It may not look as good as your favorite SUVs, but TREKOL 39294 is more special than the usual service utility vehicle. What separates it from other cars is its ability to float on water at a speed of 10 km per hour, allowing scientists to access places they could only get to by boat. The TREKOL 39294 uses 6 unique tubeless tires that allow it to run through sand, snow and marshes without sinking even with 8 people on board and fully loaded.

The TREKOL is road legal, it has a fiberglass body and can withstand temperatures ranging from -60 to +60 degrees Celsius. This monster of a car is environment-friendly, its tires leave no rut and don’t damage the soil ( the pressure on the soil is between 0,1-0,4 kilos per square centimeter).

Cook Strait Giant Wetas are a species of giant insects that grow to be 10cm long and around 27 grams heavy. Just so you can get an idea, these bugs are about the size of a city rat. They have been extinct on the mainland of New Zealand for more than a century, but the authorities are trying to reintroduce the species to the area, and the first 100 Wetas have been brought to Kraori Wildlife Sanctuary in Wellington, in 2007.

You may think Giant Wetas are hideous and dangerous but the truth is they are passive creatures that feed on fruit and plant and they are less destructive than their smaller cricket brethren. The Wetas are protected from rats and stoats that led to their extinction 100 years ago.

21-year-old Brad Sciullo of Uniontown is the first person to ever finish eating the monster-burger known as the Beer Barrel Belly Bruiser. The burger itself weighed 15 pounds but with all the toppings (lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, onions, mild banana peppers, mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard and relish)  and the buns, it reached 20,2 pounds. Sure any man could gobble down a delicacy like this but hardly anyone could do it in 5 hours.

Brad Sciullo managed to do it, but it wasn’t easy, as he himself admits: “About three hours into it, things got tough,”and everyone can understand why. But he pushed himself to the edge and manage to finish the whole burger and won a $400 prize, 3 t-shirts, a certificate and “a burger hangover” as the owner od Denny’s Beer Barrel Pub, where the event took place.

Asked why on Earth he decided to eat the giant burger, Sciullo said “I wanted to see if I could.”

It may look as uninteresting as an empty parking-lot but it is much more than that…it’s a natural asphalt lake.

The Pitch Lake, as it is frequently called is a “lake” covering about 40ha with a reported depth of about 75 meters. Instead of  water, the Pitch Lake is filled with…pitch. Although it hasn’t been carefully studied, scientists say it lies at the intersection of two faults, which allows oil to be pushed up. Its lighter elements simply evaporate in the atmosphere and leave only the asphalt.

It was discovered back in 1595 by Sir Watler Raleigh and it has fascinated the scientific world ever since. It attracts about 20,000 tourists every year but some simply find it too boring. Asphalt from The Pitch Lake is mined for asphalt that is then exported all-over the world as high-quality road-construction material.

Photo Credits

The Japanese have decided to release a series of woman self-defense instructional images to help them fight-off aggressors. Judging by the moves depicted I have to say I pity the fool who would dare attack a woman trained in these martial arts. that head-blow alone would bring any man to its knees, the other blows are just for fun. Beware women-aggressors, you may become the victims.

When the Heatherwick Rolling Bridge is in its horizontal position, there’s nothing remotely strange about it, just another steel and wood-made bridge in London. But that all changes when it curves up until its two ends touch, to let boats pass. When curled, Heatherwick Bridge resembles an old watermill wheel.

Heatherwick Studio’s Rolling Bridge opens every Friday at noon but if the winds exceed 30 mph, the hidraulics may be unable to handle them, so the bridge doesn’t open.

All you motorcycle owners out there know how hard it is to protect your vehicle against thieves and the dust of big cities. Well Protect 486 may be the solution you were searching for. Designed by Marc Graells Ballve, this revolutionary motorcycle security device was inspired by natural defense mechanisms of animals like the armadillo.

The Protect 486 motorcycle security system raps around your prized two-wheel vehicle and, because of its burglar alarm, it makes it almost impossible for thieves to steal it. Protect 486 is just a prototype for the time beein, but it might go into production if the reactions are favorable.

