To tell you the truth I often wondered why no one bothered to create a portrait of the Black Eyed Peas using black eyed peas, before. We’ve seen all kinds of weird portraits, like those made of toast, broken vinyl or bottle caps, so a black eyed peas portrait of the Black Eyed Peas seemed almost logical.

English artist Lee Mericks finally rose up to the challenge and created an 85 cm by 60 cm portrait of BEP singer will.i.am using nothing but thousands of black eyed peas. The artwork was commissioned by Alton Towers, to celebrate the Black Eyed Peas’ forthcoming concert at the Staffordshire resort, and took 24 hours, over a four-day period, to complete.

According to Lee Merricks, the black eyed peas portrait of will.i.am contains approximately 5 kilograms of black eyed peace, each of which were painstakingly placed by hand. If you’re curious to know the exact number of peas used, feel free to count them yourself.

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The small village of Juzcar, in Spain’s Malaga region, has recently been painted blue as part of a global promotion for the Sony Pictures film “The Smurfs 3D”.

Juzcar is a peaceful, traditional “pueblo blanco” village, located in the Genel Valley region of Andalucia. It boasts a population of just 250, and yet Sony has selected it as the perfect location for the world premiere of its new film “The Smurfs 3D”. Locals were delighted, especially since the news meant their small village would become a temporary tourist attraction, but their fame and fortune came at a price: Sony requested that the entire settlement, including its historic church be painted blue, to resemble the smurfs’ fantasy village.

In preparation for the big premiere on June 16, 12 unemployed locals armed with various painting tools used 4,200 liters of paint to turn Juzcar into a real life Smurf village. There have been no complaints regarding the sudden transformation, and considering tourists have already begun arriving, the locals are more than happy with the change. Although Sony has agreed to turn the village to its former white glory, locals are now considering leaving the town as it is now, hoping Juzcar could become a permanent tourist spot. It sounds like Chefchaouen might have some serious competition.

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The Great Knaresborough Bed Race of 2011 attracted a crowd of about 25,000 people eager to see one of the wackiest races in the world.

When the popular bed race was first organized, in 1965, it was considered so difficult that only members of the Army, Navy and American Marines were allowed to take part, but nowadays everyone is allowed to compete, as long as they pay an entrance fee and have a bed decorated according to the annual theme. This year, 90 teams from as far as Germany and the USA came to Knaresborough to compete in one of the strangest, most fun races on Earth.

Teams participating in the Great Knaresborough Bed Race are made up of six runners, a decorated bed and one member brave enough to sit on the bed. The runners have to carry the bed through the 3-km-long countryside course, while the seventh member tries to hold on for dear life. The race starts easily enough, along the banks of the River Nidd, but turns into a nightmare halfway through, as teams face five difficult hill climbs to Castle Fort. Going downhill is no picnic either, especially for the guy sitting on the bed, but if they manage to reach the bottom, they’re faced with the final hurdle, crossing the river.

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The Destruction Company is a member only Fight Club-like organization that allows rich Americans to smash stuff to smithereens, using an arsenal of weapons.

Destruction has been used as therapy to relieve stress for a few years now, and people seem willing to pay top dollar to take out their frustrations on stuff that can’t fight. Clubs offering people the chance to destroy old refrigerators, washing machines and things like that have been around for a while, but The Destruction Company only addresses frustrated rich folks who can afford to smash brand new things.  From a $10 set of plates to a $2,000 grand piano and even luxury cars worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, The Destruction Company offers whatever items you feel like releasing all your frustrations on.

This exclusive club is based at a secret location in New Jersey and new members can only join if they receive an invite from a current Destruction Company member. They are then called for an interview to decide if they have what it takes to join the club. They have to sign a legal waiver and respect the organization’s rules: no use of firearms, no living things or paperwork can be destroyed and no alcohol or drugs can be used during the destruction session. Members pay a confidential annual membership fee, plus the cost of every item they wish to destroy.

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Miroslav Svoboda’s house, in Mutenice, the Czech Republic, has become a regular tourist magnet after he decorated it with 180,000 wine corks.

The idea of using wine corks to make his house more appealing came to Mr Svoboda two years ago, There was an empty circle space on one of the walls, and he decided to fill it with a drawing, but when he noticed his friends were pretty unimpressed he decided to fill the space with wine corks. The small town of Mutenice is located in the South Moravian wine region of the Czech Republic, so wine corks were fairly easy to come by. A passionate red wine drinker, Miroslav Svoboda saved his own corks, but also got them by the thousands from friends and neighbors.

