You’ve probably never heard of her, but Taiwanese vegetable seller Chen Shu-chu has done more for the needy than many of the world’s rich and famous. Earning a modest living selling vegetables at the market, the Asian hero has so far managed to donate over $322,000 to various charities.

“Money serves its purpose only when it is used for those who need it,” Chen Shu-chu once told a newspaper, and throughout the years, the dedicated philanthropist made sure her hard earned cash was indeed used for the right causes. Inspired by her own difficult and impoverished childhood, Chen decided to dedicate her life to helping those less fortunate than her. Even though she earned a modest income selling vegetables in Taitung County’s central market, in eastern Taiwan, the 61-year-old led a frugal life and donated almost all of her money to charities. You’d think there wouldn’t be much to give away, but Chen Shu-chu has so far made substantial donations, including  $32,000 for a children’s fund, $144,000 to build a library at a school she attended and $32,000 to a local orphanage where she also offers financial support to three children. In total, the world’s most generous vegatable seller has so far donated over $300,000, and she’s not planning on stopping.

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Forget about painful diets and grueling exercise, from now on all you have to do to lose weight is spray on a little perfume. The magic fragrance is called Prends-Moi and is said to contain beta-endorphins that reduce the urge to overeat.

Developed by the French perfume house Robertet, the Veld’s Prends-Moi slimming fragrance was launched last year, but only recently made its debut on the English market, where women welcomed it with open arms. On July 30, the Daily Mail reported around 6,000 women had subscribed to the product’s waiting list, hoping this could actually be the miraculous weight-loss solutions they had been waiting for. It’s easy to understand why people would gladly fork out some cash on such an easy-to-use slimming product, but can shedding the pounds be as easy as putting on perfume? According to the makers of Prends-Moi, it sure can.

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After moving to the big city, Melinda Schmidt looked for a way to connect with people like she did with her friends and family back home, and found hugging helped. So she hugged total strangers every day, for a whole year.

It’s tough moving to the city after you’ve spent all your life in a small community where everyone was close, and young Melinda Schmidt found that out the hard way. She was feeling homesick, so she vowed to hug a new person every day, for an entire year, to help her get over her feelings. Only hugging quickly became a way of life, and although her pledged 365 days are up, she continues hugging total strangers. ‘I won’t ever stop doing this. I won’t ever stop hugging strangers and people who I’ve just met because it’s a complete lifestyle change,” she says in a video shot to showcase her bizarre habit.

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In a time when man has so many communication tools at his disposal, it seems odd that someone would use a horse to get their message across to the world. But that’s exactly what Vincent Gabriel Kirouac did to promote chivalry and polite manners in Canada.

It’s not every day that you get to see a man in full knight regalia, riding a horse through the busy streets of Canadian cities like Ottawa, but that’s just what Vincent Kirouac has been doing during the last few months. “I’m crossing Canada on horseback dressed as a knight, to remind people of the values of long ago, such as devotion,” he told the National Post. And believe it or not, his unique strategy seems to be working as he manages to steal smiles from people everywhere he goes and even some friendly invitations from total strangers. “You ask for the hospitality and they say ‘yes’ all the time,” he told CBC.

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A lot of people like to snuggle and cuddle, but Jacqueline Samuel, from New York’s Rochester area, actually opened her own business charging $60 for an hour’s worth of non-sexual cuddling and snuggling.

There are moments in life when you feel the need to cuddle, but you have no one to do it with. That’s where 29-year-old Jackie Samuel comes in. Last month she set up The Snuggery, a unique business that offers total strangers the chance to snuggle and cuddle with Jackie, for $60 an hour. “What I like to do is cuddle, so I figured it was a good thing to do. A lot of people didn’t like the idea so I figured it would be kind of an underground small-scale operation and provide a little extra income,” the young entrepreneur says. But her nutty idea already started attracting national attention and she’s already been featured on FOX, CNN and is set to make an appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

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Usually, when a dog starts humping your leg, you’re quick to make him stop, but at the Humpy Awards, owners actually encourage their pooches to get it on with their legs.

There’s the Grammys, the Emmys, the Webbies, and now we have the Humpys, which celebrate dogs’ natural behavior to hump your legs. This first ever annual humping competition for dogs was actually a viral marketing stunt for a new AMC reality show called Small Town Security, but that doesn’t in any way diminish the dogs’ admirable performances. Almost all of the canines brought forth into the humping arena did just what they were supposed to, impressing the judges with their techniques. I don’t know if they got any training prior to the competition, but it all seemed pretty natural to me.

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They say the banking system is very complicated, but try telling that to a bunch of Indian street kids who set up a model bank with tens of branches all over South-East Asia.

In order to save money for a brighter future, a group of Indian children have created their own bank, where they can deposit their money and take advances whenever they need to. A branch of this unusual financial institution is located in a shelter for homeless runaway teens in New Delhi. It’s here that street children who work come to place their money for safekeeping, and take out development or welfare advances to start a business or invest in things they need for school. The most impressive thing about this bank for kids and teens is that it was initiated, implemented and is operated by children. In fact, Satish Kumar, who was elected bank manager for the New Delhi branch of the children’s development ‘khazana’ (Indian for ‘treasure chest’) doesn’t look a day over 12.

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We discovered Brazilian artist Vik Muniz two years ago, when we came across his amazing portraits made exclusively with trash. Now he’s back with a whole new collection of mind-blowing recreations of classic paintings made from torn magazine scraps.

It seems everything Vik Muniz touches turns to gold, including outdated magazines. For his latest art series, Pictures of Magazine 2, the the Brooklyn-based artist used page fragments from various magazines to create impressive reproductions of known masterpieces by Van Gogh, Manet or Cézanne. We’ve seen magazines used as an art medium before, but Vik Muniz takes it to a whole new level of detail and complexity.

