It’s not easy being beautiful, at least according to 21-year-old Dana Adiva, who says her looks are both a blessing and a curse. She is treated like a princess, but the same time women are jealous of her beauty, and men just can’t help staring at her.

Dana, an aspiring professional wrestler from Illinois, was recently featured on MTV’s “True Life” where she complained about being too beautiful. The young blonde claimed she has had people telling her how pretty she was all the time, but things got ugly when she got to high-school. “I got so much attention from all the guys, but I didn’t get along with any of the girls,” Adiva said.  “They were extremely jealous of me”. Things really got out of control when she started getting hate mail from other girls, which eventually forced her to drop out of school. And that’s only one of the tough things she has had to deal with because of her look. Apparently, it’s also affecting her chances of finding true love. “I’m hoping to find love someday but when you look like me it’s not easy. My looks get in the way,” Dana said. “When I walk into a bar I’m used to every guy staring at me,” but the men she is actually interested in never seem to take her seriously. Truly a tragedy, this is…

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A tenth of an amp is enough to kill an ordinary human being, but Raj Mohan Nair is anything but ordinary. This human conductor is able to withstand several amps of electricity passing through his body without suffering any bodily harm.

Electricity Mohan or Electro-Man, as Raj has come to be known all around the world has an amazing super-power. Just a small a mount of electricity can be fatal to most humans, but this man can conduct several amps and survive unscathed. There’s nothing super-human about his looks, but connected to an electrical power source, Raj Mohan Nair can do extraordinary things. He doesn’t shoot lightning bolts from his hands or anything, but he can power up a light bulb or an electric blender by grabbing two live wires and allowing massive amounts of current to pass through his body. He might not seem like a superhero worthy of his own comic book, but it’s a lot more than the rest of us mortals can withstand. If these wires touched any other human’s body, the electricity would cause their organs to fail and stop their heart, but not Mohan’s. With one wire in his mouth for better conductivity and the other anywhere else on his body, Mohan lets the electrical current run through him and into whatever other device he’s trying to power on.

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48-year-old Blazo Grkovic has made headlines in the international media after it was reported he managed to kill a bear in combat using only a small carpenter’s ax and his bear bare hands. The incident occurred while the brave Herzegovian was herding his flock of sheep on the edge of a forest at the foot of Volujak Mountain.

Gacko, as he is known among friends, told the press he was guarding his sheep on the slopes of Volujak Mountain at dawn, as he usually did. Suddenly, a bear jumped out of the bushes and grabbed him by the leg. No stranger to combat situations, the former first-class fighter of Gatačkoj Brigade in the Bosnian War of 1992 instinctively reached for his trusty carpenter ax and hit the animal in the neck, knocking it on its back. Instead of running away, like most other people in his situation would have done, he jumped onto the bear and continued hitting it. Although he doesn’t remember too many details about the fight, or how long it lasted, Blazo says that at one point the animal managed to knock the ax out of his hand, and he recalls having one arm in the bear’s mouth and the other on its neck trying to suffocate it. Grkovic sustained dozens of injuries to his arms, legs and face during the epic struggle, but ultimately managed to kill the attacking bear. Unable to walk, he phoned his brother for help, and when he arrived with an ambulance, they found him next to the almost decapitated body of the bear.

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Ismail Jasim Mohammed, a farmer from Samara, Iraq, claims he consumes at least one live scorpion every day, and experiences symptoms of withdrawal if he goes three days without eating a nasty stinger.

When people like David Gracer started preaching about the benefits of eating bugs, I don’t think they meant potentially deadly live scorpions. But that hasn’t stopped 34-year-old Ismail Jasim Mohammed from feasting on them for the last 15 years. Tired of getting stung by scorpions around the village of Agelam, near the Iraqi city of Samara, the farmer decided to turn the tables and give them a taste of their own medicine. One day, he caught a live scorpion, put it in his mouth and ate it alive. He actually liked the taste and he has been snacking on them ever since. Obviously, he was stung in the mouth a few times throughout the years, but Ismail says that helped him develop an immunity to the scorpion venom. These days, the man is addicted to his unusual diet, and says he eats at least one scorpion a day. If he goes three days without consuming a nasty critter he experiences signs of withdrawal.

