You may be all happy and carefree today celebrating Halloween, but don’t forget that according to the Mayan calendar the end of days is less than two months away. Luckily, there’s a way around it – a survival pod built by a Chinese inventor who claims it can withstand the end of the world.

It’s big, it’s round, and apparently it will keep you alive in case of a natural disaster or a nuclear meltdown. Officially, it’s called the “Atlantis”, but everyone has started calling it a modern-day Noah’s Arc. Chinese entrepreneur and inventor Yang Zongfu worked on his survival pod for the last two years and spent around $150,000 making it as durable as possible. Back in August, he announced a series of public tests which would prove his Armageddon-proof survival pod was ready for the end of the world. On August 6, he climbed inside the Atlantis and was pushed down a 50-meter obstacle course on the side of a hill, over a bed of rocks and into a pool. Sadly, as soon as it hit the water, the arc’s door opened proving it was less than water tight. the inventor himself came out in one piece, but with a cut on his chin. But that didn’t discourage Yang, who moved on to the fire test, in which he set a smaller version of the Atlantis on fire, and pulled out a frozen ice-cream that had been perfectly preserved inside.

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The Daily Talk is a unique news medium published on a blackboard in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital city. As most Liberians lack the money and means to access conventional mass media, this chalk-written daily “newspaper” is the most widely read report in Monrovia.

In the Western world, many are already talking about the death of written media, and the coming age of online information, but in some countries, access to old-fashion newspapers is still a thing of the future. Many Monrovians can’t afford to buy real newspapers or electricity to access the internet, so Alfred J. Sirleaf, the founder of this blackboard newspaper had to come up with a way to bring information to the people in an inexpensive way. He believes a well-informed people is the key to Liberia’s rebirth so ever since he started his unique venture  on Tubman Boulevard, in 2000, in central Monrovia, he’s been providing valuable news every single day. For local news, he relies on a team of volunteer reporters who come to him with stories, while for international events he goes to an internet cafe to access sites like the BBC, because he doesn’t own a computer. Then, in the newsroom, a small wooden shed attached to the back of his blackboard, he updates The Daily Talk with chalk. He’s the editor, the designer and sole employee of the unique newspaper, yet he manages to get his message across.

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Getting a girl to go out to dinner with you isn’t as easy as some people think. Luckily, now there’s a DVD that allows single men to experience a dinner date, without having to convince a woman to go out with them. It’s called “Amateur Dinner Time – Let’s Eat Together! -, and it’s hilarious.

Maybe you’re too shy to ask a girl out, or maybe you’re just too cheap to take her to a restaurant. Whatever your reason, you’re probably a bit curious about what it must be like to have a pleasant conversation with an attractive girl, over dinner. Now, thanks to a series of original DVDs released by Japanese media company K-NETWORK, you can (sort of) interact with cute girls from in front of your TV screen. Each of the three Amateur Dinner Time DVDs features a number of attractive ladies as they sit across the table from the camera enjoying their meal and engaging in small talk. They probably don’t answer your every question, or laugh at your stupid kokes, but hey, you can’t have everything, right?

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In what may be the weirdest divorce trial in recent history, a man in China sued his wife for being ugly and actually won the right to divorce her and a substantial settlement of $120,000.

No, this is not a joke. Earlier this year, Jian Feng, a man from northern China took his spouse to court for being ugly. But you couldn’t really tell that by looking at her, in fact the unnamed woman could be considered attractive by most standards. To make things even weirder, the judge actually ruled in his favor, granting him the right to a divorce and a settlement of around $120,000. This probably makes no sense to you right now, but I’ll try to clarify things as best I can. Jian Feng’s problems began when he and his wife had their first baby. The man described his daughter as “incredibly ugly” and told the court she resembled neither of the parents. Now, most fathers would just hold their piece and love that little angel as if she were the most beautiful baby ever born, but not Feng. He started accusing his wife of cheating on him, and he kept at it until she couldn’t take no more and finally admitted she might have something to do with the baby’s appearance.

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Senad Hadzic, a 47-year-old Muslim from northern Bosnia, has recently completed an epic 5,700 km journey, from his hometown to the to the Saudi city of Mecca, by foot.

Making the pilgrimage to Mecca, the holiest city in the religion of Islam, at least once in their lifetime is obligatory for all able Muslims. Each year, millions travel to the birthplace of Muhammad, but not many of them walk thousands of miles to get there. That’s what makes Senad Hadzic’s experience so impressive. The Bosnian departed from his town of Banovici, in December 2011 and has walked for 314 days through Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria and Jordan to reach the Muslim holy city in south-western Saudi Arabia. Despite experiencing severe weather conditions, like temperatures ranging from minus 35 Celsius in Bulgaria to plus 44 Celsius in Jordan, Senad managed to walk at a rate of between 20 to 30 kilometers per day, to reach Mecca after an unbelievable 5,700 km journey.

