Chinese man stages what could be considered as the most romantic wedding proposal of all time.

Mr. Tian, from the city of Jinan, China used 9,999 roses to propose to his girlfriend, Ms. Liu. Don’t laugh, we only know their surnames. Anyway, Mr. Tian really planned this special marriage proposal to the smallest detail. He had a big rose-heart set-up in front of the hotel him and Ms. Liu were staying and had all of his friends and hotel staff waiting for his girlfriend with a big bouquet of roses on every floor.

Meanwhile, back in their room, Tian got down on one knee and popped the question to his girlfriend. You can imagine what Ms. Liu’s answer was, right? But with so many people in on this, could she really have said no?

via People.com.cn

Canadian needle-worker, Joanna Lopianowski-Roberts, spent eight years making what could be considered the most amazing replica of the Sistine Chapel paintings.

Inspired by a magazine cut-out of the Sistine Chapel, stuck-up on her bathroom wall, Joana spent eight years knitting Michelangelo’s masterpiece. She says starting was the hardest part, because she just didn’t know where to begin.

To make sure her knitted work-of-art follows every detail of the original painting, Joanna made close-ups of every section of the artwork and even bought some books from Rome. After a total of 3,572 hours of work, Joana Lopianowski-Roberts created a perfect 40 inches by 80 inches replica of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.

Her knitted masterpiece now sits safely in Joana’s home, but the artist says she would consider selling it for the right price. I’m sure she already has plenty of offers. The old-ladies who knitted their village managed to sell their creations, so finding a buyer for this should be a breeze.

Photos by BARCROFT MEDIA

via Telegraph.co.uk

Remember He Ping Ping, currently the shortest man in the world? Well, you’ll soon forget all about him as he’ll be stripped of his title by Khagendra Thapa Magar.

Nicknamed “Little Buddha“, by his fellow Nepalese villagers, Khagendra Thapa Magar is just 4 months away from officially becoming the world’s shortest man.He will be turning 18 and the Guinness Book of Records will have to acknowledge him as the tiniest human on the planet.

Khagendra has become quite  a sensation in  Nepal and even India and even his country’s politicians are fighting to see him recognized as the world’s smallest man. He travels Nepal as part of a dancing group only to let people know he will soon be in the record books.

Otherwise a very healthy individual, Khagendra has a malfunctioning pituitary gland that caused him to grow very slowly. His parents admit they were ashamed to be seen with him in the beginning, but now they feel proud to be the parents of the shortest man in the world. Khagendra Thapa Magar measures just 2 feet, 5 inches less than He Ping Ping.

A big karate and dancing fan, the petite Nepalese said he can’t wait to officially receive his title and fullfil his dream of traveling to the USA, to show the western world his dancing and karate skills.

via Telegraph.co.uk

Times Square is one of the most crowded places on Earth, but that didn’t stop 200+ people from practicing yoga right in the middle of it.

On the morning of the Summer Solstice, on June 21, 2009 more than 200 yoga enthusiasts gathered in the “Crossroads of the World” for the seventh annual free yoga classes. Participants probably thought it would be  a challenge to achieve total peace and calmness in the center of Time Square.

I wonder if yoga granny took part in this unusual yoga session.

Photos by REUTERS/XINHUA

via People.com.cn

A young, inspiring fashion designer created her prom dress using nothing else but coffee filters.

18-year-old Aimee Kick, from Missouri spent an entire month making her own prom dress out of coffee filters. Apparently Aimee spends a lot of her free time in local coffee shops and is known as “the girl with a coffee cup” so I guess she wanted to create an appropriate theme dress for her prom at Francis Howell North High School.

via The Fashion Police

The bride and groom, both sci-fi fans, decided they didn’t want a conventional wedding so they opted for one in total weightlessness.

Noah Fulmore and Erin Finnegan, two love-birds from New York City, spent nearly $20,000 on a 90-minute-long zero-gravity wedding. The ceremony was performed in a modified Boeing 727 jet that takes roller-coaster-style dives, used to simulate the zero-gravity experienced by astronauts in space.

The couple also exchanged wedding rings made out of precious metal from a meteorite that crashed in Namibia 30,000 years ago. They said the experience was everything they hoped for.

