The Pearly Kings and Queens of London, commonly referred to as “pearlies”, are an organised charitable tradition of working class culture in London, England. They raise funds to provide a better way of living for those less fortunate, but they’re best known for their flashy outfits decorated with thousands of pearl buttons.

Pearlies can be traced back to the year 1875, when the organisation was founded by Henry Croft, a 13-year-old street sweeper and rat catcher who dedicated his life to raising money to help children raised in orphanages. Henry himself was an orphan, and after he left the orphanage, at age 13 he became fascinated by London’s costermongers, a guild of colorful street traders who always helped one of their own when he was in trouble. They would organize a “whip round”, collecting money to help fellow costermongers get back on their feet. Traditionally, costers elected Kings’ to lead them against bullies seeking to drive them from their’place of business. They all wore clothes decorated with pearl buttons so they could easily be identified. The buttons were sewn down the outside leg seam of their pants, from the knee down to the ankle, on the pockets of their waistcoats and the front of their caps. Henry was fascinated both by their lifestyle and their dress code and decided to take their fashion style to a new level by decorating a whole suit with pearly buttons, while at the same time raising money for various causes. He became an attraction wherever he went, and one point he was so popular that Hospitals and other charities started asking him to collect money for their causes. But he needed help in his quest to help the sick and poor, and it help from his costermonger friends, who later became known as the Pearly Kings and Queens of London.

Read More »

Hananuma Masakichi is one of those extraordinary artist who never really got the recognition they deserved. This Japanese sculptor created a life size statue of himself that is almost 100% identical in appearance to its maker. Although created over a century ago, the Masakichi sculpture still baffles artists and scientists alike.

Masakichi started working on his greatest masterpiece after he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He believed he was going to dies soon, and decided to create a life-size statue of himself as a gift for the woman he loved. In 1885, when his artwork was finally completed, it was so life-like and realistic-looking that people couldn’t tell which was the fake even when the real Masakichi stood next to it. Working with adjustable mirrors, the Japanese artist made each of his body-parts separately, using strips of dark wood. The number of strips he used differs between 2,000 and 5,000, depending on which source you believe. No nails were used during the building process, the wooden strips were all assembled using dovetail joints, glue and wooden pegs. They are joined so perfectly that no seams can be seen on the wooden statue, even with a magnifying glass. The level of detail achieved by Masakichi is so mind-blowing that it reflects every tendon, muscle, vein, bone, wrinkle, down to the pores on his body. The anatomically-correct eyeballs he created for his statue still have opticians wondering how he made them.

Read More »

Want to give someone a unique present? How about a bolt of lightning? Bert Hickman’s work of art are literally stunning. He creates “Captured Lightnings” by blasting clear blocks of acrylic with millions of volts of electrical charge, using a high-energy particle accelerator, creating permanent “fossilized” tree-like patterns that reflect light like microscopic mirrors.

Bert Hickman’s works are scientifically known as Lichtenberg figures, only the artist and his physicist friend Todd Johnson have managed to turn them into artworks by creatng lightning bolts in the shape of butterflies, stars, trees and even the Yin Yang symbol. 65-year-old Hickman breaks down the process of making his Captured Lightnings: “To create our sculptures, we rent “beam time” on a 5 million volt particle accelerator. As the accelerator injects huge numbers of electrons inside a clear acrylic plastic specimen, a huge electrical charge (typically 1 – 2.5 million volts) builds inside.” He also manually creates an escape path for the electrical charge, a weakened path through the acrylic, to achieve the desired shapes. While the electricity escapes in a short lightning-like discharge, the intense heat from this miniature lightning leaves branching patterns that are permanently captured within the acrylic. These patterns are a ‘fossilized’ chain of microscopic fractures and tubes that reflect light like microscopic mirrors.

Read More »

42-year-old Sergei Tarasov, a school teacher from the Russian village of Tigritskoe, has recently completed an incredibly detailed modular origami model of Moscow’s St. Basil cathedral, from over 10,000 A4 sheets of paper.

Origami is as hard as it is impressive, and it just amazes me how some people can just take some common pieces of paper and turn them into something wonderful. Take Sergei Tarasov, an Arts teacher from a rural area 502 miles south of the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, who creates modular origami masterpieces from thousands of pieces of paper. His latest creation is a mind-blowing 1.5-meter-tall model of the iconic St. Basil cathedral, in Moscow, which took around a year to complete. Without even using a sketch for his projects, the teacher created 60,000 modular pieces and assembled them into this fragile wonder. The artwork was presented during the “Rus Masterovaya” festival dedicated to showcasing arts and crafts talent of Russian teachers.

Read More »

UPDATE: Apparently this WAS in fact an elaborate hoax that managed to convince various media outlets, including English ITV, which also did an interview with the company’s CEO. Following an investigation by the TV channel, it turned out everything the guy said was a lie. Pretty good story, though.

