This Chinese man is so rich he is willing to shell out one million yuan (US $170,000) just to rent a girlfriend. The news was first reported on China’s leading social networking website, Weibo. The post came from an account called ‘Host of Henan newscast’.

Paying a girl to date you might give people the wrong idea, but this case appears to be different. According to the posting, the man wants to hire a girl just to accompany him to his family reunion during the upcoming Spring Festival. Perhaps he doesn’t want to be alone during the Chinese holidays?

The listing included a photograph of the dude, sitting behind a pile of cash. I suppose he wanted to go all out to prove that he is serious. He put up a list of requirements: the girl should be under 25, over 1.68 meters tall, less than 50 kilograms, and “sweet,” with at least a bachelor’s degree. He will pay 10 percent extra for a girl with a doctorate degree or a virgin. Among other promises is a chartered flight from Shenzhen to Zhengzhou and back.

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24-year-old Pavel Sapozhnikov is putting himself through one of the most epic socio-psychological experiments in history. He is trying to replicate the lifestyle of his Russian ancestors from around the year 1100, and practicing an ascetic lifestyle with very little human contact for the entire duration of the experiment.

The project began in September 2013 and should run on until May this year. The essence, according to Pavel, is to live on the replica of an ancient farm, devoid of any modern conveniences or communication. “I live alone in the past,” he wrote.

‘Project Hero’ is the brainchild of Alexei Ovcharenko, from the event management agency ‘Ratobor’, which translates as ‘A Mighty Man’. Ratobor, founded in 2006, has conducted several projects and events exclusively based on historic experiences. They proudly declare on their website: “We often do not agree with the vision of the customer and dictate what the event should be. But in our history, we haven’t received any negative reviews about the quality of our corporate programs.”

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If Nie Yongbing was in a comic book, he would probably be ‘Super-Lung Man’ (lame name, I know, but I’m open to suggestions). The 63-year-old has lungs of steel that allow him to inflate car tires using only his nose.

According to recent news reports, the Chinese man displayed his strength in Chengdu, Southwest China, by inflating four truck tires with two adults standing on each, in just 20 minutes. He held a 40-meter rubber hose to his right nostril and blew as hard as he could, gradually filling the tubes. He had his left nostril and left ear covered the whole time to prevent pressure leaks.

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You don’t really need an expensive canvas to make beautiful art. Rick Minns, from Wicklewood in Norfolk, proves that a dirty old van will do the trick.

Seriously, if someone like Rick lived in my area, I’d never clean my car. I would  just leave it coated with layers of filth, hoping he’d find it and do his thing. Rick, or ‘Ruddy Muddy’ as he’s now being called, creates amazing works of art in the grease, mud and dust collected on unwashed vans parked in the streets.

Rick said that he had often wondered if people would like to find art on their cars, rather than the usual ‘clean me’ and other rude messages scribbled in the dust. That’s how he got the idea for ‘Graffilthy Art’. “I was a bit bored at work one day, with a bit of spare time on my hands and thought it would be like a bit of fun,” he said. When no-one complained, he took it as a good sign and kept going. “I played around with a few things and they sort of developed from there.”

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Pigeon droppings may be smelly and disgusting, but did you know they could also be an inspiration for jewelry? Don’t worry, no one’s actually putting droppings in jewelry. But an English artist is making broaches that resemble the shape, size and color of pigeon poo.

30-year-old Frances Wadsworth-Jones, from Ealing, West London, has created a new line of broaches called ‘Heaven Sent’. Each piece in the collection is made from crushed semi-precious and precious gems like black diamonds, sapphires and tourmaline. The gems are set together in imitation of splattered pigeon droppings.

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Dr. Jim Withers, from Pittsburgh, Pa., has dedicated the past 20 years of his life to treating the city’s homeless. He is known as the ‘street doctor’ because he dresses up like a homeless person and goes out at night to provide medical care to the real needy.

The extraordinary doctor started his unusual practice in 1992, along with Mike Sallows, a former homeless man. The two of them went out at night with backpacks of medicine. Withers estimates that he has treated over 1,200 homeless people a year since 1992.

Today, his initiative has evolved into a national network of medical students and volunteers who treat the homeless, four nights a week. The nightly service is now a nonprofit – Operation Safety Net. It is one of the first full-time street medicine programs in the United States.

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A few weeks ago, we did an article about a male model from Korea who posed as a girl. Now the latest news doing the rounds is quite the opposite – 23-year-old Yachen Xing is one of the hottest topics trending on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, for being a girl with a successful career in male modeling.

In her photographs, Yachen is dressed in male clothing and has her hair cropped short. The pictures show a guy with sulky, school-boyish looks and striking features. It’s really impossible to tell that the model is actually female.

Yachen is studying animation at the Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University & School of Arts. She is 173 centimeters tall (that’s 5 foot 7 inches), and her frame is best described as ‘lanky’. She is a representative of her school’s women’s basketball team. Her suave, model-like appearance seems to have helped her get started with modelling as well.

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Verrückt, in German, means ‘insane’. And that’s exactly what this new and upcoming water slide is. Verrückt is touted to be the world’s next tallest and fastest water slide – beating the current Brazilian record holder.

The current record holder, 49.9m-tall ‘Kilimanjaro’, is located at Aguas Quentes Country Club in Rio de Janeiro, but Verrückt is going to be much taller than that. Exactly how much, we don’t know. Its makers at Schlitterbahn Water Park and Resort in Kansas City, are keeping the height a secret until opening day. But if the rumors are true, it could be about 17 stories high. That’s taller than Niagara Falls and the Statue of Liberty from toes to torch. It’s also twice the height of the tallest wave ever surfed.

