It may seem like you’re seeing double, but what you’re really looking at is twins, and lots of them! Welcome to Igbo-Obra, a farming community in the southwestern part of Nigeria, which proudly calls itself “the Nation’s Home of Twins”. The name is very appropriate because, as community leader Olayide Akinyemi states “there is hardly a family here without a set of twins.” The man knows what he’s talking about: he himself had 3 sets of twins and his own grandfather had 10 sets.

West Africa has the highest incidence of twins in the world, and this is especially true for the Yoruba people of Igbo-Obra, 5% of births being twins. It may not seem like a lot, but considering that the percentage is 1.2 in Western European countries and just 0.8 in Japan, it really is pretty unusual. Are they doing something special that makes women give birth to twins? Well, not really, except maybe eat lots of yams, like most other West Africans. It’s believed that yams contain a herbal equivalent of estrogen, called phytoestrogen, that may stimulate the ovaries to each produce an egg. Despite many people being skeptical about this theory, Akin Odukogble, gynecologist, claims that there are studies supporting the yam theory. However, there is no medical evidence to connect eating yams to having twins. The chief nursing officer at the Muyibi Yomi hospital believes that the explanation for so many birth twins is genetics: “if a family has a history of multiple births, this will continue from generation to generation”.

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According to foodies, traditional cuisine is among the best things China has to offer. The Chinese food prepared and sold on the streets is not only delicious, but it’s also a big part of the cityscape. The problem is that some street vendors and even restaurants have taken recycling too far by using gutter oil – yes, gutter oil – as cooking oil. This practice  has nothing to do with being eco-friendly, but rather with the Chinese food black market, where gutter oil is presented as a cost-friendly solution for small businesses.

Why is it called “gutter oil”, you ask? Well, sadly enough, the name is not a metaphor, but it merely describes the source of the oil used illegally in the food market. The process of turning sewer sludge into cooking oil is quite simple and disgusting: after draining sewers, trash bins, gutters and anything that may contain cooking oil and animal parts, the content is boiled and then filtered. As expected, the final product is not only unhealthy (and gross!), but it can be fatal in some cases, as it contains carcinogens and other dangerous toxins. Recycling oil is not a novelty in the food industry, where cooking oil is re-used after refining  and purifying it, but in most cases the origin of the oil is clearly not the gutter.

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Up until a few years ago, people rarely looked at bananas as anything more than delicious fruits, let alone as an art medium. But that was before artists started taking advantage of the banana peel’s oxidation process to create amazing artworks. Today, more and more artists are becoming specialized in banana oxidation art, also known as banana tattooing.

Banana peel may seem like a strange canvas too some, but it’s also one that can yield some pretty impressive results. Case in point, the amazing artworks of End Cape, a young Japanese artist who specializes in bruising bananas. Using a sharp tool like a simple needle or a thumbtack, he spends up to five hours puncturing the peel of the tropical fruit and creating breathtaking masterpieces inspired by popular anime, traditional Japanese art and famous landmarks. The process is very similar to that used by regular tattoo artists, only without the paint. In contact with air, the bruised sections of the banana turn brown, revealing artist’s designs. Apparently, the colder the fruit is, the faster it oxidizes. By controlling the density of needle holes, End Cape is able to create different textures and shades of brown.

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Turkey’s delicious baklava and its crowded Grand Bazaar have always attracted tourists, but now there’s a new reason why men are flocking to the transcontinental country – bushier mustaches and beards. No, it’s not something in the air that makes your face hairier, but there are clinics specialized in this matter, so gentlemen, if you want a manlier look, Turkey is the place to go.

The mustache has had an important role in society since time immemorial and although some cultures have abandoned it as a fashion icon, others have kept it and made a tradition out of wearing it. Today, the mustache is pretty popular especially in the Middle East and parts of Asia: when it comes to politics, the mustache is among the elements that capture the differences between the Western world, where being clean shaved is considered a sign of stability and maturity, and the Eastern world, where the mustache is a mark of traditionalism.  All in all, politics or not, the mustache is a sign of pure masculinity and a fashion statement. Hipsters know what I mean. Getting the mustache you’ve always dreamed of is possible through a simple medical procedure called follicle-hair extraction. In medical terms, the procedure implies removing hair from hairier areas and implanting it into the mustache or beard area. In laymen terms, the follicle-hair extraction means recycling your own hair. I’m just wondering, what would be the most suitable area of the body to provide the hair for the implant?

