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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51-year-old Canadian social worker, Line Rainville, is a Star Trek superfan. She loves the 1960s Original Series so much that she spent $30,000 to bring the Enterprise spaceship into her basement. Rainville re-created parts of the bridge, transporter room, observation deck, recreation room and Spock’s quarters in her home in Notre-Dame-des-Prairies, Quebec.

You’ve got to be a Star Trek fan yourself to truly appreciate what Rainville has done here. It wasn’t easy for her to find pieces of furniture and décor that matched the theme of the series. She used custom-built furniture for the stations on the bridge that would face a central viewing screen (the TV). She had to get her widescreen TV to fit the space reserved for bridge viewing screen, which was a tricky process.

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It’s hard to believe that there are people in this world who have no idea about the internet or cell phones. These are tribes that are completely cut-off from global civilization and do not welcome any kind of contact from the outside world.

North Sentinel Island, a part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal Ocean between Myanmar and Indonesia, is home to one such tribe. The Sentinelese people are so hostile to external contact that the island has been dubbed the ‘hardest place to visit’ in the world.

The Sentinelese are thought to be direct descendants of the first humans who emerged from Africa. They have lived on the tiny island for almost 60,000 years. Their exact population is unknown; it could be as low as 40 or as high as 500.

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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 are plenty of natural treasures hidden away in the most unsuspecting places on Earth. One of them is an Indonesian sulfur mine, Kawah Ijen, that produces stunning, spectral blue lava. The images of this mine are so breathtaking, I could just stare at them for hours.

Kawah Ijen is a part of the Ijen volcano complex – a group of stratovolcanoes in East Java, Indonesia – with an active crater that’s 200 meters deep. The complex is also home to the world’s largest turquoise-colored acidic lake, full of sulfuric acid. The lake is a sulfur mining site; miners carry sulfur-laden baskets by hand from the crater floor.

The miners work at night to double their meagre income, but they don’t have to worry about the dark. Kawah Ijen, an ordinary rocky crater by day, transforms into a stunning display of electric blue light at night.

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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 »

Ben Heine, a 30-year-old Belgian artist, creates amazing life-size 3D sketches. He then takes pictures of himself stepping into his own drawings. So he creates incredible images of his real-life self walking a black-and-white tiger, being held at gunpoint, and staring at a hand-drawn self-portrait.

Ben makes use of a very interesting technique called anamorphosis. It requires the viewer to look at the sketches from a very specific angle, to see the complete effect. From a different perspective, these ‘illusions’ look slightly distorted. “It was very exciting to create these works because I like new challenges and I like to surprise,” Ben said. What’s amazing is that he sketches freehand, in just a single take, using a mixture of charcoal sticks and graphite pencils. The works are re-touched in post-production. It takes him a week to complete each drawing.

The sketches begin as pencil drawings and the shading is added using charcoal sticks. For large dark areas in the composition, Ben uses as many as 15 pencils and three charcoal sticks. “I’m actually using a mix of charcoal sticks for the large shadows and thick dark lines and graphite pencils for the smallest details and soft shadows,” he said. “Both materials are carbon based so they still belong to the same medium.

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Now this is what I call a dream diet. John Cisna, a school teacher from Iowa, ate only at McDonald’s for three whole months and managed to lose 37 pounds (16 kilograms)! He even made a short documentary on his experiences.

John’s project was inspired by the 2004 documentary film, Supersize Me. It featured an American filmmaker, Morgan Spurlock, who also ate only McDonald’s food for 30 days. At the end of that period, Spurlock reported a drastic deterioration of his physical and psychological health. Which is why John’s findings are almost unbelievable. In spite of eating for a longer period of time at the fast food chain, he reported better health and weight loss. In fact, there has been a large improvement in his blood cholesterol after the three-month period.

How could it be that two experiments, so similar to each other, reported such different results? Simple. John followed a much smarter plan that Spurlock did. John and his team of students formulated a plan that would allow him to eat fast food and still stay healthy. “I can eat any food at McDonald’s I want as long as I’m smart for the rest of the day with what I balance it out with,” he said.

