Several years ago, young Jyothi Raj was a depressed man – he chose a rock and decided to climb it before plunging to his death. The huge rock presented a dilemma – there was no easy route to reach the top. But Jyothi Raj managed to scale it anyway, by observing and emulating the monkeys around him. And when he got to the top, he was rewarded with cheers and claps from passers-by who had observed his feat. He didn’t want to die anymore. Instead, he became India’s most famous monkey climber.

“A monkey is the world’s best climber. Humans came from monkeys. But I have it backwards. I’m turning into a monkey from being a human,” Jyothi said with a smile.

Jyothi Raj’s story is a rather sad one – he was born to a poor family in the state of Tamil Nadu, Southern India. Fearing punishment at the age of seven, he ran away from home to Bagalkot, in the nearby state of Karnataka, which he made his new home. “I don’t remember how I ended up here,” he said.

Read More »

A Swedish journalist decided to teach his two young sons – who were obsessed with war-based video games – what real war is all about. So he took them to visit Israel and Syria to show them the harsh realities that exist in war-torn regions, and make them realise what guns are really used for. The trip lasted 10 days, and when the boys got back, they were completely transformed.

The idea for the trip came at the dinner table one night last year, when Leo, 11, and Frank, 10 begged their father Carl-Magnus Helgegren to buy them the latest Call of Duty game. He was quite concerned with their obsession for the popular shooter – he wondered if his boys actually realized the real effect that war has on its victims.

So Helgegren devised a brilliant plan to impart a much needed lesson. He cut a deal with his sons – if they agreed to travel with him to an area plagued by war and spend time with war victims, he would buy them any video game of their choice on their return.

Read More »

American investigative journalist and activist, James O’Keefe, recently made headlines for donning an Osama bin Laden costume. Halloween is still months away, but O’Keefe’s attire had a different purpose – he was attempting to illustrate the lack of security along the U.S.-Mexico border in West Texas. He was actually able to cross the Rio Grande River from Mexico into Texas undetected, dressed as Osama.

O’Keefe, who is well-known for his headline-grabbing sting videos that often involve disguise and trickery, also recorded himself in the act of crossing the border. He released the footage on Monday, calling it ‘Project Veritas’. In the video, he can be seen crossing into Mexico twice – once in regular clothes and the second time dressed in an army costume and an Osama Halloween mask. His video release arrived amidst a national debate in America about border security.

“Project Veritas has just returned from the U.S.-Mexican border,” the video description states. “What we discovered there should worry every American. Here in West Texas, the border is just a muddy sliver of river.” And then the video goes on to show O’Keefe splashing his way through the Rio Grande to the other side, effectively entering another country.

Read More »

22-year-old British taxidermist Elle Kaye has a pretty unusual eating habit, even by taxidermy standards – she actually consumes the meat of the subjects she stuffs for her art. Kaye mostly uses roadkill or animals that have died of natural causes, and she tries to eat as much of them as possible, as long as the meat is fresh.

The attractive young woman who studied art at Loughborough University said that she decided to eat her subjects because she wanted to recycle and minimize waste. “For me, it’s a lifestyle choice,” she says. “Doing what I do ensures I recycle a deceased animal, as a meat eater, there is no logic in wasting perfectly edible meat. It’s important to me, because it upholds all of the notions that underpin taxidermy, and it means that I do the animal justice in recycling all of it.”

“I’m a big meat eater and I believe strongly in the idea of recycling,” she says. “It doesn’t make sense for me to preserve the specimen then throw the meat away. If I can determine that it’s fresh, I wouldn’t hesitate to eat it. I’m very careful.” Read More »

The ladies’ bathroom at Bang Bang, a new San Diego sushi restaurant is so stunning that once they step inside, women don’t ever want to leave. You see, every inch of the walls is covered with posters and photographs of Hollywood heartthrob Ryan Gosling. I’m not going to waste time telling you just how dreamy this bathroom is for most girls; I think the pictures speak for themselves.

It’s a marketing strategy that’s so simple, it’s brilliant. Women are actually thronging Bang Bang, a Japanese social house, just for a glimpse of that bathroom. They’re taking ‘Gosling pics’ of themselves and putting them up all over the internet.

Read More »

A struggling South Korean Major League baseball team has come up with a novel idea to boost players’ morale. They’re replacing human fans with robots called ‘Fanbots’, all in a bid to improve the atmosphere at their matches.

