Hundreds of ballerinas of all ages gathered on Monday, in Central Park, New York, to set a new world record for standing on pointe.

Led by a desire to leave their mark on the world of ballet dancing, 241 ballerinas from New York’s dance school attempted to set a new Guinness world record, by standing on pointe simultaneously. Most of them heard about the challenge online, and decided to “make history through dance” with other fellow ballerinas.

At the signal of Craig Salstein, a soloist with the American Ballet Theater, the ballerinas attempted to stand on their toes. 230 of them managed to maintain their pose for 1 minute and 7 seconds, thus beating the old record set last year. by 220 other ballerinas.

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That’s right fans of the Dark Knight, your favorite superhero is finally settling down with the love of his life, none other than Wonder Woman. Surrounded by their superhero friends, the lovely couple said “I do” in front of Joker, who played master of ceremonies.

46-year-old Neil Vaughan, and 40-year-old Sharon are not the most traditional people in England, so they decided to get married as their favorite superheroes, and asked their attending friends to follow their example. Neil wanted to be Batman ever since he was a child, and his wife said she always dreamed of being Wonder Woman. They spent under 300 pounds on costumes, to finally fulfill their dreams.

Robin, Batman’s faithful sidekick, was his best man on the big day, while the adorable Powerpuff Girls were bridesmaids. The cast of superheroes at this incredible wedding included The Hulk, Spiderman, Superman, Ironman, Captain America, Wolverine and many others.

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31 overweight beauties of Italy competed for the title of “Miss Cicciona“, which translates as Miss Chubby, in the yearly contest of Forcoli.

The only entry condition for Miss Cicciona is related to the weight of the contestants. Women have to be at least 100 kilograms heavy, in order to be admitted. The lucky ones then try to impress the judges by parading in glamorous gowns, or undergarments. The bravest of the women even try striptease routines to gain an edge. The winner doesn’t get a prize, just a boost in self esteem and a huge cake to share with her competitors.

Miss Cicciona was founded to show the beauty of overweight women. Most of them are mocked and humiliated every time they go out in public, and this is a welcome opportunity to actually be proud and feel good about how they look.

This year’s winner of Miss Cicciona was 33-year old Angela Scognamiglio, from Naples. The 170 kilogram heavy beauty said she “felt like she had just won the lottery”.

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Scott Burr, a chemistry professor at Gustavus Adolphus College, in Minnesota, returned from his vacation to find his office a lot shinier than he left it.

Upon returning from his well-deserved Summer vacation, the young chemistry professor found his office had fallen victim to some really resourceful students. Everything in the office, including pens, books and even his box of Kleenex tissues were individually wrapped in aluminum foil. The students were so meticulous they even wrapped a tissue in foil and put it back in the box, for effect.

Mister Burr said this kind of pranks have become somewhat of a tradition. In previous years, students have turned his office into a pirate ship and draped his office in pink. But he admits this year’s effort really impressed him, as he has never experienced anything like this.

One of the students involved in the college prank said he and his colleagues used 10 200-foot long rolls of tin foil, to pull the whole thing of.

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PETA (People for the Ethic Treatment of Animals) staged some pretty original protests in the past, but its most recent, “Meat Is Murder” was a bit on the shocking size. The event took place July 27th, in Times Square, New York.

PETA demonstrators  acted like packed pieces of meat, the kind you see in most every supermarket, only a lot bloodier. The human meat packs were branded with stickers that read ‘Billions of Animals Are Abused and Violently Killed Because You Eat Meat’. Now doesn’t that make you feel guilty?

I’ll confess I was moved by a few of these protests, but this particular one just managed to gross me out. I think PETA would be much wiser to stop condemning everyone who eats meat, and just militate for the ethical treatment of animals raised for slaughter, before they are sacrificed. To hope everyone will just stop eating meat is just unrealistic, and quite frankly their zero-policy attitude is doing more harm than good.

Let me know if these trays of packed human meat convinced you to stop eating meat. They just made me hungry. Read More »

With the Luxury Cat Hotel now open in Hertfordshire, you can rest assured your cat will have a nicer holiday than you, the next time you go on vacation.

Abi and Matt Purser, the owners of this five-star pet hotel, have always believed cats deserve the same attention and care as their owners, and that’s how the idea for their business was born. Now, while their human owners are getting pampered on some exotic island, their cat enjoys the same star treatment at the Luxury Cat Hotel.

