You’ve probably never seen anything like this before, I sure haven’t. Tennessee native James Cripps earned the nickname Backwards Bowler for a very simple reason – he’s able to bowl perfectly well without even facing the lanes.

Believe it or not, it all started as a friendly bet. Jim Cripps loved bowling, but he admits he was pretty terrible at it, so at one point a friend challenged him to try and score 150 points backwards. It sounds impossible, but Jim says he managed to land a strike on his first try, and ended up with a final score of 163. After that he just couldn’t stop bowling backwards. “We never settled up on the bet, but I think I definitely came out the winner of the bet because it truly has been great,”Cripps said. As you can imagine, his skills improved dramatically over the next few years, and he now has an average of 204 points per game and holds a Guinness record of 278.

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Among the most bizarre coming-of-age rites we’ve ever featured is the one followed by the Satere-Mawe Tribe, an indigenous tribe from the Amazon rain forest, Brazil. What a boy has to do to become a man in this tribal community is painful, to say the least – he has to withstand being stung by not one, but a swarm of Bullet Ants. In case you’e not familiar with this exotic insect, here’s an interesting fact: the Bullet Ant claims the number one spot on the SSPI (Schmidt Sting Pain Index), a scale created by Justin Schmidt that rates the pain caused by different Hymenopteran stings. Some say the ant’s sting is just as agonizing as being shot by a bullet.

In preparation for the initiation rite, the elders of the tribe collect the ants from the jungle. These ants are drugged and placed stinger- first into special gloves woven from leaves. As the drug wears off, the ants become increasingly agitated and are raring to sting. This is when the boy puts on the gloves and lets the bullet ants work their magic, for 10 whole minutes, no less. “It’s the same as having your hands on fire,” says one Satere man. But the real pain starts once the gloves come off, and the venom starts to take effect. As the pain continues to rise, the hands become paralyzed and look like stumps. But just one attempt is usually not enough to turn a Stare boy into a man. He must go through this ritual as many times as it takes for him not to cry during the process. The day he doesn’t shed a single tear, is when he becomes a real man. Sometimes, this can take up to 20 attempts.

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Two male Dutch TV hosts known for performing outlandish stunts on their program, “Proefkonijnen” (Guinea Pigs), have recently experienced agonizing pain similar to that of labor, by strapping electrode emitting machines to their abdomens.

Dennis Storm and Valerio Zeno first caused international controversy in 2011, when they consumed cooked pieces of each other’s flesh, on live television. Now, they’re back with another crazy experiment. Not satisfied with just sympathizing with women who go through labor, the two crazy hosts wanted to go through the same experience, to see what it feels like. And since actually giving birth was out of the question, they went for the next best thing – strapping a number of electrodes to their bellies, which sent electrical charges meant to simulate cramps and contractions. The controlled experiment lasted two hours and had the two crazy men screaming, groaning and curling into the fetal position from the pain.

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A man from China’s Hubei Province has recently become an internet celebrity of sorts, after a video of him throwing plastic playing cards at soda cans and actually putting holes in them, went viral.

Who says there’s no such thing as comic-book-like superpowers? And I’m not talking about the funny ones you can buy at the Superhero Store, but real superpowers that actually capture people’s imagination. Take 23-year-old Feng Yangxu, from Xishui county, Hubei Province, China, who can throw plain playing cards with such speed and accuracy that they slice even full aluminum cans. In a video that recently went viral on the Chinese internet, Feng wows his young audience by launching cards at hanging cucumbers and slicing them to pieces, as a warm-up for his most impressive trick – puncturing soda cans from three feet away. Now that may not seem like a big distance, but keep in mind this guy is putting wholes in metal containers with flimsy plastic cards. His fellow countrymen were so impressed with his feat that they’ve given him a cool nickname – Awesome Flying Cutter. And you thought “Batman” was a cool superhero name…

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Compressorhead is not your usual heavy-metal rock group. The band’s three members are all robots, but they’ve proven they can cover hits by rock legends like Motorhead or AC/DC honorably. They’re even scheduled to play alongside The Chili Peppers and The Killers, at the Big Day Out Festival, in Australia, this summer.

Assembling, cooking, waiting tables, even horse riding; robots have proven capable of doing all of these jobs, but until now, musicians seemed like they had nothing to fear. Well, not anymore – introducing Compressorhead, a rock band made up of three real metal heads: Fingers, Bones and Stickboy. They are robots that can be programmed to cover hits by pretty much any rock group that ever existed, but so far they seem to prefer heavyweights like Black Sabbath, Pantera or Led Zeppelin. They’re a bit lacking in the creative department, but I’m sure they’ll improve on that as they go along. The robot group hail from Germany and hope to conquer human kind with their music, instead of Terminator-like force. Let’s meet the boys:

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There are some things you would only expect from superheroes or action heroes; like slicing a bullet in half with a blade. So when a real-life, modern-day samurai does it, it’s certainly worth ooh-ing and aah-ing over. Isao Machii, who has been honing his sword skills since the age of five, is able to slice a pea-sized bullet traveling at 200 miles per hour, fired at him from a BB gun from about 70 feet away, in mid-air.