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You know those moments when you’re surrounded by a sea of people and all you can think about is being alone in a tiny room? Ok, maybe that’s just me, but he point is now you can isolate yourself from the world pretty much anywhere and anytime, thanks to the Danbocchi. This ordinary-looking cardboard box is is soundproofed up to 30 decibels, so as long as you do it in a low voice, you can talk to yourself, scream, or sing without worrying about people hearing you.

The Danbocchi might seem like the perfect accessory for hikikomori, Japan’s reclusive youth, but in fact, it was designed for ordinary people who want to sing karaoke or play video games at high volume without disturbing their neighbors. If you live in an apartment with really thin walls, you probably know how annoying loud neighbors are, particularly at night, but thanks to the Danbocchi sound-dampening box, noise is no longer a problem. Just step inside, close the door, and be as loud as you can. According to the Danbocchi official site, if someone is singing karaoke at 90 decibels inside the box, it only sounds like 60 decibels to people outside of it, which is about a normal speaking volume.

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Mitsuhiro Mori is an accomplished musician best known for his hand flute skills. If you close your eyes and just listen to him sing, you ca swear he’s playing a flute or an ocarina, when in reality, all he’s really doing is blowing air into his hands.  Prepare to have your mind blown!

The talented Mitsuhiro and his college friend and pianist Keisuke Usuda formed the “Piano and Hand Flute Duo Childhood”, after Usuda was so impressed with his buddy’s hand flute skills and decided they should put it to good use. The unique duo have been entertaining audiences all around the world ever since, produced several albums and appeared on numerous television shows. You may have seen your friends do an impressive hand flute or maybe watched YouTube videos of people showing off their skills, but I can assure you you haven’t seen anything quite like this before. There are some pretty amazing hand flute players out there, but almost all of them agree, Mitsuhiro Mori is in a league of his own. He can reach any note he wants and can play really fast, which is incredibly difficult. It just goes to show you don’t always need expensive instruments to make great music.

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Ever dreamed of having your face immortalized in expensive lipstick? No, well, you can, thanks to Singapore-based artist May Sum, who has made a name for himself by carving expensive lipsticks from top brands in the makeup industry into detailed busts of various celebrities, from Lady Gaga to Audrey Hepburn.

Some women would kill for a stick of lipstick from established brands such as Yves Saint Laurent or Estee Lauder, but artist May Sum doesn’t think twice before butchering them into oily busts of popular fashion icons. It’s not clear what kind of tools he uses during the carving process, but considering the size of his medium, they must be pretty tiny and precise. Although his lipstick busts aren’t exact replicas of the characters he aims to depict, the Singaporean somehow manages to always nail he details that define his muses. For example, Lady Gaga is easily recognizable by her unmistakable hairdo and large glasses, while Coco Channel can be distinguished by her signature hat and pearls. May Sum can carve sticks of lipsticks into anything from animals to sceneries and customs portraits, but she is most famous for her “Strong Women” series.

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Isaac Brown is a 5-year-old boy from Iowa who suffers from a rare genetic condition which makes him immune to pain, but not to the effects of his frequent injuries. Painful falls, deep cuts and other agonizing injuries that normally make children scream at the top of their lungs and cry out for their parents, don’t determine any kind of reaction from little Isaac. Even after he broke his pelvis by falling from playground equipment, he calmly acknowledged that something was wrong, but he didn’t feel pain.

Isaac was born with a congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP) and, according to his parents, the first years of his life years were especially hard as the boy “would just drop to the ground and smack his face on the table. He thought the fall was fun.” Unaware of the damage he was doing to his body, he also put his hands on a working oven burner and one time cut himself with sharp pieces from a mug he had broken. His parents sought medical help but were disappointed to find that his condition was untreatable. The only advice medics were able to give the couple was to teach Isaac to recognize pain. He now knows that bleeding is bad but he is still unable to understand that there are different levels of pain which vary in intensity. While he understands that his father accidentally stepping on him is painful, he doesn’t recognize that a cat brushing against him, while it might be unpleasant to some, should not hurt. Unfortunately, Isaac’s response in both of these situations is the same “Ow” that his parents thought him to say.