Photos by REUTERS

via Daily Mail

Competitors went toe to toe last weekend, for the title of World Toe-Wrestling Champion.

Who knew something as silly as toe-wrestling was an actual sport, right? Well, turns out it really is and people have been clashing their toes in the World Toe-Wrestling Championship for the last 14 years.

This year’s competition was held in Ashbourne, England. The rules were pretty simple. After a basic check for foot hygiene, two competitors “toed-it-out”, trying to push each other off the “toedium”. Toe-wrestling has become more and more popular lately and, this year, the championship drew-in contestants from all around the world, including Australia and the US.

The final toe-down was between two locals, last year’s champion Paul “Toeminator” Beech and Alan “Nasty” Nash. After a tough match, the judge decided “Nasty” had the stronger toes and awarded him his fifth World Toe-Wrestling Championship trophy.

via People’s Daily

BEFORE YOU SCROLL DOWN TO THE PHOTOS, BE WARNED, THEY ARE NOT FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED!

Welcome to the village of Salba, 610 km southeast of the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk. This is where 600 Siberian Marals (a subspecies of Red-Deer) lose their antlers every year. These photos, taken June 15 2009, at a private ranch, in Salba, show the marals held in special devices, in order to have their antlers removed with a hand saw.

The antlers are sold to markets in Russia and East Asia, where antler velvet is used as a holistic medicine. Some people consume the antlers themselves, grinding and consuming them in small quantities.

Marals go through this brutal process every year and, even though some say it doesn’t cause them too much pain because they have no nerves in the antlers, I still call it animal cruelty.

Photos by REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin

via Drugoi

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‘Surprisingly’ the US Texting Champ is a 15-year-old girl.

Kate Moore, a young girl from Des Moines, Iowa, took home the title of 2009 US Texting Champion and a prize of $50,000. But she had to work hard for every cent. LG, the contest organizer, made this year’s competition a very difficult one.

Contestants had to type tough messages while blindfolded, text acronyms, run an obstacle-course and text at the same time, and even text tongue-twisters while being taunted by actors dressed as emoticons. Moore made it to the final tie-breaker with runner up Dynda Morgan, and won the championship by typing “Zippity Dooo Dahh Zippity Ayy…MY oh MY, what a wonderful day! Plenty of sunshine Comin’ my way….Zippitty Do Dah Zippity Aay! WondeRful Feeling Wonderful day!” faster than her opponent.

15-year-old Kate Moore stated she texts between 400-500 times a day and an average of 12,041 times a month.

CNN via Switched

More and more Chinese women turn to pole-dancing to keep in shape.

Great news for Chinese men, an increasing number of their women are registering for pole-dancing classes, to keep fit. These photos, taken in Luoyang, central China, show women learning to master the pole, under the guidance of professional instructors. It appears this is the latest trend in Chinese exercising and practically every gym and dance studios is offering classes.

Damn I hope this trend goes international real soon, I know a few guys who would gladly pay for their wives’ classes.

via CCTV.com

At least that was the case when young Kimberley Vlaminck asked for three stars tattooed near her left eye.

The young Belgian says she went to a tattoo parlor to get three small stars tattooed, but the foreign artist misunderstood her request and left her with 56 stars covering the left side of her face. How could that possibly have happened, you say? Simple, she fell asleep during the procedure and woke up when the artist finished his work.

Now, the guy who tattooed her doesn’t exactly look like the most trustworthy person in the world (he’s the guy in the last photo), but I find it hard to believe someone could fall asleep while getting a tattoo. Nevermind the pain, the noise of the tattoo-gun right next to her left ear would have been enough to keep her awake.

Kimberley says she must have been drugged by Rouslan Toumaniantz, the shop-owner and the guy who executed the tattoo, but he insists the girl specifically asked for 56 stars tattooed on her face. He says the whole scandal started when the 18-year-old went home and showed her family and boyfriend the permanent artwork. They went crazy, so miss Vlaminck returned to the tattoo-shop and accused Toumaniantz of misunderstanding her request.

Now Kimberley Vlaminck is suing Toumanintz for 10,000 pounds, the cost of a laser-procedure to remove his ‘mistake’. Although the tattoo artist maintains that the girl asked for 56 stars, and even brought in a witness to sustain his claim, he agreed to pay half of the procedure costs, just because he doesn’t want an unsatisfied customer.

