17-year-old Rudy Hummel has been sleeping outdoors every night for the past seven months. He plans to continue until he has reached his one-year goal. Through this unique project, Rudy wants to test himself and also raise awareness about the difficulties that the homeless face.

“I came up with the idea to do this for a whole year just because I like to challenge myself, but now it means more than that,” he said. “I’ve got a couple of organizations picked up that I want to try and collect money for, to donate to. Trying to turn this into a fundraiser.” The high school junior from Hermantown, Minnesota said that he has always loved camping and spending time in the outdoors.

His initial plan was to sleep outdoors only during the summer, but then he just kept going. “Geez, this has not been hard enough,” he said. At first Rudy slept on a platform in a tree in the Hummels’ backyard that he had built with his dad. When winter came, he piled up snow with a shovel in the backyard and hollowed it out to create a small bedroom. “It’s a quinsy, which is a type of snow shelter,” he explained.

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Now this is what I call pure genius. Why didn’t I think of this when I was a college student struggling to stay awake all night? As you can see in the pictures, these Chinese university students have resorted to tying up their hair using clothespins. Every time they nod off, the pins will pull on their hair, jerking them awake.

The technique became popular after two students at the Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University in Fujian province uploaded pictures of themselves on Weibo. Chen Tang, 20 and her roommate Huang Lu, 21, had been struggling with a huge workload and needed a quick fix to fight the urge to nap.

They had tried the regular methods – caffeine, push-ups and cranking up the air-conditioning – but none of that worked. That’s when they decided to hit the history books for a solution. Chen and Huang read about two famous Chinese scholars who practiced extreme methods to keep their minds alert.

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A couple of years ago, we wrote about Cecil Chao Sze-tsung, a Hong Kong-based property and shipping tycoon who offered US $65 million to any man who could woo his gay daughter, Gigi Chao. At the time, 33-year-old Gigi had just announced her wedding to her partner of seven years, Sean Eav.

Fast forward to present-day and Gigi is still a happily married woman, but Cecil doesn’t appear to have given up yet. He is in the news again for raising the reward to a whopping HK $ 1 billion (approximately US $130 million), even though thousands of eligible bachelors have tried and failed at the task. 77-year-old Cecil is still refusing to acknowledge Gigi’s marriage, insisting that she is single.

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For a person born without fingers, 48-year-old Annette Gabbedey has the most unusual job – she is one of Britain’s most talented jewelry designers and an expert goldsmith. It is surprising that she doesn’t even use special tools to help her work around her condition. Instead, she adapts conventional crafting devices to make the most dazzling and intricate ornaments.

Because she has never had fingers, Annette says that she doesn’t feel like anything is missing. In fact she prefers it this way, insisting that she is not disabled. “I tend to look at people with fingers and think well how can you manage with fingers because they must get in the way,” she said. “It is just your own perception of how you look at yourself and for me I was born like it and I have never known anything different.”

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This Chinese man is so rich he is willing to shell out one million yuan (US $170,000) just to rent a girlfriend. The news was first reported on China’s leading social networking website, Weibo. The post came from an account called ‘Host of Henan newscast’.

Paying a girl to date you might give people the wrong idea, but this case appears to be different. According to the posting, the man wants to hire a girl just to accompany him to his family reunion during the upcoming Spring Festival. Perhaps he doesn’t want to be alone during the Chinese holidays?

The listing included a photograph of the dude, sitting behind a pile of cash. I suppose he wanted to go all out to prove that he is serious. He put up a list of requirements: the girl should be under 25, over 1.68 meters tall, less than 50 kilograms, and “sweet,” with at least a bachelor’s degree. He will pay 10 percent extra for a girl with a doctorate degree or a virgin. Among other promises is a chartered flight from Shenzhen to Zhengzhou and back.

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Yacouba Sawadogo is an exceptional man – he single-handedly managed to solve a crisis that even scientists and development organizations could not. The simple old farmer’s re-forestation and soil conservation techniques are so effective they’ve helped turn the tide in the fight against the desertification of the harsh lands in northern Burkina Faso.