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It’s hard saying goodbye to your favorite pair of jeans, even when they’re way beyond wearable, but English artist Ian Berry has found a way to avoid throwing away denim, by using it to create beautiful works of art.

Netherton-born artist Ian Berry, who now lives in Sweden, has made quite a name for himself after his unique art, called Denimu, took the art world by storm. It’s hard to believe the idea of using old denim as medium for his art came after a call from his mother, Christine, asking him to clean out his room. “It was about six or seven years ago my mum was clearing out my old room and she wanted me to go through my things. I found loads of old jeans and denims and I noticed the different colors and shades. I kept hold of them but it was only about 18 months later I began to do something with them.” Little did he know his experiment would soon make him and his denim art famous all over the world.

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Believe it or not, the Japanese use fish for something else than sushi. Take Iori Tomita, a former fisherman who now creates creepy works of art from various dead marine specimens.

28-year-old Iori Tomita uses scientific techniques of preserving and dyeing to transform dead fish into brightly-colored glowing pieces of art. The former fisherman applies over 10 different chemicals to each specimen, which break down the muscle proteins, making it transparent and revealing the skeleton. He then uses red and blue dyes to highlight the hard and soft cartilage. It sounds easy enough, but it’s really a complex eight-stage process which takes Tomita three months to a year to complete, depending on the size of the animals he’s trying to turn into morbid works of art.

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I guess it’s true what they say, you can find anything on eBay, even a slightly used human soul. And while some of us wouldn’t sell our soul for all the money in the world, a woman from Albuquerque tried to give hers away for just $2,000.

It might sound like a stupid joke, or an-attention grabbing scheme, but the woman selling her soul, identified as Lori N., said her eBay ad is a cry for help. “I guess you could say that. I’m at the point now, I’m tired. I don’t feel good. I’m near the end of my rope. I really am,” she told WOAI. Up until five years ago, Lori was living a normal life and made a living as a freelance writer, but a serious car accident completely changed her life. She was a passenger in a car hit by a drunk driver, and the repercussions were dire. The poor woman was in a coma for three weeks, and woke up suffering from a stroke, a broken hip, broken pelvis, leg, collarbone, sternum, ribs, a collapsed lung. And if that wasn’t bad enough, she lost one of her breasts.

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Can you imagine your life without plastic? That means no computer, no mobile phone. no car and a whole lot of other stuff we’ve come to consider basic necessities. It sounds a nearly impossible task, in this day and age, but a family in Austria has proven it can be done. Sandra Krautwaschl, from a village near Graz, Austria, has recently written a book called “Plastickfrei Zone” (Plastic-Free Zone) in which she tells the story of how she and her family started living a life without plastic.

It all began in the summer of 2009, when during a vacation in Croatia, Sandra was surprised how often her three children asked where all of the trash on the beach came from. This made her think harder about how plastic really affects our world. Although recycling works very well in Austria, it’s not as effective in other parts of the world, so the petroleum-made material ends up clogging up landfills and polluting the environment. The 40-year-old physical therapist realized that as long as we keep buying products made of or wrapped in plastic, we’re just contributing to the problem. Then, shortly after she returned from Croatia, Sandra saw the documentary “Plastic Planet”, and learned how toxic plastic is for our planet.

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Zhang Lianzhi, a 50-year-old porcelain collector from Tianjin, China, has spent four years decorating an old house with hundreds of millions of ancient porcelain fragments and tons of natural crystals. It’s now known as the Porcelain House or Yuebao House.

The Porcelain House of Tianjin opened its gates to the public on September 2nd, 2007, onChifeng Street in Heping District. The old French-style building has a history of over 100 years. It was originally the home of a central finance minister in the late Qing dynasty, and was later converted into a bank, after the founding of New China, in 1949. But after the bank changed its location, the beautiful building was left deserted for several years, until porcelain collector Zhang Lianzhi bought it for 1 million yuan ($160,000). He then spent the following four years turning it into a unique edifice, decorated with porcelain dating from the Tang (AD 618-907) to the Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. Now the Porcelain House is the most eye-catching building in Tianjin, and one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions.

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Minnesota-based artist Gregory Euclide creates amazing impermanent artworks in just 25 minutes, during the lunch breaks at the high-school where he teaches.

As unbelievable as this might sound, Gregory Euclide actually washes away the whiteboard masterpieces he draws every day, to make room for new ones. In an interview with Minnesota Original, the art instructor says his unusual habit of drawing on whiteboards started as a way to release stress after teaching 38 students an hour, five hours a day, for 8 months. He was beginning to feel a little restless so he decided to give himself 25 minutes every day to finish sketches he enjoyed drawing. He would use sumi ink, brushes, spray bottles, erasers, paper towels and pretty much anything else he could get his hands on around his desk.

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Robot Never Loses at Rock Paper Scissors (Geek.com)

US Woman Wins Toilet Paper Wedding Dress-Making Contest (YouTube)

Bird of Prey Faces Poisonous Snake (Environmental Graffiti)

Brazilian Prisoners Read Books to Shorten Their Sentences (Telegraph.co.uk)

Naked Shoppers Turn Heads at German Supermarket Opening (Digital Journal)

Witches Pardoned 385 Years after Being Burned at the Stake (The Local)

Flatulence Deodorizer Helps Hide Your Farts (Gawker)

Miss Holocaust Survivor Crowned in Israel (MSNBC Photoblog)

Herterochromia in Dogs – Pooches with Differently-Colored Eyes (Environmental Graffiti)

Van Gogh’s Starry Night Recreated with Thousands of Dominoes (YouTube)