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Peter Fitzek is a self-proclaimed king of a made-up state called the Kingdom of Germany which promises to “not serve capitalism, but the people.” This was possible because of a lesser-known subarticle of German law which entitles the citizens to establish non-profit organizations with their own legislation, executive and judiciary structures.

Fitzek started off as a chef working in a renowned restaurant. He then founded several businesses such as a video store, shoe and jeans shop, a disco bar and tattoo parlor. When he got bored with them, he turned to martial arts. He had always been interested in being healthy and in great shape, thanks to his father who always rode a bike on his way to judo class and because of his mother who was physically disabled. Her condition gave him the determination not to be ill since, according to him, being handicapped is a matter of choice. He believes every man has utter control over what happens to his body. “I control every thought I have. Every emotion, every action. I observe very carefully what those ‘bodies’ do and I carefully decide what I allow them to do and what I don’t allow them to do,” Fitzek says. After participating in some karate tournaments, getting married and having two children, he met a mysterious person who gave him some “ancient magical writings.” Fitzek was so captivated by what he read in those books that from then on, he rejected the rational scientific worldview and embraced the magical, surreal world and beliefs the books described. He soon started teaching that belief system to others, holding seminars in his apartment. “I am a teacher with all my heart. I love to teach people new things and set a good example,” he states. In his seminars, he talked about big issues such as humanity’s problems and political systems which, according to him, were flawed. He now believes democracy too is flawed since “the masses never came to a wise decision. It’s always been a small amount of people or individuals who served the further development of mankind.”

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Authorities in Sierra Leone have found a really cool and ingenious way to deal with their very undisciplined and uneducated drivers who are involved in thousands of accidents every year – a fun board game meant to be played for several months by any newbie wanting a driver’s license. Before actually being allowed to get behind the wheel, players will find themselves in realistic situations where the only way out is to give the right answers to traffic law and conduct questions.

The game, called “The Drivers’ Way”, might look like your regular board game but it has a quirky twist – the rules of the game are real driving rules and players move pieces modeled like classic cars around a colorful board as they advance. The dice is cleverly made into a traffic light but even if the light is green, players still have to tackle tough traffic law tests to go further. If they fail the tests or have a broken tail light, they get a fine, just like in real life. The game, which apparently plays a bit like Scrabble, seems easy enough if you know your signs and speed limits. Thousands of copies of the game have already been made, each costing 60,000 Leones (about $14). Sarah Bendu, executive director of Sierra Leone’s Road Transport Authority explains that “they (novice drivers) will have to pay for it. Then they will play it for two or three months, or maybe just one if they’re smart enough, then they will come for their test.”  I’m guessing that after playing it months on end, the West African country will have some seriously determined drivers.

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It’s tough being a professional model in such a competitive industry, especially when you are passed your prime, but it’s always good to remember that when a door closes, a window opens. Take Elliott Sailors, for example. She used to grace Bacardi billboards around the world with her beautiful blond locks, but at 31, she struggled to find any decent giggs. So she chopped off her hair, wrapped her breasts tightly and reinvented herself as a sexy androgynous male model.

Inspired by Casey Legler, a fellow colleague at the prestigious Ford modelling agency and the first woman to exclusively model menswear, Sailors cut her hair into a modern masculine style, hid her curves as best she could and started posing in front of the camera as a man, in an attempt to save her career. She says she didn’t want her modelling career to end so abruptly at only 31, as it often happens with female models who are replaced by younger newcomers. “Men don’t need to look as young as possible, so I have a lot of time,” the woman explains. Her decision to become a male model was not as extreme as it might seem. Back in the day, when she was a beauty pageant contestant, she was insecure with her masculine features. “Earlier on in my career, I would get frustrated because I thought I looked too masculine,” Elliot explains. “I have a strong jaw, wide forehead, huge eyebrows. I thought I looked like a man wearing makeup.” Nowadays, she likes her jawline and other manly features and tries to accentuate them with makeup.

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Take a seat and let your eyes feast upon the stunning views unfolding underneath your dangling feet. Designer extraordinaire Dallin Smith from Provo, Utah, made a rope chair and attached it hundreds of feet above ground on a steep rocky cliff at Rock Canyon, offering rock-climbers a new reason to tackle the challenging rock face.

Dallin says his chair wasn’t designed to hang off of cliffs, but as a comfortable lounge chair. “I was trying to figure out how to put it to use and I was originally planning on a type of furniture to place in the living room,” the industrial designer who is also an avid climber says. “The chair was a design project I have been working on as I had an excess amount of retired climbing rope lying around.” When the project was complete, it occurred to him that the chair’s place might not be in a home. “However the more renditions I made, the more it made sense to place something outside,” the man states.

