They say everything’s bigger in Texas, and you’ll have a hard time finding better proof that the “Undisputable Cuz”, a humongous barbecue pit located at the Folsom residence along highway 290, in Brenham. The 40-ton, 75-foot monstrosity ventilated by seven chimneys is the world’s largest barbecue pit. It’s so huge that it needs to be carried around in a large truck and Local authorities have to issue special permits and escorts just to move the cooker down the road!

“It has 24 doors – 12 on this side, 12 on the other,” said owner Terry Folsom, proudly describing his prized possession. The pit can cook four tons of meat at a time, and also has a walk-in cooler with space for kegs attached to beer taps on the outside. Surprisingly, the heat that powers the beauty comes from a small fire that burns only a couple of cords of wood. A tube carries the heat along the length of the entire pit.

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Benjamin Bennett probably has the most bizarre YouTube channel. For the past six months, he has been sitting in front of a camera in zen-like silence, smiling, for hours on end! He’s put out at least 120 hours of footage of himself doing nothing but sitting, without offering any explanation whatsoever.

Ben’s videos made no noise at all – literally and figuratively – until he reached the middle of his 25th live stream. Once he started getting a decent number of views, everybody wanted to know what he was doing and why. Some thought it was art, while others speculated that he was meditating. A few were convinced that he was mentally ill.

The mystery was finally solved a few days back when Vice published an interview with the man himself. When asked why he was doing this, he was quite vague about it. “I don’t know,” he said. “It seemed like something the internet was lacking. It seemed like it needed to be done, and nobody else was going to do it.”

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Typing with one hand when the other one is occupied can be a real pain, so imagine having to type with just one foot. It’s got to be a nightmare, but 21-year-old  Hu Huiyuan from China’s Anhui province is using her only functional foot  to write not just a few sentences, but an entire fiction novel!

Born prematurely, Hu was diagnosed with cerebral palsy when she was only 10 months old. This left her permanently paralyzed – the only parts of her body she can move are her head and left foot. As she grew older, she learned how to perform everyday tasks using her foot.

Despite not having received formal education, Hu is surprisingly well-spoken. Over the years, with the help of her mother, she taught herself to read and write. “I’m not a genius, but I’m very focused,” she said, modestly. “When I watched TV in my childhood, I often learned words with subtitles.”

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Japanese designer Kiyoyuki Amano has combined fashion and technology to create futuristic short skirts that illuminate the wearer’s thighs. Aptly named ‘Hikaru Skirt’, which means ‘Shining Skirt’, the garment comes equipped with LED lights and the miniature gyro sensors on the inside. So the skirt lights up, and the color and pattern of the light changes every time the wearer moves.

Amano said that he first placed light bulbs inside a skirt on a whim, and that’s when he noticed that it created a pleasant illumination of the thighs. So he worked on the design some more and soon created a whole line of LED-illuminated minis. The Hikaru skirts, he said, are meant to bridge the gap between everyday fashion and cosplay.

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It’s hard to find an original, one-of-a-kind name for a baby in this day and age – a fact that a Swiss company is cashing in on. For a hefty fee of $32,000, they promise to have their team of experts come up with a name that your baby wouldn’t share with anyone else in the world.

The company, called Erflogswelle, is actually in the business of creating names for brands and products, but director Marc Hauser came up with the idea for this new service after he helped a friend name her child. “The choice was causing tension between the couple, so I thought I could help,” he explained.

His friend loved the name that he picked out and that’s when he realized the potential of extending the service to parents all over the world. So he put together a special team of his best people, who employ their tried and tested techniques to find unique names for babies.

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68-year-old Ekaterina Bilyik is fondly known as ‘The Punisher’ in her home town of Zhidaev, Ukraine. Contrary to her appearance, the frail-looking grandmother is a total badass – she recently completed a gruelling military training alongside army cadets four decades younger than her.

The amount of energy and enthusiasm that she displayed during training is quite awe-inspiring. Footage from the training camp shows her rolling over snow-covered fields, leaping high, and firing assault rifles along with all the young men in her troop. And believe it or not, she is now training to take part in the raging battle in eastern Ukraine.

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Kindness is not always rewarded, as proven by Chinese officials who are punishing a 65-year-old woman for taking in abandoned children with physical and mental disabilities.

Kong Zhenian, from the rural village of Jiu Jiu in northern China’s Shanxi Province, has been caring for physically and mentally-challenged children for the past 40 years. “I found the first one on the side of the road,” she said. “She had just been left there and I felt so sorry for her I just had to do something.” So she took the child into her care and hasn’t stopped helping children since then.

“I have now raised 39 children,” she added. “All of them are regarded as having problems, either physically or mentally. But in fact, many of them were simply suffering from neglect. It costs a lot of money to care for them but we have managed.”

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A Los Angeles artist is on a mission to cover her entire body with tattoos. She’s offering herself up as a human billboard by tattooing people’s names and designs all over her body, for as low as $10.

Illma Gore, 22, said that the initiative is a part of her ‘absurd and beautiful’ project called A Hundred Tiny Stories. She was actually trying to raise $6,000 through a Kickstarter campaign, in order to cover the cost of 60 hours worth of tattooing. She actually managed to raise a whopping $11,000, until the campaign got suspended.

