It’s truly amazing when we get to cover news of people who single-handedly create something truly significant. Churches on a mountain side, for instance. Or in this case, an entire forest. Jadav Payeng, a man in his mid-fifties, has been instrumental in converting a sand bar in the middle of the river Brahmaputra in Assam, India, into a huge forest. His work of the past 30 years is being recognized by tourists and film-makers, the world over.

Mulai, as Jadav is known among locals, started work on the land in 1980. A scheme was launched at that time by the social forestry division of the district, involving the planting of trees on only 200 hectares. The project was completed after 5 years and all the laborers left, except Mulai. Dedicated to the forest, he stayed on and single-handedly looked after the trees, continuing to plant more of them. Eventually, the forest expanded to 550 hectares. According to Assistant Conservator of Forest, Gunin Saikia, this is perhaps the world’s biggest forest in the middle of a river. Mulai says there’s potential to extend this even further to 1000 hectares. Inspired, the department has planned to launch another plantation program this year.

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Have you ever been so angry that you just wanted to hurl that laptop right across the room, but restrained yourself in the interest of ‘proper conduct’? I know I have. Anger is a common emotion experienced by everybody at some point. Some manage it, some don’t. But it gets the better of even the best of us at times. However, an emotional outburst is never appreciated by the people around you, even if you had a very valid reason for it.

That’s why, now there’s the Anger Room. It’s a place where it’s absolutely okay to be angry and break things. They even give you the tools and set it up so that you can vent out all the anger from years and years of holding it all in. The founder of the room is a Dallas businesswoman, Donna Alexander. The smash sessions at the Anger Room can last for 5, 15 or 25 minutes and the place can be set up according to your liking. It could be an office, a kitchen or a living room. Cheap furniture, TV sets, balloons, inflatable punching bags and headless mannequins are provided, along with a golf club to break it all. For protection, participants are allowed a hard hat, gardening gloves, goggles and a face mask. They also require you to break things in the direction of the graffiti-filled wall, for the safety of the camera crew on the opposite side.

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It’s the stuff that ancient legends are made of, but I guess you could call the story of Aba Defar a modern-day miracle. How else would you explain an old man carving four churches on a mountain side of the Ethiopian highlands, all on his own?

Aba Defar is a man driven by his faith in religion. At one point in life he was a family man and a weaver by profession. But all that changed with a simple dream he had in 1959. The Holy Spirit appeared in his dream, showing him a mountain church carved out of sheer rock. The dream kept repeating itself over the next 30 years, but he never knew what to make of it. It was when he had a vision that he finally understood that his life’s mission was awaiting him.

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Lizards creep me out big-time. That’s why it’s a little hard for me to understand what 25-year-old Lizzie Griffiths, a lizard-loving school teacher from London did for her little dragon. She loves her pet lizard George so much that she wakes up at 5.30 am every day to snuggle with him for a while. She’s even postponed her wedding to be able to afford his treatment.

Lizzie and George first met at a rescue center a year ago. One look at the bearded dragon lizard, and she was in love with the way he burrowed into her neck. She took him home and cared for him, even nursing him back to health from a chest infection. Soon, the scaly creature developed a tumor on his face that wouldn’t go away after two surgeries. Fearing the loss of her favorite pet, Lizzie decided to empty her entire savings on George’s treatment. Chemotherapy for animals is a pioneering treatment and she spent over £3,000 on it at the Animal Health Trust in Suffolk. The chemo was apparently successful.

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Also known as China’s most explosive artist, Cai Guo Qiang uses gun powder to create some truly unique works of art. His technique of igniting gun powder on a paper canvas is considered a new medium of contemporary artistic expression.

Fire and explosion seems to be a very popular art theme these days. We’ve recently covered the works of Radya Timofey, a 23-year-old artist who paints with Molotov cocktails, and Rob Tarbell, who guides the smoke of open flames to create detailed artworks, so Cai Guo Qiang fits right in. The famous Chinese artist started using gun powder as an art medium in 1989, when he used fuse lines to create explosions that lasted between 1 and 15 seconds, for public audiences. But his works has evolved a great deal since then, and he now uses modern technology to create much more detailed works, and even aerial explosions supervised by experienced pyrotechnicians.