The experienced bricklayer developed an entire process to clean the wine corks and make sure his decorative work passes the test of time. First he placed them in a disinfectant bath that removed the smell of wine and killed any germs that could have caused mold to appear. He then dried them in nets made from onion bags and cut them in half. Using cement, he fixed each piece of cork into place, by hand, into various shapes. Svoboda says his house is very old and has extremely thick walls, so he didn’t cover his house in corks for padding, but purely for aesthetic reasons.

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Wang Kang, a 25-year-old office worker from Shanghai, China, surprised his colleagues a few days ago, when he came to work wearing a home-made Iron Man suit.

It happened on June 3rd, 2011. Kang walked into his office building wearing a metallic-looking costume and was immediately stopped by security. After explaining to them that he was actually an employee there they allowed him to go through to the office area where all his work mates stopped what they were doing and stared at the real-life Iron Man that just walked in. Everyone was speechless at first, but proceeded to congratulate Wang Kang for his incredible achievement, and started taking pictures. One of these ended up on China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo, and the young self-taught costume maker became an internet sensation.

Wang Kang got the idea of making his own Iron Man costume after seeing the 2008 blockbuster starring Robert Downey Junior, but actually started working on it on February 26, 2011, right in the living room of his rented apartment. The costume is mainly made of high density foam, wires and tubes, for which he only paid 3,000 yuan ($460). It also features the famous arc reactor which he made from glass. The whole thing took him three months to finish, but the reactions on his colleagues’ faces were totally worth the time and effort. After the office test, Kang took to the streets where he left everyone stunned, as well.

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When your body is covered with almost 7,000 metal piercings, one more ring really doesn’t seem that important, but for Elaine Davidson it was the most important one so far.

Looking at her, you’d probably think most normal men would run for the hills the minute they laid eyes on Elaine Davidson, the world’s most pierced woman, but she actually got a decent looking civil servant named Douglas Watson, who doesn’t have any visible piercings, to marry her. The 42-year-old former nurse was dressed in a classic white wedding dress that covered all of her body, except the face which was painted green and covered with 192 piercings. In case you’re wondering, no, she didn’t scare off the minister.

Brazilian-born Davidson first broke the record for most piercings in 2000, when Guinness examined her body and found 462 piercings, including 192 on her face. She’s come a long way since then and the last count revealed she now sports 6,925 piercings, weighing around three kilograms. Believe it or not, she never takes off any of her piercings. Read More »

22-year-old Staysha Randall had her arms legs and back pierced by 3,200 industrial strength needles, in order to set a new Guinness record, in Las Vegas.

Staysha, a Las Vegas performer who usually does escape acts and burlesque shows in which she demonstrates her physical strength set out to break the old record of 3,100 needles stuck in one person, in just one sitting. She and body piercer Bill ‘Danger’ Robins first set out to reach the 3,600 needle mark, but the pain was apparently so great Staysha called it quits after being pierced with 3,200 18-gauge, 1.5-inch-long needles.

The whole thing began at noon and ended after 7 hours and 28 minutes of excruciating pain for Randall, who didn’t take any pain medication nor drank alcohol because it would have made her blood thinner. The only way she could fight the pain was by biting on a paper towel wrapped in Saran Wrap. Read More »

General Electric has teamed up with London’s National Gallery to create a living version Van Gogh’s A Wheatfield with Cypresses from 8,000 plants. The famous painting, originally created in 1889, was chose for its strong colors that could be effectively reproduced with living plants. 26 different varieties were used for this amazing eco-installation and the result is simply mind-blowing.

The living painting is currently displayed on the side of the National Gallery, in Trafalgar Square, where it will grow throughout Summer and Fall, until October 2011. If you’re in London this Summer, this is one sight you don’t want to miss.

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Inspired by fantasy buildings featured in sagas like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings , LEGO fan Gerry Burrows has built an awe-inspiring giant structure called the Garrison of Moriah.

Ever since he was just a kid, Gerry Burrows dreamed of building something big using LEGO bricks, but it was only after finishing college that he realized he finally had the freedom to pull it off. He began thinking about how he finally had the space and financial freedom to fulfill his childhood dream ‘without a little sister to rampage through my Lego creations’ so he called his realtor and told him he needed a LEGO room. As soon as he bought his first house he unpacked a box of his old LEGO bricks.

Even more impressive is how this LEGO master managed to create his Garrison of Moriah with very little planning. He made no initial plans, on paper or computer, but simply started assembling the bricks, focusing on individual structures. As he kept building he got inspiration on what direction to take to make his masterpiece looks as cool as possible. Amazingly enough he suffered no disasters during the entire building process.

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Something doesn’t smell right in Prague, and I’m pretty sure it’s the buckets of elephant dung the local zoo has started selling to visitors, as souvenirs.

