An elderly man in Latvia recently got his 15 minutes of fame after a video of him driving an old Audi into a makeshift pool filled with 6,000 two liter bottles-worth of Coke to see if it would help get rid of the rust, went viral this week.

The eccentric 73-year-old Latvian, whose name has not yet been revealed, claims that he spent around $8,700 setting up the bizarre yet hilarious experiment. He started out by digging a large hole on his farm, near Sheder, south-east Latvia, lining it with thick plastic foil, and then proceeded to empty a whopping 6,000 two-liter bottles of Coke into it. For his first trick, he poured 88 pounds of baking soda into the fizzy pool, attempting to create a spectacular chemical reaction, but seeing that nothing too impressive happened, he got into his old Audi 80 and decided to drive it into the pool to see if the Coke would clean up all the rust.

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While millions of people around the world eagerly awaited the release of Apples’s new iPhone 7, dozens of attendants at the Fireside Gathering – a no-phone, no-reception event held at a summer camp two hours west of Ottawa – had to make due with a “revolutionary NoPhone Air, a simple phone package with nothing but air inside.

“We are very proud to introduce the least-advanced NoPhone ever,” inventors Chris Sheldon and Van Gould told Fireside Gathering attendees on September 10th. “We took away the headphone jack. And then we took away everything else. It may look like nothing is in this packaging. But that’s what’s so beautiful about it.”

Sheldon and Gould are part of a growing smartphone-resistant counterculture, and claim they came up with the idea for the NoPhone after seeing everyone at a rooftop bar in New York with their eyes glued to their smartphones. “The NoPhone was created to combat the rapid decline of real life social engagement that has stemmed from chronic smartphone use. It’s sleek, plastic design serves as an idle hand’s security blanket and is devised to alleviate the constant need humans have to hold a mobile device without preventing users from fully experiencing their immediate surroundings,” they wrote on the NoPhone official site.

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With summers getting hotter every year, keeping your armpits dry is quite the challenge. While many of use still rely on deodorants, the quirky Japanese have come up with a high-tech alternative worthy of their reputation for crazy inventions – clip-on armpit fans.

Developed by Japanese gadget maker Thanko, the Waki no Shita Kura (Japanese for Under the Armpit Cooling Device) is a small fan that clips to your sleeve to deliver cooling blasts of air to your armpits. The device is powered by three AAA batteries and can keep your armpits nice and dry for five to nine hours, depending on which of the three speeds you use. If you want to stay cool for longer you can connect the fan to your PC or a separately purchased battery pack with the included micro USB cable. Thanko claims the armpit fans are very light (30g/1 oz) and silent enough to use even in a crowded, so you shouldn’t have to worry about attracting unwanted attention with your buzzing armpits. The fan is also very small (60 x 65 x 15mm)  and thanks to the clip-on design it can also cool your chest area: just clip it to the front of your shirt and it will keep your torso and neck dry.

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You don’t need to go to the beach to enjoy a little sunbathing. People do it on their balconies or on top of their apartment buildings all the time, but one woman in the Russian city of Novosibirsk has managed to enrage her neighbors by exposing her bikini-clad behind at her window every day.

The woman, who lives on the city’s Kropotkin Street, sunbathes by hanging her legs and butt out the window of her second-story apartment, every day from 10 a.m. to about 1 p.m., and her neighbors have had enough. They claim that the bizarre spectacle is visible to small children playing in the area, and they are criticizing police for not taking any action against the extreme sunbather. Read More »

If you’re looking of ways to make vacuuming the house less of a chore, this ingenious combination between a harmonica and a vacuum cleaner may be the coolest thing you’ll see today.

Vacuuming a harmonica may just become the house-cleaning trend of 2016, but it all started just a few days ago, completely by accident. Japanese Twitter user @CelloMetalGirl was the first to upload one a video of the unusual activity, with the caption “I laughed to death”. As it urns out, the girl’s father was vacuuming the house when he accidentally hit an old run-of-the-mill harmonica with the vacuum brush and… Magic happened.

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Capitalizing on the Japanese work culture that makes insomniacs of employees,  Coca Cola Japan has recently released a new beverage that the company claims can help people get a better night’s sleep. Aptly named ‘Glaceau Sleep Water’, the drink is perfect for those who have trouble nodding off every night and are desperate to experience deep, uninterrupted sleep.

Sleep Water is apparently enriched with a special ingredient called L-Theanine, an amino acid that is believed to decrease anxiety and stress while improving relaxation. Theoretically, this should result in better quality sleep, so it should work even for people who don’t have time for a full eight hours of slumber. The company claims that only a few hours of Sleep Water-induced rest are more than enough to feel rejuvenated the next morning.

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Japanese online retailer Felissimo specializes in all things feline, but they really seem to be in love with cat odor. So much so that they’re releasing their second cat-scented product this year! First they came out with a cat paw-scented cream earlier this year, and now they’re introducing a special fabric spray that carries the smell of cats’ foreheads.

‘Mohu Mohu Odeko no Kaori’ (Fluffy Forehead Fragrance) Fabric Water comes in a 3.4-ounce bottle, priced at 1,293yen ($10.60). The company revealed that they developed the product after collecting extensive data through customer survey responses. Many of the respondents wrote that the smell of a cat’s forehead is like ‘the smell of sunshine’, ‘a futon that’s been dried in the sun’, and ‘sweet bread’.