Imagine sliding down at top speed from such a great height. The adrenaline rush has got to be truly ‘insane’. To get to the top of the ride, you need to climb a whopping 264 stairs. Then, a specially designed raft will take you and three other riders plummeting down at a speed greater than 65 mph (the current speed of the Brazilian ride).

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Pastor Lesego Daniel, of Rabboni Centre Ministries, is a highly unusual person. In order to be closer to God, the South African preacher is encouraging his congregation to eat grass. He also tramples on them for added effect.

The pastor is said to have claimed that humans can eat anything they choose to sustain themselves. When he put up pictures of the grass-eating event on Facebook, he faced severe criticism from thousands of people across the world. Rabboni Centre Ministries is now a trending topic on social media. But none of that has bothered Mr. Daniel’s followers; they defend their pastor and swear by his methods.

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‘Wheelies’ are the latest accessories for motorcycles, developed by World Moto, a Bangkok-based tech company. Their invention allows bikers to convert a bike’s front wheels into full color LED screens – displaying mobile billboards, videos, animation or text of their choice. What’s great about Wheelies is that the display is stationary even when the wheels are in motion.

According to Paul Giles, CEO of World Moto, “The technology has the potential to turn essentially any wheel in the world into a brilliant, full-color billboard or video screen.” He said that the idea could appeal to motorcyclists who want to put a face on their wheels. “It gives their bike a face, sort of like an avatar.”

The ad for the product is amusing – it shows a gang of ‘hot’ girls choosing a geek on a motorcycle with Wheelies, over a cool biker dude. Wheelies are fun and quirky, and can show 30 seconds of video on a loop, managed by a web application. But they’re still in development stage. World Moto hopes to evolve the product to be able to stream video and play full length movies. Very practical. Not.

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A 66-year-old Brazilian man believes he is the reincarnation of Jesus. He has been preaching the word of God for the past for the past 35 years. Born Alvaro Theiss, this controversial religious figure now goes by ‘Inri Cristo’.

Inri is derived from the Latin acronym inscribed on the cross during Jesus’ crucifixion (INRI – Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum, which means: Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews). Cristo, his last name, means Christ.

Cristo experienced his first revelation that he was Christ during a religious fast in Santiago, Chile, in 1979. Although he had a powerful voice in his head guiding him since childhood, on this occasion it told him clearly: “I am your Father. The God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.” He has hundreds of followers around the world, and his own church, ‘Soust’, based on a lush farmland outside Brasilia. Soust is an acronym for Suprema Ordem Universal da Santmssima Trindade.

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A few weeks ago, we told you how students at a University in Dubai came to school in flashy cars. Now, Dubai’s cops seem to be catching up too. The latest version of the emirates police fleet is so impressive, people on the streets are begging to be arrested and taken for a ride. Civilians actually stop to click photographs as the police cars pass by.

The latest addition to the fleet is a state-of-the-art, US $280,000 McLaren MP4-12C. It joins the Dubai police’s garage of the world’s most expensive patrol cars – a Lamborghini, an Aston Martin, a Bentley, a Ferrari and a Chevrolet. All of these cars can comfortably exceed 190 miles per hour. They are almost impossible to outrun.

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In a world where getting a kind word from your boss is a huge achievement, businessman Michael De Beyer comes across as one-of-a-kind. Where else do you get to see employers selling an entire business to help out an employee in need? I for one have never heard of such a thing before.

De Beyer is the owner of the Kaiserhof Restaurant and Wunderbar, in Montgomery, Texas. Brittany Mathis, his 19-year-old employee, is suffering from a tumor that she cannot afford to get treated. So De Beyer has decided to sell the 6,000 square foot family restaurant that he has owned for 17 years, and donate money to Brittany.

Brittany appears to be a healthy girl, but the serious ailment is taking a toll on her. It all began when she noticed a rash on her leg. “I went to the hospital and found out it was my blood clotting,” she said. “So, they wanted to keep me and do CAT scans and MRIs and the next day they came in and told me I had a tumor.”

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51-year-old Canadian social worker, Line Rainville, is a Star Trek superfan. She loves the 1960s Original Series so much that she spent $30,000 to bring the Enterprise spaceship into her basement. Rainville re-created parts of the bridge, transporter room, observation deck, recreation room and Spock’s quarters in her home in Notre-Dame-des-Prairies, Quebec.

You’ve got to be a Star Trek fan yourself to truly appreciate what Rainville has done here. It wasn’t easy for her to find pieces of furniture and décor that matched the theme of the series. She used custom-built furniture for the stations on the bridge that would face a central viewing screen (the TV). She had to get her widescreen TV to fit the space reserved for bridge viewing screen, which was a tricky process.

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The concept of bachelor pads isn’t unique to humans. Male bowerbirds are amazing architects, but they reserve theirs skills for just one purpose – finding a mate. They construct such elaborate and dazzling nests to impress females, perhaps they could teach our men a thing or two about home décor.

Male bowerbirds use embellishments such as coins, nails, leaves, shells, seeds, flowers and live insects to weave their nests, called bowers. Bowers are U-shaped nests built with twigs and grass, and carpeted with moss. Each bower is an architectural marvel that stretches out 5 or 6 yards across, complete with a thatched roof and supporting pillars.

Blue is a very important color in the construction process. Male bowerbirds use several blue objects – berries, flowers, bottle caps and string – to attract prospective mates. Research has proven that females are attracted to bowers with the most number of blue decorations. Because blue objects are rare in a bowerbird’s environment, a male who is able to acquire them and protect them is deemed superior.

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