Sprayable Sleep – The Melatonin Spray That Promises to Give You a Good Night’s Rest

After their highly successful 2013 product Sprayable Energy, Silicon Valley startup Sprayable are back with a new product involving transdermal technology – ‘Sprayable Sleep’. It is the world’s first topical melatonin spray that helps you fall asleep naturally and wake up refreshed.

While melatonin pills have long since been used to treat sleep related disorders, the makers of Sprayable Sleep claim it has several benefits over the pills. Ben Yu, 22, and his partner Devan Soni, 35, say that the effectiveness of the hormone in the pill form could be lost to the digestive process, but this doesn’t happen with the spray.

“Sprayable gives you the exact level of melatonin you need (often 30 times less than you ingest with pills) and delivers it gradually over time – mimicking how your body naturally produces and uses melatonin,” the creators said. “Sprayable Sleep puts you in control of your sleep. Whether you’re traveling and have jet lag or are working the night shift, Sprayable will help you get sleep when you want so you’re refreshed and alert when you need it most.”

sprayable-sleep

Read More »

Chinese Company Showcases Fully 3D-Printed Villa and Apartment Building

Only a few years ago, if someone had told you that it was possible to build a home without the noisy, dusty eyesore that is the construction site, you’d probably have thought they were crazy. Yet, Chinese company WinSun Decoration Design Engineering Co has made this possible – they’re actually printing homes now, using one of those revolutionary 3D printers.

WinSun made headlines in March last year, when the printed 10 different one-story, 200 square-meter houses, using nothing but industrial construction waste and a 3D printer. Each building cost $4,800 to make. Now, they’re in the news again with two new additions – a five-story apartment building and a 1,100 square meter villa.

3d-printed-homes Read More »

Luxury Company Guarantees Good Weather on Your Wedding Day for $150,000

Luxury travel company Oliver’s Travels is offering its wealthy clients an innovative wedding service – a sky clean up. For a hefty fee of over $150,000, they actually offer to pop clouds and induce rain up to a week before their wedding, in order to ensure clear blue skies on the day of the ceremony.

It might sound ridiculous, but cloud seeding is actually a legit scientific technique. It involves the firing of rockets filled with silver iodide crystals into rain clouds from a light aircraft, or from the ground. The icy silver particles freeze the water droplets in the clouds so that they continue to grow in size and eventually fall out of the cloud as snow, turning into rain just before hitting the ground.

3958880477_d115a36a61_z Read More »

For Some Reason, This Guy Is Filming Himself Just Sitting and Smiling for Four Hours a Day

Benjamin Bennett probably has the most bizarre YouTube channel. For the past six months, he has been sitting in front of a camera in zen-like silence, smiling, for hours on end! He’s put out at least 120 hours of footage of himself doing nothing but sitting, without offering any explanation whatsoever.

Ben’s videos made no noise at all – literally and figuratively – until he reached the middle of his 25th live stream. Once he started getting a decent number of views, everybody wanted to know what he was doing and why. Some thought it was art, while others speculated that he was meditating. A few were convinced that he was mentally ill.

The mystery was finally solved a few days back when Vice published an interview with the man himself. When asked why he was doing this, he was quite vague about it. “I don’t know,” he said. “It seemed like something the internet was lacking. It seemed like it needed to be done, and nobody else was going to do it.”

Benjamin-Bennett Read More »

Louisville Mega Caves – America’s First Underground Mountain Bike Course

Mega Underground Bike Park is a one-of-a-kind underground bike trail in Louisville, Kentucky. Spanning 320.000 square feet, with over 45 trails, Jump Lines, Pump Tracks, BMX, Cross Country and Single Track, the park is entirely located 100 feet or 10 stories below the ground!

The bike park is one of the many attractions at Louisville Mega Cavern, a man-made, privately-owned limestone cavern that encompasses an area of 100 acres beneath the streets of Louisville. Founded by Ralph Rogers in the 1930s, the cavern is currently used as a business park, entertainment center, and tourist attraction.

All set for a soft opening in early February, the bike park will be the nation’s first underground mountain bike course, and the largest indoor park ever built. In fact, it is nearly twice the size of America’s current largest indoor park – Ray’s Indoor Bike Park in Cleveland, Ohio.

Mega-Cavern-bike-park Read More »

Being Stung by the Gympie Gympie Tree Is the Worst Kind of Pain You Can Imagine

‘Gympie-Gympie’ is hardly the name you’d expect for a stinging-tree. It looks quite harmless too, but in reality, the Gympie-Gympie is one of the most venomous plants in the world. Commonly found in the rainforest areas of north-eastern Australia, the Moluccas and Indonesia, it is known to grow up to one to two meters in height.