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No offence to 64-year-old Sibusiso Mthembu, but hearing his story just made me laugh out loud. Of course, the South African from KwaZulu-Natal tells it in all seriousness. And who knows, he may even be telling the truth about having visited heaven four times, so far. The first time was in 1998, and subsequent visits were made in 2004, 2006 and 2008. It all started in 1993, when a white man (an angel, apparently) paid him a visit and told him he was needed in heaven. And now, after several visits, he’s drawing a map to make sure the rest of us ‘unlucky’ ones get what he’s talking about.

But it’s not the fact that he took a few vacations to heaven or even that he’s drawing a map that amuses me. It’s more to do with the stuff he says he’s seen and done there. According to Mthembu, there are 11 heavens in all, and he was taken to the fifth one, Crista, first. It was there, in a city called Sharmoy, that he claims to have met Jesus. The main heaven is Salem, he says, where God’s temple is located. God is apparently in his youth, and of a Grayish complexion. Jesus is white. He saw God for the first time during his second trip, on a planet called Jadalem that’s mostly covered in water and ice.

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Who knew that an old childhood pastime could actually help adults lose weight. And I’m talking massive weight here. 31-year-old Jen Moore simply hula-hooped her way from a huge 288lbs to a trim 145lbs. Now she’s a fitness trainer with the very same company that helped her shed it all. Sure does sound like a dream come true.

Jen couldn’t hula hoop when she first got started. Not surprising really, looking at her before pictures. But what’s admirable is that she stuck to it, and within two weeks she was able to keep the hoop spinning around her waist. There’s been no looking back since then. Within just three months of learning the skill, she ended up losing 40lbs of body fat. Take a look at Jen’s ‘after’ pictures and you would never believe she was once obese. “I would go to my local YMCA and stake out a little corner on the court while the guys played basketball and snickered,” she says. “From day one, I felt a tremendous difference in my core strength, confidence and energy just from the workout involved in dropping, bending over and picking up the hoop.”

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If there’s one thing I’ve learned writing for OC, it’s that the truly talented are able to create breathtaking art out of literally anything, even ordinary stuff like packing tape or sprinkles. So when I read about wine art, I decided to look up the artists who work with the drinkable medium. After doing a little snooping around, we discovered these five amazing artists, who create the most beautiful wine paintings.

Christina LoCascio

What would a person with a Fine Arts degree and a career in the wine industry do? Why, paint with wine, of course! And that’s exactly what Christina LoCascio has been doing since 2002. She is credited with the development of a new technique using wine as her palette, making use of different grape varieties. Several paintings in Christina’s portfolio reflect a wine narrative – there are vineyards, grapes and wine bottle portraits. She also uses subjects to portray the emotional experience of enjoying a glass of wine. Her art has a very classy, elegant feel to it.

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Hikikomori (Japanese for “pull in”) is a term that refers to reclusive adolescents and young adults who choose to isolate themselves from social life. With about a million people in Japan suffering from Hikikomori, I suppose you could call it an epidemic of sorts. Except, the condition is not spread through physical means, it’s purely psychological. It is a phenomenon of social withdrawal that’s pretty much swept the nation in the past few years. About 80% of hikikomori are male, in their teens or twenties, and do not leave the confines of their rooms. They don’t go to school or to work, spending their days in the homes of their parents, reading, watching TV or surfing the internet, consuming meals left for them at the door.

A good example of a typical hikikomori is this boy I’ve been reading about. His mother supposedly refused to reveal his name, fearing social retribution for the boy. The 17-year-old was a normal child, but began to hate school about three years ago. This was after he became a victim to bullying and anonymous hate letters. One day, he suddenly returned home and locked himself in the kitchen. He’s been in there ever since, refusing to come out or let anyone in. The family’s response to this most unusual condition is even more strange. They have simply ‘moved on’, accepting the boy’s behavior as something he will eventually grow out of. They’ve built a new kitchen in the house, and his mother takes meals to his door three times a day. In fact, this is the manner in which most Japanese respond to hikikomori – with utmost tolerance.

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“There’s no place like home!”, I believe the saying goes, and this modest migrant family from China proves it applies even when home is an abandoned public toilet in the city of Shenyang.