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Appropriately named Armageddon, the new beer from Scotland’s Brewmeister Brewery will probably end your days if you drink too much of it. The potent concoction has an alcohol content of 65% by volume. That’s stronger than vodka or whiskey.

Although the Guinness Book of Records has yet to certify Armageddon as the world’s strongest beer, that hasn’t stopped Brewmeister from slapping the unofficial title on the label. And who can blame them, after all, that’s what makes their drink so special. Company co-founder, Lewis Shand says Armageddon “is closer to a liquor than a beer, but it is classified as a beer and we are pleased with it.” He added that “it delivers a supersonic-charged explosion and delivers the drinker to Drunksville”. That’s probably why Brewmeister’s brewers have cautioned that the beer should be sipped and served in small doses.

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Don Martini, a 75-year-old fan of the New York Giants has taken his devotion for his favorite football team to a whole new level. The Blairstown-native spent the last two years and $20,000 building an astonishing replica of the Giant’s old stadium in his garage.

The crazy idea came to Don in the middle of the night. The next morning, he got up and told his wife “I’m going to build Giants Stadium”, but all he got out of her was “You’re crazy!” But not even she thought he would be crazy enough to actually go through with it. The truth is, Don Martini was in search of a new project. After turning his backyard into a miniature village complete with an elevated rail for model trains, a working windmill and a lighthouse, the man was looking for a new challenge, something bigger than everything he had created in the past. He decided to combine his love for the New York Giants with his passion for building stuff, so he actually started work on this astonishing model of the football team’s stadium.

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Can you imagine having to ask someone else to flush the toilet for you because you’re too terrified it will swallow you up? That’s exactly what 20-year-old Ney Decino, from Church Village, Wales, has to go through every day.

“The sound of the water sends shivers down my spine. It’s awful. I swear it will swallow me up. Once I’ve flushed, the sound of it and the look of the water going down, it freaks me out,” Ney says. She has had an irrational fear of toilets ever since watching a scene in the 1990 film Look Who’s Talking Too, starring John Travolta and Kirsty Alley. It showed an imaginary big-eyed, sharp-toothed character called Mr. Toilet Man, who screams it wants the child’s pee. I actually remember that scene, it freaked me out a bit as well, but I got over it pretty quickly. Ney, on the other hand, hasn’t, and she has had to deal with her phobia for most of her life. The young mother says she only goes to the toilet in public if it’s an absolute emergency, and always tries to find work close to home, so she can use the only toilet she feels safe on. And even there, she has problems flushing if she’s by herself. She will use a friend’s toilet if she has to, but only if they or a family member flush for her. Now, she’s trying to face her fear by setting up a Facebook group and getting in touch with other phobia-sufferers.

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Zhang Feng, a 23-year-old man from Zhengzhou, China, has apparently mastered a unique kung-fu technique he calls “Shaolin Sunshine Hand”, which allows him to generate enough energy with his fists to put out candles up to three meters away. This you gotta see!

Remember those cheesy Chinese kung-fu films we all used to watch during the 80s and 90s? I used to love seeing kung-fu masters blowing stuff and enemies away with their punches, but I kind of always knew it was just theatrics. After looking at this video that recently went viral in China, showing a nerdy dude throwing punches at a row of 15 candles and extinguishing them with air or energy generated by his flying fists, I’m not so sure anymore. I know, you’re convinced it’s a fake, and you’re not the only one, but the guy actually invited a couple of reporters from the Zhengzhou Evening News newspaper into his home to try the feat themselves and then film him doing it. The two journalists gave it their best shot, but were only able to put out one of the 15 candles set 10 cm apart, and even blowing air didn’t kill all the flames. Zhang Feng, on the other hand, put them all out just by throwing punches. Needless to say the reporters were in awe and couldn’t explain how he did it. If they were in on the trick, shame on them, but maybe there is something to this uncanny Shaolin master.

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UPDATE: Apparently this WAS in fact an elaborate hoax that managed to convince various media outlets, including English ITV, which also did an interview with the company’s CEO. Following an investigation by the TV channel, it turned out everything the guy said was a lie. Pretty good story, though.

Always dreamed of having a celebrity’s baby? Well, now’s your chance, as Fame Daddy, the world’s first celebrity sperm donor service claims to have 40 A-listers on books, including am Oscar-winning actor, a rock star, a Formula 1 driver, a former football player and even a genius. For “just” £15,000 ($24,000), you can give your baby that X factor everyone seems to be looking for these days.

I know, it sounds like a PR scam, but apparently this is a real service. London-based Fame Daddy is a unique service advertised as the ideal way for girls to discover what it would be like to have a child with their favorite celebrity. There’s a catch, though, the identity of the donor is never revealed. Instead, clients are asked to complete a 12-question quiz about child’s ideal height and complexion, whether they’d like the father to be a popular actor, talented musician or an accomplished athlete, as well as other questions to help them determine which donor best fits their personality, character and lifestyle choices. Later, a team of experts from Fame Daddy will help women choose the right father “that will compliment their biology and heritage. Donor fathers have apparently signed exclusive ‘donor’ deals on the basis of guaranteed anonymity and a legal waiver of their rights to access to the child.