Always dreamed of having a celebrity’s baby? Well, now’s your chance, as Fame Daddy, the world’s first celebrity sperm donor service claims to have 40 A-listers on books, including am Oscar-winning actor, a rock star, a Formula 1 driver, a former football player and even a genius. For “just” £15,000 ($24,000), you can give your baby that X factor everyone seems to be looking for these days.

I know, it sounds like a PR scam, but apparently this is a real service. London-based Fame Daddy is a unique service advertised as the ideal way for girls to discover what it would be like to have a child with their favorite celebrity. There’s a catch, though, the identity of the donor is never revealed. Instead, clients are asked to complete a 12-question quiz about child’s ideal height and complexion, whether they’d like the father to be a popular actor, talented musician or an accomplished athlete, as well as other questions to help them determine which donor best fits their personality, character and lifestyle choices. Later, a team of experts from Fame Daddy will help women choose the right father “that will compliment their biology and heritage. Donor fathers have apparently signed exclusive ‘donor’ deals on the basis of guaranteed anonymity and a legal waiver of their rights to access to the child.

Read More »

He’s rich, single and most importantly, he’s not cheap, but despite all these qualities, 47-year-old Larry Greenfield can’t seem to find a suitable life partner. In the last 12 years he has spent around $65,000 on matchmaking services, has been on 250 blind dates, but he has yet to find a wife.

Larry sounds like a really unlucky guy, but according to the New York Post and Yahoo Shine, he’s apparently just really picky. “His problem is he’s a six and he wanted tens,” Maureen Tara Nelson, one of his former matchmakers told Shine. He would pick out his dates according to their photos and profiles, but at the end he’d always say there was no chemistry. The Post also paints out the retired Wall Street trader as very detail-oriented: he wants a woman who is slim, Jewish, funny, and a non-alpha (isn’t interested in a career). That’s apparently a very rare breed in New York. “He thinks because he’s wealthy he could get a beautiful women, but what he doesn’t realize is that beautiful women in New York are also already successful,” Nelson said.

Read More »

31-year-old Rachel Held Evans has spent an entire year trying to follow of the Bible’s instructions for menstruating women, from “submitting” to their husbands to removing themselves from the community. Now she’s launching a book on her religious experiment, called “A Year of Biblical Womanhood”.

The Tennessee-based evangelical blogger set out to obey the Bible’s strict rules for women on their period, from Leviticus Chapters 15 to 18. In case you didn’t know, the Holy Book sets a strict set of rules for women, some explicit, others implied, and Evans tried to obey most of them as precisely as possible. During the 12-month-long experience, she stayed home from church, made her own clothes, abstained from sex and even touching her husband, let her hair grow, slept in a tent once a month, and even carried a  seat cushion with her wherever she went to avoid sitting on chairs outside her home. It might sound funny, even kooky, but  through her experiment Rachel tries to make a serious point: all Christians choose to respect those parts of the Bible that suit them.

Read More »

Even in the animal kingdom, the loss of a loved-one isn’t easy, and this grieving dog, on the outskirts of Filippovka, a village in Russia’s Perm region, is proof of that.

His mate had been by a car while trying to cross the road, over seven days ago, but he’s still standing guard over her body, hoping she will wake up. Eye-witnesses say the dog dragged his mate from the road right after she was hit and hasn’t left her side since. He kept trying to move her with his paws and keep her warm with his own body, and the story of his loyalty spread among the locals in just a few days. Children and even adults who passed by and heard his heartbreaking whines and howls, and saw him standing guard over her body often broke into tears. “It’s very sad. He won’t let anyone near her and he keeps trying to warm her up with his own body”, a local said.

Read More »

32-year-old Justin Jedlica, from New York City, has so far splashed around $100,000 on 90 cosmetic procedures, in his never-ending quest for that perfect look.

Plastic surgery is pretty common nowadays, but some people really take it to the extreme. Meet Justin Jedlica, whose sculpted physique would have you thinking he’s a gym fanatic. But in reality, his muscles are more plastic than meat, as most over his upper body has been augmented with silicone implants. He’s had pectoral implants, six-pack implants, triceps and biceps implants, all so he could attain the look he desired. It all started with his glutes. He wanted his buttocks to be perkier, tighter, harder, so instead of working out, he decided to get some implants, and after 13 cosmetic sessions, he got what he wanted. But that was only the beginning of his affair with plastic surgery. During the last 10 years, Justin Jedlica has went through 90 different plastic surgeries, transforming himself into a real-life Ken doll.

Read More »

English artist Ann Carrington uses hundreds, sometimes thousands of everyday objects to create awe-inspiring mosaics.