Zeng Lingjun was born in a small village, in the Jilin Province of Northeastern China. As a boy, he dreamed of one day attending college, but because his family was too poor he had to abandon his dream and settle for becoming a cobbler and repair shoes for a living. But just because he couldn’t afford to go to college, didn’t mean he was willing to spend the rest of his life in his village. He had bigger plans for himself, so one day, with just 50 yuan ($8) in his pocket, he left for Shenyang, the biggest city in northeast China. Being a hard worker and a skilled cobbler helped Zeng make a living in the big city, and he was soon earning around 2,000 yuan (315) per month. But this wasn’t enough for him to get his own place.

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Looks like the dead have left behind Ouija boards and upgraded to e-mail communication. That is, if the story of Jack Froese is to be believed. The 32-year-old from Dunmore, PA, died last June from a heart arrhythmia. But last November, a couple of people received e-mail messages from him containing personal information that only he could know.

For instance, Tim Hart, his childhood buddy got this message: “Did you hear me? I’m at your house. Clean your f-cking attic!!!” The subject line read, “I’m watching.” Now, according to Tim, only Jack could have sent a message like this, because they had had a conversation about what to do with the attic space shortly before Jack’s death. Jack’s cousin, Jimmy McGraw, also received a similar e-mail, warning him about an ankle injury that he’d suffered after Jack’s death. “I knew you were going to break your ankle, tried to warn you, gotta be careful.” Mc Graw believes the message to be a sign that Jack is trying to connect with him, telling him to move along and feel better.

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The Near Annihilation of the American Buffalo (Environmental Graffiti)

Chefs Create Menu for Space Tourists (Techeye)

Sheep-Shearing Course Helps Businessmen Relieve Stress (Youtube)

Homeless Man Poses as Woman for 13 Years for Free Medical Care (Fox News)

GPS System Leads Japanese Students into Oyster Point Bay (Bayside Bulletin)

Awesome Photos from Inside Musical Instruments (Behance)

12 Amazing Recycled Dragons (Environmental Graffiti)

Camping Tents That Look Like Real Food (Laughing Squid)

The Man-Made Clouds of Berndnaut Smilds (Designboom)

20 Amazing Look-Alikes (Oddee)

When something as natural and inevitable as death is banned, it does seem a tad illogical. You would be surprised to know that there actually are quite a few places on Earth where death has been forbidden, and deemed illegal. In fact, it seems that this is actually an age-old practice; the earliest known instance of the prohibition of death was in the 5^th century BC,  when dying wasn’t allowed on religious grounds at the Greek island of Delos. Each place has a reason of its own, varying from religious beliefs to environmental factors.

We’ll take a look at four places where death is forbidden in today’s world:

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Korean artist Kim Dong Yoo creates amazing portraits of various icons like Audrey Hepburn or Michael Jackson, made up of hundreds of smaller painted portraits that either support or contradict the main subject of the artwork.

Over the years, we’ve featured some truly interesting celebrity portraits on Oddity Central, like Jason Mecier’s pill portraits, or Jason Kronenwald’s chewing gum creations, but we’ve never seen anything like Kim Dong Yoo’s works. This incredibly talented artist painstakingly paints hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of miniature portraits by hand, using them as smaller piece of a much bigger, unbelievably detailed portrait. His portraits look a lot like the stamp paintings of Peter R. Mason, only instead of using recycled stamps to recreate the faces of many historical and Hollywood icons, the Korean painter actually paints every one of the little images that make up the big portraits.

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Batman is in the news again, this time from Slovakia. Unlike his Brazilian counterpart, the Slovak Batman hasn’t been hired by the police, he’s self-appointed. 26-year-old Zoltan Kohari, from the southern Slovak town of Dunajska Streda, has donned a leather Batman suit that he’s stitched together himself, in an attempt to help the people of the town. He goes around cleaning the streets, helping the old, and calling the police when he spots something suspicious.

Incidentally, Kohari was a petty criminal prior to his superhero-avatar; he had spent eight months in jail last year and also attempted suicide just after his release. This was before he realized that he had a larger mission – to make life in his community better. “I have decided to do good for the people. I take care of order and help clean up the environment so we can keep living on this planet,” he says. Since Kohari doesn’t really have a full time job, he’s moved into an abandoned apartment in a dilapidated building on the edge of town. He has no electricity or water supply, but the place serves the purpose of a Batcave perfectly, to conduct his town patrols from.

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