83-year-old Antonio Vicente has spent the last four decades of his life fighting against the current. As Brazilian landowners cut down rainforests to make room for profitable plantations and cattle grazing grounds, he struggled to bring the lush jungles of his childhood back to life. Today, his efforts are being rewarded, as the completely stripped land he once began planting trees on 40 years ago, has become a beautiful jungle teeming with tropical wildlife once again.

It was 1973 when Antonio took up the challenge of restoring the forest on a 31-hectare piece of land that had been razed for cattle grazing. Ironically enough, he bought the land on the outskirts of Sao Pablo, in Brazil’s Sao Paulo region, using credits that the military government was giving out to promote deforestation and investing in advanced agricultural technology. But Antonio had no intention of using the money to boost the national agriculture. He just wanted to revive the forest.

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28 years ago, Carmen Jiménez, from Madrid, Spain, became completely blind due to a serious eye injury. At least that’s what she told everyone, including her own family, because she was tired of having to say “hello” to people she didn’t actually want to greet.

The 57-year-old woman recently revealed that she had always been able to see perfectly, which left her family in shock, even though they had always suspected that something was of about her condition. Her husband told reporters that she would put on her makeup perfectly, and sometimes they would see her trying to look at the TV from the corner of her eyes. But she never admitted to faking her blindness, until recently

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Ever wonder what your pet would look like as a Japanese samurai? Well, thanks to this company selling samurai armors for cats and dogs, you don’t have to imagine it anymore.

Samurai Age specializes in handmade samurai helmet and armor bottle covers, but they recently went into the pet business as well, launching a line of samurai armor for cats. They don’t look like the provide much protection from the cold, but if you’re looking to bring out their warrior spirit, they are perfect.

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Students at Beijing’s Yucai High School have to be very careful when playing football on the school’s well-maintained field. That’s because it has a 100-year-old tree growing smack in the middle of it, and keeping their eye on the ball too much can result in a painful collision.

Building a football field around a tree sounds pretty stupid, but it’s not like the Chinese school had a choice. Yucai High School is reportedly surrounded by various historical buildings, and this was the only available space for a football field. Before starting work on site, the school did ask permission to have the tree transplanted someplace else, but they were notified that it was hundreds of years old, and considered a national treasure. Having it transplanted was considered too risky, so they were left with no choice but to build the field around it.

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Constructed in 1970, the Seoul Station overpass connected the eastern and western halves of the South Korean capital for over three decades. Closed in 2015, due to safety concerns, the iconic suspended highway was reopened this month, as a pedestrian sky garden.

The old overpass was created as a solution to the growing traffic congestion in Seoul, and eventually became a symbol of the Asian country’s economic growth in the 1970s. However, concerns regarding its safety were first raised by experts during the 1990s, prompting the local government to conduct periodic inspections. In 2012, engineers reported that the 1,024-meter-long structure could only support heavy traffic for three more years, and the city announced that it was going to be demolished by 2015. However, in 2014, Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon, came up with a different plan.

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If you’re really short on cash and haven’t eaten anything in about a week, you may want to head over to Gold Curry, a restaurant in Japan’s Ishikawa prefecture, where you can earn up to $900 if you can finish one of their giant dishes in the allotted time.

We’ve featured some outrageous restaurant challenges in the past, like eating a bowl of the world’s hottest curry, feasting on a 4-pound taco, or finishing a giant bowl of Pho soup, but, while definitely extreme, completing them still seemed possible. That’s not the case with the ultimate challenge set by Japanese restaurant Gold Curry. They are offering a grand prize of $900 to any person that can eat over 20 pounds of rice and curry in just one hour, which I for one don’t think is humanly possible without rupturing your stomach.

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You probably never even knew you wanted colored LED eyelashes, but just look at the pretty lights. Yeah, you want them!

Swedish Arduino designer Tien Pham has been getting a lot of attention lately for an unusual tech-inspired beauty product – interactive LED eyelashes that stick to your eyelids with regular eyelash glue. Called F.Lashes, these eye-catching accessories come in pink, red, blue, light blue, white, yellow and green, and feature different lighting modes, like follow, where the lights follow the movements of your head, dance mode, where they just blink at short intervals when you move your body, and sparkle, with the LEDs lighting up individually to create a sparkle effect.

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After being exposed to a long-term gas leak in her home for a long period of time, a Los Angeles woman’s immune system turned against itself, making her allergic to food, water, clothing, technology with an electromagnetic field, and even people.

30-year-old Pilar Olave, a Chilean-born actress from Los Angeles, California, has been living in her room, isolated from the rest of the world, for the last two years. Due to severe allergies, coming into contact with certain chemicals, foods and bacteria that most of us carry around can trigger a variety of symptoms, like acute stomach pain, headaches, nausea, heart palpitations and tight chest. For now, Pilar can’t even kiss or touch her own husband, because her body is hypersensitive to bacteria.