No idea who built this bad boy, but it’s definitely the most impressive auto sound-system I’ve ever seen. Just imagine cruising through your neighborhood with that thing cranked up to full volume, old people yelling and throwing their canes at you, hommies giving you envious looks and babes falling at your feet. Well maybe except for the last one, but it’s still worth it.

Would like to see it on a more decent ride, but this mega sound-system is still wicked. I wonder what its specs are. If you have some info on this baby please share.

A new landmark found its way on the map of Chicago and it may make people call it The Shitty City instead of The Windy City.

Installed in front of a residence in Augusta, The Shit Fountain was created by Jerzy S. Kenar, an artist internationally known for his religious sculptures, who has had enough of people not picking up their dogs doo-doo of the streets. So he decided to make a monument for the dogs and created a bronze sculpture that perfectly resembles dog crap.

Most people received The Shit Fountain warmly but their have been people who disapprove of such a display in their neighborhood.

The Big Picture is a project by British creative artist Helen Marshall who worked with specialists from PollyTiles to create what may be the world’s largest photo mosaic in central Birmingham. The idea behind The Big Picture was to create the biggest photo album in the West Midlands, where people donated over 110,000 photographs.

The photo mosaic is a new record in terms of size, covering over 3 tennis courts. If you’re ever in Birmingham, you shouldn’t pass the opportunity of seeing The Big Picture photo mosaic unveiled at the city’s ThinkTank in Millenium Park, on August 23rd.

The Big Picture

Daniel Deutsch is one of those Star-Wars fans that likes to create memorabilia of the series in his own garage. So he decided to build the X-34 Landspeeder used in Star-Wars parts 1 and 4 using any materials he could find and his extraordinary talent. The speeder has the exact size of the original and it’s built out of glassfibre on a custom chassis. It has an electric motor that pushes the X-34 to a max speed of 25 miles per hour and can go a few miles on a single battery charge.

The X-34 Star-Wars Landspeeder took 6 weeks to build and it was first unveilled at a Star Wars Celebration in May 2007.

Source: Neatorama

The world’s first sand-hotel is open for business on Weymouth beach, Dorset, in England. The 1000 tone-of-sand structure was built in a week by a team of 4 sand-sculptors and is only expected to last until it rains…which, as you probably know, happens quite often in Britain.

The sand-hotel was commissioned by a local travel website that, upon doing some research, found out that 57% of English tourists prefer foreign beach-destinations instead of national ones. So this is like a statement that signifies the rebirth of British tourism. The sand hotel has no roof, so you have a clear view of the star-filled night sky, no toilets and is not recommended for those that hate getting sand between their toes. For an offbeat experience like spending a night at the wonderful sand-hotel, you only have to pay $21, more than a fair price, in my opinion.

And if this doesn’t appeal to you, maybe you’d like to try the ice-hotel? But you’ll have till winter for that one.

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How would you like a ride in this bad-boy? Cool idea if I may say so, good for business, those New-York cabs all look the same, so any modification to make one stand out is a welcome one. Wonder if it’s really still a working cab, I’d like to take it for a ride.

You may stumble across this merry old man if you walk around Tokyo, especially in the Harajuku district.

Ojisan used to be a postman but he always wanted to be an actor and be in the center of attention. As an opportunity to become a professional entertainer never emerged, he decided to claim the spotlight after he retired. These days he walks around dressed as you can see in the photos, wearing goldfish in plastic bottles as earrings and oversized funny hats and tourists just can’t help but take photos of Ojisan, as memorabilia.

Image source 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

You might just see a huge steel ball, but this tuned mass damper is so much more.

This 728 tons steel pendulum is installed in one of the world’s tallest buildings, the taipei 101 in Taiwan. It helps stabilize the building in case of strong winds and earthquakes, through simple mechanics, when the building moves in a direction it swings in the opposite direction reducing movement by 40%. You can understand how it works by looking at the small GIF image.

It cost #4 million to install the huge damper in the skyscraper but architects and engineers said it had to be done. It spans across 4 of the building’s stories and it was assembled on site because it couldn’t be lifted by a crane, due to its enormous weight.

Here’s a video of the damper in action, on May 12th, when a horrific earthquake hit one of China’s provinces and the tremors reached as gar as Taipei. As the building started to shake, people ran towards the center to see the damper in action, it did it’s job.

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