The word heliography usually refers to a photographic process invented in 1822, but Colorado-based artist Michael Papadakis has given it a new meaning after using it to describe his art of harnessing the sun to burn intricate artworks onto wooden panels with a magnifying glass.

Up until five years ago, Michael Papadakis used to create art the old fashioned way, with painting and drawing supplies, but on a trip along the Silk Road from Asia to Europe, he discovered a new and ingenious tool – the magnifying glass.

Read More »

What was supposed to be the happiest day of their lives turned into a complete nightmare for a young couple in China, after it was revealed that the groom had hired 200 random people to act as his friends and relatives at the wedding.

The groom, known only by his surname, Wang, and his fiancee, Xiaoli, were supposed to tie the knot on Sunday, April 30th, during a big wedding banquet at a hotel in Xian, China’s Shaanxi Province. Everything was going according to plan up to the point when the family of the bride noticed that half of the tables reserved for the groom’s guests laid empty. Wang kept telling them that they were on their way, but the bride and her parents really became suspicious of him after talking to the few guests that were seated at his tables and noticing that while they all said that they were Wang’s friends, they couldn’t really say how they knew him.

Read More »

With millions of Chinese visiting the country’s sacred mountains every year, keeping them trash-free is incredibly difficult. Luckily, that’s where the Spiderman cleaners come in. These dedicated men an women risk their lives on a daily basis, rappelling down steep cliffs to reach plastic bottles, bags and various other garbage thrown there by uncivilized tourists.

Spiderman cleaners get their name from the dangerous nature of their job. Photos released in the media show them dangling thousands of feet above ground on the side of steep mountain cliffs, supported only by ropes or cables, as they attempt to collect hard-to-reach trash. In an attempt to highlight the danger of their work and make tourists think twice before littering, some of the cleaners actually exchanged their regular uniforms for Spiderman costumes. This has made them a hit with visitors, who often stop to watch these real-life versions of their favorite superhero descend into the abyss to pick up a piece of trash, rewarding them with applause and cheers when they complete their mission.

Read More »

A bizarre beauty craze has been sweeping Thailand for the last 5 years, with women spending thousands of dollars to have their upper lip reshaped as buffalo horns. Known as “krachap lips”, the cosmetic procedure is apparently only popular in Thailand.

Named after the water chestnut or buffalo nut – known as krachap in Thailand – because of its shape, which resembles a buffalo head or a flying bat, the controversial cosmetic procedure has become increasingly popular among young women over the last four or five years. It’s unclear how the trend began, but posts on the plastic surgery internet forum Dungdong reveal that people had been talking about the bow-like upper lip shape as early as 2009, in a desire to copy the look of actress Patcharapa “Aum” Chaichua. But it’s been getting worse in the last couple of years and plastic surgeons are desperate to stop it.

Read More »

Sitting in traffic, or trying to change lanes on a busy highway are not the most relaxing things in the world, but one Indianapolis entrepreneur thinks that sitting idly on the side of a highway and watching other drivers go through these daily ordeals can be quite entertaining and even therapeutic.

Most motorists drive past the big grassy space between the I-65 and I-70 highways in Indianapolis without giving it a second thought, but local businessman Tom Battista thinks the undeveloped land has the potential to provide entertainment in the form of traffic. He wants to turn it into a gathering spot where people can get together to socialize and relax by watching cars zoom by or just sit in traffic. Tom acknowledges that it’s a crazy idea, but he’s also sure that people will love it.

Read More »

If you thought your hairstylist was a little rough, you’ve probably never seen Russian hairdresser Daniil Istomin work. He taught himself to cut hair with a sharp hatchet instead of scissors, and while the process is allegedly very effective, it’s also about as brutal as you can imagine.

Like many other hairstylists, Daniil wanted to come up with an idea to set himself apart from the competition. Inspired by old stories about how rugged men once shaved their beards, he started experimenting with a very sharp axe about two years ago, and steadily improved his hair-cutting skills. He worked on mannequins at first, and as he built up his confidence, he started asking women if they’d  let him chop their head hair off. Some of them, the “crazy ones, as Daniil calls them, actually agreed.

Read More »

A Dutch physical therapist turned inventor has spent 15 years developing a tailor-made pillow that he claims will solve any sleeping problems. At a price of $57,000, it better!

Created by Thijs van der Hilst, who is supposedly some sort of neck specialist, the world’s most expensive pillow is made of Mulberry silk, Egyptian cotton, non-toxic Dutch memory foam and 24-carat gold fabric, while its zipper is  studded  with  four  diamonds and a huge 22.5-carat sapphire. It sounds pretty expensive already, but it takes more than high-quality materials and jewelry to justify such an outrageous price tag for a pillow.

Read More »

Most people get chills down their spine at the simple thought of a tarantula, but one Indonesian woman literally can’t get enough of them. 28-year old Ming Cu has been collecting tarantulas since 2010, and she now has 1,500 of them living in her home.

Ming Cu’s obsession with tarantulas began 7 years ago, when she spotted a beautifully-colored tarantula in her yard, in Bandung City, Indonesia. She only took some photos of it, but the more she looked at the pictures, the more fascinated she became with the eight-legged creatures, and it wasn’t long before she started looking online for people selling tarantulas. She bought one, than another, and before she knew it, Ming was hooked. Over the past seven years she has spent over $55,000 on tarantulas, and now has 1,500 of them living in a special room in her home.

