The internet has revolutionized crowdfunding by creating an unprecedented interconnectedness that allows people from all over the world to hear each other’s stories and help those whose stories touched them in particular. Today, you can send aid to hurricane victims in Florida, help a single mother start her small business in Ohio, and even help this couple from Saskatchewan make their dream wedding a reality, all in just a few clicks.

Jason Mielke and Rebecca Winter Hansen from Saskatchewan, Canada are engaged to be married, but they need some help making their wedding a special one. Young couples ask friends and family for help planning their big day all the time, these two lovebirds are actually asking complete strangers to basically sponsor their nuptials. They’ve set up a website where they try to explain why they opted for crowdfunding to celebrate their union with a wedding that accurately captures their unwavering love instead of simply eloping, and hope that their love story will make people and corporations want to give them a hand.

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Spirit Payton is one of YouTube’s unlikeliest stars. In just under two years, she has grown her channel, ASMRTheChew, to over 160,000 subscribers and had several of her videos go viral, with millions of views, all by making chewing noises into a microphone.

From popping giant pimples to squashing bread with their faces, we’ve seem people come up with all kinds of crazy ways of attracting attention online, so I guess it’s not that big of a surprise that someone managed to make it big on YouTube by making loud eating noises into a high fidelity microphone. Spirit Payton does post the occasional makeup tutorial, but her eating videos are pretty much her bread and butter. She takes requests from her fans and eats their preferred foods on camera, chewing it slowly and loudly as part of what is known as an ASMR therapy session.

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Luo Dengping has become famous as the only woman in a group of “spider men” who climb vertical cliffs of up to 100 meters high, without ropes or safety equipment of any kind, for the entertainment of tourists in China’s Guizhou Province.

Men of the Miao people, in Southwest China, have been free-climbing steep cliffs for centuries. They originally developed this skill as part of a burial custom, to lift coffins of relatives up the cliffs and place them in small caves or just hang them on the cliffside, like the Tana Toraja tribe, in Indonesia. This practice fell into obscurity, but the Miao spider men continued climbing the perfectly vertical cliffs of Ziyun, in order to collect rare medicinal plants said to cure asthma and rheumatism. However, as Western medicine started taking precedence over traditional Chinese medicine, spider men found themselves struggling to support their families. Today, only a few members of the Miao people still practice this ancient tradition, and one of them is a woman.

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Between deforestation, climate change, and poaching, the number of orangutans living in the wild is dropping at an alarming rate, but one orangutan in particular has made it through all this torment and her story is giving us all hope. Her name is Alba, and she is truly one of a kind. Alba is an albino – currently the only known one in the world.

The five year old ape was rescued in an Indonesian Village by the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS). She had been illegally captured and kept in a cage without proper care for a couple of days before rescuers got to her. Researches believe Alba was orphaned at a young age and caught not long after. When they found her she was suffering from a parasitic infection, dehydration, and low body weight. However, she still displays wild behaviors, meaning she can be released in the wild.

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The new Apple Watch may have better fitness tracking technology and spunkier bands, but can it regulate your body temperature? I don’t think so, but the new Aircon Watch  – the world’s first personal A/C watch – claims it can.

Using “ClimaCon” technology, the Aircon Watch gives off an influx of hot or cold directly into the wearer’s wrist, which will then cause the whole body to regulate its temperature, delivering a cool or warm sensation regardless of the climate they are in at the time. Its inventors claim that humans can “change the signal that our nervous system sends to the brain by using the Aircon Watch to generate pulses of heat or cold. By this method we can trick our brain into thinking that we are cooler or warmer than we really are.”

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The “Mr. Model Tabasco 2017” male beauty contest was supposed to bring together the most handsome men in the Mexican state of Tabasco, but the modeling agency behind the event recently announced its cancellation, after failing to find candidates that met their beauty requirements.

In order to be accepted as contestants for the Mr. Model Tabasco pageant, candidates needed to have a height of at least 1,78 m, be between 17 and 27 years old, have a “harmonious face and body”, have a college degree or an education equivalent to their age, speak English, have a valid passport, and not be a stripper. Apparently, these requirements proved to be a big problem, as just a few days before the contest, organizers had only selected 6 candidates. Those didn’t really meet the agency’s beauty standards either, so they ultimately decided to cancel the whole event.

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A self-proclaimed veterinarian in Chengdu, China, is currently under investigation for operating an unlicensed “clinic” on the street, and charging around 50 – 100 yuan to remove the vocal chords of noisy dogs.

Why would any dog owner want to remove their pet’s vocal chords, you ask? In this particular case, most of the shady vet’s customers told police officers that they had received complaints from their neighbors that the animals barked too loudly, so they decided to have them devocalized. That’s a gruesome thing in itself, but to have the procedure done by some random guy on the side of the street, with unclean surgical instruments is simply appalling.

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Do you have stubborn migraines that just won’t go away? Maybe you’ve recently been in an accident or contracted some life-threatening virus? Have you tried everything Western and Eastern medicine has to offer? Well, in that case, maybe you should look to the stars for your next treatment and give Jerry Sargeant a call. All you need is £90 (about $120), 15 minutes, and an open mind – the rest is up to Sergeant, or, as he prefers to be called “The Facilitator”.

