kitchen utensils, Scott stays true to the tradition of creating jack o’lanterns, by creating scary Halloween pumpkins, with big mouths that kids can slide their heads through, and big threatening teeth.

Believe it or not, Scott Cully absolutely hates pumpkin pie. Ironic, isn’t it?

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Why should a trivial thing like death split up a loving couple, when they could be together for all eternity, as flesh eating zombies? I’m sure that’s what Tracy and Andy Monaghan thought when they decided to have their fairytale zombie wedding.

Tracy and Andy have been married for seven years, but their first ceremony wasn’t exactly what any of them had dreamed of. She was pregnant with their son, they didn’t have a lot of money and to top things off, it was pouring on the big day. Tracy remembers that by 7 pm that day, she wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. With this kind of memories from what was supposed to be the happiest day of their lives, its’ no surprise the English couple wanted a second chance to set things right. Read More »

At 73.8 meters in height, and featuring a floor area of over 5,000 square meters, this unique teapot museum of Meitan is the world’s biggest teapot-shaped building.

China’s Meitan County is known as the “hometown of Chinese green tea”, and the reputation of Meitan green tea has surpassed national borders, so there was really no better place to build a museum of tea culture. As fascinating as visiting this place may be to tea lovers, we’re more interested in its unique architecture. Shaped like a giant clay teapot, and accompanied by a smaller building shaped like a tea cup, the Meitan tea museum is one of the weirdest looking museums in the world. Seen from a distance, it looks like just a strange teapot sculpture, but as you approach it, the windows give away its true purpose.

With a maximum diameter of 24 meters, and a capacity of 28,360.23 cubic meters, the Meitan tea museum is by far the world’s largest teapot.

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Nikolay Orekhov, from the village of Kemerovo, eastern Russia, has built his house to look like a miniature replica of Noah’s ark. Not that he’s ever seen the real thing, but we’ve all been blessed with an imagination.

47-year-old Nikolay Orekhov has spent more than a year working on his unusual house shaped like some sort of ugly ship. According to Russian site Life.ru, the reason behind this modern version of Noah’s ark is Nikolay’s fear of floods caused by climate change. He says he’s not a fanatic but he does strongly believe in the possibility of a serious flood.

But according to the livejournal of Viktor Borisov, who also took some photos of Orekhov’s ship-shaped house, the weird craftsman actually dreamed about building the strange structure, and has really no fear of an actual flood. Regardless of his reasons, Nikolay Orekhov managed to create a truly unique piece of architecture, and he did it all without any blueprints. All the plans he needed were all in his head, and frankly, you can tell by the final result.

Located in his backyard, Nikolay Orekhov’s strange house measures 9 meters in height and 14 meters in length, and is three levels high. On the first floor, the Russian builder created a bathroom (complete with sauna and swimming pool) and a small kitchen, the second floor features two bedrooms and a nursery, while the third one is a greenhouse.

Nikolay began building his ship-shaped house on the “sacred” date of July 7, 2007, and is now living in it with his family. His neighbors have started referring to his weird creation as the “Ark of Nikolayev”.

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Taking a  nap in a public, surrounded by strangers isn’t very easy, but Spain’s first National Siesta Championship was a succes and it was aimed at reviving this tradition of afternoon sleep. With all the demands of modern life, this old Spanich custom is slowly dying and something had to be done to prevent this.

The competition was attended by hundreds of people who were connected at pulse monitors for 20 minutes, which is the optimal duration for an afternoon sleep.  The contestants were judged according to the amount of time they slept in the 20 minutes granted to each. Points were also given for unusual positions during sleep, funny and eye-catching PJs and, of course, lots of points for snoring. The winner of the inaugural round was a 47-year-old construction worker who managed to doze off for a whopping 18 minutes of the total 20. Judging by his line of work, I don’t think the noise and being outdoors bothered him much.

The nine-day competition is taking  place in a shopping center in Madrid and is set to end on October 23rd. Winners receive various gift certificates to use in the shopping center. When theNational Siesta Championship ends, the contestant with the most points will receive a certificate worth 1,000 euros.

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Sushi may be a Japanese dish, but that didn’t stop a team of Norwegian chefs from creating the world’s largest sushi mosaic, at their country’s pavilion at the Shanghai Expo.

As China celebrated its ten millionth imported Norwegian salmon, last week, Norway decided the creation of a giant sushi mosaic would be a great way to recognize the milestone. Norwegian chefs arranged 8,734 sushi pieces into a beautiful mosaic depicting the intertwined Norwegian and Chinese flags.

Relations between China and Norway have been a bit tense since a Norwegian committee  awarded the Nobel Piece Prize 2010 to Liu Xiaobo, a jailed Chinese dissident, on October 8. By emphasizing on the importance of salmon in the diplomatic relations between the two nations, Norway hopes to come to better terms with  China.

Check out the making-of video of the world’s biggest sushi mosaic, at the bottom. It takes a while for the chefs to actually start arranging the sushi pieces, but it’s worth it.

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When you’re a deadly martial arts expert, traditional dating just doesn’t cut it, so you have to take special measures to find your soul mate. In the case of sisters Xiao Lin (22) and Xiao Yin (21) we’re talking about a martial arts tournament for suitors.

The two young sisters, from Foushan, East China, said they’ve tried dating agencies, but the men they met were too weak, and they could easily beat them. Since they want their special half to be stronger than them, they decided to bring back an ancient tradition called Bi Wu Zhao Qin – a tournament in which the warrior princesses of old found their men.

The three-day tournament will take place in their home town, and will have challengers compete in an archery event, carry weights over sharp bamboo spears, and finally, beat one of the sisters in full contact combat. I take it this isn’t a challenge for gentlemen…

The two kung fu sisters will give their opponent the chance to choose between open hand combat and any weapon, but they warn everyone that they won’t be holding back: “If they can’t beat us they aren’t worthy”, said Xiao Lin. Only after they’ve beaten one of the sisters can the suitors take off their masks to see the face of the one they’re going to marry.

A combat tournament for a girl’s hand in marriage sounds pretty honorable, even fairytale-like, but in this modern day, I doubt too many suitors will go through these challenges for a girl whose face they can’t even see.

via Metro.co.uk