Not everyone looks at buttons, safety pins or metal coins and sees art, but for Ann Carrington, “all objects are saturated with cultural meaning. Mundane objects like knives, gloves, shoes, shells and tin cans come with their own ready-made histories.” Whenever she decides on what material she’s going to use for a certain work, there’s a certain reason for her choice. For example, her Pearly Queens series made with buttons was inspired by the Pearly Queens and Kings fashion movement, in London, while her bluejeans-made flag of America is a homage to this iconic American symbol.

Read More »

Animal cafes, places where you can enjoy a nice drink surrounded by animals, have become really popular in Asia, but Deco’s Dog Cafe takes things to a whole new level by allowing pet owners to share a gourmet meal with their pooches.

Even if they don’t have the time or space to take care of a pet, people seem to enjoy spending time around animals, so cat cafes, dog cafes, and even reptile cafes have become popular venues in Asia. But when Hideko Notani opened Deco’s Dog Cafe, in 2001, she wanted to create more than just a place where people could relax surrounded by pooches. She envisioned a cafe where dogs would be in charge instead of their owners, where they would be treated to gourmet meals very similar to those eaten by their human masters. The special menu includes human and canine versions of fine dishes like cabbage rolls, sweet potato scones and chicken pie, but  no one’s stopping owners from sharing the food with their dogs.

Read More »

A video of an 84-year-old man who appears to be moving objects with only his internal energy has become viral in China. The man also slices his stomach with a cleaver but remains unscathed.

The power of Qi is often demonstrated in various styles of Chinese martial arts most often practiced by Buddhist monks. You’ve probably seen those Shaolin shows where they make their bodies immovable or unraisable, and even immune to the sharp tip of a spear, but an 84-year-old man from China takes things to a whole new level. He claims he can channel his inner Qi (Chi) to move and even break various objects. To prove his ability he allowed a camera crew to record several of his feats, including moving bricks and a bowl full of water and breaking a glass bottle. The video of him performing these extraordinary stunts has been doing the rounds for about two years, but so far no one has been able to explain just how he’s doing it.

Read More »

There’s no way to tell, but you’re actually not looking at a photograph, but a hyper-realistic painting by London-born artist Robin Eley. Armed with a simple paintbrush he’s able to create photo-quality works of art that draw attention instantly.

Born in London, raised in Australia and educated in the United States, Robin Eley is a man of three continents. But more impressive than his life’s story and journey are his amazing hyper-realistic works. Most of the subjects depicted in his large-scale oil paintings are naked and wrapped in plastic foil, with each tiny detail of their bodies and countless reflection of their translucent covers expertly depicted by the artist. “Inspired by history, I extract from the present. Artifacts and textures that reflect the beauty and nobility of decline and question the modern obsession with perfection. While my subjects and technique are intentionally very real, the context in which they are painted is less defined, Eley says about his art.

Read More »

40-year-old Julia Abdullah, from Malaysia, was obsessed with her self-cleaning rituals. Her bizarre behavior started 20 years ago, but it gradually got worse to the point where she was washing her hands up to 300 times a day, spending 5 hours in the shower and shampooing her hair 25 times per day.

Julia first noticed something was amiss two decades ago. She was working as a laboratory technician, and often handled urine and stool culture samples, as well as blood samples for HIV tests. She started spending increasingly more time on washing her hands, for fear of contamination, and although she suspected she had developed OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), she didn’t seek help. “I thought I could will myself off the washing,” Julia remembers, but her condition only got worse. She eventually lost her job as her obsession caused her to be constantly late for work, and needed to find other ways to pay her rapidly increasing house utility bills. At one point the  woman became so desperate that she started scavenging through her neighbors’ trash looking for stuff she could sell. In a short period of time she amassed a collection of junk that occupied the two-room flat she shared with her mom. The hoarding got so bad that her mother had to sleep at the stairwell as there was no ventilation or natural light in the flat. “It finally got too much for me to bear. I got so angry that I stopped bathing for three months,” Ms Julia told the Malaysia Chronicle, but her obsessive-washing habits were hardly cured.

Read More »

You hungry but there’s nothing in the fridge to munch on? Don’t freak out, just take a look at the “treats” offered by this anatomically-correct cake shop and you’ll probably lose your appetite for a while.

Miss Cakehead, the creative director who previously brought us the decadent Bloody Human Heart cupcakes and the Human Meat Shop, has now found a new way to shock her fans – an anatomically-correct cake shop featuring all kinds of sick treats, from STD cupcakes and infected toenail cookies to carbuncle bars that will put your stomach to the test. She’s basically inviting bakers to come up with the most gruesome treats they can and showcasing them in various locations across the UK, as well as online on her Eat Your Heart Out blog. The Evil Cake Shop is described as “a the place that allows your imagination to plumb the depths of deviance and soar to the highest ecstasies of bad-taste and good-flavor.”

Read More »