China has a long-standing tradition in wood carving. For centuries, its chisel-wielding masters have been turning bland pieces of wood into awe-inspiring masterpieces, but none as impressive as the mind-blowing creation Zheng Chunhui. This talented Chinese artist spent the last four years painstakingly carving a detailed replica of Along the River during the Qingming Festival, a famous traditional Chinese painting, into a 12-meter-long tree trunk. The breathtaking beauty of his work simply cannot be expressed into words, you just have to see it for yourself.

As you can imagine, Zheng Chunhui needed mountains of patience to complete his wooden masterpiece, but it was all worth it. Apart from the praise of everyone who got to see the artwork up close at its recent unveiling, the Chinese artist was also honored by the Guinness Book of Records with the new world record for the longest wood carving. It measures 12.286 meters long, 3.075 meters high and 2.401 meters wide.

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The beautiful three-story French Baroque-style house at Chaonei No. 81 is a well-known anomaly of Beijing. Small courtyard properties in this area of China’s capital city sell for millions of dollars, and yet this once lavish mansion lies in a state of decay. The reason no one will go near it? Fear of ghosts and death.

Local legend has it this amazing mansion was built by the Qing imperial family as a church for British residents of Beijing. In 1949, when the Communists had just defeated the Nationalists and were making their way into the city, the high-ranking Kuomintang official living in the house at the time abandoned his wife, leaving her to face the Communists all by her safe. Devastated, she allegedly hung herself from the rafters of their impressive home. Many believe her troubled spirit has been haunting the place ever since, and few dare venture inside by themselves, especially during the night. The once luxurious mansion is now a dilapidated shadow of its former self, covered with graffiti warning daredevils to stay away and full of empty alcohol bottles and cigarette buts. Despite its location in the center of Beijing, where prices for small properties are in the millions, there are currently no plans to do anything with this particular building. Ghost stories keep potential tenants away, and the building is now on a historic preservation list so it can’t be torn down, just renovated. So everyone seems to be waiting for it crumble on its own.

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Denis Cyplenkov is a Ukrainian strongman and arm wrestling champion known not only for his incredible strength, but also for his unusually large palms. Let’s just say fictional characters like the Hulk or Shrek would be jealous of this guy’s hands.

31-year-old Denis Cyplenkov was born in Krivoy Rog, Ukraine, where he attended various sports clubs during his childhood and teenage years. He trained in kettlebell lifting for a few years and had great results in a number of competitive events, before becoming one of the world’s best arm wrestlers. He won the Nemiroff World Cup in 2010 and 2011 and holds several Russian Arm Wrestling Champion titles. On his website, Cyplenkov claims he also holds records for the biggest biceps in Russia (64 cm in circumference) and the strongest man in Russia. At 186 cm in height and 140 kg of pure muscle, Denis Cyplenkov has quite an impressive physique, but his most incredible assets are his abnormally thick hands. As you can see in the photos below, his pinkie is easily twice as thick as most people’s thumb, not to mention his other fingers. His wrists are also a whopping 24 cm in circumference, which partly explains his successful arm wrestling career. The guy must have some grip strength.

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For the last 15 years, Georgio T. has been making a name for himself by playing a human carpet. Only it’s not an act, he genuinely enjoys covering himself in carpet and having people walk all over him.

Ever since he was a little boy growing up in Malta, Georgio knew what he wanted to be when he grew up. Some kids dream of becoming doctors or astronauts, but he just wanted to be a carpet. He used to love placing weights on his body and having his pet cats walk over him. When his mother would enter his room and saw him playing his unusual games, she used to tell him “Georgio, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble when you grow up”. But he didn’t let her warnings deter him from fulfilling his dream. These days, 52-year-old Georgio, a.k.a. the Human Carpet is a familiar sight on the New York party scene. He charges a modest fee and accepts tips for inviting revelers to stand and dance on him. His getup is an actual carpet wrapped around his body with a breathing hole cut around his mouth. Although he charges for his services, he claims playing a carpet is not a money-making stunt. He actually enjoys getting stepped on and the more people do it, the better he feels. They can dance or jump on him for hours, without getting a complaint from the Human Carpet. In fact, he says people pay him to have fun.

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Boasting a combination of Byzantine, Roman, Gothic and Mudejar architectural styles, Colomares Castle, in the Spanish town of Benalmadena is a unique monument that pays homage to explorer Christopher Columbus.

