Giant Chocolate Bar Sets New World Record

Chicago-based company World’s Finest Chocolate has set a new record for the world’s largest chocolate bar, with a delicious treat weighing a whopping 5.5 tonnes.

In a bid to topple the previous record set in September 2010, by the Armenians at The Grand Chocolate factory, workers mixed thousands of pounds of ingredients to create a calorie bomb no chocoholic could hope to finish. They used 5,500 pounds of sugar, 2,000 pounds of powder milk, 1,700 pounds of cocoa butter, 1,400 pounds of chocolate liquor and 1,200 pounds of almonds, and managed to topple the old record by over a tonne. The 12,000-pound heavy, 21-meters-long and three-feet-high chocolate bar was unveiled inside the company’s factory and simply left attending children speechless and drooling.

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Taiwanese Artist Uses Nail Gun as His Brush

Artist Chen Chun-hao, known as Howard Chen in the western world, uses a nail gun, an air compressor and millions of small nails to create incredible works of art.

Chen isn’t the only artist in the world using nails to create impressive artworks. Marcus Levine is perhaps the most famous nail-using person in the art world, but mosaic master Saimir Strati and Shannon Larratt have also experimented with the medium. But whereas the above mentioned artists hammered the nails into their canvases, Chen Chun-hao uses a nail gun, which allows him to use up to hundreds of thousands of mosquito nails (headless metal pins) for each of his masterpieces. He shoots them one by one into white canvases stretched over wooden boards, creating reproductions of traditional Chinese ink paintings.

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Wannabe Actor Writes, Directs and Stars in His Own Films, Makes $400,000 a Year

Despite never acting in a big Hollywood movie, Dennis Woodruff is a living legend in Los Angeles, known for driving around town in his crazy art cars and advertising his acting services. But it appears the long-time wannabe actor is turning over a new leaf and making a fortune in the process.

For around 20 years he has been known as the guy driving along Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards in ridiculous art cars covered in hand-painted signs, portfolio photos and phone numbers, trying to land a movie part. Like Angelyne, he became a local celebrity that everybody seemed to recognize, but his dream was to star in movies and he wasn’t going to give up on it. Dennis visited over 200 casting agencies only to face rejection after rejection, but he was hellbent on leaving his mark on Hollywood, and recently decided the only way he could do that was t make his own movies.

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Dutch Artist Makes Creepy Flower-Covered Skeleton Sculptures

Amsterdam-based sculptor Cedric Laquieze decorates real cat and dog skeletons with colorful fake flowers to create some of the creepiest sculptures you’ve ever seen.

Flowers and skeletons make one strange combination, but that’s probably what makes Laquieze’s sculptures so intriguing, the contrast between morbidity and beauty. He takes cat and dog skeletons and applies various fake flowers on them to make them look…prettier. I don’t care how many flowers he glues on there, these skeletons are still creepy as hell, if you ask me. Originally hailing from France, Cedric Laquiez has specialized in using all kinds of dead things for his artworks, from animal and bird skeletons, to dead insects and plants. Head on over to his blog, if you’re into this stuff.

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Awe-Inspiring Venator Class Star Destroyer Made from 43,000 LEGO Bricks

I hope you’re seating down LEGO and Star Wars fans, because there’s a chance you might pass out from the awesomeness of this Venator Class Star Destroyer model made from 43,000 LEGO parts.

Now LEGO has been one of my favorite topics to write about on Oddity Central, and we’ve featured some pretty cool-looking creations, from the record-breaking LEGO Warship Yamato, to the mind-blowing LEGO Middle Earth, or the incredible LEGO sculptures of Nathan Sawaya. Well, it’s time to add another brick masterpiece to our collection – Sylvain Ballivet’s model of the Venator Class Star Destroyer featured in Star Wars, made from 43,000 parts. Sylvain, also known as iomedes in the world of LEGO enthusiasts, has created a lot of amazing sculptures, which you can check out on his blog, but the giant Venator is definitely the highlight of his career as a LEGO master.

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9/11-Themed Kids Coloring Book Proves Big Hit

We Shall Never Forget 9/11: The Kids Book of Freedom is a coloring book about the tragic events of 9/11 2001, featuring pictures of the burning World Trade Center towers and the execution of Osama bin Laden.

Although Wayne Bell, publisher of Really Big Coloring Books Inc., in Saint Louis, says the book was never meant to be controversial, and that it’s simply based on market research, on what people are looking for, the fact that it contains scenes like Osama bin Laden being shot by a Navy SEAL has sparked some controversy. Bell goes on to describe the coloring book as “a simplistic honest tool” to “educate children on events on 9/11”, but do kids who still like to color need to see scenes of mourning, burning buildings, and the execution of a Muslim man portrayed as hiding behind his veiled wife? may

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Demolition Man Downs World’s Biggest English Breakfast

Steven Magee, a 29-year-old hungry demolition man has become the first person to actually finish the giant breakfast plate offered by the Hungry Horse cafe, in Corby, England.

No matter how much you love English breakfasts, The Big One at Hungry Horse cafe is hard to swallow. But, where sixty other people before him failed, Steven Magee, a young Scott who says he usually only has cereal for breakfast, managed to become the first person to go through the whole thing. He needed 1 hour and 20 minutes, and six cups of tea to down three sausages, three burgers, three fried eggs, three bacon rashers, three black pudding slices, three square sausage slices and triple servings of beans and mushrooms. That sounds like enough, but he also had to go through triple helpings of potato waffles, potato scones, hash browns, fried bread portions and three rounds of bread and butter and toast.