In fact, the Gympie-Gympie sting is so dangerous that it has been known to kill dogs, horses and humans alike. If you’re lucky enough to survive, you  only feel excruciating pain that can last several months and reoccur for years. Even a dry specimen can inflict pain, almost a hundred years after being picked!

With the exception of its roots, every single part of the deadly tree – its heart shaped leaves, its stem and its pink/purple fruit – is covered with tiny stinging hairs shaped like hypodermic needles. You only need to lightly touch the plant to get stung, after which the hair penetrates the body and releases a painful toxin called moroidin. Sometimes, merely being in the presence of the plant and breathing the hair that it sheds into the air can cause itching, rashes, sneezing and terrible nosebleeds.

gympie-gympie Read More »

Only in Japan – The LED-Illuminated Upskirt Skirt

Japanese designer Kiyoyuki Amano has combined fashion and technology to create futuristic short skirts that illuminate the wearer’s thighs. Aptly named ‘Hikaru Skirt’, which means ‘Shining Skirt’, the garment comes equipped with LED lights and the miniature gyro sensors on the inside. So the skirt lights up, and the color and pattern of the light changes every time the wearer moves.

Amano said that he first placed light bulbs inside a skirt on a whim, and that’s when he noticed that it created a pleasant illumination of the thighs. So he worked on the design some more and soon created a whole line of LED-illuminated minis. The Hikaru skirts, he said, are meant to bridge the gap between everyday fashion and cosplay.

Hikaru-skirt Read More »

No Girls Allowed – The Greek State That Forbids Both Human and Animal Females

Mount Athos, formally known as Autonomous Monastic State of the Holy Mountain, is located on the Greek peninsula of Halkidiki. The monastic traditions of the mountain date back to 800 A.D. and the Byzantine era. Today, it is home to 20 Eastern Orthodox monasteries, and 2,000 monks from Greece and other eastern orthodox countries such as Bulgaria, Serbia and Russia. These monks live an ascetic life, isolated from the rest of the world.

Although technically part of the European Union, the Holy Mountain is largely self-governed. This prohibits the free movement of people and goods in its territory, unless formal permission has been granted. As a result, a number of traditions at Mount Athos might seem odd to people outside. The keeping of Byzantine time, for instance, means that their day begins at sunset. But perhaps their most bizarre practice is the centuries-old ban on women entering the sacred peninsula.

For over 1,000 years, women have been forbidden from setting foot on the mountain. In fact, females of other species such as cows, dogs and goats aren’t permitted either. Only birds and insects are exempted from the rule – scanning the skies and grounds for female body parts would surely be too absurd, even by Mount Athos standards.

Mount-Athos6 Read More »

Swiss Company Will Find a Truly Unique Name for Your Baby for Just $32,000

It’s hard to find an original, one-of-a-kind name for a baby in this day and age – a fact that a Swiss company is cashing in on. For a hefty fee of $32,000, they promise to have their team of experts come up with a name that your baby wouldn’t share with anyone else in the world.

The company, called Erflogswelle, is actually in the business of creating names for brands and products, but director Marc Hauser came up with the idea for this new service after he helped a friend name her child. “The choice was causing tension between the couple, so I thought I could help,” he explained.

His friend loved the name that he picked out and that’s when he realized the potential of extending the service to parents all over the world. So he put together a special team of his best people, who employ their tried and tested techniques to find unique names for babies.
baby-names

Read More »

Chinese Woman Who Has Adopted 39 Handicapped Children Gets Punished by Government

Kindness is not always rewarded, as proven by Chinese officials who are punishing a 65-year-old woman for taking in abandoned children with physical and mental disabilities.

Kong Zhenian, from the rural village of Jiu Jiu in northern China’s Shanxi Province, has been caring for physically and mentally-challenged children for the past 40 years. “I found the first one on the side of the road,” she said. “She had just been left there and I felt so sorry for her I just had to do something.” So she took the child into her care and hasn’t stopped helping children since then.

“I have now raised 39 children,” she added. “All of them are regarded as having problems, either physically or mentally. But in fact, many of them were simply suffering from neglect. It costs a lot of money to care for them but we have managed.”

Chinese-heroine Read More »

Meet the Moranbong Band – North Korea’s Version of Spice Girls

Believe it or not, North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, is actually a big fan of K-pop music. In fact, he’s so passionate about it that he hand-picked every member of the girl group ‘Moranbong Band’ – his country’s answer to the Spice Girls.

