Sean Le Vegan, a dog lover from Manchester, England, will spend over a month in an animal shelter enclosure  to raise awareness about the plight of stray dogs and encourage people to adopt rather than buy canine pets.

Sean, a 35-year-old web-designer and volunteer at the Manchester and Cheshire Dogs’ Home, believes spending 35 days and nights in a cage is a good way to attract attention to the hideous plight of homeless dogs. It’s also a great way to raise some much-needed funds for the dog shelter, as he plans to broadcast his challenge on the internet with webcams and charge £5 ($7.50) per subscription. People will be able to watch a human living a dog’s life and Le Vagan plans to offer them a realistic experience. 35 days is the average stay for a dog at the Manchester-based animal shelter. Just like the canines brought here, Sean won’t eat anything for the first four days and will have to make do with just water and a blanket. After that he will be feasting on vegetarian dog food throughout the whole event. He will only be allowed one hour of freedom per day, to use the toilet and freshen up. To make his experience even more authentic, he even had a chip implanted in his shoulder which  is hooked up to the dog-care database.

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For the past 20 years Houston-based Larry Da Leopard has covered his entire body with over 1,000 leopard spots to achieve his goal of becoming a “manimal”, part man, part animal. He refers to himself as The Leopard Man.

Larry says he started getting tattoos with his friends in a time when skin inking was considered taboo, as a way of acting rebellious, but he never stopped. Even after covering his entire body, including the years and private parts, with tattoos, he considers himself a work in progress. He constantly adds new leopard spots wherever they still fit, and retouches his older ones if they fade after prolonged sun exposure. Although he says his parents cried the first time they saw his face full of permanent leopard spots and admits they make him look like a cartoon character, Larry is proud of the way he looks and likes showing off his skin art in public. He often goes out wearing only a Tarzan-inspired loin cloth and an animal-print coat, and hands out fliers for his tattoo parlor to passers-by.

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You would expect a modern-day Hercules who can rip phone books in half and bend steel wrenches and hammers with his hands to be a mountain of a man, but standing at 5 foot 6 inches and weighing 168 pounds, Dennis Rogers looks like an average 55-year-old. Still, he is considered to be the pound for pound world’s strongest man.

Dennis Rogers weighed less than 80 pounds when he entered high-school. He looked so frail that he was put in Special Education gym, and he believed he would never be big enough to do anything sports-related in his life. But during the early 70’s something changed in Dennis’ perception of who he was and what he was capable of. The strongman remembers he and his brothers once saw a television program about a man who could rip a deck of cards in half, and drove to the nearest store to buy one and try the trick themselves. He was in the driver’s seat when his brother handed him the deck, and he just tore it apart on his first attempt. That was one of the first times he realized what he was capable of. Since then, Dennis Rogers has become a World Arm-Wrestling Champion and Grandmaster Strongman capable of bending steel hammers and wrenches and even stopping aircrafts from taking off with his bare hands.

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The world famous Bushman of San Francisco, real name David Johnson, has been entertaining passers-by in Fisherman’s Wharf for over 30 years by hiding behind two Eucalyptus branches and jumping out at unsuspecting tourists as they walk by.

The Bushman of San Francisco is an alleged homeless man who rakes in a reported $60,000 a year from his original street performance, with just two Eucalyptus branches and the cardboard box he sits on. David Johnson was born in Indiana, where he worked as a crane operator crane operator, steel mill worker and truck driver before moving to San Francisco. Here he opened one of the first shoeshine stands on Market Street, but arthritis and growing competition from the busy Financial District forced him to look for a new way to make a living. After discovering some fallen branches under a tree, Johnson was inspired to use them in a street act that would eventually make him famous all around the world. Sitting on a makeshift stool, the Bushman hides behind the Eucalyptus branches waiting for tourists to walk by. When they get close enough, he jumps from behind the greenery or waves it in their direction scaring the daylights out of them, to the amusement of nearby spectators, many of whom reward his performance by throwing a quarter or a dollar into his jug.

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According to multiple Chinese media reports, wealthy and busy adults have found a new way to combat health issues caused by stress and strain – drinking human breast milk. They hire wet nurses who regularly provide the nutritious drink.

While many parents in China are struggling to find safe powdered milk for their babies, following a scandal over poisoned formula, rich and powerful adults from cities like Shenzen and Guangdong  are paying big bucks for fresh breast milk to keep in shape. The demand is apparently so great that companies are promoting and expanding their breast milk supply business from babies to adults. “Clients can choose to consume breast milk directly through breastfeeding … but they can always drink it from a breast pump if they feel uncomfortable,” Lin Jun, a manager of Xinxinyu Household Service Company told Chinese newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily. “Quite a few of our clients hire in-house wet nurses to ensure a supply of fresh breast milk on a daily base,” Lin said, adding that “wet nurses rarely raise objections as long as the price is right.” Apparently, most of those who indulge in drinking fresh breast milk are successful adults with high incomes and high-pressure jobs looking for a highly nutritious miracle cure to their health problems.

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The things people will put themselves through to give up smoking. Case in point İbrahim Yücel, a 42-year-old smoker from Kütahya, Turkey who recently decided to wear a locked metal cage over his head to fight his addiction.