Read More »

The story of Sindhutai Sapkal is one of incredible determination in the face of adversity, rebirth and love of children who nobody else wanted. The 68-year-old has raised over 1,400 orphans, offering them not just food and shelter, but also the love of a real family. Her amazing work has earned her over 750 awards, and the nickname “Mother of Orphans”.

Sapkal runs four orphanages in her home town of Prune, India’s Maharashtra state – two for girls and two for boys – with the help of her biological daughter, Mamta, and her eldest adopted children, some of whom have become lawyers, doctors and professors. The children under her care were found trying to fend for themselves in railway station, abandoned in dustbins, or even dragged by stray dogs in the streets. New ones are brought to her orphanages all the time, and as long as they are eligible for adoption, she never turns them away. But unlike state-run orphanages, the Mother of Orphans doesn’t give her children up for adoption with other families, and doesn’t turn them away when they turn 18.

Read More »

A 20-year-old man from Russia’s Sakhalin Oblast region recently made national headlines after being declared the winner of a women’s lingerie photo contest organized by a popular store chain.

Andrey Nagorny, a resident of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, heard of the online photo contest through his girlfriend. Aware of his feminine features, they decided to take a few photos of Andrey wearing some sexy women’s lingerie and enter them into the contest, just for fun. Andrey’s girlfriend, whose name has not been made public, fixed his hair and did his makeup before asking a talented photographer to snap some rather professional-looking photos of him and submitting them to the contest organizer online. They expected to get a good laugh out of the whole thing, but what they didn’t expect was for Andrey to be declared the winner.

Read More »

Ever since he decorated his prized Jaguar S-Type with 4,600 colorful toy cars from his Hot Wheels collection, a Malaysian businessman has been turning heads in and around Kuala Lumpur.

Reports of an unusual-looking Jaguar S-Type limousine covered in thousands of miniature cars driving around the Malaysian capital had been circulating on social media for a few weeks, but no one knew anything about it, who the owner was or if it was just some sort of marketing stunt. Luckily, the Harian Metro managed to track down the owner and get to the bottom of this mystery.

Read More »

Up until a couple of years ago, Mark Ching was a successful businessman who dedicated his free time and resources to rehabilitating abused dogs in Los Angeles and finding new homes for them. But then he heard about the horrors of the dog meat trade in China, and after witnessing them first hand he dedicated his life to rescuing as many canines as he could from dog slaughterhouses across Asia, even if it meant putting his own life at risk.

Mark’s life changed in 2015, when he heard about an annual event in China called the Yulin Dog Meat Festival. He knew that the Chinese and other Asians ate dog meat, and he accepted that as a cultural thing, but what he couldn’t understand was the unspeakable torture that the animals were apparently subjected to before being killed, to supposedly make their meat tastier. It didn’t make any sense to him, so he bought a plane ticket to China, put on a backpack and flew to Yulin to learn more. The gruesome scenes he saw on that first trip to China were more horrific than he could have ever imagined, and while they left him traumatized for life, they also transformed him into a brave activist willing to risk his life to rescue as many animals as possible.

Read More »

To make its newest romance video game stand out from the competition, a Japanese company is giving users the chance to marry their virtual girlfriends in a real life wedding ceremony, with the help of VR technology.

At first glance, Niitzuma LovelyxCation is a romance and dating simulator like many others in Japan. It lets players court one of three anime protagonists – Yuki Isurugi (long black hair), Aiko Kurihara (short brown hair), or Nono Naruse (blond hair) – and eventually get married to them, but in order to make the illusion of a virtual marriage more believable, it plans to organize a real-life wedding for the “grooms” in an actual chapel, where they can exchange vows with their cartoony betrothed.

Read More »

Every year, the people of Kairuppala, a village in India’s Andhra Pradesh state, engage in an epic cow dung cake battle that often leaves dozens injured. They believe the tradition brings them good health and prosperity.

Legend has it that Lord Veerabhadra Swamy, a fearsome form of the Hindu god Shiva, and the Goddess Bhadrakhali fell in love and decided to marry. In order to tease his beloved, Veerabhadra Swamy declared that he did not want to marry anymore, which enraged Bhadrakhali and her clansmen, who decided to teach the deceitful groom a lesson by beating him with cow dung cakes. The other side retaliated, but the goofy battle ended in compromise and the much awaited celestial wedding. Today, the devotees of Kairuppala village celebrate their union by reenacting their mythical battle using the same unconventional weapons.

Read More »

Popular Korean actress Lee Tae-Im recently sparked a bit of controversy after revealing that she only eats three spoons of rice a day in order to maintain her slim figure.

Lee, who was previously known for her curves and overall healthy image, appeared on an episode of MBC Every1’s “Video Star” on Tuesday, where panelists quickly noticed her extremely slim physique. The young actress admitted to undergoing an extreme diet for the last six months, during which she only ate three spoons of rice per day. She confessed that she felt insecure about her look after a photo-shoot with fellow actresses Park Han-Byul and Lee Chae-Young, both of whom were in much better shape than her.

Read More »