Scientists and doctors have made a huge leap in cryonics – the effort to save lives through sub-zero temperatures – by freezing the body of a two-year-old child. Matheryn Naovaratpong is now the youngest person in the world to be cryogenically preserved.

Fondly known to her family as ‘Einz’, the little girl was diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer shortly after her third birthday. She died in January this year, just before she turned three. But her parents – both medical engineers – have decided to give her another chance at life using cryonics. 

Through cryonics, it is possible to preserve the bodies of humans and animals who cannot be cured through contemporary medicine, with the hope that they may be healed and resuscitated if extraordinary medical advances take place in the future. “As scientists, we are 100% confident this will happen one day – we just don’t know when,” Einz’s father Sahatorn said.

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A group of Russians are trying to construct the world’s first underwater church at Cape Fiolent, about 200 meters off the Crimean coast. Divers recently planted a large cross styled like a ship’s anchor at a depth of about 20 meters below sea level, marking the beginning of the ambitious project.

The church is partly sponsored by a Russian motorcycle club called Night Wolves, believed to have close ties with President Putin. Co-funding the project is the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. Both groups hope that the church will attract more tourists to the newly annexed Crimean peninsula.

“The underwater church will look like a church,” said Archimandrite Tikhon, who is also a diving enthusiast. “There will be icons inside – just like in a real church. Most probably they will be bas-reliefs of icons in stainless steel or stone.” He added that architects are working on the design and details of the structure.

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Shridhar Chillal, from Pune, India, hasn’t cut his fingernails in over six decades. He began growing them when he was still in school, and now holds the Guinness World Record for the ‘Longest Fingernails on a Single Hand Ever’. The super-long talons on his left hand now have a cumulative length of 909.6 cm!

Chillal’s thumb nail is the longest at two meters and curls into a tight coil at the end. The middle finger nail comes a close second at 186.6 cm. The ring finger nail measures 181.6 cm, the little finger nail is 179.1 cm, and the index nail stands at 164.5 cm. As you can imagine, his nails have sabotaged every aspect of his life, including work and love.

“I can’t move much, so every half an hour or so I wake up and move my hand to the other side of the bed,” he admitted.

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If you love building sandcastles then here’s your chance to actually live in one. ‘Zand Hotels’ – the world’s first hotels constructed out of sand have opened in two Dutch towns – Oss and Sneek – to commemorate sand sculpture festivals held there each year.

The two pop-up hotels have fully furnished one-room suites, hidden inside eight-meter sculptures. One is modeled after the iconic Bedrock homes from the Flintstones, and the other has a Chinese theme, with dragons, the Great Wall of China, and the Terracotta Army as decorations. Believe it or not, these sand hotels have all the modern amenities, like electricity, running water, glass windows, king size beds, soft carpets, luxurious bathrooms and Wi-Fi!

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When 24-year-old Bhanu Prakash, from Hyderabad, India, realised that his job was eating into his precious selfie-time, he decided to quit working altogether. He now spends all his time taking pictures of himself, and training to break the world record for most selfies in an hour. The record currently belongs to American football player Patrick Peterson, who managed to click himself 1,449 times!

Bhanu, who studied pharmacy in college, was working as a research assistant at a hospital in Hyderabad. He was already into the selfie trend big time, ever since his brother got him a smartphone with a front-facing camera, three years ago. “Almost the first thing I did when I got the phone in my hands was click a picture,” he recalled.

But his obsession reached new heights in May this year, when he overheard a conversation between a few kids on a bus – they were talking about Dwayne Johnson’s feat of clicking 105 selfies in three minutes. “It immediately struck me that it was a guy who did this,” Bhanu said. “I mean, people keep saying selfie is a very girly thing, but here Dwayne Johnson was doing it. And I knew I was up for it now.”

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Flour, butter, eggs, and sugar were apparently too boring for this super wealthy Arab family, so they decided to throw a few diamonds into their cake mix. They recently splurged an eye-watering $75 million on a bejweled cake for their daughter’s birthday-cum-engagement party.

British designer Debbie Wingham, who turned to baking after previously creating the world’s most expensive dress, was commissioned to make the cake. The identity of the family – living in the UAE – has not been revealed, but there are plenty of pictures online of Debbie and the extravagant dessert.

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The ancient Italian art of spinning ‘sea silk’ is all but lost, save for one woman who still knows how to produce the incredibly rare, almost magical fabric. While modern silk is spun from silkworms, Chiara Vigo can harvest the saliva of a rare variety of clam and spin it into a shiny, gold-like material called byssus.

Legend has it that byssus was the cloth that God instructed Moses to lay on the first altar. It is believed to be the finest fabric known to Egypt, Greece, and Rome. If treated properly with lemon juice and spices, the remarkable material shines when exposed to the sun. It is also incredibly light, so much so that the wearer cannot even feel it touching the skin. It is said to be as thin as a spider web, resistant to water, acids, and alcohols.

Vigo gathers the raw material required to weave the cloth every spring – she goes out diving early in the morning to cut the solidified saliva of a large clam, the Pinna Nobilis, an endangered fan-shaped species of mollusc that is native to the Mediterranean Sea bed. Vigo has mastered a special cutting technique that allows her to take the secreted material without killing the rare creature. 300 to 400 dives later, she is able to gather about 200 grams of material. 

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A nightclub in Amsterdam is getting ready to host the world’s first ‘blood rave’ this Halloween, with real blood! According to media reports, Dutch partygoers will be sprayed with gallons of blood from an overhead sprinkler system, based on the opening scene of the 1998 vampire film Blade.