Over-farming, over-grazing and over population have, over the years, resulted in heavy soil erosion and drying in this landlocked West African nation. Although national and international researchers tried to fix the grave situation, it really didn’t really make much of a difference. Until Yacouba decided to take matters into his own hands in 1980.

Yacouba’s methods were so odd that his fellow farmers ridiculed him. But when his techniques successfully regenerated the forest, they were forced to sit up and take notice. Yacouba revived an ancient African farming practice called ‘zai’, which led to forest growth and increased soil quality.

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Pastor Lesego Daniel, of Rabboni Centre Ministries, is a highly unusual person. In order to be closer to God, the South African preacher is encouraging his congregation to eat grass. He also tramples on them for added effect.

The pastor is said to have claimed that humans can eat anything they choose to sustain themselves. When he put up pictures of the grass-eating event on Facebook, he faced severe criticism from thousands of people across the world. Rabboni Centre Ministries is now a trending topic on social media. But none of that has bothered Mr. Daniel’s followers; they defend their pastor and swear by his methods.

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A 66-year-old Brazilian man believes he is the reincarnation of Jesus. He has been preaching the word of God for the past for the past 35 years. Born Alvaro Theiss, this controversial religious figure now goes by ‘Inri Cristo’.

Inri is derived from the Latin acronym inscribed on the cross during Jesus’ crucifixion (INRI – Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum, which means: Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews). Cristo, his last name, means Christ.

Cristo experienced his first revelation that he was Christ during a religious fast in Santiago, Chile, in 1979. Although he had a powerful voice in his head guiding him since childhood, on this occasion it told him clearly: “I am your Father. The God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.” He has hundreds of followers around the world, and his own church, ‘Soust’, based on a lush farmland outside Brasilia. Soust is an acronym for Suprema Ordem Universal da Santmssima Trindade.

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80-year-old Haji believes that “cleanliness brings him sickness.” That’s why he hasn’t bathed at all in the past 60 years. He lives in isolation in Dejgah village, in the Southern Iranian province of Fars.

Haji hates contact with water. Even the suggestion of a bath makes him very angry. And all these years of escaping bath time have taken their toll – Haji is almost the color of earth. He has managed to completely blend in with his surroundings. In fact, it’s easy to mistake him for a rock statue if he sits very still.

It’s not just bathing that Haji dislikes. His disgust for fresh food and clean drinking water is unmistakable. Instead, he prefers his favorite meal of rotten porcupine meat. He drinks 5 liters of water a day for health purposes, but only from a large rusty oil can. He likes to fill his smoking pipe with animal feces instead of tobacco. To trim his hair he doesn’t use clippers; he just burns it off over an open flame. An old war helmet keeps his head warm during the winter.

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In a world where getting a kind word from your boss is a huge achievement, businessman Michael De Beyer comes across as one-of-a-kind. Where else do you get to see employers selling an entire business to help out an employee in need? I for one have never heard of such a thing before.

De Beyer is the owner of the Kaiserhof Restaurant and Wunderbar, in Montgomery, Texas. Brittany Mathis, his 19-year-old employee, is suffering from a tumor that she cannot afford to get treated. So De Beyer has decided to sell the 6,000 square foot family restaurant that he has owned for 17 years, and donate money to Brittany.

Brittany appears to be a healthy girl, but the serious ailment is taking a toll on her. It all began when she noticed a rash on her leg. “I went to the hospital and found out it was my blood clotting,” she said. “So, they wanted to keep me and do CAT scans and MRIs and the next day they came in and told me I had a tumor.”

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This Christmas, a businessman from Iowa came up with a very creative way of giving. Posing as a homeless person, Jonnie Wright gave away envelopes of cash to all the people who showed him kindness.

On December 24, Wright stood at a street corner for four hours, in the bitter cold, in the Des Moines suburb of Johnston. He gave away about 50 envelopes, a total of $1,000 in cash. Five of them contained $100 bills and the rest, $10 bills. All the envelopes came with a letter of appreciation as well.