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48-year-old Deb Hoffman is probably the world’s biggest Winnie the Pooh fan. Her collection of over 8,900 Winnie-themed items has won her a place in the Guinness Book of Records and even though it takes up four rooms of her house, this dedicated fan doesn’t plan to stop adding to her collection anytime soon.

Deb, a computer software designer, from Waukesha, Wisconsin, says her obsession with the lovable Winnie started when she was just 2 years old. Her father came home late one night, and as always, she used the old “I have to go to the bathroom” excuse just so she could go see him. Only this time he had brought something home with him in a box. Her mother put it in the bathroom where she could reach it, and the moment she put her hand inside and pulled out an adorable orange bear dressed in a bright red t-shirt with the letters P-O-O-H on the front, little Deb fell in love with it. Over the years, the cuddly teddy bear remained her favorite toy, and by age 20 she had around 40-50 Winnie-themed items. Not exactly unusual, considering other kids collect hundreds of their favorite dolls or action figures. But at 22, Deb Hoffman married Gary, a careful and patient husband, and got a full-time job which provided her with some disposable income. That’s when her obsession with Winnie the Pooh really kicked into high gear.

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Chloe Mayo, an amateur artist from Surrey, England, painted a depiction of her dream man two months before meeting him on an online dating site. She was so shocked by the resemblance that she hid the painting for fear he would think she was a stalker.

In 2009, Chloe, who was single at the time, painted a romantic image of her holding hands with a tall, dark, bearded man. The 31-year-old didn’t think too highly of her artwork, so she just left it in a corner of her living-room and forgot all about it. Shortly after, she started looking for love on the internet, and ended up messaging Michael Goeman. The pair seemed to have a lot in common, and after two months of chatting, they decided to meet in person. The moment she laid eyes on him, Chloe was shocked by his resemblance to the man in the painting. Fraid he might think she was some kind of stalker, she put the hid the painting under the bed and only showed it to Michael after they went on a few more dates. “He was due to come over to my house and I thought that if he saw the picture he would think I was a stalker and a bit weird, so I hid it under my bed,” Chloe said. “About a week later I mustered up the courage to show him and although he looked a bit confused, he saw the funny side when I explained what had happened.”

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American Jason Roher has recently won a game design competition after creating a board game that no one is likely to play anytime in the near future, if ever. Called A Game for Someone, Roher’s game was made from titanium, to stand the test of time, and buried somewhere in the Nevada Desert, where it will probably be discovered by an advanced civilization, or zombies, thousands of years from now.

“I wanted to make a game that is not for right now, that I will never play,” Rohrer said, “and nobody now living would ever play.” Inspired by ancient board games like Mancala, as well as “the architects and builders who, over hundreds of years, constructed religious cathedrals that they themselves would never set foot in, never see completed in their lifetimes”, the designer set out to create a game that actually worked, without ever playing it himself. To do that, he first conceived it in computer form, by designing a set of rules that would be playtested not by a human, but by the computer. He told reporters he ended up plugging the game’s rules into a “black box”, and letting the artificial intelligence find imbalances, iterating new rules and repeating. Once the game was playable, he started manufacturing it. He couldn’t shape it from degradable materials like wood, glass or cardboard, so he ultimately decided on making the 18-inch by 18-inch game board and its piece out of 30 pounds of titanium.

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38-year-old Liu Lingchao is a real-life human snail who carries his 60-kg-heavy house on his back wherever he goes. Made of bamboo poles and plastic sheets, the portable home provides shelter on Liu’s long travels through China.