The event’s official Facebook page states: “Blood Rave is a night-life community for likeminded individuals, on a discrete location in Amsterdam.” It also lists a link to an intro video (the scene from Blade), and another link to purchase tickets.

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Pig’s meat is undoubtedly delicious, but I’m not so sure you could say the same about its milk. Nevertheless, a family-run farm in the Netherlands has produced the world’s first cheese made from pig milk. They’re selling it at a whopping £1,500 ($2,300) per kilogram – more expensive than the former world’s costliest cheese, made from Balkan donkey milk!

Erik Stenink, free-range pig farmer and owner of ‘Piggy’s Palace’ is the brains behind pig milk cheese. He decided to do it because mainly because he was curious to see if it would work, given that pig’s milk is richer in protein than cow’s milk. But milking pigs is quite a labor intensive process, so he only managed to produce half a kilo of the “chalky” cheese. A bit of it was sold to an anonymous buyer last week, and the proceeds were donated to a children’s cancer charity.

“It’s a product which has never been made before and a lot of people are very interested in it,” Erik said. “We’ve only just recently tried to milk the sows. We’re very happy with it all and although for us it’s a one-time thing, if someone wants to give us £1,500 we’ll make a kilo, but it’s too intensive to make without an order.”

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Archaeologist-turned-entrepreneur Nancy Warner is making headlines for creating the world’s first jam made purely from beer. But before you get too excited, let me tell you it’s non-alcoholic, so there’s no real chance of getting tipsy at breakfast!

Nancy had already quit her job as an archaeologist to start a preserves company called ‘Potlicker’, when she stumbled upon the unique recipe by accident. She had run out of fruit to make jams and jellies one day, so she reached into her beer cupboard instead. After much experimenting, she managed to come up with a clear ‘Beer Jelly’. It is now so popular that she’s producing about 3,000 jars a week!

“I’m actually an archaeologist by trade and spent close to 10 years working in south eastern US archaeology before my husband Walter and I moved to Vermont,” the 34-year-old said. “I could not find archaeology work, so I developed a food blog hobby to keep me busy. The blog lead to a canning addiction, the canning addiction turned into a small business. I had bills to pay and lots of jam on the shelf so Walter packed me up and sent me to the farmer’s market.”

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The Crater of Diamonds State Park, in Murfreesboro, Arkansas, is the world’s only diamond mine open to the public. Visitors get to go on a real-life treasure hunt and keep whatever they find!

According to park officials, over 600 diamonds of various colors and grades are found by visitors each year. Over 75,000 diamonds have been unearthed since the mine was discovered in 1906 – 19,000 of them since the mine became a state park in 1972.

Scientists believe that these diamonds were formed three billion years ago in the earth’s mantle, 60 to 100 miles below the earth’s surface. The precious rocks were brought up to the surface about 100 million years ago, by a rising column of magma. A huge volcanic eruption resulted in an 80-acer crater, filled with fragments of mantle rock that contained diamonds. Over the years, the rocks have eroded, leaving the diamonds and other semi-precious gems loose in the soil.

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Phoenix-based heavy-metal outfit ‘Okilly Dokilly’ call themselves the world’s first ‘Nedal’ (Ned+metal) band – a tribute to the well-meaning, yet super-annoying Simpsons character Ned Flanders.

The members of Arizona’s most ‘neighborly’ rock band are bespectacled, mustachioed, and always dressed in Flanders’ signature costume – pink shirt, grey trousers, and green sweater. They even have creative names for themselves – Head Ned – vocals; Red Ned – synth; Thread Ned – bass; Stead Ned – guitar; and Bled Ned – drums. Most of their songs feature ‘direct Ned quotes’.

Lead singer Head Ned revealed that the idea for the band came about when he was shopping for groceries one day. “Myself and our drummer were in line at a grocery store, entertaining ourselves by coming up with really cutesy names for really hardcore, brutal bands,” he said, speaking to Australian magazine Rip It Up. “The name Okilly Dokilly came up and was very funny to us.”

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Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport offers a weather service quite unlike any other. Instead of doling out boring reports, it actually lets people feel what the weather is like in various cities around the world before actually flying there.

Yvonne Boe, communication manager at Swedavia – the company that manages Sweden’s airports – describes the unique Climate Portal as an “experience for all your senses which replicates the weather live from all over the planet, a direct link to the whole world. It’s also a preview of where you’re going, so you know if you need that warm sweater or an extra pair of sunglasses before boarding.”

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30-year-old Liu Haibin is being hailed as the world’s coolest dad after he built an innovative seesaw that allows him to play with his toddler son who lives with his mother over 700 miles away.

While Chinese media is referring to Liu’s invention as the ‘world’s longest seesaw’, in reality, it consists of two identical seesaws equipped with motion sensors. One is placed in Tengzhou City, where Liu’s wife and eight-month-old son live. The other is with Liu, who lives in Xiamen City, 730 miles away. Through wireless internet signals and remote synchronization sensor data, the seesaws are perfectly synchronized. HD monitors on both seesaws enable father and son to see and interact with each other as they play.

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Over the years, redheads have borne the brunt of many jokes, enjoying very little appreciation in the fashion world. Changing all that is MC1R – the first and only magazine dedicated to gingers.

In scientific lingo, MC1R is a protein that regulates skin and hair color in mammals. A mutated MC1R protein is believed to cause red hair. So it happens to be a befitting title for the magazine, which exclusively caters to people with red hair. It features content on a wide range of topics, including contemporary art and fashion editorials, interviews with musicians and designers, and current events. Every story is related to red hair.

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