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A 36-foot-tall meerkat statue made of straw has appeared on a field, in Chester, England, drawing the attention of drivers on the A51 motorway.

I don’t know if you remember, but last year I wrote a post about a straw replica of the Big Ben, built by the owner of an ice-cream company. His straw creations have become sort of a tradition in Chester, and this year he raised the bar even higher with an incredible meerkat straw statue.

Chris Sadler and his wife Cheryl have been coming up with ideas for straw statues since 1998, when their first creation, the straw Millennium Dome, was created, and have continued delivering wacky ideas that ended up being built by Mike Harper, who creates metal structures and fills them with hay.

The idea of a meerkat statue was inspired by a popular commercial in the UK, and since everyone loves these creatures, it seemed like a good idea. The public certainly loves the overgrown meerkat, and most people say they feel cheered up just looking at it.

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If your parents are anything like mine, they probably told you money doesn’t grow on trees more than a million times, when you were growing up. Well I can’t wait to show them how wrong they were all those years.

In an attempt to “wake up people’s lazy money”, RaboDirect, an Australian online bank sponsored a special experiment that fulfilled the financial fantasies of hundreds of passers-by – a real-life money tree. The event took place in one of Sydney’s park, where a tree was covered in $5 bills, from its lower branches to the top. People were secretly filmed, to see how they would react to such an unbelievable sight.

Believe it or not, the first 100 or so people who walked by the money tree flat out ignored it. Some of them didn’t even notice there was anything odd about the tree, a group of joggers was to busy running to stop and check it out, and passers-by who did stop to analyze it, just took some photos and left empty handed.

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Chinese artist Qiao Lianchun, along with 25 other artists, is claiming the Guinness world record for the longest piece of embroidery.

The 25-meter-long, 0.96-meter-tall embroidered work of art may not look like much from a distance, but it took a team of artists two years to complete. Made up of 3, 150,000 stitches, the embroidery inspired by the classic Chinese painting ‘Along the River during Qing Ming Festival’, involved the use of 50,000 meters of thread, in 120 different colors.

Embroidery is a really fascinating art, and Qiao Lianchun took it to the extreme. He spent 27 months just traveling trough China’s Yunnan Province, looking for talented artists and craftsman to help him fulfill his dream. The “stitched painting” was created at Qiao Liachun’s factory, in Baoshan, and ever since its unveiling, people from all over China have been coming to see it.

After he receives his Guinness record, Qiao Lianchun hopes to sell his embroidered painting for $500,000.

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Antisa Khvichava, from a village called Sachino, 370 km west of Tbilisi, Georgia, has just turned 130, making her the oldest woman on Earth, by 16 years.

I don’t know about you guys, but I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that this woman has been around since 1880. Although her birth certificate has been lost, Antisa has Soviet-era documents that clearly state she was born in the second half of the 19th century. She has a son, ten grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren and six great-great-grandchildren. Her 70-year-old son was apparently born when she was already 60 years old.

Antisa Khvichava, born on July 8, 1880, says she has been healthy all her life, and she worked as a corn picker until the age of 85. The Gerontology Research Group currently recognizes 114-old Eugenie Blanchard, from France, as the oldest woman on Earth.

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Shi Liliang, a monk from the Southern Shaolin Temple in Quanzhou, has performed the popular kung-fu walk on water.

If you’re a fan of old Chinese kung-fu movies (I know I am), than you must have seen the kung-fu flight on water at least once. A kung-fu master would cross vast stretches of water by making long leaps and barely touching the surface of the water with the tip of their feet. It seemed impossible, and it actually is, but that didn’t stop a Shaolin monk from trying it in real life.

Shi Liliang has been practicing his flight on water for years, and last year he even set a record for the longest walk on water. Using a number of thin planks, loosely tied together, Shi Liliang beat his own record and moved 28.7 meters by quickly running on his toes. Unlike what you see in the movies, he eventually ended up in the water.

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China’ may not have been present at the World Cup 2010, in South Africa, but its team of football playing roosters would probably win any competition.

Zhang Lijun has always been a big fan of football, but he decided to take his passion for the sport to a whole new level three years, when he started training his roosters to handle a ball. Now, chickens aren’t exactly famous for their intelligence and ability to learn new things, but Zhang’s roosters have developed mad football skills.

