Dieter Kapsch, a 38-year-old Austrian flight attendant has managed to collect 1,760 airplane spoons from 447 airlines.

The young flight attendant started gathering airplane spoons 13 years ago, after going on a holiday in Spain, with his sister Gunda. While they were flying towards their destination, she suggested they take one of the spoons, as it may prove useful on their vacation. After returning home, he ended up with the spoon, and every time he used it, it reminded him of his nice time in Spain. From there on he decided to collect as many airline spoons as possible, and he stayed true to his goal.

Dietrich says his family and friends have been very supportive and have added to it every time they got the opportunity. He is now the proud owner of 1,760 different airline spoons, some dating back to the 1920s and 1930s, when companies like Pan Am were still around. While some of his spoons are of unknown origin, he relies on the Internet to solve the mystery of his collectibles. Check out his Flickr stream and see if you can recognize any of the logos from his yet untraceable spoons.

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Known as the “empty city”, the Kangabashi district of Ordos was designed as a home for over 1 million Chinese, but it remains nearly uninhabited. What makes this even stranger is the fact that we’re talking about the second richest settlement in China.

Once just another a poor town in Inner Mongolia, Ordos boomed in 2003, thanks to its immense coal and natural gas reserves. The area surrounding Ordos has one sixth of China’s coal reserves and one third of its natural gas reserves. As was to be expected, the government couldn’t resist the temptation of starting lavish projects in the area, and the building of Kangabashi district is one of them.

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I remember seeing a set of photos from Google’s offices in Zurich, and thought that was pretty cool, but Google has nothing on Inventionland’s fairytale workplace.

Inventionland, like the name suggests, is a company that invents stuff, over 2,000 new inventions every year. To come with that many inventions, the Inventionland team must really be inspired by something, but what could it be? Believe it or not, it’s actually everything that surrounds them in their Pittsburgh headquarters.

The 70,000 square feet facility looks like nothing you’ve ever seen before, featuring 15 different fantasy sets, from pirate ships to tree houses and even a house shaped like a giant shoe. And it’s not only the world’s most creative workplace, it’s also equipped with the latest in sound, video and animation technology to help creationeers come up with the best ideas. Oh, that’s right, Inventionland employees are called “creationeers”, they get to wear lab coats and they brainstorm for ideas in a room called “Inventalot”. Now, how cool is that!

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Eco-pioneer Richard “Rishi” Sowa designed and built an artificial island kept afloat by 100,000 plastic bottles.

Spiral Island II is actually Rishi Sowa’s second artificial island. He built the first one in 1998, near Puerto Aventuras, using 250,000 plastic bottles to keep it afloat. Sadly, his recycled island was destroyed in 2005, when Hurricane Emily passed through the area. Most of Spiral Island was washed up on the beach, but Sowa decided to build a whole new island, in a safer area.

And that’s how Spiral Island II came to be. With the help of volunteers, Rishi Sowa gathered around 100,000 plastic bottles and hand-built his second recycled island, in a lagoon that offers protection from bad weather. The new island features a house, beaches, 2 ponds and a solar-powered waterfall, but its creator says Spiral Island II is and always will be an eco-work-in-progress. Although smaller than its predecessor (only 20 meters in diameter), you can expect the new Spiral Island to increase in size, significantly.

One of the most impressive DIY projects ever attempted, Spiral Island has inspired volunteers to come to Mexico and help Rishi Sowa improve his creation. But while some believe it a perfect environmental design, built entirely of recycled materials, there is some controversy surrounding Spiral Island. There are those who believe that if the island gets destroyed by a hurricane, again, the materials used to build it (mainly plastic bottles, sand, mangrove plants) will litter the waters of the Atlantic.

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Richard T. Porter has earned the nickname “The Thermometer Man” by putting together a collection of around 5,000 thermometer of various shapes and sizes.

The small village of Onset, in Wareham, Massachusetts, may not be among the world’s top travel destination, but Richard T. Porter has been working long and hard to put this settlement on the tourist map. He spent decades putting together his thermometer collection and opened the Porter Thermometer Museum. The founder, curator and educator of this unusual museum has been featured by Ripley’s Believe Ir or Not, and is in the Guinness Book of Records for the world’s largest collection of thermometers.

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Inspired by the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, Reg Miller transformed his old shed into a pirate themed retreat that earned him the title of winner in the Shed of the Year 2010 contest.

Reg Miller, or Jolly Reg, as he’s come to be known, built his impressive pirate shed from scratch. He has some old muskets and swords, and since his partner didn’t want them in the house anymore, he figured the best place to store them was the shed. After seeing his first “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie, he decided he was going to build his very own pirates’ den.