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He’s rich, single and most importantly, he’s not cheap, but despite all these qualities, 47-year-old Larry Greenfield can’t seem to find a suitable life partner. In the last 12 years he has spent around $65,000 on matchmaking services, has been on 250 blind dates, but he has yet to find a wife.

Larry sounds like a really unlucky guy, but according to the New York Post and Yahoo Shine, he’s apparently just really picky. “His problem is he’s a six and he wanted tens,” Maureen Tara Nelson, one of his former matchmakers told Shine. He would pick out his dates according to their photos and profiles, but at the end he’d always say there was no chemistry. The Post also paints out the retired Wall Street trader as very detail-oriented: he wants a woman who is slim, Jewish, funny, and a non-alpha (isn’t interested in a career). That’s apparently a very rare breed in New York. “He thinks because he’s wealthy he could get a beautiful women, but what he doesn’t realize is that beautiful women in New York are also already successful,” Nelson said.

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31-year-old Rachel Held Evans has spent an entire year trying to follow of the Bible’s instructions for menstruating women, from “submitting” to their husbands to removing themselves from the community. Now she’s launching a book on her religious experiment, called “A Year of Biblical Womanhood”.

The Tennessee-based evangelical blogger set out to obey the Bible’s strict rules for women on their period, from Leviticus Chapters 15 to 18. In case you didn’t know, the Holy Book sets a strict set of rules for women, some explicit, others implied, and Evans tried to obey most of them as precisely as possible. During the 12-month-long experience, she stayed home from church, made her own clothes, abstained from sex and even touching her husband, let her hair grow, slept in a tent once a month, and even carried a  seat cushion with her wherever she went to avoid sitting on chairs outside her home. It might sound funny, even kooky, but  through her experiment Rachel tries to make a serious point: all Christians choose to respect those parts of the Bible that suit them.

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40-year-old Julia Abdullah, from Malaysia, was obsessed with her self-cleaning rituals. Her bizarre behavior started 20 years ago, but it gradually got worse to the point where she was washing her hands up to 300 times a day, spending 5 hours in the shower and shampooing her hair 25 times per day.

Julia first noticed something was amiss two decades ago. She was working as a laboratory technician, and often handled urine and stool culture samples, as well as blood samples for HIV tests. She started spending increasingly more time on washing her hands, for fear of contamination, and although she suspected she had developed OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), she didn’t seek help. “I thought I could will myself off the washing,” Julia remembers, but her condition only got worse. She eventually lost her job as her obsession caused her to be constantly late for work, and needed to find other ways to pay her rapidly increasing house utility bills. At one point the  woman became so desperate that she started scavenging through her neighbors’ trash looking for stuff she could sell. In a short period of time she amassed a collection of junk that occupied the two-room flat she shared with her mom. The hoarding got so bad that her mother had to sleep at the stairwell as there was no ventilation or natural light in the flat. “It finally got too much for me to bear. I got so angry that I stopped bathing for three months,” Ms Julia told the Malaysia Chronicle, but her obsessive-washing habits were hardly cured.

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Fish are regarded as the most low maintenance of pets, but even they need a minimum degree of care, like making sure they’re fed every day and cleaning their tank from time to time. But the Robo-Fish invented by Japanese company Takara Tomy A.R.T.S. makes having a pet fish a carefree job.

Robo-Fish are not only meant to look like real exotic fish, but they also act like them when powered on. They scour the bottom of their tank as if they’re looking for food, and rise to the surface looking for floating bits of food. The only thing that gives them away as robotic fish is a small gap between their tail and the rest of the body, but other than that they look and move like the real deal. People too busy to even throw their live fish some food every once in a while need only go to Amazon and spend $37 for one Robo-Fish. The worst that can happen is the robotic fish runs out of battery, but that’s easily fixable.

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It’s not the kind of job students dream of during university years, but for 22-year-old Jamie Fox being a human scarecrow in a rape field really is a great gig. It gives him the chance to sit down, read a book and even improve his ukelele-playing skills.

Jamie graduated from Bangor University this summer, with a degree in music and English, but until he finds a job he likes in the music business, he’s more than happy to put on a bright orange suit and play a scarecrow in a rape field, in Norfolk, England. “The farmer said to me, ‘Bring a deckchair and a good book’,” Mr. Fox says, and that’s exactly what he did. Now he just enjoys the peace and quiet, and the fresh air while catching up on some reading, listening to podcasts and playing the ukelele during his daily 8-hour shifts. “I get to sit and read for a lot of the time but whenever I see the partridges, I have to get up and scare them off,” the young man said. “A couple of my friends in busier, more generously-paid jobs, are slightly envious.” And for good reason, who wouldn’t want to earn £250 ($400) a week just sitting around in the great outdoors?

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