On August 23rd, an extraordinary even took place in the German port-city of Hamburg. The world’s top 10 cliff-divers gathered here to demonstrate their abilities and claim the title of 2008 Red Bull Cliff Diving Champion. The winner of such a competition is not even important, just being able to accomplish such incredible acrobatic feats is remarkable. These people accelerate from 0 to 90 km/h and drop back to 0 in a free fall that only lasts 2.5 seconds.
Just watch the video and be amazed:
I don’t exactly know where this kind of snake hunting is practiced but my money’s on Australia. I tried to find some info besides the photos but I couldn’t find anything; if you know more, please share.
Wherever they’re from, these snake hunters have balls the size of freakin’ Jupiter, I wouldn’t chase a snake in its lair even if you paid me all the money in the world, and armed with only a piece of leather around my arm and a small fire. Look at the photos and judge for yourself if this is courage or insanity…
I can here the Brits screaming “Run for your lives, the blue rubber duckies are attacking!!!”, must have been horrible…Well not really, it was just the annual Great British Duck Race, a charity event where people paid 2 ponds two enlist their rubber ducky in a race on the river Thames.
The prize was 10,000 pounds for the fastest floating rubber duck on the river and all the earnings went to charity. In case you were wondering, the rubber ducks were blue because last year, when they were yellow, people threw their own ducks without paying the fee.
This year’s Great British Duck Race scored a new world record for the most rubber ducks in one place, around 250,000. I wonder who had the “pleasure” of counting them.
Well if one can create art out of bottle-caps I don’t see why corks can’t be used for the same purpose? It seems Albanian artist Saimir Strati feels the same way, since he has taken on the challenge of creating a 3D painting out of 300,000 wine-bottle corks. What you see in the photos is not the completed project, upon completion it will be a 96 square meter masterpiece depicting people playing guitar.
This is not Strati’s first unusual artwork, in the past he has gained a spot in the Guinness Boook of Records for the world’s largest toothpick mosaic in the world. It contained approximately 1 million toothpicks and it depicted some horses. So be on the look out for Saimir Strati, he’s one special artist.
If you have a thing for cork, you might like to take a look at the cork costume
Frequently called the eight wonder of the world, Willard Wigan‘s micro art is indeed quite something. Some people can barely fit string through a pinhead, let alone create art on such a level. Wigan creates famous figures on pin tips, pin heads, nails, matchsticks, anything particularly thin and small. He’s an amazing artist and his work speaks for itself.
Once every two years, the Grand Place, a central market in Brussles, Belgium becomes one of the largest flower gardens in the world. This year people could admire a beautiful flower carpet between the 14th and 17th of August, for those of you that missed it, there’s always two years from now.
The flower carpet of Grand Place has a different model every time and it’s made out of roughly 700,000 begonias. This is definitely one of the must see- attractions of Brussels.
Remember the Bottle-cap painting and the Bottle-cap collection? Those are just too examples that anything that seems like junk can still be usable. Today it’s the cork‘s turn to prove its long-term usefulness.
The man in the photos is very passionate about wine so he decided to create a costume that could show his love for delicious drink. So he just collected enough bottle corks and bound them together to create this tuxedo. Looks good on him, doesn’t it?
Artist Jennifer Marsh, founder of the International Fiber Collaborative has just finished wrapping an abandoned gas-station in pieces of fabric from all-around the world. The whole project cost $29,000 and a part of the sum came from her own pocket.
She’s now thinking of expanding the organization into other communities, not just Syracusw, New York and her future project will involve covering an abandoned grocery-store in recycled plastic.
Last time I saw a cruise ship in a city was in that crappy sequel to Speed (starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock), what was it called again…oh yeah, Speed 2. But this particular ship didn’t actually sail to the middle of Hong Kong, it was built there. Whampoa ship is one of the main tourist attraction Hong Kong has to offer and one of the most unusual commercial centers in the world. It has the size of an actual cruise ship and inside you can find many restaurants, shops and even a hotel. To see how much Whampoa really is, just look it up on Google Maps, or better yet take a trip to Hong Kong.
