An elevator button factory in Japan allows visitors to test its vast collection of buttons by pressing no less than 1,000 of them on a specially designed display.

Shimada Denki Seisakusho is a specialized manufacturer of custom-made elevator buttons and arrival lights based in Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1933, the factory is a piece of Japanese industrial history and conducts guided tours for people interested in its early beginnings and the way it makes its vast array of elevator buttons. It’s a fascinating visit, I’m sure, but the highlight of the tour has to be the ‘1,000 Buttons’ display, which, as the name suggests, is made up of rows upon rows of different elevator buttons that light up when pressed.

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Boji, a stray dog from Istanbul, Turkey has become so familiar with the local public transportation system that he casually uses several means of transportation (bus, subway, train, and even the ferry) every day.

Dogs using public transportation is not unheard of. Back in 2011, we wrote about Moscow’s impressive subway-riding dogs, and three years ago we featured Eclipse, Seattle’s famous bus-riding canine. But in both cases, the animals used a specific means of transportation that they had become familiarized with. Boji the stray, on the other hand, is comfortable using several types of public transportation every day, including the ferry, to get around the ancient Turkish city and even travel between continents…

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Are you stuck in quarantine? Do you miss staring out the window at the clouds below while flying to your next vacation destination? Apparently, there’s a lamp for that!

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted all facets of daily life, but traveling has been particularly hard hit. For globetrotters used to frequent flying from destination to destination, the last year has been nothing short of a depression-inducing nightmare, but luckily, there are ways to treat your wanderlust. One solution, this clever lamp that perfectly imitates an airplane window and the view from above the clouds.

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LumiLor is the world first and only patented electroluminescent paint, which can light up virtually any solid surface when an electrical current passes through it.

Luminescent paint has been around for decades, but it has never looked as cool as the ingenious invention that is LumiLor. Fluorescent and phosphorescent paints only maintain their glow for a short duration after being exposed to long-wave ultraviolet (UV) radiation while radioluminescent paint contains a small amount of a radioactive isotope mixed with a radioluminescent phosphor chemical. Lumilor, the world’s first electroluminscents coating, only requires an electrical current to achieve its glowing effect, and can be used to create awe-inspiring light-shows at the flip of a switch.

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Photos of an unusually-tall cactus growing on the side of a three-storey building in Tokyo, Japan, have been doing the rounds on social media, raising the question: ‘is this the world’s tallest cactus?’

Last Wednesday, Japanese Twitter user =Yang= (@0okome0) posted a bunch of intriguing photos of a building he had spotted in Takinogawa, Tokyo Metropolitan Area. It wasn’t the building that drew people’s attention, but a green pole on the side of it. =Yang= himself admitted that at first he thought it was simply a green-painted utility pole, but the deformed top, which stretched onto the roof of the building, told him otherwise. As he approached the strange sight, he realized that it was actually a thick cactus stretching from the bottom all the way to the roof of the three-storey residential building. He snapped some pics and posted them on Twitter, where they quickly went viral.

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Robin Lachhein, 31, and Judith Schneider, 30, a couple from, Germany, have a very interesting hobby – they travel around the world to recreate iconic movie scenes in the exact same locations they were filmed at.

Robin and Judith met at a friend’s party 10 years ago, and they’ve been visiting famous film locations for the last six years. At first it was just a personal hobby they kept for themselves, only posting photos they took around their home, but then friends started noticing them when they came over and praising their talent for recreating iconic scenes. Instagram had been gaining popularity, so they started their very own page, aptly named ‘Secret Famous Places’, which has gained tens of thousands of followers.

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Even you’re not the kind of person who keeps their business cards in a bespoke holder, heck, even if you don’t have business cards, you’re going to fall in love with this awesome steampunk card holder.

Looking at this crazy contraption created by Japanese design company SMD Factory, you’re tempted to think it’s some kind of futuristic device from back in the 1930’s. It’s all metallic, but features decorative elements like a small osciloscope and an astrolab, as well as interconnected gears and latches. It’s as steampunk a device as you can imagine, but it’s really just a card holder, a really cool card holder.

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A photo of a tattooed man’s hand with the top layer if skin damaged by a minor kitchen burn sparked a heated debate on social media site Reddit last week. That’s because the section where the skin was burned off revealed a tattoo so bright you could swear it was just inked.

The photo, posted by Reddit user uhmodijia, reportedly shows the hand of a “friend of a friend” who had just suffered a minor burn which only affected the top layer of his skin, exposing the dermis. The man had a blue rose tattooed on his skin a while ago, and like all tattoos do in time, it had started to fade. However, the patch of burned skin that had peeled off because of the burn revealed a much more vibrant copy of the same tattoo on his dermis. Apparently, tattoo guns reach deep into the skin, and while the tattoos on the first layer begin to fade just months after they’ve been inked due to multiple factors, they remain vibrant under this first layer of protective skin.

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A viral video that has been viewed over 50,000 times shows a fish being frozen in ice at a fish market in Japan and then seemingly brought back to life in a tub of warm water.

The video starts with the fish being submerged in a vat full of crushed ice and then cuts to a thermometer that indicates that the temperature inside the vat is -2.10 degrees Celsius. A man than takes the fish, which at this point looks frozen solid, and passes it to a man wearing a black suit who then puts it into a plastic tub filled with warm water. The video then cuts again, this time showing the same man grabbing the fish by its tail and trying to turn it under the stream of warm water, at which point the fish starts to move. Gasps of amazement and laughter can be heard from the people witnessing the ‘miracle’, before the video cuts forward once again, showing the fish thrashing around in the warm water, to prove that its movements are not just involuntary nerve spasms.