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A Canadian automotive products company recently built a pretty cool truck, quite literally. It was made of ice!

Canadian Tire, in Zurich, Ontario, wanted to advertise the MotoMaster Eliminator Ultra battery that works at subzero temperatures. So they built a frozen truck using 14,000 pounds of ice. They also froze the battery to -40 degrees Celsius before using it to start the vehicle. During the test drive, the ice truck actually moved at a speed of 12 miles per hour for about a mile.

To create the Canadian Tire Ice Truck (as they call it), a team of professionals completely stripped the body off of a 2005 GMC Silverado. They fitted it with a steel frame, and ice sculptors were called in to chisel out the frozen vehicle around the frame of a regular chassis. “It was probably one of the biggest challenges we’ve ever done,” said Heidi Bayley, from Iceculture (the company that sculpted the truck).

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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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To be the ‘strongest kid in the world’ is a childhood dream that never translates into reality for most kids. But Jake Schellenschlager has managed to come very, very close to this goal. Inspiration hit him when he was 12 years old – when he saw his dad working out one day. Jake hasn’t looked back ever since. The 14-year-old American is now a weightlifter who can lift more than twice his own body weight.

At 5 foot 3 inches and 119 pounds, Jake has been setting world records for his weight class (under 123 pounds). Last June, he broke the world record for the squat for his age and weight at the Powerlifting Bench Press Championships in York, Pennsylvania. He lifted 136 kilograms (that’s 300 pounds – more than twice his body weight). Jake has been training for the past two-and-a-half years, without missing a single day. He gets the courage to keep going from his father. “My dad is super strong,” he says. “When I see him, it gives me motivation.” Jake and his dad work out together at their gym in Glen Burnie, Maryland.

According to Jake’s trainer, Mike Sarni, the teenager has displayed astounding mental strength. “He doesn’t feel he can be defeated,” said Sarni. “It is that inner strength that tells him, ‘I can do this.’ Usually, you get that in older, more mature people.” While his face is still that of a sweet little boy, his body is completely the opposite. Jake’s muscles are ripped and you can see the determination etched on his face in his weight lifting pictures.

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In 2005, the Atlantic Road was honored as Norway’s Construction of the Year. The National Tourist Route runs between two Norwegian towns – Kristiansund and Molde – that are the main population centers in the county of More og Romsdal in Western Norway.

The Atlantic Road (Atlantic Ocean Road) is an 8.3 kilometer long section of County Road 64, running through an archipelago and passing by Hustadvika, an unsheltered part of the Norwegian Sea. The structure is built on several small islands and skerries that are connected by causeways, viaducts and eight bridges. The longest and most prominent of the bridges is the 260 meter long Storseisundet Bridge.

But mere facts about the Atlantic Road do no justice to its magnificence. You need to see pictures to realize just how breathtaking it is. An aerial view of this long structure snaking through the sea is simply breathtaking. It’s hard for me to believe these pictures are real; they seem like someone’s imagination manifested on my screen. Better still, you could visit the road yourself and drive across it to experience its complete beauty. In fact, the Atlantic Road has been declared the world’s best road trip and is a popular site for automotive commercials.

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The concept of bachelor pads isn’t unique to humans. Male bowerbirds are amazing architects, but they reserve theirs skills for just one purpose – finding a mate. They construct such elaborate and dazzling nests to impress females, perhaps they could teach our men a thing or two about home décor.

Male bowerbirds use embellishments such as coins, nails, leaves, shells, seeds, flowers and live insects to weave their nests, called bowers. Bowers are U-shaped nests built with twigs and grass, and carpeted with moss. Each bower is an architectural marvel that stretches out 5 or 6 yards across, complete with a thatched roof and supporting pillars.

Blue is a very important color in the construction process. Male bowerbirds use several blue objects – berries, flowers, bottle caps and string – to attract prospective mates. Research has proven that females are attracted to bowers with the most number of blue decorations. Because blue objects are rare in a bowerbird’s environment, a male who is able to acquire them and protect them is deemed superior.

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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 »