Looking at this fairy-tale castle with all its exquisite details, you could never guess it was built by a doctor with no architectural background, and two local brick layers. Esteban Martin, M.D., spent seven years working on Colombares Castle, from 1987 to 1994, trying to create a marvelous monument honoring Christopher Columbus and the discovery of America. For the good doctor building the castle was a labor of love, undertaken in his spare time. He tried to combine all these different architectural styles and at the same time include various elements relating to Christopher Columbus and his historic journey, like finely carved representations of the three ships that made the trip to America. In the end, he manged to construct the largest monument dedicated to the Genovese explorer, covering an area of 1,500 square meters. At the same time, Colomares Castle made into the Guinness Book of Records for hosting the world’s tiniest chapel, just 1.96 square meters in size.

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I love watching movies, but doing it continuously for over 200 hours seems like an impossible feat. But not for two Bolivian movie aficionados who recently won a national movie marathon contest and split a prize of $10,000.

Last year, Bolivia set a new world record for the longest movie marathon. Felipe Gonzalo Ticona managed to stay awake for 131 hours watching all kinds of different films, but because a Guinness representative wasn’t present on scene, his record wasn’t certified so the title remained in the possession of a certain Indian gentleman. But this year, Bolivian movie theater chain “Cine Center” was determined to snatch the title of longest ever movie marathon for their home country, so they announced another monumental film-watching event that would take place simultaneously in three of Bolivia’s largest cities: La Paz, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. The person who managed to beat all other participants and surpass the current record of 128 hours was guaranteed a prize of $10,000 and his name mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records. In total, over 1,400 film fans signed up for the chance to see dozens of films and win the attractive cash prize. At first, organizers decided to allow only people over 18 to enter the competition, but after receiving a considerable number of requests from younger movie buffs, they decided to allow teens as well, as long as they presented a signed authorization from their parents. Everyone had to pay a $14 entrance fee.

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Daniel Edlen, from Phoenix, Arizona, is probably one of the world’s most patient artists. Using just white acrylic paint, he dabs thousands of tiny white spots on black vinyls to create amazingly-detailed portraits of famous musicians.

But why would an artist go through a painstaking process of dabbing white spots on records, instead of painting them the old-fashioned way, with a brush? Well, Daniel told My Modern Metropolis that  “it’s challenging painting on raw records because the paint streaks if I stroke it. Dabbing is the only way it works, but consistency is hard because I don’t use any black and I can’t remove paint easily once it’s dried.” That means the talented artist doesn’t afford to make any mistakes during the creative process, and that’s probably why he can take up to a whole month to complete a single piece.

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Measuring nearly 30 square meters, The Awakening mosaic recently unveiled in Gorky Park, Moscow, set a new world record for the largest coffee bean mosaic.

It’s not very often that you get to see artworks as impressive as the one created by Russian artist Arkadi Kim. He and his team spent around two weeks working on the impressive mosaic, weighing the coffee beans, roasting them to achieve the desired color tones and placing them at just the right spot on the giant panel set up in Gorky Park. Believe it or not, this unique piece of art is made of 1 million coffee beans, weighing an impressive 180 kg (397 pounds). Entitled “The Awakening”, it shows the detailed visage of a girl and alluring coffee aroma making its way to her nose.

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South African Weathermen Could Face Jail Time for Wrong Forecasts (Yahoo)

Jaipur’s Painted Elephant Festival (Environmental Graffiti)

Man Spots Dead Mother’s Ghost in Guesthouse Photo (Metro)

MMO Game Wants to Break Record for Virtual Marriages (Geekosystem)

16 of the Smartest Children in History (Business Insider)

China’s Famous Salad Towers (The Consumerist)

Functional Bone Guillotine Model Made by Prisoner Awaiting Execution (Daily Mail)

India’s Incredible Hand-Drawn Movie Posters (Asia Obscura)

25 Beautifully-Colored Sea Slugs (Environmental Graffiti)

Man Sets New Record for Most Eyebrow Raises (Record Setter)

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)

Pat Vaillancourt is the current record holder for the most web addresses tattooed on his body, with over 10,000 URL’s inked on his back and shoulders. That sounds like a lot, but he’s not stopping until his body is covered by 100,000 website addresses.

In 2010, 30-year-old Vaillancourt, from Quebec, Canada, decided he wanted to set a world record of his own, and because he wasn’t an athlete and he couldn’t do extreme stunts, he chose tattooing as the way to leave his mark on the world. “I want to break a Guinness World Record, but more importantly, I want to help others. And this is my way of doing so,” he said back then. People and businesses can pay $35 to have their URL tattooed on Pat’s body and listed on his website, Back2thelight.com, with half the proceeds being donated to help the people of Haiti and Somalia. Vaillancourt says the other half is used to pay for his tattoos and promote the project. If my calculations are correct, he hopes to ultimately raise $3.5 million, including expenses.

