Thousands of black plastic balls cover the Ivanhoe reservoir in Los Angeles.

It might not look like serious business, but The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power dropped 400,000 black plastic balls into one of the city’s reservoirs for a reason. The sunlight mixes with the chlorine and bromide in the water creating a deadly mix which some scientist believe may be causing cancer. The balls are meant to shade the water from the dangerous sunlight.

Sure a tart or some kind of lid would have seemed more normal, but the authorities say a tart would have cost to much too manufacture and a metal lid would have taken too long. So, although it looks like an oil spill, this was the best measure and it’s only temporary, the Ivanhoe and Elysian reservoirs will be covered by 3,000,000 black plastic balls for the next four years.

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Yeah, this convinced me to stay a bachelor for life.

We TV hosted the Bridezilla contest to celebrate the fifth season of their Bridezillas television show, on June 3rd, in Time Square, New York. The brides participating in the contest had to race to the top of a multi-layered artificial cake where they had to participate in a cake-eating contest, for the grand prize of $25,000. The winner managed to eat 9 mini-cakes in just 2 minutes and said she’ll use the money for an extravagant wedding.

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Yeah, I thought so too, but apparently it’s possible.

It’s actually been done too, in October 2007, a German cathedral, first mentioned in documents in 1297, was moved using a huge trailer platform from its original emplacement by a mining company. The village it was built in 710 years ago was evacuated and was going to become a coal mining site, so, forced by German legislation, the contracting company had to spend 3 million euro to move the church to another location.

At 19,6 meters high, 14,5 meters long and weighing 750 tons, you can imagine it wasn’t an easy task for those involved. Thankfully, the church reached its new home in Martin Luther Square, in Borna, after a few days of traveling.

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Would you let someone jump over your infant like this?

Known as El Colacho in Spain, the Baby-Jumping Festival is a popular event that takes place in Castillo de Murcia near Burgos, every year since 1620. It’s basically all about infants laying on a blanket and adults dressed as devils jumping over them i a procession that’s supposed to cleanse the little ones of all evil doings. Doesn’t sound like it works, but hey who am I to contradict tradition? I just wonder if in history any of the devils tripped and fell over the poor babies…

I for one wouldn’t have my kid jumped over by a grown-up like this, even if they’d allow me to keep my hand over him as protection. If that guy falls my hand isn’t going to break his fall, the baby might though…

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You know what happens if you drop a sweet mint into a bottle of coke right? What if 1500 people did it at the same time?

That’s what 1500 students from a University in Belgium tried to find out and also set a new world record for the world’s biggest Mentos fountain. It wasn’t the most important experiment in the lives of the young chemistry students, but I can bet it was the funniest one.

You can see the result of the experiment in the photos below, too bad I couldn’t find any more.

Source

Building Antena Span Earth

That’s what the acronym B.A.S.E stands for. This incredible sport is derived out of sky-diving and it looks a lot harder too. BASE jumpers have to make use of their wingsuits and be very careful at their body-attitude so they don’t start tumbling. The parachute is only opened at the last second which makes the adrenalin rush even more powerful.

Valeri Rozov, one of the world’s most talented BASE jumpers made a jump from the Alps “Grandes Jorasses“, a place experts had deemed impossible for a free-fall, but he proved anything is possible.

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That’s what the organizers say anyway.

Welcome to the world of lunatics and masochists – that’s what it says when you visit the “About” page on the official site of Le Marathon des Sables. And I don’t think they’re just saying that, I think they mean it. After all we are talking about 243 km of desert over a period of 6 days. That’s 5 and a half normal marathons of running through the sand, with a backpack on, in a temperature of over 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

You have to prepare your own food, so be careful what you bring with you as well as set up a tent to camp out over night in the unwelcoming Sahara desert. Food is rationed and handed out at specific checkpoints, so you have to reach them in order to get some water. Equipment is apparently very important as the rough terrain can do irreparable damage to your feet ( you’ll be running on uneven, rocky, stony ground as well as sand dunes).

Now comes the crazy part, if you’re crazy enough to register for Le Marathon, you’ll need to come up with $5000 to pay the entrance fee, not to mention all the money you have to spend on equipment, traveling and training. They should’ve said most expensive race too!

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Yeah these photos may date back to 2005, but a giant wall of sand moving at 60mph never gets old!

These amazing photos were taken by a civilian contractor who was supporting US troops in Iraq. he might be an amateur photographer but he did a pretty good job with these pictures, I must say. I wonder what was going on in the minds of the people in that camp, seeing something like that coming towards you at an incredible speed messes up your thinking completely.