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World’s Most Expensive Model Car Costs 12 Times More than the Original

German model maker Robert Gülpen has built the most expensive car model in the world – a 1:8 scale replica of the Lamborghini Aventador made from carbon, platinum gold and decorated with precious stones.

52-year-old Gülpen, who describes his creation as a “high-tech work of art” said he wanted to create something unique that has never been done before. A former mechanical engineer, Gülpen started making miniature car models from precious metals in the late 1990s and eventually became a renown miniature car model maker. He decided the cutting edge Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4 would be the perfect choice for his greatest masterpiece.  The body of the car is made from carbon, just like the original, and features around €2 million-worth of precious metals and stones. Metal was used for the detailed rims and diamonds were inserted into the seats, steering wheel and headlights.

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Britain’s Mysterious Coin-Covered Wishing Trees

Sticking hundreds of small denomination coins into tree trunks is apparently a popular way of getting rid of illnesses.

At least that’s what the staff at a holiday attraction in Gwynedd discovered after investigating the story behind several coin-covered tree trunks in the vicinity of Italianate village Portmeirion. The first tree was cut down four years ago, in order to widen the path to the picturesque settlement founded in 1925, and within only a few months it was covered with 2p coins. Now there are seven such tree trunks in the area, so estate manager Meurig Jones started an investigation to uncover the origins of this unusual habit.

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House Painter Creates World’s Largest Ball of Paint

Michael Carmichael, from Alexandria, Indiana has created the world’s largest ball of paint by covering a regulations baseball with tens of thousands of coats of colored paint, for more than 30 years.

The story of Michael’s unusual hobby began one day in the mid 1960s, when he was playing baseball for the Knox County Children’s Home. A baseball accidentally landed in some paint, and Michael was so intrigued by it that he decided to hold on to it as a keepsake. During the two years after that, he kept on dipping it in paint and painting it by hand, until it reached the size of a football. He donated his colorful creation to the Indiana Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Children’s Home Museum, where it’s still on display today. Later he tried to get it back so he could continue painting it, but they wouldn’t give it to him.

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World Egg Throwing Championships – An Egg-centric Competition

One of the wackiest competitions in the world, the annual World Egg Throwing Championships held in Swaton, England feature a variety of events, all having to do with smashed eggs.

According to the World Egg Throwing Federation website, egg throwing is a local tradition inspired by historic events that occurred in the 14th century. It’s believed the ancient village of Swaton has stood on theses very grounds since before Roman times, but it wasn’t until 1322 that it became forever linked to egg throwing. The newly appointed Abbot was assigned to the Parish of Swaton  by royal decree, and found a rather ingenious way of increasing church attendance. As the only person in the settlement to own chickens, he provided one egg for each attendee to his sermons. But when the waters of the River Eau flooded, cutting off the church from the village, monks started throwing the eggs to the waiting locals. Legend has it when the gap became even wider, the monks used small trebuchets to make sure the eggs traveled the required distance.

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10 Coolest Finds of the Week #8

The Most Beautiful Sand Dunes on Earth (Environmental Graffiti)

Dog Has World’s Longest Ears (Orange News)

Real Starship Troopers Powered Suit Is as Badass as It Sounds (Dvice)

Fat Cat Photoshopped into Artistic Masterpieces (Geekosystem)

The Sick Collector and His 1,000 Pairs of Shoes (Asia Obscura)

10 Most Extreme Acrobatic Gymnastics (Oddee)

“Beauty Class” Chinese TV Show Teaches Women How to Be Perfect (China Smack)

The Abandones Cold War Listening Station Built on the Ruins of Nazi Berlin (Environmental Graffiti)

Pionen Data Center – The Internet as Provided by a James Bond Villain (Atlas Obscura)

Ben & Jerry’s unveils Schweddy Balls Ice-Cream (Topix)

Raincatch – A Raincoat That Turns Rain into Drinkable Water

Raincatch is a water purification raincoat that turns collected rain water into drinkable water the wearer can enjoy on the go.

Let’s just put it this way, wearing Raincatch in a rainy city like London means you’ll probably never be thirsty again. Sure, in some regions of the world rain water is still clean enough to be drunk as it falls from the sky, but in today’s polluted climate drinking it without purifying it first poses a real risk. But thanks to the invention of two CIID students, Hyeona Yang and Joshua Noble, you’ll be able to enjoy refreshing rain water on the go, without a care in the world.

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Taiwanese Chef Makes Lobster Shell Motorcycles

Now here’s something you don’t see every day – a skilled Taiwanese chef uses leftover lobster shells to create intriguing miniature motorcycles.

We’ve seen amazing miniature motorcycles made from computer parts, used wristwatches, and wood, but the ones crafted by chef Huang Mingbo are definitely something you don’t see everyday. Apparently he’s not a fan of throwing away lobster shells after preparing a delicious dinner, so he came up with an ingenious way of repurposing them. The food carving expert showcased his lobster shell motorcycles during a cooking art seminar in Fuzhou, southeast China, leaving attendants baffled.

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Artist Creates Space Shuttle Mosaic Exclusively Out of Keyboard Keys

I’ve posted my share of impressive mosaics, throughout the years, but the keyboard key space shuttle created by Doug Powell has to be one of the coolest ever.

Known for his incredibly detailed puzzle-piece mosaics, Powell has now turned to a more modern medium – keyboard keys. For his latest project, a beautiful mosaic of a space shuttle, he spent 190 hours placing 5,951 keyboard pieces in just the right place to create a detailed image. Within the artwork created for Ripley’s Believe It or Not, the artist also included 14 hidden words for the viewers to discover. Head over to Ripley’s blog and see if you can find all 14.

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