Jolly Reg did it all himself, using anything from recycled pieces of wood to fixtures and fittings he found at car trunk sales. He spent years working on it, but his pirate shed is still a work in progress, as he is always adding new things. So far he has set up a Koi fish pond, complete with palm trees, and decorated the shed with barrel seats, pirate flag pole and even a real life parrot.

The 65-year-old would-be pirate managed to beat over a 1,000 other candidates and snatched the grand prize at  UK’s Shead of the Year 2010 competition. He’s now 1,000 pounds richer and has a hefty supply of wood-maintenance products from the contest’s sponsor.

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Home to the largest secondhand bookstore in the world, Hay-on-Wye is more than just a little town on the border between England and Wales, it’s book heaven on Earth.

The history of Hay-on-Wye as the “town of books” began on Fools’ Day of 1977, when during a bold publicity stunt, bibliophile Richard Booth announced the independence of Hay-on-Wye as a kingdom of books, with him as the monarch. Ambassadors were sent to the International Court of Justice, in Hague, and a rowing gunboat started patrolling on the river Wye. Since then, he managed to establish a healthy tourism industry based on books, and thousands of visitors come to Hay-on-Wye every year, to look for whatever books they need.

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Most likely, the only pyramids you learned about in school were the “Great” ones in Egypt. If you were lucky, you maybe heard that there were some in Central America, but mostly the education was all about Giza and the buried Pharaohs. However, pyramids were built as sacred architecture all over the world, from Chichen Itza (Mexico) to Indonesia; from China to the Canary Islands. If you’re traveling because you’re interested in cultures that you may not have known about before, then you have to check out these epic pyramids of the world.

1) Pyramids of Guimar (Tenerife) – Tenerife is one of the most well-traveled locales in the Canary Islands. There are plenty of hotels and cheap flights to Tenerife; this makes the Pyramids of Guimar a great first “Pyramid That’s Not In Egypt” to see. Built out of volcanic rock and fitted together without mortar, these pyramids are mysterious in that a) they’re comparable in size to all the major pyramids of the world, yet b) no one knows who built them. There are all kinds of stories involving Gnostic Christians, Freemasons, or even Aztec traders before the first millennium, but no one knows for sure. That’s why they’re so interesting.

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An ambitious chef from the Philippines has created the world’s most expensive sushi, wrapped in sheets of gold and small African diamonds.

Angelito Araneta Jr., a young chef from Manila, managed to create yet another delicious treat for snobs the rich and famous. The ingredients used in his serving of sushi are not much different than what you’d expect to find in any other pieces of sushi you’ve had before, except for some thin sheets of 24 carat gold and a bunch of .20 carat African diamonds.

The five pieces of gold and diamond sushi cost around $2750 and can be found in a restaurant in Manila. You might think no one buys this incredibly expensive dish, but according to Angelito Araneta Jr, his unique sushi is often used in marriage proposals and during courtship.

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Using vegetables of all shapes and sizes, Chinese artist, Ju Duoqi, recreates famous masterpieces, like The Last Supper, or Mona Lisa.

Ju Duoqi first started working with vegetables in the summer of 2006, when she spent two days peeling a few kilograms of peas, before stringing them on a wire and transforming them in a skirt, a top, a headdress and a magic wand. This was her first experience with vegetable art, and it was called Pea Beauty Pageant.

In the years that followed, Ju Duoqi spent a lot of her time going to the vegetable market, picking them up and placed them in different positions, to see which ones made them more interesting. She discovered the different colors and textures of vegetables offered a rich source of imagery. And frying, boiling, drying, pickling or letting them rot made them even more interesting. The artist realized she no longer needed models for her artworks, as the vegetables could easily be used as models and props alike.

The Chinese artist decided to restage La Liberte Guidant le Peuple, using only vegetables, and called it La Liberte Guidant les Legumes. She used rotting ketchup for blood, potatoes as soldiers and rotting vegetables as background. She went on to create the vegetable art masterpieces you see below.

Ju Duoqi hardly ever leaves her home, and when she does she rarely travels for over 15 km, so she created her vegetable art for all women who love their home. She considers it an environmental way of bringing art and life together.

via ParisBeijing Photo Gallery

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What can you do with a monster truck tire and a rich imagination? Build a kick-ass tricycle, of course.

We can’t all build our very own sports car, or make a Batmobile replica out of scratch, but a good idea and some technical skills go along way, and this monster tricycle is the perfect example. Making great use of a giant tire, some European managed to build an old-school, with a modern twist.

