Spirit Payton is one of YouTube’s unlikeliest stars. In just under two years, she has grown her channel, ASMRTheChew, to over 160,000 subscribers and had several of her videos go viral, with millions of views, all by making chewing noises into a microphone.

From popping giant pimples to squashing bread with their faces, we’ve seem people come up with all kinds of crazy ways of attracting attention online, so I guess it’s not that big of a surprise that someone managed to make it big on YouTube by making loud eating noises into a high fidelity microphone. Spirit Payton does post the occasional makeup tutorial, but her eating videos are pretty much her bread and butter. She takes requests from her fans and eats their preferred foods on camera, chewing it slowly and loudly as part of what is known as an ASMR therapy session.

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Ever wonder what it would feel like to be thrown around in a giant metal bowl with only a few metal bars keeping you from literally flying out of the bowl or bumping face first into other people? If so, all you have to do is take a ride on a Tagada, one of the most dangerous amusement park rides ever invented.

The Tagada may not be as fast or as steep as a roller-coaster, but it is certainly more dangerous. You may scream in terror when riding on a roller-coaster, but deep in your mind you know that you are safely harnessed to your seat and the chances of something going wrong are very small. With the Tagada, on the other hand, the total lack of restraints makes the danger of physical injury very real, but that’s exactly what makes it so popular with thrill seekers.

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Sébastien Charron doesn’t look like your average parkour enthusiast. Instead of a lean muscular physique, he sports a prominent belly and obviously high body fat percentage, features not usually associated with a sport that requires impeccable physical conditioning. But as soon as you see him in action, you are reminded of the old saying “you should never judge a book by its covers.”

Dubbed a “real-life Kung Fu Panda”, Charron is actually an inspiration for average guys everywhere that nothing is impossible. He started practicing parkour a decade ago, and became really good at it, but after five years he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and the side effects of his prescribed medication forced him to take a break from what he loved doing most. The treatment and lack of physical activity also caused him to gain massive weight in a relatively short period of time, but he never gave up on his passion. He recently started training again, and although he admits that the thick layer of fat makes working on his jumps and vaults tougher than before, he somehow manages to make it work.

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People generally love decorating their homes for the winter holidays, but how many of us would actually put a whole month into making sure that the whole place is filled with Christmas decorations? Well, one man does it every year.

43-year-old Jack Baremans, from Etten-Leur, a commune in southern Netherlands, has always loved the Holidays. He has been collecting all kinds of Christmas decorations ever since he was 16-years old, and has made a habit of using all of them to decorate his home every year. His collection has gotten so large over the years, that he now reportedly takes about a month filling the inside of his home with dozens of artificial Christmas trees, thousands of ornaments, garlands, wreaths, plush reindeer and polar bears, Christmas lights and pretty much every other decoration imaginable.

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11-year-old Cen Xiaolin can move his legs faster than most people can count. The boy recently set a new rope skipping world record by completing a whopping 108 skips in just 30 seconds!

That’s so fast that you can’t even see the rope. In fact, judges at the first World Inter-School Rope Skipping Championships, in Dubai, simply couldn’t keep up with him. They were unable to count Cen’s steps while he was skipping, as it was all a bit of a blur. They had to rewatch the footage in slow-motion eight times to verify the exact number of steps. Later, he broke another record by skipping 548 times in three minutes.

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We’ve seen hairdressers use unusual tools like samurai swords, hot metal tongs, and claws to cut hair before, but here’s one that uses all three together!

There’s a reason why Alberto Olmedo is being hailed as a real-life Edward Scissorhands. The genius hairdresser wields swords, a mini blowtorch, and a pair of ‘finger scissors’ to cut his clients’ hair at his salon in Madrid. He claims that his use of these “medieval” tools ensures that all his cuts are mathematically precise from every angle.  

“Hairdressers usually cut one side, and then the other, and one side is always a bit different from the other, even if it’s only a little bit,” he said. “The only way to do it in an exact mathematical way is to cut both sides simultaneously.”