As a result of Kim Jong-un’s endorsement, the band has been playing sell-out gigs across the country. Their first concert was so popular that the streets of Pyongyang were apparently deserted during the broadcast. Often dressed in conservatively sexy attire – with skirts cut well above the knee and hair clipped short – the Moranbong girls have received good reviews from local critics as well.

Although the band has been around for a few years, they appeared to have fallen out of favor in late 2013. But after a six-month hiatus, they were back to performing in April 2014 to rave reviews from Korean media, thus reclaiming their status as queens of North Korea’s pop scene, and the darlings of primetime TV. Their comeback concert featured ‘colorful numbers’ such as ‘O My Motherland Full of Hope’, ‘Our Father’, and ‘We Think of the Marshall Day and Night’.

moranbong-band Read More »

Professional Beggar Takes Credit Card Donations, Makes a Killing

Damien Preston-Booth is probably the smartest, most resourceful beggar in the world. Every week, the 37-year-old from Lancashire travels all the way to London’s Mayfair to accept donations from wealthy tourists – via credit card! He actually carries around a card reader to make sure he doesn’t miss out on contributions from rich people who don’t have cash on them.

Every Wednesday for the past five years, Booth has journeyed from his £300 a month rented apartment in Preston to London, where he pretends to be homeless, spending three days and nights sleeping rough and begging. He walks up to potential donors and tries appealing to their generosity. If they’re ready to contribute, he quickly whips out his mobile card reader that transfers all payments to his PayPal account. The reader is linked via Bluetooth to his smartphone, and the donor receives a receipt for his donation.

card-reader-beggar Read More »

Shani Shingnapur – India’s Village without Doors

Believe it or not, there’s a village in India where none of the 300-odd buildings – homes, educational institutions, and even banks – have doors. Cash is stored in unlocked containers, as are valuable pieces of gold jewellery.

Even most of the public toilets in Shani Shingnapur village square have no doors. “For reasons of privacy and following requests by women, we recently agreed to put a thin curtain near the entrance, but not doors because that would go against our belief,” said village shopkeeper Parmeshwar Mane.

Some villagers do put up loose door panels against their door frames, but this is done only at night, to keep out wild animals and stray dogs. The only problem with the lack of doors is that there’s nothing to knock on to announce your arrival. But the villagers have a solution for this, too. “Just shout out and somebody will come to the door,’’ one of the villagers, Rani, explained.

Shani-Shingnapur-doors Read More »

Humane Bullfighting in Costa Rica – No one Can Hurt the Bull but the Bull Can Kill Anyone

While the bullfights of Spain and Mexico generally don’t end well for the bull, Costa Ricans prefer to do things differently. Since cattle are revered as a source of income for thousands of farming families in the nation, they don’t consider it practical to kill bulls for sport. Although bullfights are a main event at Zapote – the annual Costa Rican bull festival – the bulls always leave the arena unscathed.

Corridas de toros (bullfights) are held all through the year in Costa Rica, but Zapote’s is considered to be the country’s grandest event. At the end of each year, cattle farmers from all over the nation haul their bulls and gather at the capital, for the much-awaited celebration. And instead of glorifying man’s power over the beast, the bullfights during Zapote celebrate bulls. The animals are never to be killed, only dodged.

Costa-Rica-bullfighting Read More »

Russia’s Lake Karachay – The Most Contaminated Place on Earth

Although breathtakingly beautiful, Russia’s Lake Karachay is probably the last place on earth you’d want to choose for a lakeside retreat. Just standing next to the picturesque shore for an hour would give you a radiation dose of 600 roentgen, more than enough to kill you. At its height, the lake was putting out more than 200,000 times the normal amount of radioactivity, due to poor waste disposal practices.

Nestled deep in Russia’s Ural Mountains, close to the modern Kazakhstan border, Lake Karachay falls within the Mayak Production Association, one of the country’s largest (and leakiest) nuclear facilities. Built in the 1940s, immediately after World War II, Mayak was one of Russia’s most important nuclear weapons factories and was inaccessible to foreigners for 45 years. But when President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree in 1992 that opened up the area, visiting scientists who gained access immediately declared it the most polluted area on the planet. It seems that in its long period of obscurity, Mayak was the site of numerous nuclear-related accidents, some almost as devastating as the Chernobyl meltdown.

Nuclear engineers at Mayak apparently dumped radioactive waste into the nearby Techa river quite regularly. The watered down waste that they discarded rather carelessly was a mixture of radioactive elements such as Strontium-90 and Cesium-137, each with a half-life of approximately 30 years.

Lake-Karachay Read More »