Judging by the video footage below, riding the monster tricycle requires great leg  muscles, and I don’t even want to imagine what would happen if anyone were to ride it down hill, but it’s a great way to get noticed and become an Youtube sensation.

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With various tattoos covering 95% of her body, Julia Gnuse has been acknowledged as the world’s most tattooed woman.

What started out as a desperate solution to cover up lesions, caused by a severe skin condition, turned into a true passion, that earned Julia Gnuse a spot in the Guinness Book of Records, for the most tattooed woman on Earth. Miss Gnuse, also known as the “Illustrated Lady” suffers from porphyria, a disease that causes the skin to blister when exposed to sunlight. When doctors told her the only medicine that could help her, could also induce blinding, she decided to turn to tattoos, to cover the blisters on her legs.

A plastic surgeon suggested she tattoo her body the same color as the blisters, but since that was so hard to reproduce, she settled for some really colorful tattoos. At first it was just her legs, than she moved up to her stomach, arms and back, and be fore she knew it she was hooked on ink. She just kept adding tattoos, ranging from cartoons, film characters to jungle scenes.

All of Julia Gnuse’s tattoos were done by the same artists.

Photos by Seth Wenig/AP via DailyMail

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Many said she would never make it, but teenager Jessica Watson shut them all up when she completed her months long journey, and sailed into Sydney Harbor, on May 15, 2010.

The Australian sailor took off on her daring trip around the world, on October 18, 2009, all by herself. For over 200 days and 23,000 nautical miles, Jessica was all alone on her 30-foot-long pink yacht, “Ella’s Pink Boat”. She had to overcome strong winds, waves as high as mountains, and loneliness, in order to prove young people can accomplish their dreams, whatever they might be.

Ms. Watson said the toughest times were when bad weather was forecast, and she had to fight against monster storms. But she managed to keep her cool, kept her boat afloat, and against all odds, complete her journey around the world.

Having become the world’s youngest person to sail around the world, non-stop and unassisted, Jessica Watson captured the attention and admiration of the whole world, and become rich and famous, in consequence. While she was away at sea, her team managed to secure deals estimated at around $1 million, with several companies, including one of Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers. She also has a nationwide book tour coming up, for her “True Spirit: The Aussie Girl Who Took on the World” book, due to come out in July, as well as other souvenir sales.

But saying Jessica Watson did it all for media attention and profit just wouldn’t be fair. She is clearly in love with the ocean, and she said that even after seven lonely months at sea, she was reluctant to leave the pink yacht that had become “more than a home”.

Photos via CourrierMail

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The city of Lagos, in Nigeria, has hosted the 13th All-Nigerian Ram Fighting Championships. This increasingly popular sport drew an impressive crowd, eager to see the animal compete.

Ram fighting is a popular sport in countries like Algeria, Indonesia and China, but in Nigeria it even has its own Ram Lovers Association, which organizes ram fighting events. believe it or not, this sport isn’t as bloody as you might think. During the history of the championships, only one ram has lost its life, and there has rarely ever been any blood shed. According to Bashir Augusto, founder of the Ram Lovers Association, rams naturally love to fight, the only difference is here they do it for the entertainment of the crowd.

The animals, of the same weight class, are placed together in a dirt ring, with a judge and several referees closely watching them. Usually they naturally run towards each other and but heads. The fight ends when one of the rams runs away from the fight. One match normally lasts for less than 10 blows, but the longest match, this year, lasted for 98.

Just like human boxers, fighting rams go through rigorous physical training (especially running), have special diets, rich in beans and bananas, and even have their very own music, as they step into the ring. This year, in the main event, Gobe, last year’s champion, retained his title and won his master a brand new refrigerator. In Africa, I bet that’s a prize worth fighting for.

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Although London’t Hyde Park is famous for hosting a variety of tree species, Vitraya ramunong (better known as the Tree of Souls) was definitely not one of them. Until now, anyway.

Unlike the alien tree, indigenous to Pandora, this Earthly version is considerably smaller (only 5 meters tall), features a plastic-like bark, and its glowing tendrils look a lot like fiber-optic cables. Plus, it’s planted in gravel and asphalt, and it’s root is made up of just one cable that seemed to power the trunk withe electricity.

As you might have (hopefully) realized, we’re not talking about a real Tree of Souls, but about a man made avatar, if you will. It appeared in Hyde Park, last Saturday, for the launch of Avatar on DVD, and as a way of celebrating the 40th Earth Day. Unfortunately, this weird version of Vitraya ramunong was removed from the park, the next day. If you didn’t get the chance to see it live, these photos should compensate:

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