The promo video for ‘Fanbot – the world’s first cheering robot’ rides high on the emotions involved while watching a match. “Fans of Hanwha Eagles always come to the stadium to cheer for the team,” the video states. “But those who cannot come to the stadium watch the game on the web or on their phones and cheer through commenting online. What if there was a robot cheering for those fans?”

It’s not easy being a fan of the Hanwha Eagles – most fans are subject to ridicule because of the team’s poor performance. The Hanwha Eagles have suffered over 400 losses in the past five years. Fans of the team are regarded with sympathy – they’ve even been dubbed ‘Buddhist Saints’ and ‘Hanwha Chickens’ by fans of other teams. The humiliation has been so great that many fans don’t feel like attending games anymore. Others simply do not have the time.

Read More »

When we wrote about Datta Phuge, an Indian businessman who owns a 3.2-kilogram solid gold shirt, we thought that his was a unique story. But it turns out there are other rich men in India obsessed with gold – like Pankaj Parakh, a businessman and local politician who celebrated his 45th birthday by gifting himself a 4-kilogram gold shirt worth over $200,000.

Pankaj is a textile magnate from the town of Yeola, near Mumbai city, who made his millions through his clothing empire. He now wants to make sure the rest of the world knows about his success. And what better way to flash his wealth than by wearing it? So he commissioned the solid gold shirt that he wore on the occasion of his birthday, last Friday.

The yellow metal shirt was designed by Bafna Jewellers in the nearby city of Nashik. The garment was then meticulously executed at Shanti Jewellers in Mumbai, by a team of 20 select artisans who spent 3,200 hours over the past two months ‘sewing’ the shirt.

Read More »

Like many other couples their age, 49-year-old Mandy Jones and her husband Gary, 48, were struggling to save their failing marriage. That’s when they hit upon a unique solution – they decided to give the 1950s lifestyle a try. Now, the couple from Staffordshire claim that the change has actually saved their marriage.

So what’s so great about the fifties that it could bring Gary and Mandy closer to each other? Well, some might find this regressive, but Mandy says that she now cooks for her husband every night, just like most women did back then. So Gary gets to come home from work every night to a ‘dutiful’ wife and a wholesome 1950s dinner.

And that’s not all – Mandy, a part-time caterer, spends all her free time cooking, cleaning and darning Gary’s socks. She dresses in vintage frocks, drives a 1949 Chevrolet and listens to rockabilly records on her jukebox. She strongly believes that all women should adopt a similar lifestyle if they want to keep their man happy.

Read More »

He Qin-jiao, a 13-year-old girl from China’s Hunan Province is a prime example of what being a true kind-hearted human being is all about. Believe it or not, this fragile little girl somehow carried her polio-stricken best friend and classmate on her back, to and from school, every day, for three years. That’s a four-mile round trip, just to be clear. Qin-jiao’s story has touched Chinese internet users’ hearts so deeply that they’re now calling her ‘China’s most beautiful student’ .

When Qin-jiao was 9 years old, she realised that her best friend, He Ying-hui, couldn’t come to school anymore as she was disabled by polio and her family couldn’t carry her. So Qin-jiao decided to take up the responsibility herself. The loyal friend carried He to school for three long years, until the local government heard about her devotion, and finally gave Ying-hui her very own wheelchair in September of last year.

But Qin-jiao’s dedication towards her friend didn’t stop ther. She still wakes up at 6am, finishes her house chores and rushes to Ying-hui’s house to push her to school. When they finally reach their destination, she carries her friend on her back up to their classroom, on the second floor.

Read More »

Threadsmiths, a Melbourne-based clothing and technology company, has created a special t-shirt that could very well revolutionize the garment industry. Their new line of 100 percent cotton t-shirts , called ‘The Cavalier’, are made of a material that repels both water and dirt. The highly resilient garments have been put through a range of tests, and miraculously, they’ve passed every single one.

Pour a cup of water on these babies and they’ll remain dry as a bone. Splash Cola or Gatorade directly on to them and all that colored liquid simply beads up and rolls off the fabric. Hose them down with a high pressure stream and they still won’t hold a drop of water. It sounds like magic, but it’s all pure science.