It all started one day in Romania when Sargeant was in a life-affirming car accident. His taxi allegedly crashed into two women who were crossing the street. Sergeant claims that one woman came through the window – causing him to hit his head and the last thing he witnessed was “her soul hovering over her body”. This was apparently what kickstarted his abilities and awoken Sergeant to the healing powers that have always resided within him.

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It’s one thing to get scouted by a modeling agent when you’re walking downtown, dressed to the 9’s, but you have to be both striking and extremely lucky to get scouted while washing dishes at a Chipotle in Austin, Texas. But that’s the unlikely story of Remington Williams, the fashion world’s hottest new show stopper, who went from doing the dishes to walking the runway at the New York Fashion Week in just 12 days.

Williams was working at her local Chipotle restaurant not more than two weeks ago, when a scout walked in and offered her a life changing opportunity. Days later, Williams was on a plane for New York City, to sign with DNA Models, the modelling agency that launched the careers of legends like like Linda Evangelista and Natalia Vodianova. She arrived just in time to book the Calvin Klein Show at New York Fashion Week – an impressive achievement by any model’s standards, but made even more amazing by the fact that this would be her first time working as a model, ever.

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Elmer Padilla, a young construction worker from Manila, Philippines, recently shot to internet fame after photos of his hand-made action figures went viral on multiple social networks.

While being able to make your own action figures is an impressive talent in itself, what really caught people’s attention was the medium used by the Filipino amateur artist – old flip-flops. Photos posted on a Facebook group dedicated to Filipino art show Elmer Padilla cutting colorful flip-flops on a sidewalk using knives and scissors, and assembling them into intricate toys like Transformers, Predator and Marvel superheroes. As you can see in the photos below, his creations are nothing short of awe-inspiring.

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Sexual assault against women is a really big problem in India, as hardly a day goes by without a case being reported in the media. Until authorities decide to take it seriously and adopt a proactive approach, a 18-year-old teenage boy is trying to help women fight back against aggressors by literally giving them the shock of their life.  

After witnessing multiple instances of disturbing and life-changing acts of violence against women, as well as attending many protests with his mother demanding change, Siddharth Mandala, a student from Telengana, India decided he needed to do something himself. He spent years working on the “ElectroShoe”, a unique type of anti-sexual assault footwear that electrocutes attackers by inflicting 0.1 Ampere of electricity while also alerting police and family members that the wearer is in danger. All the wearer has to do is kick the perpetrator.

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When hiking in North Carolina, everyone knows that you must ward yourself against the mosquitos and other southern bugs that plague the area, but it turns out that your bug repellent might actually be attracting a much larger critter? At least if you’re using the “Bigfoot Juice” created by North Carolina mom Allie Megan Webb, who claims it can attract the elusive Bigfoot while also keeping bugs at bay.

While experimenting with scents for her homemade bug-repellent, Webb discovered that there was a direct correlation between the use of her bug spray and Bigfoot sightings reported by the research group Bigfoot 911. This prompted her to make the conclusion that she had, in fact, cultivated the perfect scent to attract the elusive, some may claim mythical, creature commonly known as Bigfoot.

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Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence that Earth is a spherical planet, supporters of the “flat Earth” theory are still trying to prove that we’ve all been lied to for centuries, and they’re coming up with craziest ways to do it. The last such attempt – taking a spirit level on a plane.

Flat Earth conspiracy theorist and YouTuber D. Marble recently went viral for his ingenious and hilarious attempt to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that Earth is indeed a pancake, not a globe. He actually took a spirit level – the kind used in construction – on a flight from North Carolina to Seattle in order to “monitor whether or not the pilot would dip the nose of the plane to compensate for curvature”. The self-professed realist filmed himself placing a spirit level on his plane seat arm rest to see if the bubble would move as the pilot tipped the nose of the plane to compensate for the planet’s curvature. Only the bubble never moved…

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If, for some reason,  you’ve always dreamed of having a dad bod, but you’re also to addicted to exercising and in great shape, you may want to check out “The Dadbag”, a fanny pack that doubles as a natural fanny pack.

London-based art director Albert Pukies is one of those few people who actually long for a dad bod, but are also aware of the risks associated with belly fat. So instead of stuffing his face with high-calorie foods, he just came up with an accessory that makes it seem like the wearer is slouching with his belly sticking out from the bottom their shirt. It’s basically just an ordinary fanny pack, only it has a realistic belly printed on it, so the dad bod effect is pretty much guaranteed.

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You think obtaining an academic degree is a daunting task? Try 145. Professor VN Parthiban, who teaches in Chennai, India, has obtained 145 degrees over the last 30 years and has no plans to stop studying anytime soon.

Parthiban’s journey started after he struggled with his first degree. He was a disorganized student who would often mix up course work and study for the wrong test – leading him to flunk major exams and projects. After he finally graduated, Parthiban got a job working for the Judiciary Department, but the desire to study never completely went away. Enticed by all the amazing subjects and areas of study that were available to him in university, Parthiban decided to go back and seek a second degree. And then a third. And then 142 more.

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