Kimberley hasn’t accepted his offer yet.
Read More »

Why journey to Vulcan in a spaceship when you can just drive there?

The Canadian town of Vulcan, Alberta has become a true pilgrimage site for Star-Trek fans because of its coincidental link to the sci-fi series. Vulcan received its name in 1915, from a surveyor of the Canadian Pacific Railway who named it after the Roman God of Fire. It has no connection to Mister Spock’s home planet, but do trekkies care?

Of course not, anything that relates to the Star-Trek universe, accidentally or not, is worth a visit. So the people of Vulcan decided to capitalize on this great tourism opportunity and built a 5-ton replica of the USS Enterprise. And it paid out. This year trekkies gathered in Vulcan, Alberta for a celebration called Spock Days.

Photos show Klingons, Romulans, Tholians, Vulcans and even good old Captain Kirk had a great time in Vulcan this year.

via Telegraph.co.uk

Another unusual animal love story shocks the world. An 18-months-old dog and an 8-weeks-old wolf cub become best friends.

Ulrok, a fully grown Rottweiler was more than happy to become the father figure in young Beldaran’s life, after the poor baby was rejected by her natural mother. Kahlani, the wolf who gave birth to this little furry treasure, was too young herself and her maternal instincts didn’t kick in.

Caretakers at the Krisma Preserve, in Mt. Desert, Maine, tried to find another surogate parent for Beldaran, but Ulrok was the only one who accepted the young cub, when she was just four days old. Now they spend all their time together, playing in the sun, howling at the full moon and even sleeping together.

It’s nice to see them getting along so well and, no matter how down you are, just one look at them will put a big smile on your face. But, once Beldaran is old enough to take care of herself, she will be introduced to a pack of wolves, to make sure she grows up to be a wolf and not something else.

Photos by Bary Bland/ BARCROFT MEDIA

via Daily Mail

While other two-year-olds are just learning to walk and talk, the children of the nomad Vadi Tribe are introduced to the centuries-old art of snake charming.

All the children of the Vadi Tribe come face to face with a poisonous cobra at age two, and go through a ten-year ritual, in which they learn all the secrets of snake charming. Both boys and girls must learn to handle snakes. While men must be able to manipulate cobras by playing the flute, the women must know how to take care of the reptiles when their husbands or brothers are away.

The Vadi treat snakes like their own children, never keeping them away from their natural habitat for more than seven months. Any longer than that would be disrespectful to the snakes, according to Babanath Mithunath Madari, the 60-year-old Vadi chief-charmer. In fact, the only time a snake actually bit his charmer, was when he kept it for more than seven months.

Vadi snake-charmers don’t cut the fangs of their snakes, instead they feed them an herbal mixture which, they say,  makes their deadly poison harmless.

Unfortunately, in 1991, the thousand-year-old tradition of snake-charming was banned in India, and the Vadi tribe are stripped of their snakes whenever they are confronted by the police. They never spend more than six months in the same place.

Photos by BARCROFT MEDIA

via Telegraph.co.uk

40,000 small terracotta soldiers storm into the Spanish Barn, in Torquay, Devon.

The Terracotta Army is a famous art collection, by British artist Anthony Gormley, featuring 40,000 clay figurines. They were all made in St. Helen’s, Merseyside, as a community project. Children and their families were given clay balls to manipulate into a human shape, with two eyes. Each person created up to 200 terracotta figurines per day.

Now the Terracotta Army has been moved from London’s South Bank Center into the Torre Abbey’s Spanish Barn, in Torquay, Devon. All the 40,000 lilliputian terracotta soldiers must face in the same direction and must be viewed from a certain angle. That’s why volunteers were needed to walk through the ranks and arrange the figurines.

The young lady in the second photo is one such volunteer, walking carefully among the 8 to 26-cm-tall statuettes, in her socks. If one of the soldiers were to fall, it could lead to a disastrous domino effect.

Anthony Gormley’s Terracotta Army will be stationed inside the abbey for the summer, if you fancy a visit.

Photos by SWNS

via Daily Mail