Hundreds of people running through the streets of London, dressed in gorilla suits, may sound like monkeying around, but it’s actually pretty serious.

While the annual Great Gorilla Run is a pretty fun event, the reason behind the event is very serious. The number of Mountain gorillas around the world is declining rapidly, and if something radical isn’t done soon, our children will probably know them as an extinct species. Through the Great Gorilla Run, the Great Gorilla Organization is trying to raise money for saving the endangered primates.

The seventh edition of the Great Gorilla Run saw 700 fake gorillas (about as many Mountain Gorillas are in the wild today) line up at the starting line, for a 7 kilometer run through London. The wacky race started in central London, in front of the Minister Court, went on along the Thames to St. Paul’s Cathedral, past Tower Bridge, and all the way to the Tate Modern Art Gallery.

Participants were dressed in various gorilla outfits, from Scottish gorillas, to businessmen gorillas and even a gorilla impersonating Che Guevara.

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Every year, teams from various countries around the world gather in Britain to compete in the Nailympics – the ultimate fake nail showdown.

For the last six years, the world’s top manicutists have been coming to Britain to show their skill in the art of fake nail making. Everyone knows everyone, but because of the accumulated  tension before every event, they don’t even talk to each other. After all, their personal egos and national pride are at stakes so there’s no place for courtesy, just focus and the desire to prove they’re number one.

Most people think of fake nails as the basic acrylic pieces glued as extensions to natural nails, but the competitors in the annual Nailympics create regular masterpieces, using  methods like airbrushing and the embedding of jewels and other trinkets. An explosion of creative madness, the fake nails entered in the “fantasy nail art” event range from fairies, pagodas and complete forest landscapes to flashing lights and revolving designs powered by small batteries strapped to the wrist.

Few people outside the nail industry has heard about the Nailympics, but it’s popularity is definitely on the rise, as the 30,000 visitors, this year, clearly show. With the manicure business still as flourishing as ever, despite the recession, the interest in over-the-top nail style is comparable to the impractical clothes showcased in fashion-shows around the world.

Some of the designs featured in the Nailympics may look ridiculous, and they may not be the perfect for doing the dishes, but to the people in the industry they “display the mastery of the nail technician’s craft.”

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The Pumpkin Boat Race of Ludwigsburg Pumpkin Festival has people racing each other in hollowed out pumpkins, across Ludwigsburg Lake.

Known as the biggest pumpkin related event in the world, the Ludwigsburg Pumpkin Festival draws in pumpkin enthusiasts from all around the globe, every year. They travel to the small German town to see over 500,000 pumpkins, from 450 different varieties, arranged in all kinds of different shapes, from animals to abstract sculptures.

One of the most eagerly awaited events of the Ludwigsburg Pumpkin Festival is the pumpkin boat race. Giant pumpkins, some of them over 90 kg heavy, are hollowed out and launched onto Ludwigsburg Lake, and contestants have to paddle their way to the finish line, in the cheers of onlookers. I’m not sure what the prize is for winning such a bizarre boat race, but I could swear it’s something related to pumpkins.

If you’re a pumpkin lover yourself, you’ll be happy to know the Ludwigsburg Pumpkin Festival continues until early November.

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To mark the 70th anniversary of The Battle of Britain, farmer Tom Percy created a giant maze, shaped like a Spitfire fighter plane.

Tom Percy has made a name for himself, after creating a series of incredible corn field mazes, just outside Yorkshire town, in Britain. In previous years, he designed mazes shaped as an astronaut, the Statue of Liberty, the Flying Scotsman, Big Ben and a Viking longship. This year, he really outdid himself, creating one of the biggest mazes in the world, the size of 8 football fields.

Using GPS technology, Tom completed his giant Spitfire plane in just one week. And what’s even more amazing is that he managed to create an intricate maze, from over one million corn plants, inside the shape of the fighter plane.

Measuring over 1,000 feet in length, Tom Percy’s maze is the largest image of the famous World War 2 fighter.

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A hybrid of football and table tennis, headis is a fun, easy-to-play sport that’s becoming more and more popular with each passing day.