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Wesseh Freeman, a.k.a Weesay, became an internet sensation last December for his badass strumming skills. His unique handmade guitar – cobbled together from an old stick, a paint can, and three used strings – caught the attention of brothers Nikhil and Sachin Ramchandani, the owners of O! Chips, a potato chips company in Liberia. So they asked him to write a jingle for their brand, and posted a video on the company’s YouTube channel. The two-and-a-half minute clip instantly went viral.

Weesay, 37, is blind and homeless. But that hasn’t affected his musical abilities in the least. The man is truly gifted, and that’s evident just from the guitar he managed to fashion for himself. According to Guitar World, “His frets are made from bike spokes or coat hangers and are apparently movable; yet he has a mastery of intonation. This instrument should be completely out of tune…but it’s not! Weesay plays it like a boss.”

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The Aztec death whistle produces a sound so horrifying, it will chill you to the bone. Described as the ‘scream of a thousand corpses’, the death whistle sounds like the cry of the un-dead, or the torment of a human being burned alive.

Interestingly, the skull-shaped whistles were discovered 20 years ago by archaeologists, but were dismissed as mere toys. Most studies focused on how they looked, but no one really thought to blow into them. Now that the fearsome sound of the whistle has been discovered, it is attracting the attention of scientists, musicians and historians alike.

According to 66-year-old mechanical engineer Roberto Velazquez, who has spent several years recreating the sounds of his pre-Columbian ancestors, the Aztecs played the mournful ‘Whistles of Death’ just before they were sacrificed to the gods. Some historians believe that the Aztecs used to sound the death whistle in order to help the deceased journey into the underworld. Tribes are said to have used the terrifying sounds as psychological warfare, to frighten enemies at the start of battle.

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A Russian biker has taken it upon herself to teach people not to litter while driving. And her methods are quite extreme – she follows the offenders on her motorcycle, picks up their trash, and throws it right back into their cars!

The mysterious crusader recently uploaded a video of herself in action, which she recorded using a GoPro camera attached to her helmet. The video is so hilarious that I’m not surprised it hit 10 million views in just three days.

The two-minute clip starts off with the woman’s motorcycle parked on the sidewalk, behind a bright red car. The car driver is seen flinging a cigarette butt out of his window. The woman promptly starts up her bike and moves forward, picks up ash from a nearby ashtray and flings it on the driver through the car’s open window. The man was flabbergasted, and the woman was off before he could react.

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Kung Fu master Liu Fei, from Mianyang, South-West China, can exhale smoke and fire from his mouth, sort of like a dragon. And I’m not talking about the kind of fire breathing performances you get to see at the circus, either; this man seems to be able to produce fire from within his body, exhaling it through his sawdust-packed mouth.

The viral video of Fei’s performance and is really quite mind-blowing. He starts off by stuffing large quantities of sawdust in his mouth. Then, he makes a hole into the sawdust, with his finger, and starts  to blow out small puffs of smoke through the dust.

Later, he uses a fan to blow air into his ear and even more smoke comes out of his mouth. The performance culminates with actual flames coming out of his mouth, which get bigger and and more frequent towards the end. The whole thing seems miraculous, but after watching the video, some forum users came up with a few plausible explanations.

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Everybody loves a good massage, but this snake massage at the Cebu City Zoo in Philippines is really something else. It involves 15 minutes of hardcore action, with four enormous Burmese pythons slithering all over brave participants.

According to zoo manager Giovanni Romarate, the free massages are a part of a new theme that encourages visitors to interact more with the animals. “We are going to change the zoo into an interactive one,” said Giovanni. “Everybody could have an experience and have a chance to hold and pet some of the animals here, including the snake massage that we newly introduced.”