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A Bogota-based company specializes in fashionable clothes that will protect wearers against gunshots and knife attacks. One such bulletproof jacket can withstand ammunition from a variety of weapons such as a 9mm, a .44 Magnum and a 3.75 revolver. The protective clothes – now sold in 18 countries, have been worn by the Vice President of Colombia, Francisco Santos, Hugo Chaves – the former President of Venezuela, the Price of Spain and even by action film star Steven Seagal.

Colombia is notorious for arms and drug trafficking and is considered one of the most violent and dangerous countries is Latin America. High-level dignitaries an businessmen here try to protect themselves as best as they can, with owning bulletproof cars and vests being the most typical life-saving accessories. During their University years, Miguel Caballero and John Murphy noticed people’s pressing need for safety and started a profitable business creating stylish and lightweight bulletproof clothing.  While citizens are safe in their bulletproof cars, once they get out, they became vulnerable to attack. “Most of these people ride in armored cars, so they need something to wear when they step out of the car and walk into their home or restaurant,” said Murphy – who left the partnership but still sells the innovative  garments he and Miguel designed.

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If you live in Yelm, Washington, be very careful where you park your vehicle because Edward Smith may have sex with it. So  far, the 62-year-old car lover (pun intended) has bedded – in lack of a better word – 1,000 cars, which makes him the world’s most promiscuous mechaphile, a colloquial word used to describe people who love machines a little bit too much or who feel an insatiable sexual attraction to cars.

Smith claims he has never been attracted to a human being in his life and that his love for cars started way back in his childhood. He actually lost his virginity to a neighbor’s Volkswagen Beetle. He has had only one female girlfriend 12 years ago but never found it in him to consummate the relationship. In fact, his sexual experience with women began and ended with a one night stand in Seattle. Ever since he can remember, he felt attracted to cars. “When I turned 13 and the famous Corvette Stingray came about, that car was pure sex and just an incredible machine. I wanted it,” he explains. “I didn’t fully understand it myself except that I know I’m not hurting anyone and I do not intend to,” he adds. He’s now in an open relationship with a second-hand Volkswagen Beetle named Vanilla, a 1973 Opel GT, called Cinnamon, and an 1193 Ford Ranger by the name of Splash, which he regularly takes for joy rides. However, his heart belongs to Vanilla for which he has real feelings. “When I hold Vanilla in my arms there’s a powerful energy that comes from her,” he says. “I would say it is extremely satisfying but at times a little melancholy because I know she cannot talk to me. But overall I know she feels what I feel and it’s intense. If anything was to happen to her I would be more than heartbroken.”

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In 2010, the Year of the Tiger,  a series of pictures showing orange puppies with black stripes caused controversy in China after they were posted online. Hoping to make a profit off them, some vendors had started selling striped dogs under the false pretense that they were a new breed.  At the time, everybody questioned the authenticity of those photos, not knowing if they were photoshopped, if the puppies where genetically altered or simply painted, but now everyone knows the truth. These are “one week puppies” a name that hints at their short life expectancy due to the toxicity of the varnish they are painted with. Believe it or not, they are still very popular in China.

It seems making your canine companion look like other animals using toxic varnish has become very popular in China. Pandas and tigers are especially sought after and dogs resembling these animals have been showing up in every city. “I have seen this kind of dog more than once in China, once in ZhuHai last fall and then in the city of Guangzhou. Both times the dogs were for sale from a street vendor, they were not all the same color, but they were all striped. The only thing I can think is that the stripes are spray painted on,” a woman wrote on a forum. The coloring process used in the case of the “Bengal dogs” (tiger-skinned dogs) must have required some powerful chemicals as the people curious enough to buy a striped individual reported that the dog was very ill. “I recently bought one of these dogs in Beijing China,” another person wrote . “I got it home and it was very dehydrated. I took it to the vet today and they confirmed that its hair had been dyed. It is a black dog, that gets to be about medium size. They dye the orange part, that’s why the orange is never around the eyes, or nose, and the stripes are so uniform. The vet stated that the dye would wear off in about 2 months, and that the dog would be healthy unless we continued to dye the dog,” he detailed.

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