The technology used to create these shirts is an extreme form of water-proofing that involves modifying the fundamental nature of surfaces, making them super-hydrophobic. The company website states: “Our shirts emulate the natural hydrophobic properties of the lotus leaf.” Instead of getting absorbed by the fabric, liquids just form into droplets that slide off of it.

Read More »

For nearly 50 years, Don Ritchie saved the lives of people who were on the verge of suicide. During his lifetime, he managed to stop 160 people from plunging to their deaths at Australia’s most famous suicide point – a cliff called ‘the Gap’ – with just a kind word and a smile. Although he passed away a couple of years ago at age 85, he is still fondly remembered as ‘the Angel of the Gap’.

Ritchie was an extraordinary gentleman who deliberately chose to live right across the street from The Gap, just so he could continue saving lives. He would wake up every morning and look out of the window for “anyone standing too close to the precipice.” If he saw someone and thought they might jump, he would simply walk over with his palms facing up, smile, and say: “Is there something I could do to help you?”

That sounds incredibly simple, but the trick worked – Ritchie managed to strike a conversation with these people and ended up inviting them back to his house for tea or breakfast. “And that was all that was often needed to turn people around, and he would say not to underestimate the power of a kind word and a smile,” said his daughter Sue Ritchie Bereny.

Read More »

While good food might sell itself, there’s nothing like some good ol’ ‘ripped’ charm to boost sales. The owner of a Chinese fast-food stall is using this fact to his advantage. In a brilliant marketing move, he recently employed a muscular male model to flip and sell burgers to his customers. The humble stall has now become a hit with the ladies, sales are through the roof and he’s making a killing!

Wang Meng, who owns a small food stall at a night market in Shenyang city, said that he decided to employ a man known as ‘John’ because of his impressive physique. John doesn’t speak much Chinese, but Meng seems to have made up for that by having John flip hamburgers topless. After all, there’s no language like body-language. Meng said he specifically chose hamburgers because he didn’t really want to challenge his new chef’s culinary skills (or lack thereof).

Read More »

It’s not unusual for people to choose their coffins before they die, but 48-year-old Anto Wickham’s choice is a rather strange one. He’s gone and spent $50,000 on a 10-foot casket shaped like a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey.

Well, the shape of the coffin might be bizarre, but Wickham, a former soldier, has a pretty valid reason for choosing it. After witnessing the death of eight Army pals during the Iraq war, he began to plan his own funeral – he decided he wants it to be a celebration, rather than a mourning.

“While working in Iraq I had a very close call,” said Wickham, who spent 22 years with the Royal Irish Regiment. “Over a 28-day period in February 2007, I was attacked 74 times and there were some days we would get three or four hits in one day. I was attacked by heavy machine gun fire, IEDs and roadside bombs.”

Read More »

20-year-old Brazilian Celso Santebanes has spent over $50,000 to transform himself into a real-life Ken doll. The young model is so obsessed with dolls that he even behaves like one. And now he’s actually giving the real Ken a run for his money by releasing his own line of figurines called ‘Celso Dolls’.

Celso Santebanes recently shared pictures of himself and his namesake toy on Instagram. “I went to the city to become a model,” he wrote. “I never expected to have a toy myself. I dreamt of becoming a human puppet, but having one in my image was completely unexpected.”

Celso, who has been a doll enthusiast all his life, said that he grew up with a shelf full of dolls. He claims that his family told him he looked like a doll himself since the age of 13. He’s been obsessed with being the perfect human puppet ever since, and his own personal transformation began after he won a modelling contest at age 16.

Read More »

An elderly Chinese couple were recently forced to go to court to teach their freeloading son a lesson. Xu Qing, the 29-year-old son, never went to work because he found it too boring. He chose a life of comfort at his parents’ home instead, where all his needs were being met. But the situation got out of hand when he brought his girlfriend to live with him, and expected the same service for her as well.

It all started when Qing, an only child, left university; he simply refused to go to work like other people his age. His mother, Xu Hsing, cooked and cleaned for him out of love. Qing was the typical spoilt son – he ate, slept and surfed the internet all day long. His father Ku managed to find him a job, but he quit after only three months because it was too dull.

Soon, Qing managed to meet a jobless woman online, and the pair hit it off. She moved in with the family after dating Qing for only a month. The parents were horrified, and much to their chagrin, discovered that they were expected to cook and clean for the girlfriend as well! This was the last straw – they put down an ultimatum asking Qing to get a job or move out.

Read More »