İbrahim Yücel has been smoking for the last 26 years, and despite several attempts to quit he couldn’t break his two-packs-a-day dirty habit. Every year, on his three children’s birthdays and on his wedding anniversary he would give up cigarettes, but he never went more than a few days without them. His family, his friends and co-workers all tried to convince him to stop using tobacco cigarettes, but he just couldn’t do it. After losing his father to smoking-induced lung cancer a few months ago, İbrahim realized smoking just wasn’t worth losing his life over and putting his wife and children through the same hardships. But the Turkish technician also knew he lacked the willpower to quit by usual means, so he came up with a rather unusual solution. Inspired by motorcycle helmets, he decided to build a metal wire cage that would prevent him from lighting up no matter how badly he craved a cigarette.

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For the last 10 years Australian artist Jodi Rose has traveled the world recording the vibrations in bridge cables with contact microphones and using them to create experimental music. You could say she has an almost intimate relationship with bridges, and recently she decided to make it official by marrying a mysterious bridge in the south of France.

Le Pont du Diable (Devil’s Bridge) is a 600-year-old stone bridge built over a steep-sided gorge in Céret‎, but for Jodi Rose it’s simply “The One”. After visiting dozens of bridges all over the world, for her Singing Bridges musical project, she decided this was the one she wanted to celebrate her love for bridges with. Although he is made of stone, the resonance of his being is very present, and I feel at peace in his strong embrace,”Jodi said.  “He makes me feel connected to the earth and draws me to rest from my endless nomadic wanderings. He is fixed, stable, rooted to the ground, while I am nomadic, transient, ever on the road. He gives me a safe haven, brings me back to ground myself, and then lets me go again to follow my own path, without trying to keep me tied down or in thrall to his needs or desires. I am devoted to him. The perfect husband… strong and silent!”

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Faizul Hasan Kadari, a retired post-master from India, has put his entire life savings into building a replica of the world famous Taj Mahal in memory of his beloved wife who died in 2011.

The original Taj Mahal was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in honor of his wife Mumtaz in 1631, and is regarded as one of the world’s greatest monuments to love and grief. But who would have thought Shah Jahan’s gesture would ever be replicated, and by a retired postal worker, of all people? Faizul Hasan Kadari might not have had the riches of the old emperor, but the promise made to his dying wife Tajammuli Begum was enough to fuel his ambition and build his own version of the Taj Mahal. He took a team of local workers to the walled city of Agra to see the original masterpiece and asked them to build a smaller replica, without all the intricate carvings and decorations, which would have been impossible to imitate anyway. To fund his project, Kadari sold his land, his wife’s jewels and used up all the savings from his pension.

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Most five-year-olds love playing dress-up by randomly combining clothes to create ultra-eccentric outfits, but Alonso Mateo doesn’t fool around like that. The mini-fashionista sports the most impeccable ensembles, smiles charismatically and poses as nonchalantly as an experienced male model. Virtually every photo of him posted online goes viral on sites like Instagram and Facebook, and his style is an inspiration to fashion-conscious grownups.

Alonso Mateo may be only five, but dressed in tailor-made suits, pocket squares, untucked and rolled sleeve shirts and designer blazers he looks like a miniature grown man. The thousands of fans who view his every photo and praise his fashion sense seem to love that about him, but there are those who think it’s too much for his age and that he should be allowed to enjoy a normal childhood. His mother, Luisa Fernanda Espinosa, a freelance stylist from Laguna Beach, California, says she never forced her love for stylish clothes on young Alonso. “I would put a scarf or a beanie on him and he wouldn’t mind. After a while, when he was 3 almost 4, he started asking me for bow ties and suits!”, Luisa told news reporters. His career as an Internet star began after Luisa uploaded some photos of her son to Instagram and got an amazing response from the community.  She kept adding them, and today her account has over 130,000 followers. Alonso’s own account is slowly catching up, and he has dozens of fan-pages on sites like Instagram and Facebook. Even famous stylists like Ugo Mozie, who has worked with Chris Brown, Beyoncé, and Kelly Rowland, think he’s got swagger.

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If you’re ever passing through China’s Fujian province, make sure to stop by Dacuo Village and catch a performance by local band Lightningfan. The group specializes in producing electric arcs from Tesla coils that are charged with 1 million volts of electricity, and are in sync with the music they play.

31-year-old Wang Zengxiang, founder and leader of the 10-strong band Lightningfan, is a huge fan of the Tesla coil invented by geek hero extraordinaire Nikola Tesla. “When I was young, my family opened an electrical appliance repair shop. I have loved to study semiconductors and electrical equipment since I was a child,” Wang told the local press. But it was in 2001, when he enrolled in the school of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University that he discovered his first Tesla coil. He was so fascinated by the electrical device that he spent nearly all of his free time studying it. In 2007, he managed to build his very own 1.2-meter coil above his house, quit his comfortable job with an electrical company and dedicated himself to combining his passion for music with electricity. Together with a few like-minded friends, Wang founded Lightningfan, which started entertaining fellow villagers with its electrifying performances.

