A Swedish journalist decided to teach his two young sons – who were obsessed with war-based video games – what real war is all about. So he took them to visit Israel and Syria to show them the harsh realities that exist in war-torn regions, and make them realise what guns are really used for. The trip lasted 10 days, and when the boys got back, they were completely transformed.

The idea for the trip came at the dinner table one night last year, when Leo, 11, and Frank, 10 begged their father Carl-Magnus Helgegren to buy them the latest Call of Duty game. He was quite concerned with their obsession for the popular shooter – he wondered if his boys actually realized the real effect that war has on its victims.

So Helgegren devised a brilliant plan to impart a much needed lesson. He cut a deal with his sons – if they agreed to travel with him to an area plagued by war and spend time with war victims, he would buy them any video game of their choice on their return.

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When American artist William Utermohlen was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1995, he decided to make the best use of his limited time and memory. He began to use his art to understand himself better – for five years, he drew portraits of himself before he completely forgot how to draw.

Through this unique series of self-portraits, viewers can observe the London-based artist’s quiet descent into dementia. As the terrible disease took control of his mind, his world began to tilt and his perspectives flattened. The details in his paintings melted away and they became more abstract. At times, he seemed aware of the technical flaws in his work, but he simply could not figure out how to correct them.

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Kala Kaiwi, a tattoo and body modification artist from Hawaii, recently set the Guinness Record for the largest non-surgically made earlobe rings in the world. Also known as ‘flesh tunnels’, the earlobe stretches measure a whopping 4.3 inches in diameter – so large that you could fit your hand right through them!

It’s not just the lobes – Kaiwi has modified almost every part of his body. He has silicone horn implants in his forehead, stretches in his nostrils, tattooed eyebrows, studs all over his face, and bolt holes on his forehead with spikes screwed in. He also managed to split his own tongue using dental floss.

Kaiwi trained in body art in Las Vegas in 1999, before he moved back to Hawaii to open his own business called the Sin City Body Modification and Tattoo shop. But he started with the really extreme stuff only a few years ago. Read More »

A struggling South Korean Major League baseball team has come up with a novel idea to boost players’ morale. They’re replacing human fans with robots called ‘Fanbots’, all in a bid to improve the atmosphere at their matches.

The promo video for ‘Fanbot – the world’s first cheering robot’ rides high on the emotions involved while watching a match. “Fans of Hanwha Eagles always come to the stadium to cheer for the team,” the video states. “But those who cannot come to the stadium watch the game on the web or on their phones and cheer through commenting online. What if there was a robot cheering for those fans?”

It’s not easy being a fan of the Hanwha Eagles – most fans are subject to ridicule because of the team’s poor performance. The Hanwha Eagles have suffered over 400 losses in the past five years. Fans of the team are regarded with sympathy – they’ve even been dubbed ‘Buddhist Saints’ and ‘Hanwha Chickens’ by fans of other teams. The humiliation has been so great that many fans don’t feel like attending games anymore. Others simply do not have the time.

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Korean artist Hyung Jin Park uses photographs as inspiration to create equally realistic paintings of young Asian women. He generally paints bust-length portraits of a monumental scale, up to seven feet high, depicting women at close range. The hair, lips, eyes and skin are painted with a high level of precision, making them unbelievably real. His photorealistic technique is so accurate that once he completes a piece, it’s almost impossible to tell if it’s a high-resolution photograph or a painting.

But Park’s work can be identified if you are aware of his signature style. He often makes distortions of the women he’s painting, like enlarging the eyes or shrinking the chin, to give them an otherworldly look. He also gives the women a universalized, glazed appearance, softening features just like in Oriental ceramics. So his paintings do appear to be like photographs, but they’re also rather surreal. And although the artist chooses his subjects from among his students, the women in his paintings are really quite different from the real-life inspiration.

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When we wrote about Datta Phuge, an Indian businessman who owns a 3.2-kilogram solid gold shirt, we thought that his was a unique story. But it turns out there are other rich men in India obsessed with gold – like Pankaj Parakh, a businessman and local politician who celebrated his 45th birthday by gifting himself a 4-kilogram gold shirt worth over $200,000.

Pankaj is a textile magnate from the town of Yeola, near Mumbai city, who made his millions through his clothing empire. He now wants to make sure the rest of the world knows about his success. And what better way to flash his wealth than by wearing it? So he commissioned the solid gold shirt that he wore on the occasion of his birthday, last Friday.

The yellow metal shirt was designed by Bafna Jewellers in the nearby city of Nashik. The garment was then meticulously executed at Shanti Jewellers in Mumbai, by a team of 20 select artisans who spent 3,200 hours over the past two months ‘sewing’ the shirt.

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With just a craft knife and a needle, talented Iranian artist Omid Asadi can breathe life into dry, fallen leaves. The 35-year-old, now based in the UK, carves breathtaking silhouettes into fragile brown leaves, creating exquisite pieces of art. Right from celebrity portraits to wild animals, or even random patterns – Omid is an expert at using the natural shape of a leaf to transform it into a wide range of subjects.

“Art for me is the way of looking differently to this world and around myself,” Omid said. “I started to think why nobody paid attention to these beautiful leaves and trod on them, because of their name – if they were called flowers we wouldn’t tread on them at all! I wanted to give the leaves another life and make art from them.”

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For nearly 50 years, Don Ritchie saved the lives of people who were on the verge of suicide. During his lifetime, he managed to stop 160 people from plunging to their deaths at Australia’s most famous suicide point – a cliff called ‘the Gap’ – with just a kind word and a smile. Although he passed away a couple of years ago at age 85, he is still fondly remembered as ‘the Angel of the Gap’.

