From the country that brought us rugby and soccer comes one of the oldest, hardest and weirdest ball games in the world, the Eton Wall Game.

It’s not clear when the Eton Wall Game was invented, but the first recording of a game dates back to 1766. Its rules were changed several times up to 1849, but have remained unchanged ever since. The game originated at Eton college, along a slightly crooked brick wall, built in 1717. The most important game is played on St. Andrew’s Day, between a team of Collegers and Oppidants.

People kicking a ball along a brick wall sounds a little like soccer, but the 5-meters wide, 110-meters-long pitch makes the Eton Wall Game special. Each ten-player team tries to get the ball to the far end of the opposite side and score a goal, without handling the ball, hold or hit their opponents or get caught offside. As you can imagine, scoring a goal under these conditions can be rather difficult. In fact, the last one was scored 100 years ago, in 1909.

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To celebrate the release of the “New Super Mario Bros” video game for the Nintendo Wii gaming system, a makeshift Super Mario Museum popped up at the Nintendo World Store in Rockefeller Center, in New York.

Remember all that Mario every day stuff that came out throughout the years. we’re talking about Mario shampoo, Mario lunchboxes, cooking pans, paintings and even Super Mario adverts. All were showcased at the temporary Super Mario Museum, outside the Nintendo World Store, in New York City.

Thousands of fans gathered outside the establishment waiting to admire all the priceless memorabilia, compete in Super Mario video-game challenges and get their hands on a copy of the new video-game starring the popular Mario and Luigi duo.

If you haven’t had the chance to check out the Mario Museum on site, Wired offers you a set of photos revealing most of the Mario items on display:

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More and more overweight men and women who normally don’t go to clubs for fear of discrimination, choose places like Club Bounce of Butterfly Lounge.

Women who call themselves “BBW” (big, beautiful women) and “BHM” men (big, handsome men) have recently discovered there are places where they can go to dance and enjoy themselves without being laughed at or forced to wait in line at the entrance, just because they pack a few extra pounds. Tired of complaining, some of them decided to do something about these problems, so they opened special establishments like Club Bounce, in Long Beach, California and Butterfly Lounge, in Orange County.

This is where everybody’s welcome, thick or thin. Owners say they opened up their businesses as support for people like themselves, but they also get a large number of normal weight men who love big women and celebrate them. In this clubs like these big people can feel comfortable dancing , without everyone’s eyes focused on them and bring thinner friends for an experience they won’t soon forget.

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In the name of entertainment and adrenalin, Spain’s bull leapers, known as “recortadores”, continue an ancient tradition that can be traced back to 1500 BC, during King Minos’ reign.

Teams of 5 to 7 bull leapers gather each year in cities like Valencia or Barcelona, to take part in a performance that many compare to the Russian roulette. Each team may face up to three bulls in the ring, at once, taunting and jumping over them just when the beats prepare to impale them.

The bull leapers all look calm and brave, but they don’t hesitate to run for their lives after a successful jump or evasion, to stay well clear of the angry bulls. The atmosphere in the bullfighting arena is said to be exhilarating, with the crown cheering every successful trick.

Sure some may call these death-defying artists insane, but I have a lot more respect for them than I do for bullfighters. At least bull leaping doesn’t get the bull killed in a violent way. sadly it can’t quench the Spanish thirst for bull-fighting blood.

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In an attempt to set a new Guinness record and raise money for charity, hundreds of Australia gathered on the steps of the iconic Sydney Opera for the city’s largest ever swimwear parade.

Dressed only in bikinis and “smudgie smugglers” business men teamed up with construction workers and marched into Sydney’s financial district, all for a good cause. Although everyone had a lot of fun participating, their effort wasn’t enough to beat the recently set record for World’s Largest Swimsuit Parade. On November 9, 287 women took to the streets of Johannesburg, South Africa, dressed in swimwear and unfortunately for the Aussies, they couldn’t even match that.

The funds raised during the Sydney Swimwear Parade will go to the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience, an organization that encourages the young indigenous population to attend university.

Photos by Getty Images, AFP, EPA, AP, Reuters

via Etoday

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Hundreds of girls dressed only in their bikini take to the streets. I know, it’s every guy’s fantasy, but for once it came true, in South Africa.

That’s right boys, 287 girls walked 1,690 meters on Melrose Arch Boulevard, in Johannesburg,  and set a new Guinness record for the World’s Largest Bikini Parade. The girls used their sexuality to draw attention to the issue of breast cancer, a condition that affects one in every thirty South-African women.

The event took place on November 9th, 2009

Photos © Alexander Joe / AFP / Getty Images

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Guys will definitely appreciate these photos a lot more than girls, but I’m sure we can all agree the Ukrainian FEMEN group can protest in the most original way.

If you didn’t know anything about FEMEN, they are a group of women from the Ukraine, who protest in the most unusual ways, in order to raise awareness to feminist issues in their country. In an attempt to draw attention on the plight of Ukrainian prostitutes, the group’s members dressed-up as nurses “to cure foreigners of sex-addiction”

On November 9, 2009, the sexy members of FEMEN attracted quite a crowd in Kyiv square, when they appeared dressed in underwear made from swine flu masks. This was their way of protesting against authorities using the flu outbreak to scare citizens before Ukraine’s presidential elections, on January 17.