Liu Lingchao makes a living selling plastic bottle and metal cans he picks up from the streets of various Chinese cities. The man from Rong’an, Guangdong Province, built his first mobile home five years ago, as a way to save money on his long journeys, and for protection against rain and cold weather. Liu found life as a snail to his liking, and has since then worn out three bamboo huts. His newest one is 1.5 meters wide and and 2.2 meters tall, offering him just enough room for a modest bedding and his travel necessities. Its 60 kg weight is not exactly easy for one man to carry, so Liu really is moving at the pace of a snail along China’s roads, but it beats having to look for shelter wherever he goes, and says the fact that he can settle down virtually anywhere he wants is worth the effort. The human snail left Wuzhou City several months ago, and is now just 20 miles away from completing an epic 270-mile walk and returning to his home town.

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A ten year old bully from Utah got a taste of her own medicine when her stepmother made her wear ugly thrift shop clothes to school after discovering she was constantly picking on another student on account of her wardrobe.

Bullying is a hard-to-fix problem in schools, but a mother from Murray, Utah seems to have come up with a very effective way of making her daughter realize the seriousness of her actions. Last Wednesday, Ally, whose last name was not revealed in order to protect her daughter’s identity, received an email from one of Kaylee’s teachers, explaining that she had been bullying another classmate because of how she dressed. This had been going on for the last three weeks, and according to the teacher, the bullied girl was now refusing to come to school anymore. Aware of the long-term effects of bullying, Ally decided to confront Kaylee about it and make her understand her behavior could have serious consequences. Only the young girl seemed to have no remorse for what she had done, and that prompted Ally to approach the problem differently. “I thought this is a perfect moment for us to really teach her, this is right, this is wrong, which path are you going to take? And then it’s her choice,” the woman said.

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Varya Akulova is one of those extraordinary human beings most people have never even heard of. Often referred to as “The World’s Strongest Girl”, Varya holds two Guinness records and is able to lift up to four times her own body weight.

Born in 1992, in the Ukrainian mining town of Krivoy Rog, Varya Akulova showed remarkable physical abilities from a very young age. When she was just one year old, Varya could do a handstand, at one and a half she did flips, at three years of age she started performing acrobatic routines with her parents, and by age four she was already doing powerlifting exercises with massive weights. When Varya’s mother, Larisa, became pregnant, her father, Yuri, started making plans about performing in the circus with his yet-unborn strong son, but when his wife gave birth to a girl, he knew his dreams would never materialize. But as the days went by, Yuri began to realize that with the right training, his daughter could become as strong as a man. The girl had stronger arms and legs than most babies her age, and soon he became certain Varya had inherited the Akulovs’ legendary strength. Historically, his ancestors served at the court of Catherine II and became known for their amazing abilities and toughness during the Russian – Turkish wars. And as the years passed, it became clear Varya was truly an Akulov, able to lift massive weights when other girls her age were busy playing with dolls.

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Tao Xiangli, a 37-year-old inventor from Beijing, China, has spent over 150,000 yuan ($25,000) and more than 11 months building a functional robot made of scrap parts and wires bought from second-hand markets.

In China, Tao Xiangli is known as a DIY genius, with a collection of amazing home-made creations under his belt. Three years ago, he made headlines in international media after building a submarine all by himself, and today he’s back to with another impressive achievement – a 496lb (225kg) robot he pieced together in his small Beijing apartment. “He’s ugly, but he’s kind of awesome,” Tao said about the  2.1-meter-tall metal behemoth  that can apparently perform simple movements and even mimic human actions by using infrared rays. It can turn its neck, raise its legs and even shake hands at the flick of a switch on the board located on its back. Instead of crating a humanoid casing for his robot, Tao Xiangli decided to leave it “naked”so viewers could see every one of the over 110 scrap parts and 3,000 lengths of wiring required to make it work. To make it easier on the eyes, the young Chinese inventor fitted his robots with strips of bright neon cabling.

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With a population nearing nine billion people and food shortages becoming increasingly problematic, the human race needs sustainable solutions if it wants to survive. Japanese designer Ai Hasegawa has come up with a very controversial approach to solving environmental and food-related issues – the possibility of women giving birth to various animal species and eventually eating them.