As you probably already guessed, headis is pretty similar to table tennis, only you have to hit the ball with your head. All you need to play headis is a regular tennis table and a special rubber ball with special bouncing properties, and that is probably the main reason why the sport is played by more people every day.

Headis was invented in 2006, by René Wegner, a sports science student at the University of Saarbruecker, in Germany. Because the football field was occupied, Wegner started hitting a football back and forth on a tennis table, with a fellow student. That’s when he got the idea for a new sport that soon spread throughout Germany.

While it may seem very similar to table tennis, headis is actually more comparable to badminton. Since players have to get behind and underneath the ball, they workout all parts of the body, at all times.

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Xia Yu, a man who really believes in the concept of recycling, has built a functional boat out of 2,010 plastic bottles.

The 37-year-old boat builder gathered all the plastic bottles at a tea-house he manages in Xiangtan, central Hunan Province, China. Every time a customer left behind a plastic bottle, he just added it to his supply, until he got the number he needed to start construction on his boat.

This is not Xia Yu’s first plastic bottle boat. Last year, he built hos first one out of 1,500 plastic bottles and sailed 35 miles in it. This experience gave him the confidence to built a second, larger boat, to sail in all the way to Shanghai, for the World Expo. His second creation is seven meters long, features 5 sails ( the tallest of which las a special message that reads “Low carbon emission, beautiful world”) and has room for a six man crew.

Although when he began his journey to the Shanghai World Expo, in May, he expected it to last only 45 days, Xia Yu only arrived at the event on September 15, after sailing over 1,000 miles. He hopes his achievement will raise awareness to the environmental problems afecting our lives every day.

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Hundreds of odd sports fans gathered in Minsk, Belarus, for the 8th edition of the country’s Cell-phone Throwing Championship.

It may not be the only competition of its kind in the world, but the phone throwing championship of Belarus is definitely the most important, at least for Belorussians. They take so much interest in this wacky event that they actually film and televise it.

The 8th edition of the Cell-phone Throwing Championship took place last Saturday, and consisted of several phone throwing events, including long distance throwing and precision tossing, where contestants had to throw their mobile devices into plastic buckets. Throwers received scores from a group of judges, and although prizes were not revealed, I’m pretty sure winners got a new phone.

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Wang Luyao, a junior student at the Commercial Service College in Wuhan, has built a perfectly functional boat out of sheets of paper.

In an attempt to raise awareness about recycling, and green living in general, Wang used his paper boat to cross from one side of the Hanjiang River to the other. Escorted by two normal canoes, the young student jumped in his paper boat and rowed the 800-meter distance in just seven minutes, proving that boats made of recycled paper really are an environment-friendly solution.

Wang Luyao’s paper boat is 1.9 meters long, 1.2 meters wide, weighs 45 kg, and is made out of raw sheets of paper that the young student collected, himself.

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Every March, the Wat Bang Phra temple of Nakhom Pathom, Thailand, becomes the scene of a weird celebration, known as  the Wat Bang Phra Tattoo Festival.

While in most western countries tattoos are viewed as an art form, in Thailand, a country with a culture deeply rooted in superstition and spirituality, tattoos are considered more than just skin deep artworks. The traditional Thai tattoos, known as “Sak Yant”, are believed to have magical powers, and people get them done at temples, for protection against evil spirits, and as good luck charms. Many members of Thai police, army, and the underworld think some tattoos have the power to stop bullets and blades from piercing their skin.

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Switzerland and Belgium may be the world’s most famous chocolate-making countries, but tiny Armenia has just stolen some of their spotlight by creating the largest chocolate bar, ever.

The sweet event took place in Armenia’s capital of Yerevan, and was organized by the Grand Candy Factory – a local chocolate making company – as a way to celebrate to celebrate its 10 years of existence. Guinness Book representatives were invited to take part in the unveiling of the chocolate monster created, and to make sure this event goes into the record books.

The giant chocolate bar weighs 4,400 kilograms, is 224 inches long, 110 inches wide, 10 inches thick and is made from cocoa beans from Ghana. In the following weeks, the world’s biggest chocolate down will be chipped into pieces and handed out to freely around Yerevan.

The previous record for the world’s biggest chocolate bar was set in 2007, in Italy.