FEMEN members acknowledged it’s their sexiness that draws attention and admits most people would ignore their protests if they were wearing normal clothes.

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The things people will do for money…

To advertise their new Chinese food products, KFC has hired seven young people to dress-up as shrimps and live together in a small glass house. That’s not so difficult if you’re doing it for just a day, but these guys have been sharing a small space since October 22.

I don’t see a toilet anywhere in the glass house, so I suppose they are allowed to go to the bathroom outside the confined space. Still finding stuff to do in there for around to weeks, with passers-by checking you out like animals at the zoo can’t be easy.

Photos by Imagine China

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Members of the Unification Church, all around the world, took part in the world’s largest mass wedding officiated by reverend Sun Myung Moon, founder of the controversial church.

Over 20,000 people filled up the Sun Moon University campus, in Seoul, South Korea, to celebrate Sun Myung Moon’s 90th birthday and his 50th wedding anniversary with wife Han Hak-ja. Some of the couples had just met a few months before, while others came to renew their vows. Korean couples were joined by 20,000 other followers from all around the world, who tuned in via an internet link.

Sun Myung Moon took this opportunity to pass down leadership of the Unification Church to his children. Moon started the much contested cult in 1954, following a vision he had when he was just 15, where Jesus allegedly appeared to him and asked him to finish His work. The Korean leader performed his first mass wedding in the early 1960s and throughout the years officiated ceremonies between people who had never met each other before their wedding.

Critics stated this latest mass wedding proves followers of the Unification Church are brainwashed. Sun Myung Moon denied the accusation saying these days couples spend months getting to know one another, before they tie the knot.

Photos via csmonitor

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Well, if there’s such a thing as the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, you’d better believe we also have a Cardboard Tube Fighting League.

It’s actually an international organization promoting events where people face each other in fair combat, wielding deadly…carton tubes. To be honest, it focuses more on fun and costume creativity than on violence. Anyone over 5-years-old can participate in a cardboard fight, so it’s not dangerous at all.

The rules of cardboard tube fighting are simple. To win a tournament or cardboard battle, you have to break your opponents cardboard and keep yours intact. If it should happen that both fighters break their tubes, the fight is declared a draw and the competitors are both declared winn…, losers. Parrying hits with the arm is forbidden and so is hitting an opponent in the face and stabbing.

During cardboard tube fighting tournaments, shields of any kind are forbidden, but they can be worn during cardboard tube battles, where two armies face each other and pound away until the last cardboard tube breaks or unravels.

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It was bound to happen sooner or later, right? With plastic surgery becoming more and more popular, enhanced babes yearned for a chance to show off their improvements. And so, Miss Plastic Beauty Contest was born.

Miss Plastic, the world’s first “plastic” beauty contest, takes place in Hungary and any woman aged between 19 and 38 can participate. As long as she is a resident of Hungary and, more importantly, has at least one cosmetic surgery in her medical history. A boob job or facelift will do just fine.

Instead of focusing on looks, the judges pay a lot more attention to the sugeons’ work on the contestants. Both the contestants and the doctors who operated on them will be rewarded with valuable prizes.

The final of this very first edition of Miss Plastic takes place on October 9th. Below, I’ve posted photos of all 18 finalists that will be battling for the grand prize, a brand new apartment. Which one do you think deserves to win?

via Miss Plastic Hungary

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He Wenjun, an artist from China, was recognized by Guinness Book of Records for creating the world’s largest paintbrush.

The artist claims he used the tails of 300 horses to make the 12-foot brush, which weighs 115 lb and almost double that when it is soaked in ink. He Wenjun said it took him a year to make the brush and another year to learn how to control it.

The proud new Guinness record holder took part in a special exhibition in Nanchong, where he displayed his calligraphy talents, using the giant paintbrush.

Photos by CEN via Europics

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10,000 people gathered in Chongquing, China and laughed simultaneously, during a campaign to celebrate the 60th anniversary of People’s Republic of China.

In order to prove the love for their country, the Chinese have come up with some very original its 60th anniversary. After a Chinese hairdresser created a replica of Tianan Men Square out of human hair, 10,000 people gathered in Chongquing for what can be considered one the biggest collective laughter in history.

via ImagineChina

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On Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement, ultra-Orthodox Jews use white chickens to perform the Kaparot ritual and get rid of all their sins.

The holiest of Jewish days, celebrated with 25 hours of fasting and intense prayer, offers ultra-Orthodox Jews the chance to make a year’s worth of sins vanish. All they need is a chicken, preferably white, and a simple blessing. The live chicken is waved above the sinner’s head as the blessing is recited and it is believed all his of the previous year are transferred into the chicken.

The new host of the sins is then quickly beheaded and its blood drained as young ultra-Orthodox boys watch. Pretty cool isn’t it? Just sin a way for an entire year and let a brainless chicken take the fall. These are the times that make me wish I was a Jew.

via Telegraph.co.uk

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The Buffalo-Riding Ceremony is held every year, in the Cambodian village of Virhear Sour, Kandal province. The tradition of this even goes back 70 years and it marks the end of the Festival of the Dead. It is also a way to honor the Neakta Preah Srok pagoda spirit.

After the race is over, the buffaloes are auctioned off to the highest bidders.

Photos by Reuters

via People.com.cn

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