The unusual football team is made up of only two players, and they recently had to go head to head in a mock World Cup match, on the city streets, in Liaoling Province China. Zhang Lijun played the role of the referee, while the two roosters used their feet and wings to handle the ball. Passers-by gathered to watch the bizarre spectacle and were surprised by the bird’s dribbling skills.

Maybe Zhang’s roosters should play in the national football team, or may be he could be the new coach. Either way, China would have a higher chance of qualifying next time.

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That’s right there are people out there who gladly cash out on reenacting the dramatic sinking of the Titanic, in a totally fun way.

An even more surprising is the fact that people actually pay to to go down with the Titanic. I mean COME ON, didn’t you see those tragic scenes from James Cameron’s film where people were hanging on for their lives, while the ship was sinking? Why would you want to go through that, even if it’s in a totally harmless manner?

In the Swiss town of Ibach, the inflatable Titanic slide was pretty popular with the visitors at the local fair, but it ended up being banned, following complaints from Switzerland’s Titanic Club. Spokesman Gunter Babler said “Is it ethical to let kids slide down the decks of a blow up Titanic? Hundreds of people died sliding down those decks.” And a visitor thought “It’s pretty sick. It’s like having a bouncy graveyard. No-one could forget that scene from the Titanic movie with all the people sliding down the decks to their deaths. It’s very insensitive.”

Still, the fair organizer believes “The tragic Titanic accident happened years ago and those emotions have been dealt with long ago. Now people are having fun on the slide and enjoying themselves.” Oh, that makes sense. Hey, I know, how about making an inflatable Auschwitz replica, getting people inside and “gassing” them with laughing gas? That sounds fun, and it’s been so long since the Holocaust there’s no reason why people shouldn’t have fun remembering it…

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Around 1,500 people showed up at the Bottle Inn pub, in Marshwood, Dorset, to see 61 contestants compete in the 2010 edition of the annual Nettle Eating World Championships.

The history of this bizarre eating competition can be traced back to the mid 1980s, when local farmers started the ‘Longest Stinging Nettle’ competition, to see who could grow the longest stem of nettles. Things went along just fine, until 1989, when Alex Williams presented a 15ft 6inches-long nettle, and claimed that if anyone could find a stem longer than his, he would it, As luck would have it, an American actually found a 16ft-long nettle, and Mr. Williams kept his word. From there on in, the competition evolved into the competitive eating challenge we now know as the Nettle Eating World Championships.

On June 19th, competitors were each served two-feet-long stinging nettle stalks, from which they had to pluck and eat the leaves. After an hour of eating, the bare stalks were measured and contestants who ate the most nettles, named winners.

In the men’s competition, first time participant Sam Cunningham managed to eat a whopping 74ft of stinging nettles, and claimed the title of king of the 2010 Nettle Eating World Championships. In the women’s contest, Laura Revell managed to consume 40ft of nettle, and win the title of champion.

Photos by REUTERS/Chris Helgren via Daylife

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The 60 tons of junk that made up the awesome Cathedral of Junk, in Austin, Texas, are probably on their way to the recycling plant right now, leaving us with just photos and memories of the famous roadside attraction.

Vince Hannemann began building the Cathedral of Junk in 1988, just because he thought it would be cool. There’s was no real purpose behind it, just a nice thing to build in an Austin backyard. He was in his mid twenties when he started, and he kept adding do it over the years, until it grew into a 60-ton pile of junk. But it wasn’t really junk, it was just made of it. In reality, the Cathedral of Junk had long become one of the cities most popular attractions. Tourists were coming over just to give Vince something new to add to his masterpiece, but, sadly, that won’t be happening anymore…

After a safety complaint, fro one of his neighbors, real estate inspectors showed up at Vince Hannemann’s door, saying he needed to get a permit, if he wanted to keep his 33-f00t-tall cathedral, made of everything from bicycle wheels to old urinals, computers and lawnmowers. he tried to comply, and together with a team of volunteers, began altering the cathedral to meet required standards. But looking at his beloved creation being reduced to something he didn’t recognize anymore, Vince decided to tear it down. “It already isn’t the Cathedral. It might best be described as Junkhenge,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “I’m not willing to get a permit for the little that is left.”

According to many, this was the work of real estate firms, who did everything they could to bring down the Cathedral of Junk. It’s a sad time for the Austin art world…

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