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Kirby de Lanerolle is a breatharian who gets his nourishment from light, wind and the “vibrations of God”. He claims to eat regular food as rarely as ten times a year, and is the only known person to have completed a marathon having only consumed water for 3 months.

Many people have died trying to give up food for a breatharian lifestyle, but Kirby de Lanerolle claims he has survived without eating for the last five years. A former Gold medalist at the Junior National Level Championship for Rifle Shooting 1995, winner of several boxing medals, the founder of Warehouse Project, Executive Advisor to the Ministry of Social Services in Sri Lanka and Working Director of the National Volunteering Secretariat, as well as a successful entrepreneur, Kirby is what many people would call an accomplished individual. But all this success came after he assumed a new level of consciousness, he says. At just 16 years of age, Kirby was a drug-addicted thug who liked nothing better than knocking guys around. His life was going nowhere fast, but one day he just asked himself if it was possible to assume the thoughts of a successful person, like an entrepreneur, or a professional boxer, and just like that, through the power of thought, his life took a completely different turn. Kirby de Lanerolle says the same thing happened with his bizarre eating habits.

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20-year-old Yaritza Oliva is living a nightmare. For the last couple of weeks the girl from Purranque, Chile, has been crying tears of blood and so far no one has been able to explain her mysterious condition.

Yaritza first noticed blood tears coming out of her eyes about two weeks ago, but due to her family’s poor financial situation, she couldn’t seek any professional help. The only ophthalmologist who attends at the local hospital in Purranque a few days a week has so many scheduled patients that he wouldn’t see her without an appointment. One of the few times she was consulted by a professional physician was when she was transferred at the hospital of Puerto Montt, where doctors were baffled by her condition, but could only give her some eye drops for the burning sensation she feels when the blood pours from her eyes. At first, Yaritza believed she suffered some kind of extreme conjunctivitis or infection, but after seeing photos and video footage of the girl crying blood, Dr.Alexander Lutz, an ophthalmologist at Las Condes Clinic, excluded those possibilities saying they have very different symptoms. He argued the mysterious condition could be caused by blood clotting problems, alterations in platelets or by the use of certain medications. An expert would have to check if there is bleeding in any other areas of Yaritza’s body, but she didn’t reveal anything of the sorts in the video interview with Chilean website 24 Horas. Read More »

The Xu Xiangyang Education and Training Workroom, or the Walking School is an atypical educational facility which enrolls Chinese problem children and forces them to walk up to 1,000 kilometers through across the country in order to teach them discipline and make them take responsibility for their actions.

In a Chinese society which leaves no room for failure, spoiled kids, school dropouts and troublemakers risk getting left behind in a competitive race for success. To make sure that doesn’t happen, parents who have exhausted all other options enroll their children in the Walking School, a special boarding school based in Chengdu which forces them to march cross-country all day long and teaches them military discipline. Founded by ex-army veteran Xu Xiangyang, this correctional facility is inspired by the Red Army’s long march in the 1930s, and has a reputation of turning ineducable delinquents into outstanding members of society. Children between between 8 and 18 are brought here, often by force, and left to deal with the hardships of military life to hopefully change their ways.

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Usually, it’s the drivers who help out hitchhikers by offering them a ride, but in Indonesia’s capital city, it’s the other way around. Professional hitchhikers get paid to ride in complete strangers’ cars and help them reach their destination faster.

The world’s sixth largest metropolis, Jakarta has a population of over 30 million and around 20 million registered cars. Unfortunately, its infrastructure is far less advanced than that of other large cities like New York, Tokyo or Singapore, which means traffic is terrible. In order to ease jams, authorities have created “Three in One” zones which can only be accessed by vehicles carrying at least three passengers. The measure was successful to some extent, only it also spawned a whole new industry – professional hitchhiking. Every morning, poor Indonesians from the outskirts of Jakarta can be seen lining the sidewalks near entry points to Three in One zones, offering themselves to commuters in a hurry. They are known as jockeys, and unlike regular hitchhikers, they don’t raise their thumbs up to drivers, but their index finger to signal a jockey working solo, and the extra middle finger to signal a couple, usually a mother and a baby.

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There’s no sea in Johannesburg so the poor young men from the inner city of Soweto get their kicks by surfing high-speed commuter trains. This dangerous pastime has claimed many lives throughout the years, but despite several initiatives to put a stop to it, train surfing remains pretty popular.

South Africa is considered the birth place of train surfing, with reports of people performing stunts on top of moving train cars dating back to the early 1980s. From here, the extreme hobby spread all around the world, from Brazil, to Germany and Russia, but Johannesburg remains unique through its variety of styles. The most common and least dangerous form of train surfing involves climbing on top of a car, jumping off as it starts moving and climbing back on again while it’s in motion. Then there is side surfing, with the wannabe stuntmen running alongside the train on the passenger platform as his friends keep the door open, or swinging out the door when the train passes through a tunnel and running on the walls. Another one has daredevils get under the train while it’s moving and kicking the gravel with their legs. But the most lethal of all is surfing on top of the train while trying to dodge power cables and bridges. All the different moves have names like Matrix, 2020, Gravul or Svandals.

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