One of the recipients of the envelopes was a Des Moines resident, Rob Taylor. The letter informed him that the ‘bum’ he just handed money to wasn’t homeless, but a successful businessman giving back to good people.

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There’s always some weird teenage trend or the other doing the rounds online. The latest one has kids spraying aerosol deodorant on to their skin at an extremely close range. They film themselves performing the ridiculous stunt, to see who can endure it the longest.

Teenagers all over the world have been taking part in the bizarre aerosol challenge. They’ve been putting up the videos on YouTube and other social networking sites. In some extreme videos, kids spray each other until angry red blisters appear on their skin. In worst cases, severe scarring could cause permanent damage.

As with all other teenage trends, experts are expressing their outrage against the aerosol challenge. According to a spokesperson from the British Skin Foundation, the craze could be both painful and damaging. “The British Skin Foundation would never encourage the use of any aerosol product in close proximity to the skin for a prolonged period. These products should be used appropriately and responsibly as extended use can lead to the freezing action producing a cryogenic burn,” the spokesperson said. Read More »

Most people forget their New Year resolutions within a few weeks, some can’t even make it a day. But a Melbourne couple in their 60s have completed what they set out to do, every day of last year. For the whole of 2013, Janette Murray-Wakelin, 64, and Alan Murray, 68, ran marathons every single day across Australia. They completed their 366^th marathon on January 1, running 44 kilometers down the Yarra Trail to their home at Warrandyte. The couple ran a total of 15,000 kilometers last year.

The Murrays wanted to set a positive example of being responsible for one’s own health. “We wanted to share as much, with as many people, for as long as we could, a really positive message of hope and just to show people anything is possible if you put your mind to it and set a goal to achieve,” said Janette.

Janette and Alan followed a strictly vegan diet for the whole year, to help them achieve their goal. At 4 a.m., they would eat 10 bananas, a grapefruit and a date smoothie, before hitting the road. At 8 a.m. they had 10 more bananas, and a green smoothie at 9 a.m. Once they hit 31 kilometers, they would stop to snack on a fruit salad. At the 37-kilometer mark they would have three oranges. They would finish running by 4 p.m. and settle down to a scrumptious dinner of an avocado, vegetable juice and salad.

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The ancient Egyptians spent centuries developing their mummifying techniques, but at a cemetery in San Bernardo, a small Colombian town, corpses somehow become naturally mummified in their coffins.

The phenomenon was first noticed 15 years ago, by grave digger Eduardo Cifuentes. “The burial pit was full of bodies,” he said. “I didn’t like stepping on them because they were humans like us so I started organizing them.” It’s only because of Eduardo’s efforts that the mummies are being talked about. He said that the mummified bodies have been around since about 1957, but no one paid any attention to them. “I liked the idea of keeping them for posterity,” he said. With the passage of time, the mummies’ clothes and skin have turned brown. Their skins look pasty and wrinkled.

Scientists have no idea why this is happening. The only other site in Latin America where natural mummification takes place is the Guanajuato, a town in central Mexico, where underground gas and soil conditions are the secret. But the same cannot be said for San Bernardo, because bodies are buried in chambers above the ground (as is customary in Colombia) so they do not come into contact with the earth. Read More »

The Arabs appreciate their camels rather deeply. They call these beautiful creatures ‘God’s gift to the Bedouin’. In fact, they love camels so much that they get together once a year to pick out the most beautiful ones of them all.

The Al Dhafra Festival is held annually at Abu Dhabi, in the UAE. The camel beauty pageant is the highlight of this festival, featuring 30,000 camels from all over the Gulf region. It’s something like a dog-show, with the animals being paraded around and given marks on their appearance.

How does one judge the beauty of a camel? According to Ali Al Mansouri, a camel owner and member of the Al Dhafra organizing committee, “The judges are looking for camels with big heads, wide necks, firm ears, broad cheeks and big whiskers.” He also said that the body should be long, the hump and the back should be big, and the color and posture of the camel are important.

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