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Growing up in the mountainous Sierra de Peñamayor, in Asturias, northern Spain, Aladino Montes had been shooting deer ever since he was a child, but his life as a hunter came to an abrupt end 10 years ago, when he met Bambi, an adorable fawn that has remained by his side ever since. Aladino has never shot an animal since, and says that he would rather die than take another life.

53-year-old Aladino recalls driving through the mountains in his little jeep, ten years ago, when he spotted a couple of grazing cows being followed by a skinny little fawn. Deer don’t usually hang out with cows, so he approached the animals for a closer look. That’s when he noticed that the fawn had several wounds and would have probably died without proper medical care. He put the injured animal in his car and drove back to his house where he nursed it back to health. But instead of running back towards the forests from which it came, the fawn stayed by Aladino’s side, and he didn’t have the heart to drive it away. They’ve been best friends ever since.

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Mokase is the world’s first smartphone case that also serves users a warm shot of espresso whenever and wherever they want. It’s aimed at people who are always on the go, whose hectic lifestyle prevents them from stopping by a coffee shop or even a vending machine for a dose of caffeine.

Smart K, the Italian company that came up with the concept for Mokase, claims that they were looking for a way to make coffee available anywhere, and pairing it with the smartphone just made the most sense. “We thought, ‘how to make it always available? Why not join it to a gadget that is already a piece of our lifetime?’ the smartphone is the answer,” Smart K stated in a press release.

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Momoka Kurita made quite an impression when she posed as a “race queen” during a superbike racing event in Japan, last year. Adult men showered her with compliments for her stunning looks, but little did they know that she was just 12-years-old at the time, and still in elementary school.

Her appearance at the 2016 48th MFJ Grand Prix, in Suzuka, kickstarted Momoka’s modelling career, but it also sparked a heated online debated about age in the industry. While recognizing her stunning looks, many argued that dressing a 12-year-old child in a sexy attire and having her participate in an adult event was just wrong. Most of them blamed the parents, but the now 13-year-old girl claims that nobody forced her into it, and that her parents are just supportive of her dreams.

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A DIY master from Tokyo, Japan, recently conquered the internet with a very unusual project. She set out to turn a pair of cheap high-heel shoes into realistic-looking pigeons to see if they would allow her to get closer to the real birds in a local park without them flying away. Did it work? Read on and find out.

47-year old Keiko Ohata creates all kinds of wondrous things and posts photos of them on Japanese DIY-themed community website, Nifty. She has shared dozens of interesting creations with her followers over the last 11 years, but it was her latest idea that attracted the attention of some of the world’s largest art blogs and news sites. Well, sort of, as all the articles I’ve seen got her name all wrong and linked to a Russian site as the original source, instead of her Nifty profile. Hopefully, they’ll make the necessary corrections, as Keiko deserves all the credit for this amazing pair of pigeon shoes.

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Ibrahim Mukunga Wachira, a 27-year-old marathon runner from Kenya, became an overnight sensation in the small Baltic country of Estonia, after winning the 35th annual Tartu Half-Marathon, a 23-kilometer race he ran in his socks.

Just last week, we wrote about the monumental achievement of María Lorena Ramírez, a native Rarámuri woman from Mexico, who won a 50-kilometer ultramarathon in rubber sandals made from used car tires and wearing a long traditional skirt. Today, we cover the amazing story of a man who not only won a 23-kilometer marathon in Estonia, but also set a new speed record, after running with no shoes on. It’s definitely an incredible time for sports, and running in particular.

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If there is such a place as heaven for farm animals, it must be a lot like Santuario Igualdad Interspecies, an incredible sanctuary for domestic animals destined for slaughter or left for dead. Here, not only do they get to live in perfect peace and harmony, but they receive all the love and affection they deserve.

A couple of days ago, I cam across this incredible video of a man cuddling with a grown cow. The animal seemed to be enjoying the human affection immensely, and responded by gently laying its head on the man’s chest and closing its eyes in delight as he petted and kissed its neck. It was very touching, and I decided that I had to learn more about it. I soon discovered an entire YouTube channel full of similar videos of two people affectionately interacting with various farm animals, like pigs, goats or ducks. They were shot at Santuario Igualdad Interspecie, a small animal sanctuary, in Chile, where tending to the emotional needs of rescued farm animals is of the utmost importance.

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If you live in New York City, chances are you’ve already stumbled across a most peculiar sight – a public trash containing a large, colorful arrangement of flowers, making it look like a giant vase. They have been popping up all around the Big Apple, stopping people in their tracks and putting a smile on their faces.

The unusual flower vases are the work of Lewis Miller, a local floral designer who uses leftover flowers and decorative plants from weddings and other events to add a bit of color to the grey, gloomy sidewalks of NYC. He and his team at Lewis Miller Design look for the most attractive garbage cans in the city and get up early in the morning to fill them with dozens of beautiful flower, eventually turning them into huge vases. Following a popular Vogue article on this unique project, Miller and his team have come to be known as the “flower bandits” of New York.

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