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Every September 8th, the Spanish towns of Baza and Guadix host the Festival of Cascamorras, an event unique to the Granada region of Spain.

According to legend, the origin of “La Fiesta del Cascamorras” can be traced back to 1490, when Don Luis de Acuña Herrera decided to built the Church of Mercy in the town of Baza, where a Moazarabic mosque had previously been erected. While chiseling a block of plaster, Juan Pedernal, a worker from the nearby town of Guadix, heard a soft, soothing voice coming from inside a cavern, which said “Have mercy!”. Upon examining the cavity he stumbled upon a statue of the Virgin Mary, that came to be known as “Our Lady of Mercy”.

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Chris Verschueren, a 53-year-old French fries maker, from the Belgian village of Kastel, has set a new world record after cooking and selling French fries for 83 consecutive hours.

Verschueren turned on his deep fryer on Friday morning and didn’t stop frying potato chips until Monday evening. During this cooking marathon, the tenacious chip-maker only took a 100 minute break to shower and do some stretching. After cooking up 1,500 kilograms of potatoes, Chris Verschueren had this to say: “My fingers are burnt, my feet are sore and my wrist is painful, but it doesn’t matter, I’m going to party now.”

Although he couldn’t reach his goal of selling 1,500 bags of French fries, the national Belgian dish, Verschueren managed to break the old record for non-stop French fry making, of 72 hours, set in 1987 by a British cook.

Apart from his passion for making French fries and the desire to have his name mentioned in the record books, Chris Verschueren took on this challenge to raise funds for a children’s hospital.

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47 -year-old Steve Wozniak, a lure fisherman from California, has traveled the world over, in his quest to catch as many different species of fish as possible. So far he managed to catch 1,000 species, from a colorful Threadfin Butterflyfish to a 410 kilogram shark.

Believe it or not, Steve Wozniak has spent the last 10 years, and $75,000 traveling to 63 different countries in the search for new species of fish to put on his list. He flew over 1 million air miles, and spent over 20,000 hours holding his trusty rod and hoping for a bite. But all his efforts paid out when he finally caught his 1,000th fish species, a Norwegian coalfish, and set a new world record.

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Yesterday, thousands of redheads gathered in the Dutch city of Breda, for the fifth edition of the Red Head Festival. Participants were asked to come dressed in white, a color that really compliments their hair color, and were able to take part in all kinds of fun activities, workshops and even a fashion show.

The main criteria for attending the Red Hair Festival is that participants have natural red hair, but the event itself is not all about the hair, but the color read, in general. This unique event can be traced back to 2005, when Dutch painter Bart Rouwenhorst advertised for 15 red-haired models he wanted to paint. 150 people answered his ad and the painting session turned into an annual event for redheads. Last year , 4,000 redheads attended the Red Head Festival, and their number surpassed 5,000 in 2010.

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The Fireball Festival is an old tradition celebrated each year, on August 31st, in the town of Nejapa, El Salvador.

“Las Bolas de Fuego”, as the locals refer to this bizarre event, is actually a reenactment of the fight between San Jeronimo and the devil. In 1922, the people of Nejapa and the surrounding area were forced to evacuate, by the eruption of a nearby volcano. As they were leaving, locals saw great balls of fire spewing out of the volcano, and believed their patron saint was actually fighting the devil with them.

Ever since they witnessed the fight between good and evil, the people of Nejapa have celebrated it each year, by organizing their very own fireball fight. If you didn’t know this was an organized celebration, you’d be tempted to think you’ve been dropped in the middle of a war-zone. Two teams of young men, with their faces covered by war paint, throw flaming fireballs at each other, surrounded by hundreds of bystanders who watch their every move.

Equipped with gloves and clothes soaked in water, the brave combatants throw and at the same time, evade the flaming fireballs made from rags and dipped in fuel. Some of their clothes do catch on fire, and some of the participants are often hit right in the face, at point blank, but despite all the health hazards, few injuries have been reported during the Fireball Festival.

It’s definitely a shocking display, but un a country like El Salvador, where gangs and violence are everywhere, getting hit by a flaming fireball, during “Las Bolas de Fuego” is the least dangerous thing that can happen.

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