That’s right, the Czechs have apparently found a way to turn mounds of crap into piles of cash, by selling it in 1,5 kg plastic buckets, for 70 koruna ($4.20) each . The idea belongs to zoo director Miroslav Bobek, whose last name actually means ‘piece of dung’ in Czech, and believe it or not, it proved a big success. The stinky souvenirs were only introduced last month and sold just on weekends, but sales have been so brisk that management has decided to offer them to the public all week long. It’s estimated the zoo sells around 200 ice-cream-like dung containers every week, most of them to Czech gardeners who use it as fertilizer.

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Grace Robinson, 52, from Cambridgeshire, England, takes used tea bags and sews them into fashionable dresses, shoes and accessories.

Grace has been drinking tea for most of her life and she’s been recycling used tea bags for over 10 years now. The process is quite simple: she drinks tea every day, saves the tea bags and lets them dry naturally with the tea leaves inside. Once they’ve dried, the designer empties them and sews them into whatever clothing item she likes. The color of this unusual fabric varies depending on how long she lets the tea brew.

For many years, Grace Robinson only used the tea bags from the tea she drank herself, but now some of her friends save their tea bags for her, which the designer says is wonderful because she can work a lot faster. A dress can take several months to finish, so she needs all the help she can get.

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Facebook is one powerful tool, and a 16-year-old German girl found that out the hard way, after she forgot to set her Facebook birthday party invitation as private and had her celebration crashed by 1,500 strangers.

The girl, known only as Thessa, had originally planned to invite only a few friends over at her house in Hamburg-Bramfeld, but mistakingly published the invitation on Facebook so that everyone could see it. Before long, the invitation went viral and around 15,000 people confirmed they would come to the party, even though they didn’t even know the girl. When Thessa’s parents found out, they made her cancel the invitation, announced the police and hired a private security firm to guard their house on the big day.

Even though public announcements that the party had been cancelled were made in hamburg, some 1,500 people showed up in front of Thessa’s house ready to party. Some of them had banners asking ‘Where is Thessa’, others brought presents, home-made cake, and plenty of alcohol, but they were all ready for a good time, and the 100 policemen present on the scene weren’t going to stop them. They started singing ‘Thessa, celebrating a birthday is not a crime’, in relation with the massive police presence on the premises, and although eleven revelers were detained, a police officer was injured and dozens of girls wearing flip-flops cut their feet on broken glass, Thessa’s party was abig hit.

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Rain Price is probably the world’s most embarrassed son, after his father waved goodbye to him dressed in all kinds of wacky costumes, as he went away in the school bus. This happened every day, for the entire school year.

While the sixteen-year-old found his father’s daily ritual embarrassing, especially since this was his sophomore year, for Dale Price this was a special way of saying ‘ I love you’ to his son. On the first day of school, he went out of the house dressed pretty normally and waved goodbye to Rain, who thought it was going to be just another school year. But that all changed on day 2, when Dale came out wearing a San Diego Chargers helmet. Things just got worse from then on, as Dale started wearing ever stranger outfits, including a wedding dress, a Wonder Woman costume, a Star Trek Uniform and even sat on a toilet with pants pulled down reading the paper and waving goodbye.

Rain’s colleagues actually loved his father’s goofy habit and were looking forward to seeing what he was dressed in, every day. They would laugh, roll down the windows and wave back at him. But the teenager isn’t planning on rewarding his father for his efforts, as he says his year-long feeling of embarrassment is reward enough. Luckily, the end of the school year finally came on June 2, and Dale saw him off one last time, dressed in a pirate costume he had stored from a Halloween celebration.

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India is known for the wide variety of folk remedies for various ailments, and one of the most popular right now is the raw-fish-swallowing therapy practiced by the Goud family, in Hyderabad.

Asthma is one of the most serious respiratory conditions a person can have, and since conventional medicine doesn’t offer a permanent cure, many are willing to try any kinds of treatment, no matter how bizarre. One of these is the fish swallowing cure offered by the Goud family, for the last 166 years. Every year, during the month of June, hundreds of thousands of people flock to Hyderabad to try this unusual remedy, on the day of Mrigashira Karthi. Around 500 volunteers administer the miracle cure: live 2-inch to 3-inch long murrel fish which have been fed a drop of the secret herbal formula the Goud’s claim cures asthma within three years.

Ingredients for the medicine are collected two-three months before the big day, mixed the day before using water from the Goud family’s well, and administered to asthma sufferers free of charge. The patient is advised not to eat or drink anything four hours before swallowing the raw fish and two hours after. Also, he must be aware that he must come back for the cure three consecutive years, if he wants to get rid of the asthma permanently.

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