In one of her most intriguing projects yet, “I Wanna Deliver a Shark…”, Ai Hasegawa tackles “the problem of human reproduction in an age of over-population and environmental crisis.” She envisions the possibility of humans one day giving birth to their food and satisfying both their nutritional needs and that of giving life. The 33-year-old says having a human baby isn’t as simple as some people think, especially with our world about to face a major food crisis. She argues that bringing new humans into this world is definitely not the answer, but giving birth to endangered animal species might be just what we need to survive. “We are genetically predisposed to raise children as a way of passing on our genes to the next generation but we live in an age where the struggle to raise a child in decent conditions is becoming harder with gross over-population and difficult environmental conditions,” Hasegawa says. “We must also eat, and we are equally facing growing food shortages as a result of over-fishing, land use and a growing population. By giving birth to an edible animal it might place more value on that endangered species and help prevent it’s extinction.”

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The Chinese owner of a Maserati Quattroporte worth $423,000 paid three men two smash it with sledgehammers at the 2013 Qingdao Auto Show, because he was disappointed with the way the car dealer had fixed it.

The man known only as Wang told Chinese media he had bought the car in 2011 and was forced to bring it back for repairs only two months later. He said the dealer charged him for new parts, but they really replaced the faulty components with second-hand ones. Later, the staff failed to fix a problem with the car door and even managed to scratch it. That was apparently more than Wang was willing to take, so he decided to deliver a loud and clear message to Maserati. He waited for the Qingdao Auto Show and tipped off the media to show up for an unforgettable spectacle. On the day of the show, he brought in his luxury car draped in a banner accusing Maserati of poor service, and paid three men to smash it with sledgehammers, in front of hundreds of onlookers. They shattered the car’s windscreen, headlights, grill and mirrors, and left some serious dents in its metal body. “I hope foreign luxury car producers acknowledge clearly that Chinese consumers are entitled to get the service that is commensurate with the brand,” Wang said.

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Although some of us refuse to believe it, we live in a mean, cutthroat world. Luckily there are still some genuine good Samaritans out there, and Anthony Cymerys is definitely one of them. For the last 25 years, the man known as Joe the Barber has been offering homeless people in Hartford, Connecticut haircuts in exchange for hugs.

Anthony Cymerys started offering his barber services to those less fortunate in 1988, after hearing a sermon about the homeless. He had just retired and was only cutting hair for family, but those inspiring words he had heard in church made him decided he didn’t want the homeless looking like homeless anymore. So he prepared his tools, put them in the car and started driving around town looking for people in need of his services. In the beginning, he helped people in shelters and convalescent homes, then he cut hair in downtown YMCA for years, before moving to the carousel near Bushnell Park. Every Wednesday, the wooden benches on the Elm Street side of the park are packed with homeless people waiting for a relaxing haircut, shave and facial massage from the 82-year-old Joe.

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To honor her husband, a woman from Paraiba, Brazil, gave all her children, nine girls and six boys, his name, Walter. Although they were proud to carry on their father’s name, the girls said it made their lives harder.

When she got pregnant with her first child, Erotides Brandão made a deal with her husband, Walter, to give it his name, regardless of whether it was a boy or a girl. That’s how Walterlúcia ended up with her unique and bizarre name. The mother was happy to honor her life partner, she just didn’t expect to have 15 children and him to ask her to do the same for all of them. Still, Erodites told Brazilian reporters they were very much in love and couldn’t deny each other anything. In order to make life easier for their children, especially the girls, the two parents decided to combine the “Walter” with common girl names followed by Maria. Their nine daughters are named: Walterlúcia Maria, Walterlívia Maria, Walterlênia Maria, Walterlônia Maria, Walterlácia Maria, Walterluzia Maria Emília, Walterluana Maria, Walterangelina Maria and Waltersilvana Maria. Obviously, it was easier for the boys, who were baptized with two first names: Walter Emanuel, Walter Luís, Walter Olivério, Walter Marcelo (who died at six months), Walter Licínio and Walter Fernando. Erodites lost three other pregnancies, who were also going to be named Walter.

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