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We all have our small hobbies and passions, but for Heather Hems sewing has been a huge part of her life for the last 17 years. She has dedicated at least 10 -12 hours to sewing every day and has created a collection of embroidered artworks twice the size of the Bayeux Tapestry.

The 69-year-old pensioner claims she has dedicated over 70,000 hours to sewing, over the last 17 years, time in which she also managed to hold down a job as a typesetter, raise three children and do house chores. But how did she find time to do it all, you ask? Mrs. Hems says she worked all day, then took care of her kids, and finally sat down and sewed 10 to 12 hours every night. She only slept for two hours before doing it all over again. This amazing lady says she owes her ambitious mentality to her father who used to challenge her to do things as a child, and race to see who could collect various stuff faster.

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A craftsman from Kaiyuan, northeast China, has created a rideable bicycle using more than 10,000 wooden popsicle sticks.

It took him four long months to finish it, but 35-year-old Sun Chao doesn’t regret one second of the time he put into the world’s first popsicle stick bicycle. At 1.5m long, 0.55m wide, 0.95m high and 25 kg heavy, it’s smaller than the average bicycle, but works just as well. Sure, those wooden wheels don’t provide the comfort of air-inflated ones, but Sun Chao rode it for 20 minutes, when he unveiled it in the city square, on June 1, and he didn’t complain. It’s worth noting he is 90 kg heavy, but the popsicle stick bike easily handled the weight. The only metal parts used on this unusual bicycle were the chain and bearings.

Sun Chao says he first became interested in working with wooden popsicle sticks 12 years ago, after seeing a guy make a ship model from them and giving it to his girlfriend, on TV. He was so inspired he started making a small desk lamp from popsicle sticks. Since then he’s made all kinds of stuff from them, including photo frames, building models, tissue boxes, but nothing nearly as impressive as this working bicycle. Just in case you were wondering, he didn’t actually buy 10,000 ice-creams, only the sticks.

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60-year-old Bob Gibbins, and his wife Lizzie, 55, have a rather unusual collection of 240 different kinds of love dolls that they like dressing up and taking on shopping trips.

Bob says he has always been interested in dolls, but his passion really started to develop when he used to buy rag dolls and other toys for his two kids. He then moved on to buying shop mannequins for a few years and amassing a pretty impressive collection, but it wasn’t until he found an online forum about silicone dolls that he realized that’s what he really wanted to collect. With the help of his wife, Gibbins acquired his first silicone doll, Beverly, in 2007, for around $4,000. But that was only the beginning, as the couple continued to buy different kinds of love dolls, from cheap blow-up dolls costing $639 at most, to realistic silicone dolls like Jessica, who put a serious $11,202 dent in the family budget. All in all, Bob and Lizzie Gibbins estimate they’ve spent around $160,000 since they started collecting love dolls.

You’re probably wondering what someone does with 240 dolls and mannequins, especially when they live in a not so spacious bungalow. Well, according to the wacky couple, they love dressing up the dolls, washing them and fixing them up so they look their best, and since they’re both very picky about their dolls’ appearance, this takes up a lot of their time. Silicone dolls are apparently very needy; they sweat and need to be washed regularly, which can be a problem considering they’re pretty heavy, but Bob and his wife spare no effort tending to their precious collection.

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Darren Taylor, better known as “Professor Splash“, has just set a new world record by swan diving 36 feet into a shallow kiddie pool.

Taylor, a professional diver from  Colorado, has been practicing high diving for the last 25 years, and already has 12 other Guinness Records under his belt. For his 13th one he traveled to Norway, where he jumped from 36 feet into just 12 inches of water. And if that’s not impressive enough, Guinness doesn’t allow the bottom of the kiddie pool to be inflated. “However, there are a couple of foam mats underneath the pool. Believe me, jumping and landing as flat as possible in 12 inches of water is tough enough as it is.” says the Professor.

Using his own special technique, Professor Splash leads with his hands, which breaks the impact on his face and pushes him forward as he hits the thin layer of water. “With my unique technique I can make each jump a world record one, but I must admit they are not getting any easier. You have to judge the wind, the cold, the time of day and become calm so that each jump is a success.” says the diver, who manages to remain unhurt, every time.

In Norway, he wanted the water to be as close to freezing point as possible, so it was dense enough to slow his descent when he impacted the water. He also had to land as flat as possible to “dissipate as much water for a cushion effect”.

Check out the video of his amazing stunt, after the jump.

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