Ritchie was an extraordinary gentleman who deliberately chose to live right across the street from The Gap, just so he could continue saving lives. He would wake up every morning and look out of the window for “anyone standing too close to the precipice.” If he saw someone and thought they might jump, he would simply walk over with his palms facing up, smile, and say: “Is there something I could do to help you?”

That sounds incredibly simple, but the trick worked – Ritchie managed to strike a conversation with these people and ended up inviting them back to his house for tea or breakfast. “And that was all that was often needed to turn people around, and he would say not to underestimate the power of a kind word and a smile,” said his daughter Sue Ritchie Bereny.

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20-year-old Brazilian Celso Santebanes has spent over $50,000 to transform himself into a real-life Ken doll. The young model is so obsessed with dolls that he even behaves like one. And now he’s actually giving the real Ken a run for his money by releasing his own line of figurines called ‘Celso Dolls’.

Celso Santebanes recently shared pictures of himself and his namesake toy on Instagram. “I went to the city to become a model,” he wrote. “I never expected to have a toy myself. I dreamt of becoming a human puppet, but having one in my image was completely unexpected.”

Celso, who has been a doll enthusiast all his life, said that he grew up with a shelf full of dolls. He claims that his family told him he looked like a doll himself since the age of 13. He’s been obsessed with being the perfect human puppet ever since, and his own personal transformation began after he won a modelling contest at age 16.

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Located between the towns of Grana and Casorzo in Piemonte, Italy, is a very unique tree – well, they’re actually two trees, one growing on top of the other. Locally known as ‘Bialbero de Casorzo’ or the ‘double tree of Casorzo’, this natural oddity consists of a cherry tree growing on top of a mulberry tree.

No one really knows how the cherry tree managed to take root and survive in such a bizarre position. Locals believe that a bird might have dropped a cherry seed on top of the mulberry tree, which then grew its roots through the hollow trunk to reach the soil below.

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A former Disney World janitor, who now goes by ‘TheVantasy’ on Reddit, recently put up photographs of the amazing street art she created while she worked at the theme park. Her art mainly consisted of portraits of Disney characters. And the only tools she ever needed were a wet broom and a bucket of water!

According to TheVantasy, she wasn’t the only one who created these beautiful drawings that the kids love so much – several janitors at Disneyland and Disney World are apparently known for creating water art. They’re even given special training if they are interested in the art form. TheVantasy herself got interested just before she left in 2012. “I once visited Disneyland and saw the local custodians doing water art and I asked if I could try. They didn’t know I was from Disney World,” she wrote.

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British designer Christopher Shellis has created an unbelievably expensive women’s clutch bag – it costs a whopping $180,000 and it’s so small that it can hardly hold more than a cell phone. The tiny bag measures 7 inches by 5 inches, but it’s surprisingly heavy at half-a-kilogram, thanks to all the bling piled on to it.

All that weight is attributed to the 345 diamonds that are studded on the 18-carat gold bag. It took Shellis and his team of dedicated goldsmiths and diamond setters over 100 hours to create the bag. “The inspiration and design was drawn from the Buckingham Palace gates,” Shellis explained.

“Like the palace gates, it conveys its own very regal presence. It would not look out of place among the collection of jewels in the Tower of London itself. It could easily be worn by any royal princess.”

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Pheromone parties are the latest trend to hit the international dating scene. These parties allow young men and women to literally sniff out prospective partners. Instead of meeting each other face-to-face, people at these parties just go around sniffing bags of discarded clothing worn by a potential mate. When the smell seems right, it’s time to meet.

To attend a pheromone party, you’ll have to first agree to wear the same cotton T-shirt three nights in a row, without using any deodorant or perfume. You then have to bring your odor-infused clothing to the party in a numbered transparent plastic bag.

Then, you randomly pick up bags belonging to the opposite sex – pink labels for women and blue for men – until you find one that you really seem to like. You click a picture of yourself holding the bag – all the images are projected on the wall and then you get to meet the person of your, well, smelly dreams!

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A group of bikers in Portland, Oregon, share the most unusual love of children’s bicycles. Several riders take to the hills of Washington Park every Sunday with a single mission – to speed downhill on tiny kids’ bicycles, after the sun goes down. Seasoned bikers ride at the front of the pack, while beginners follow their lead. They all take off at the same time, at the countdown ‘Three, two, one – Zoobomb!’

The unusual hobby is called ‘Zoobombing’, and it was born in Portland, one of America’s most bike-friendly cities. The ‘zoo’ denotes the fact that participants start at a spot near the Oregon Zoo, from where they speed downhill, while ‘bomb’ is a term used to describe biking downhill at very high speeds.

In zoobombing, the most glorious riders have the smallest wheels. The ideal size is the 12-inch, designed for use by three-year-olds. Those who aren’t comfortable with wheels so small prefer to ride 16 and 20-inch wheels. “On a tiny bike, you feel like you’re going faster,” said April Cox, a 16-incher who has been zoobombing for the past nine years.

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Japanese botanical artist Makoto Azuma’s flower arrangements are, quite literally, out of this world. His beautiful plants were recently launched into outer space as a part of his latest project, ‘Exobiotonica’. The launch took place on July 15 at the Nevada Black Rock Desert, with the help of Sacramento-based independent space program, JP Aerospace.

“I wanted to see the movement and beauty of plants and flowers suspended in space,” said Azuma, who is well known in Japan for his extravagant performances involving flowers. There was this one time when he stomped on hundreds of flowers during a musical performance. Once, he stuffed flowers into glass jars and filled them with water-like sardines. He has also created office chairs and Hello Kitty dolls entirely covered in green grass.

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