Isao Machii is now the headmaster of a samurai school, and what a fine example he is for his students. His hand-eye coordination is so precise that it earned him a Guinness World Record. His sword skills are so accurate that he is rumored to be unmatched by any other swordsman on Earth. He recently accepted a challenge from filmmakers, because what he does is impossible to view by the naked human eye. Shot at a firing range outside the hills of LA, Machii’s feat was recorded at a speed 250 times slower than normal with one of the world’s most sophisticated cameras . The witnesses were a filmmaker and Dr. Ramani Durvasula from California State University. Both were stunned to silence the moment Machii’s blade hit the bullet.

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Have you ever been so hungry that you actually munched on your burger’s paper wrapper without even noticing? It happens to me all the time, and while I don’t think it’s a big deal, some people are actually disgusted when that happens. But thanks to Brazilian fast-food chain Bob’s, they don’t have to worry about it anymore.

Slate.com reports U.S. consumers alone threw away over 75 million tons of packaging waste, in 20101, and only half of that was recovered through recycling. Food packaging is a real environmental issue and scientists have been working on edible wrappers for years. At the start of 2012, Harvard scientist reported they have developed a WikiCells, “novel edible forms” that could be used to wrap, bottle and package food, and take the flavor of whatever they contained. Now, almost a year since their announcement, a Brazilian burger chain has launched an intriguing ad showcasing edible wrappers. It’s unclear whether they are based on WikiCells technology, but judging by the clients reactions, they don’t taste bad at all. These novel burger wrappers look like traditional paper ones, which kind of confused Bob’s customers, but the restaurant reports their campaign was so successful than nobody threw out the edible wrappers.

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Basse Andersen has become somewhat of a national celebrity in his home country of Norway after his coworkers started uploading videos of him freaking out over various pranks. He’s even been given the title of “most easily scared guy in the world”.

Basse was just an average Norwegian working at a company called Oestereng & Benestad, in the town of Arendal, until his colleagues figured out he was incredibly easy to scare, and had the funniest of reactions. They started pulling pranks on him constantly, and at one point even started filming his reactions and uploading the videos to YouTube. Before long, he was famous, and one his most famous video even won a Best Startling Video Award. But, believe it or not, Andersen actually enjoys being the but of the joke, and laughs just as hard as his coworkers whenever they manage to scare him. “I like humorous things and people who can think up some pranks,” he says Recently, a news crew from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation paid Basse a visit at his workplace to confirm his reputation of “most easily scared guy in the world”. They made a short YouTube documentary framed like a funny news report:

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Who would have thought that an ordinary carpenter’s handsaw could be used to produce music? But apparently it can, and has been for the past 300 hundred years. And in order to commemorate this bizarre yet unique tradition, the NYC Musical Saw Festival is held in July of every year, in Astoria (Queens), New York City. Ever since the festival was established by founder and director Natalia ‘Saw Lady’ Paruz in 2003, musical saw players from all over New York and the world have come together to preserve and honor this rare form of music. In fact, for saw players in far-flung countries like Germany, Sweden, India, China and Japan, Astoria has become a pilgrimage place of sorts. Every year, the sawist who travels the greatest distance in order to attend is awarded the title of ‘guest of honor’.

At the Musical Saw Festival, the players socialize and hear each other play. There are solo performances and jam sessions as well. They even take the opportunity to educate each other about the different types of saws and various techniques of playing. Overall, the atmosphere is said to be rather friendly and encouraging. But the festival is not limited to saw players. The event is open to the public, so people are welcome to come in and learn about the musical saw, or just enjoy a concert or two. An art exhibit and a workshop are also part of the festival.

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The full chemical name of the world’s largest known protein has 189,819 letters and is considered the longest word in any language. If you’re one of those people who loves to watch paint dry, you can even watch a 3.5-hour video of a guy pronouncing the whole name.

Titin, also known as connectin, is a giant protein composed of 244 individually folded protein domains connected by unstructured peptide sequences. Also, the gene for titin contains the largest number of exons (363) discovered in any single gene. Titin is important in the contraction of striated muscle tissues, but it’s mostly known for its technical name, which is sometimes referred to as the longest known word in any language. The name “titin” is derived from the Greek “titan” (a giant deity, anything of great size), but it’s the full chemical name that really does it justice. I could just paste it in this post, but it would take you forever just to scroll through it, so I’m just going to say it starts with  methionyl… and ends …isoleucine. You can fill in the middle part yourself. But if you’re really curious to hear someone pronounce the world’s longest word, there’s a boring cool video of some Russian-sounding guy who takes around 3.5 hours to go through all the letters, and even grows a beard in the process. After a while, it all starts to sound like mumbling, but you have to admire the poor guy for his effort.