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Whether it’s clicking pens, flipping paper clips or just playing with our fingers, most of love to fidget. It’s not the most productive habit, but at least now we’ll be able to do it in style, with an ingenious little toy called the Fidget Cube.

The Fidget Cube is a pocket-size desk toy created by brothers  Matthew and Mark McLachlan as a way to change how fidgeting is perceived in society. “It’s not uncommon to hear fidgeting being spoken about negatively. It’s often labeled as unprofessional and deemed as anti-intellectual behavior.But in reality, the exact opposite has been suggested to be the case,” the two wrote on their product’s Kickstarter page. “We believe that the way we look at fidgeting needs to change. This behavior isn’t one that should continue to be stigmatized and mocked as unbecoming or inappropriate. We are passionate about the idea that fidgeting is a process that, with the right tools and outlet, can have positive and real-life applications.”

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Larry Medwig, from Painesville, Ohio, is so passionate about motorcycles that he can make one out of pretty much anything. A few years ago, he built the aptly-named ‘tractor cycle’ using parts from an old tractor!

Medwig’s unique vehicle has been spotted at various events and hardware stores across Ohio, as reported by a variety of bloggers. The earliest sighting was in 2010, at the ‘Hit and Miss’ show in Orwell. And according to blogger Andy Rupert – who spotted the tractor cycle on display at Joughin’s Hardware shop in Painesville – it looks like a “homemade vehicle” with the “front forks and handlebars made of iron plumbing pipes.”

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Take a seat and let your eyes feast upon the stunning views unfolding underneath your dangling feet. Designer extraordinaire Dallin Smith from Provo, Utah, made a rope chair and attached it hundreds of feet above ground on a steep rocky cliff at Rock Canyon, offering rock-climbers a new reason to tackle the challenging rock face.

Dallin says his chair wasn’t designed to hang off of cliffs, but as a comfortable lounge chair. “I was trying to figure out how to put it to use and I was originally planning on a type of furniture to place in the living room,” the industrial designer who is also an avid climber says. “The chair was a design project I have been working on as I had an excess amount of retired climbing rope lying around.” When the project was complete, it occurred to him that the chair’s place might not be in a home. “However the more renditions I made, the more it made sense to place something outside,” the man states.

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Ravi Fernando, a student at Stanford University and a member of the World Cube Association has mad Rubik’s cube solving skills. In a recent video, he solves three cubes while juggling them, in less than six minutes.

This is probably the coolest thing you’ll see today. I’ve watched Ravi’s YouTube video a few times now and I still can’t believe it can be done. He is somehow able to juggle three Rubik’s Cubes and solve them at the same time. The only way I can solve one Rubik’s cube in less than an hour is by taking off all the colored stickers and gluing them back in the right order. Pathetic, I know, but this isn’t about me, it’s about this skilled math undergrad who has a cube solving record of just 7.65 seconds ( no juggling, obviously). That puts him in the 48th position on the list of the world’s fastest Rubik’s Cube solvers. Pretty cool, but it’s not just about speed with this guy, as he can also solve the tricky puzzle blindfolded, with just one hand, and with his feet. And you thought you were special just being able to solve one of these darn things, huh?

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What would you do if you had 140 feet available in your living room? You’d probably do something lame, like get a couple of armchairs, a sofa and a coffee table right? But then again you’re not an awesome Star Wars fan like Barry “Zipidi Doodah”. He turned his living room into an awe-inspiring diorama of the Battle of Hoth, from the Empire Strikes Back.

Looking at the photos below, you’re probably thinking something like “wow, this guy has sick Photoshop skills”, but the truth is none of the pics are altered in any way. The special effects you see exist in real life and were built by hand, by Barry himself. It’s unbelievable, I know, and I’m not even that big a Star Wars fan. This guy somehow got his wife to agree to let him use the 140-feet living room space, and went on to recreate the iconic Battle of Hoth with almost perfect detail. Giant AT-ATs, Imperial Probe Droids, tauntauns, gun turrets, stormtroopers, gliding starfighters, he has them all right there in his living room. Sure it’s a bit difficult to maneuver around, especially when you’re in a hurry to get to the bathroom, and there are wires hanging from the ceilings to support some of the decor, but like Barry himself admits, nothing attracts the ladies like having a big Star Wars diorama in your living room.

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Invented around 500 years ago, in Malaysia, Sepak Takraw remains one of the most spectacular sports in the world. It combines elements from football, volleyball and martial arts, and is real fun to watch.

It is believed Sepak Trakaw is based on the Chinese game of “Cuju” (kick-ball), after it was introduced to Southeastern Asian countries like Malaysia and Thailand, by early traders. By the early 1400s, the game had already become very popular and was played mainly by men and boys standing in a circle and kicking the ball back and forth. Earliest historical mentions date back to the 15th century, when, according to an important historical document, it was very popular at the court of the Malacca Sultanate. In Bangkok, murals at the Wat Phra Kaeo show Hanuman, the monkey king, playing Sepak Trakaw with a group of monkeys.

Sepak Takraw is played on a court similar to that of badminton, between two teams made up of three players, each. The ball used is bigger than a tennis ball, but smaller than a volleyball, and weighs between 170 and 180 grams. The goal of the game is to send the ball into the opponents’ half so that it touches the floor, while using only your legs and head. It’s kind of like volleyball, only no hands are allowed. A game of Sepak Takraw consists of two sets, each played until one team reaches 21 points (unless the other team has 20 points, in which case a two-point difference is required, to win). If each team wins a set, a tie-break round is played, until one team has 14 points.

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