“It’s art,” she explained. “It will annoy people or make them happy or make them smile. Either way, that’s what art’s supposed to do.”

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Damien Preston-Booth is probably the smartest, most resourceful beggar in the world. Every week, the 37-year-old from Lancashire travels all the way to London’s Mayfair to accept donations from wealthy tourists – via credit card! He actually carries around a card reader to make sure he doesn’t miss out on contributions from rich people who don’t have cash on them.

Every Wednesday for the past five years, Booth has journeyed from his £300 a month rented apartment in Preston to London, where he pretends to be homeless, spending three days and nights sleeping rough and begging. He walks up to potential donors and tries appealing to their generosity. If they’re ready to contribute, he quickly whips out his mobile card reader that transfers all payments to his PayPal account. The reader is linked via Bluetooth to his smartphone, and the donor receives a receipt for his donation.

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Modern Cambodian hero Aki Ra has made it his life’s mission to rid his nation of land mines. The one-man army spends most of his day chopping vegetation in fields and delicately prodding the areas that set off his metal detector. More often than not, he uncovers hockey-puck sized antipersonnel land mines, and destroys them with a controlled explosion. “I want to make my country safe for my people,” he said.

There was a time when Cambodia was plagued by over six million land mines buried underground in paddy fields and lush jungles, ready to indiscriminately murder soldiers and innocent children alike. The devices were once used by the nation’s warring factions, including the notorious Khmer Rouge, to finish their enemies.

Aki Ra, who used to be a child soldier for Khmer Rouge, has spent over 22 years of his life single-handedly removing land mines that were left behind unexploded. Between 1992 and 2007, he was able to rid his homeland of a whopping 50,000 mines, armed with nothing but a pocket knife, pliers, a stick, and his bare hands.

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Who needs money when you have a pretty face, right?. At Jeju Island, a Korean eatery in Zhengzhou city, China, people are allowed to dine at no charge if they happen to be among the five most beautiful patrons of the day. Hanging outside the establishment last Saturday was a bold sign that stated: “Free Meal for Goodlooking”.

If you think the practice is bizarre, wait till you hear who the judges are – a panel of local plastic surgeons! All those hoping to earn a free meal are taken to a ‘beauty identification area’, where they are photographed. The doctors then evaluate the potential diners on the quality of their faces, eyes, noses, and mouths.

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Once a heroin addict, young Michael Grant managed to turn his life around and become Philly Jesus, one of Philadelphia’s most iconic characters. Since April last year, the 28-year-old has been hanging out at LOVE park, in Center City, dressed as Jesus Christ. “I’m not the real Jesus,” he admits upfront. “I’m just a huge fan. I’m doing it as a walking billboard for the King of Kings.”

Every day, Grant walks seven miles to LOVE Park, carrying with him a 12-foot wooden cross with wheels at the bottom that he made himself. “This is my way of letting my light shine, by carrying a cross in the ‘hood’,” he explained. “This is my way of sharing Jesus without preaching a blow horn and condemning people. It’s like making a statement. When they look at me, I don’t want them to see Michael, I want them to see Jesus.”

Grant, who was raised in a Catholic family, is the older of two brothers. His mother says that he was always a creative child, did theater and loved drawing. He even went to a clown school, where he learned to juggle knives and torches. “He liked people’s reactions, so he always liked reaching people that way,” she said.

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When 26-year-old Alex Noble realied that his job in finance was taking the life out of him, he decided to quit and pursue a career with the undead. The horror fan from Cardiff now works as a professional zombie – in case you’re wondering, that is a real job.

Alex explained that he has always been interested in zombies. For five years, he worked as a zombie extra in films, TV, and games. He mostly worked for free, but the experience finally paid off when he was offered a position at Slingshot, the company that runs the zombie chase game ‘2.8 Hours Later’.

“People started noticing me, because I was doing things differently,” he said. “I had a niche look and I was doing the movements and noises differently.”

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Tucked away in the mountains of China’s Anhui province, in the sleepy little town of Mao Tan Chang, is one of the world’s most intense educational institutions. Over 20,000 students (that’s four times the local population) at Mao Tan Chang High School study day and night with very little rest to prepare for the gaokao, a highly competitive national college entrance exam.

Most of these students come from rural areas as their parents know that acing the dreaded gaokao could open up a host of opportunities, allowing them to escape a farmer’s life. Mao Tan Chang helps them achieve their goals by creating an environment that encourages serious study, and little else. The school’s strategy is simple – everything that isn’t related to academics is banned.

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In a highly impressive display of mental prowess, young South Asian children are able to solve complex math calculations within seconds simply by flicking their fingers through thin air. Their secret tool –  an imaginary abacus.

News reports on the Mind Mathlon 2014 program held at the Robotics Lab of the Karachi Institute of Technology and Entrepreneurship in March described young children raising and flicking their fingers to keep track of long series of numbers and solve calculations with mind-blowing accuracy.  They were apparently taught to use their hands as the beads of an abacus – an ancient calculating tool – to add and subtract at the speed of a calculator.

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