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In a bid to make Russian tax collectors more interested in their jobs, a local government has come up with a rather bizarre scheme – providing them with money-scented soap! The idea is that the special odor will stimulate and inspire tax collectors to love and enjoy collecting money.

The idea is the brainchild of Aman Tuleyev, governor of the Kemerovo Oblast region in Central Russia. He seems to strongly believe that by using cash-scented toiletries, the smell of money will linger around tax collectors all day, thus making them love it and increasing their tax collection rate.

The concept isn’t new though, as money-based perfume and soap have been around since at least 1998, when an Austrian artist managed to bottle the smell of cash. In 2011, a Japanese study found that having employees smell money all day long is a great way to improve their productivity.

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Thanks to French builder Adrien Herve-Pellissier, the infamous ‘builder’s bum’ – a.k.a ‘plumber’s crack’ – could be a thing of the past. He’s invented a special variety of boxer shorts with an elastic band that adequately covers the offensive area. Given how common the eyesore of a problem is, it’s a wonder that no one’s ever thought of such a simple solution before!

“The underwear has a large elastic band on it, you see, so when you squat down we don’t have to see your a**e,” Adrien explained. He was inspired to design the underwear after witnessing the mortifying ‘crack’ first hand in Rennes. He then spent nine months recovering, and also coming up with a prototype of the underwear, which he’s named ‘le sourire de plombier’ (the smile of the plumber).

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An Australian takeaway place is trying to win a Guinness World Record by having their mascot Betty become the first chicken to ever send a readable tweet! The marketing campaign is a lot like shooting in the dark – they’re letting Betty peck away randomly at a keyboard, hoping that she will accidentally tweet something meaningful by the end of October. 

Perth marketing agency Marketforce came up with the idea for their client ‘Chicken Treat’, who operate over 70 franchises in Western Australia. “Betty will be tweeting away until she sends a proper five-letter word in English,” the promotional video states. “Follow her as she makes history at the Chicken Tweet Twitter page.”  

According to independent brand analyst Michel Hogan, it’s great that a company is using humour in its marketing. “This isn’t a new idea by any means, but I can see it working – depending on where they go with it and how they do it,” she said. She added that smaller chains need such stunts and tricks to grab eyeballs in an industry that is dominated by larger corporations.

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I can think of few things more embarrassing for a man than getting an erection in public with no real way to conceal it. Luckily, with Bloxers, that doesn’t have to be a problem anymore.

From the outside, ‘Bloxers’ look just like regular boxers, but with the ability to ‘block’ an erection from public view. The makers of the revolutionary new product in men’s wear are currently raising money through crowdfunding site Indiegogo. They claim to be all about “happy men, sexually, emotionally, medically.”

“Our new product centers on keeping yourself or the men in your life from experiencing the negative effects of what is fundamentally a very good thing,” the brilliant minds behind Bloxers said. “It’s funny, innovative and ultimately for the better good.”

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In a bid to combat the mosquito menace that plagues Japan every summer, Bibi Lab has released an innovative new product, called the Netsmen Wearable Mosquito Suit. The ‘unusual but effective’ full body suit is perfect for outdoor use – it protects the wearer from mosquito bites by encasing literally every inch of the body in a net!

The lightweight coat is made of polyester mesh, with breathable 1mm holes all over, which are smaller than the holes on a regular mosquito screen. It has a net hood for the head, and covers for the legs and hands as well. Each section can be individually unzipped, folded back, and held in place with fasteners. There’s a zip right around the waist, so using the bathroom shouldn’t be a clumsy affair.

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A pastor from South Africa, who previously made headlines for praying for his congregation until they stripped, is now in the news again for turning a young woman’s hair into food and having his followers eat it straight from her head.

Pictures posted on The End Times Disciples Ministries’ Facebook page show the pastor, Prophet Penuel Mnguni, placing his hands on the woman. Other members of the congregation are seen holding her hair in their hands and actually attempting to eat it. The pictures are captioned: “Man of God held the head of a woman of God Thapelo from Mabopane and her hair turned into food for the sons and daughters of God to eat. Everything depends on what we say because we carry life in our tongue.”

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For nearly four decades, Mark Gubin has been playing an epic prank on people flying into his hometown. As aircrafts descend into Milwaukee’s Mitchell International airport, passengers are greeted with a warm, welcoming sign: ‘Welcome to Cleveland’!

Gubin says that the sign – painted on the roof of his apartment in six-foot letters – has always succeeded at giving flyers a good scare. “There’s no real purpose for having this here except madness,” he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2005. “Which I tend to be pretty good at.”

The retired photographer revealed that he first got the idea for the sign from his assistant, when he was having lunch with her up on his roof in 1978. She had noticed all the low-flying planes in the area, and told him it would be nice to make a sign to welcome people to Milwaukee. But then Gubin came up with an even better idea – a sign welcoming them to the wrong city.

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The curious case of the bizarre facekini strikes again! In case you don’t remember, it’s a nylon mask that covers the entire head, leaving holes only for the eyes, nostrils and mouth. The Chinese invention is meant to be used as beachwear, protecting wearers (mostly women) from sunburns and jellyfish stings. It first made an appearance in 2006, and the present “fourth-generation” avatar has managed to enter new levels of weirdness!

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