The four snakes – Walter, EJ, Daniel and Michelle – are fed about 10 chickens each before the massage to avoid last minute hunger pangs. Obviously, the zoo authorities don’t want the reptiles snacking on their clients. The participants are given a set of safety instructions as well. According to tourist Ian Maclean, “They tell you not to blow air on the snake, because this is like being pinched on the bum. You can’t shout for help as the snake can feel your vibrations and thinks you’re a prey or a predator, depending on the environment.”

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Egyptian para-table tennis player Ibrahim Hamato has no arms, yet he can put almost any amateur ping-pong player to shame. How he is able to handle the paddle with his mouth and actually direct his shots is still a mystery to me, but watching him play is fascinating

“I had an accident when I was 10 years old but I loved table tennis,” Ibrahim says. “Three years after my accident, I wanted to play again holding the racket under my arm, but it didn’t work out. After trying different options, I found myself playing with my mouth.” The inspiring athlete was invited to be the guest of honor at the World Team Table Tennis Championships held in Tokyo this year. A short video clip shows him playing with some of the world’s best players – and they look like they’re struggling to keep up with him! His serve is incredible, and some of his shots are truly spectacular. “I feel very happy that I got this invitation from Mr. Sharara,” he said.  It is a big reward for me to watch the best players in the world in Tokyo and I hope this shows people that nothing is impossible as long as you work hard.”

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Don’t let the bed bugs bite, is what we’ve always been told. But Matt Camper, an urban entomologist at Colorado State University, is doing the exact opposite. He’s gone and created a unique ‘bedbug tattoo gun’ – made of a jar, some wire mesh and thousands of hungry bed bugs. You simply invert the jar onto your skin, let the bed bugs bite, and later admire the pink, temporary tattoo they leave behind.

Camper’s unique invention will be featured on an upcoming edition of ‘Outrageous Acts of Science’ on the Science Channel. There’s a rabbit pattern on the top of the jar, through which the bugs are allowed to access human flesh. According to wildlife expert Ellie Harrison, it takes two hours for the tattoo to really show up on the skin. “Two hours after the bed bugs have fed, the inflammatory response really kicks in and immune cells will flood into the tissues from the blood, producing redness and swelling and heat,” she says on the TV show.

“Bed bugs feed exclusively on blood,” she said. “They find us via two sources. Firstly, they detect our body head, and secondly, they detect our carbon dioxide emissions. And they don’t need to be that close, they can be 10 feet away and still find food.”

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Cui Juguo, from Changsha city in China’s Hunan Province, holds the Guinness World Record for a very unique feat – he can perfectly balance eggs on small needles. As a person who frequently breaks eggs just by holding them, I think what Cui can do is phenomenal!

In the video footage below, Cui demonstrates how he can balance an ostrich egg on a needle point but as you can see in these photos, he can pull off his balancing feat with any kind of egg. “Ostrich eggs are largest in the world and I can balance them on a pin. No one else could do this,” he said. “I set a Guinness World Record on August 19, 2011, and I am still the record holder.”

Cui has been practicing the balancing act for about 6 years now, and it takes him a mere 10 seconds to put everything in place. He used to be a truck driver and he developed the unique skill to counter sleepiness on the road. “I often take several eggs with me on the road,” he said. “Once I felt sleepy, I would pull over and start to stand the egg on the needle point.”

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It’s strange, but true – tractor square dancing is a real thing. It involves daisy chains and do-si-dos too.  But instead of people dancing on their feet, four seated couples maneuver vintage tractors to complete the moves.

Laurie Mason-Schmidt, the caller for Farmall Promenade (the most popular tractor square dancing group), said: “We are all from Nemaha, Iowa. We have real jobs, believe it or not.” Since it isn’t an organized sport, there are no real statistics available on how many other such groups exist. Most people only come together to perform at one-time events.

The origins of tractor square dancing can be traced back to the fifties. An ad campaign in 1953 by tractor manufacturer International Harvester is believed to have started it all. The ad aimed to show off the fast hitching abilities of their Farmall Super-C tractor. It came with the latest technology (back then) that allowed farmers to switch implements as easily as changing dance partners.

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