I’ve never seen a sandstorm like this, maybe just in movies like The Mummy, but that doesn’t count, it was computer generated. Mother nature sure has some powerful weapons at her disposal…

If you’re not one of those people who thinks soccer is for pussies, you’re going to love this.

Believe it or not, this sport really exists, there are even organized championships in European countries like Finland and the United Kingdom. It originates from Finland, where it was first played by cross-country skiers who were training in swamps in the summer time. Now annual tournaments take place in Finland, Sweden, Iceland and the UK. There are three types of teams in swamp soccer, man teams, women teams and mixed teams and all consist of 6 players.

Although you have to get down and dirty, I have a feeling this sport is extremely fun to play and there aren’t many teams that play it for the competition’s sake. That trophy would look pretty sweet in my personal collection though…

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Welcome to Stavropol children’s military camp, where Russian kids lose…no not their virginity you pervert, their childhood!

As the title suggests, this is not your typical summer camp, where people play games, have fun and learn cool stuff, this is the army baby, the Russian army. About 40 children, between 12 and 17 years old go through a rough training here and learn the basics martial arts and weaponry. Just like the Ansan civilian camp in South Korea, Stavropol run by former Russian servicemen and I bet they’re pretty tough.

I may seem soft but I wouldn’t send my kid there no matter what he did, I really think places like these rob kids of their childhood much too soon…

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Argungu is am important Nigerian cultural event, to which thousands of fishermen take part.

Argungu takes place in the North-Western Nigerian state of Kebbi, where an army of fishermen gather with one goal in mind, to catch the largest fish. So at the sound of a gun they all plunge into the muddy waters of the Matan Fada stream, in teams of two, one armed with two calabash (used for flotation and fish storage) and the other with two giant fish nets.

The Matan Fada may not be very impressive but it’s full of fish, because people come here to fish only once a year. After the one our time limit is over, the team who caught the largest fish is escorted by the sultans’s guards to present their prize to him. The winners receive a brand new bus as a prize as well as one million Naira (around $7500).

Nigeria hopes the Argungu fishing festival will soon become an important tourist attraction.

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Now you can see what human rainbows look like.

Holi or Phagwa is a Hindu spring festival that takes place every year in India and Nepal. On the first day of celebrations, bonfires are lit, signifying the burning of the demoness Holika. On the second day, the real Festival of Colors begins; spring and the change of weather are believed to bring illnesses like fever, flews and colds, so people throw colored powders, with medicinal significance, to chase away these illnesses. The powder can now be bought from marketplaces, but there are still those who make it in the comfort of their own homes, using various plants and flowers that give it a mesmerizing fragrance.

The Festival of Colors usually takes place at the end of February or the beginning of March, depending on when the full moon occurs.

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This girl wanted to be a ballerina a little too much.

This girl’s case should be proof enough that nothing is more important than a person’s health. She wanted to be a ballerina but she was to heavy for the job, so she decided to starve herself to death in order to fulfill her dream. Unfortunately she went “a little” to far as she managed to go from 72 kg to 32 kg in just one year. She now has several medical conditions and her body can’t yet process firm food. It’s not yet certain if she’ll ever be a normal person again.

Aurora Borealis are natural colored light displays, which are usually observed in the night sky, particularly in the polar zone.

It often appears as a greenish glow (or sometimes a faint red), as if the sun were rising from an unusual direction. The aurora borealis is also called the northern polar lights, as it is only visible in the North sky from the Northern Hemisphere. The aurora borealis most often occurs from September to October and from March to April.

Auroras are produced by the collision of charged particles from Earth’s magnetosphere, mostly electrons but also protons and heavier particles, with atoms and molecules of Earth’s upper atmosphere. The collisions in the atmosphere electronically excite atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere. The excitation energy can be lost by light emission or collisions. Most aurorae are green and red emission from atomic oxygen. Molecular nitrogen and nitrogen ions produce some low level red and very high blue/violet aurorae.

Photo: Kristian Pikner/Wikimedia Commons

Photo: Sebastien Giguere/Wikimedia Commons

 

Come to think about it, snowman is not really the appropriate term, since it actually bears the name Olympia Snowe.

Olympia was “born” in the town of Bethel, Maine and at 122 feet and 1 inch in length managed to toppled the world record previously held by…Bethel, Maine. Her eyebrows are made of skies, her lips out of red-painted tires and she has 2 pine trees serving as arms.

Olympia Snowe, named after Maine’s senior senator, takes the title of world’s tallest snowman from Angus, King of the mountain, who brought the title to the US, from Japan, 9 years ago.

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