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In villages around the Ujain region, in India’s central state of Madhya Pradesh, men lay down on the ground and have their cattle trample all over them, as part of a bizarre centuries-old ritual.

There are a many things people will do in order to have their prayers answered by their gods, but until today, I didn’t know getting trampled by cattle was one of them. In a weird example of blind faith, dozens of villagers from Bhidawad village and neighboring settlements decorate their cattle with colours and henna in different patterns, then lay down on the ground and get trampled by the confused animals. The ritual takes place on the occasion of Ekadashi, a day after Diwali, the popular Hindu festival of lights, which was celebrated around the world on November 13. The whole village gathers in the streets to witness the painful event that they believe will make Hindu gods answer their prayers. “This is a traditional festival observed during Ekadashi fast after which the entire village’s cows are made to run over men lying on the ground, ” local Rekha Dubey told reporters. “We worship the cows before the ritual and also fast for five days and sing hymns during the festival.”

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Ilana Yahav is a world-famous Israeli sand animation artist who uses only her hands to create wonderful stories out of simple grains of sand. Her incredible videos have been watched by millions of people around the world.

Ever since she was a child, Ilana knew her destiny was tied to the art world, and she experimented with painting, sculpting other types of plastic art. But growing up on the shores of the Mediterranean, she was fascinated by sand. As a young girl, she would always visit the beach on her way to school, and draw a personal story on the sand. “I would draw quickly, trying to finish it all before the wave would come and wipe everything out,” the Israeli artist remembers. “I was totally spellbound. I would stand and watch until the drawing disappeared, realizing that everything is transient and temporary…” The ability to create a unique story using such a simple and natural medium as an exciting concept, so she decided to turn it into an art form.

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DDB Moscow, a creative ad studio from Russia, recently created a campaign for Dutch electronics maker Philips, in which it used the company’s new clothes iron and steamer to recreate a series of famous paintings. Didn’t think it was possible to paint with an iron? Think again!

The latest commercial for the Philips Azur GC4870 iron and the Philips ProTouch Steamer shows an artist making a series of folds with his hands and then using the new iron to fix them into place. As the video goes into fast forward, the simple piece of white cloth turns into a canvas for an original recreation of Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring”. Then, once the masterpiece is complete, the artist uses the powerful steamer to clear all the folds and prepare the canvas for other famous Dutch masterpieces by artists like Vincent Van Gogh and Rembrandt van Rijn. The whole commercial is just over a minute long, but I can only imagine how much time was really needed to painstakingly create every fold by hand, to make such detailed replicas. No wonder this Russian Philips ad was one of the most applauded at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the most important competition in the world of advertising.

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The first trampoline dodgeball court was inaugurated in 2004, and the sport has been growing in popularity ever since. Now, the world’s first Ultimate Trampoline Dodgeball Championship might finally bring it into the spotlight.

There are a lot of popular sports played on giant trampolines these days, including basketball and volleyball, but trampoline dodgeball has to be the most exciting one yet. Created by Sky Zone Sports, this revolutionary game is played by the same rules as traditional dodgeball, with some slight differences. Instead of just trying to dodge and catch the balls by running around the court, in trampoline dodgeball the playing surface is made up of several trampolines, allowing the players to jump 10 feet in the air or bounce off the walls and “floor”, and making the experience even more fun. Two teams of five go against each other in 4-minute-long matches, with the one knocking out all opposition players being declared the winner. If at the end of four minutes, both teams have players on the court, the match goes into sudden death, until the first player is knocked out. In the upcoming championship, the team who wins two matches out of three will advance into the next stage of the competition.

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If you think balloon animals are cool, this inflated replica of the Baggins family residence, from the Lord of the Rings, will probably blow you away. Famous balloon artist Jeremy Telford recently spent 40 hours recreating Bag End from 2,600 balloons.

We’ve featured some pretty cool balloon-made stuff here on Oddity Central, from balloon costumes, to life-size dinosaurs and even giant spiders, so this latest creation by Jeremy Telford is in good company. The talented artist from Pleasant Grove, Utah spent a whole weekend twisting balloons and tying them together, ultimately transforming his living room into a unique replica of Bag End, the famous Bagging residence, featured in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Sure it’s not as accurate as the one depicted in Peter Jackson’s movies, but I’d like to see anyone do a better job, using only balloons. Paying great attention to details, Telford created the actual Hobbiton smial, as well as interior accessories like the small candle chandelier, a cozy fireplace and all the furniture described by Tolkien in his books. In a comment left on The One Ring community website, Jeremy said: “I planned it out a little bit. I googled 18th English furniture styles to give me a platform to jump from. I read the Hobbit again (not a chore!) to gleen what I could of the description of Bag End. Then I did some initial sketches before starting the big build.”

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