American auto company Aptera Motors proposes a new solution to the very present fuel problem. Its amazing tricycle-style vehicle runs 100 kilometers on 1 liter of fuel, at a speed of 88.5 km/h. As you can see from the photos, Aptera‘s creation looks interesting at least and it’s quite a beast, reaching 100 km/h in just 10 seconds.
The Aptera trike has these amazing performances due to its extremely low weight, streamed body line and advanced hybrid propulsion systems. You can place an order for an Aptera wonder car on the company’s official page, with just a $500 advance. The car costs around $30 000 and you’ll be able to jump behind the wheel in a year after you’ve placed the order. For this price you get GPS, satellite radio and a DVD player included. Quite a sweet deal, but is the world ready to try something as revolutionary as Aptera‘s machine?
Rick is not a living dead, not yet anyway, but he is trying to make himself look like a zombie and so far he’s doing a great job.
A big fan of horror movies, especially George A. Romero’s Living Dead movies, Rick has become a big fan of zombies and ultimately decided he wanted to become one. As a kid he liked The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon and he wanted to be a turtle and live in the sewers, but, with age, he became more mature and decided to become a zombie instead.
So far he has invested over 4000 Canadian dollars into over 24 hours of tattoos and piercings and says his about halfway to realizing his dream. In the meantime he’s become somewhat of an Internet celebrity due to his unique appearance.
Check out an interview with Rick the Zombie Boy over on Bizarre, if you want to know more about him.
As you probably know, the Saint Fermin Festival held every year in Pamplona, is one of the most popular in all of Spain and even the world. People from all over the globe come here to get chase by enraged bulls let loose on the streets of the city. Tradition says the bulls have to be guided to the bull-fighting ring as soon as they are released from their pens, by young men wearing red scarfs. The course is about 850 meters long, the streets are very narrow and the participants have to run in front of the bulls to lure them and if they’re not fast enough they can get stomped on pretty bad.
People that enter the festivities every year say it’s an incredible feeling, with the adrenalin in their bodies reaching incredible levels, but as you can see in the photos there are some that definitely won’t be going to Pamplona’s Running of the Bulls Festival in the following years.
This polystyrene robot also comes with an army of smaller minions that prevent curious onlookers from getting too close and tipping-over the Styrobot.
Michael Salter, a professor at the University of Oregon spends most of his time cutting up old polystyrene packaging and molding it into wonderful creations. For example this 22-feet tall robot that is touring art galleries all over the world, along with its army of robot minions, in its quest to win over the hearts of art lovers.
In these three settlements, “living on the edge” gets a literal meaning.
Ronda (Malaga, Spain) is a popular tourist attraction, because of El Tajo, a 100-meter deep gorge separating the old town form the new one. El Tajo is spanned by three bridges, each built in a different historical age: Roman, Moorish and 18th Century.
Bonifacio (Corsica, France) is a beautiful port town set in the south-most point of Corsica, on white limestone cliffs eaten away by the wind and waves they had to endure. A naval haven throughout the century, Bonifacio is now a small marina, for expensive yachts from around the world.
Castellfolit de la Roca (Catalonia, Spain) is one of the smallest towns in Spain, set atop of a 50 meters-high basalt formation stretching out for a kilometer. The edge is a result of the erosion of two rivers that flow right near the town.
The first moving building in the world will be built, where else, in Dubai, home to all the revolutionary architectural wonders in recent years.
Designed by Italian architect David Fisher, the Dynamic Tower will be made up of 80 pre-fabricated apartments rotating around a central column, with the help of 79 giant wind turbines placed between the floors. The 420 meters-long building “will never look the same, not once in a lifetime” says David Fisher, the apartments will be able to spin 360 degrees, giving the tower a different look every time.
One of the most important features of the Dynamic Tower is it’s going to be energy self-sufficient, the wind turbines will produce more than enough energy for the whole building, the extra energy will go back into the grid. The apartments will cost between $3,7 m and $36 m and the tower itself will cost $700 million to build.
The amazing Dynamic Tower of Dubai is scheduled to be ready in 2010.
