Every little boy who has ever owned a Hot Wheels miniature car remembers how fun those things were to play with, whether you owned a circuit track or not. Artist Chris Burden has spent the last four years working on Metropolis II, an awe-inspiring miniature car circuit that will spark the interest of even the most mature grownup.

It’s called Metropolis II because Chris built another cool Hot Wheels circuit back in 2004, but compared to his first one, this latest project is superior in every way. It really lives up to its name, measuring an impressive 10-feet-tall by 28-feet-long and featuring 13 toy tracks and a gigantic car circuit with 18 lanes, winding around in a loop, around 30-40 skyscrapers. There are a total of 1,100 modified cars moving around Metropolis II, at any given time. Chris and his team inserted a small magnet on the underside of each car, so when they reach one of the circuit’s three conveyor belts, which also have magnets placed underneath, they get picked up and transported to a high point from where they are released and flow away.

According to Chris Burden, Metropolis II is ten times bigger than the original Metropolis and was conceived as a miniature representation of Los Angeles. Just recently completed, Metropolis II has already been sold for millions of dollars, but Burden says is also cost millions to complete and refine. Over the next few months it will be taken apart and properly packed in steel cages, where the parts shouldn’t move more than a 32nd of an inch, in order to keep everything running smoothly.

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The Great Knaresborough Bed Race of 2011 attracted a crowd of about 25,000 people eager to see one of the wackiest races in the world.

When the popular bed race was first organized, in 1965, it was considered so difficult that only members of the Army, Navy and American Marines were allowed to take part, but nowadays everyone is allowed to compete, as long as they pay an entrance fee and have a bed decorated according to the annual theme. This year, 90 teams from as far as Germany and the USA came to Knaresborough to compete in one of the strangest, most fun races on Earth.

Teams participating in the Great Knaresborough Bed Race are made up of six runners, a decorated bed and one member brave enough to sit on the bed. The runners have to carry the bed through the 3-km-long countryside course, while the seventh member tries to hold on for dear life. The race starts easily enough, along the banks of the River Nidd, but turns into a nightmare halfway through, as teams face five difficult hill climbs to Castle Fort. Going downhill is no picnic either, especially for the guy sitting on the bed, but if they manage to reach the bottom, they’re faced with the final hurdle, crossing the river.

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Sayed al Essawy, an Egyptian who claims to be the world’s strongest man, announced he will be fighting a 10-year-old, 230 kg lion, in front of the pyramids, to boost his country’s tourism business.

I know it sounds silly, but Sayed is very serious about his plan, despite international outrage from animal activists. He claims he discovered his incredible strength when he was only 13, and almost immediately afterwards promised himself he would one day fight a lion. With the current state of the economy in Egypt, because of the recent revolution, Sayed al Essawy thought this was the perfect time to fulfill his childhood dream and at the same time boost his country’s tourism business by promoting the fight.

In an interview with Al Masry Al Youm, Essawy confessed there is also a very serious political message that he wants to send. After he has vanquished the lion, he wants to place an Israeli flag on its body and put his foot on it. He says it was Israel who pushed him to do this, with all the atrocities they committed while he was growing up, and now he wants to prove that even though Israel and America are as strong as lions, they can still be defeated by the Arab youth, which is about to explode…

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Chessboxing is a very unique sport that consists of alternating rounds of boxing and chess, allowing players to win either by knockout or check mate.

You probably think it’s a joke, but those who actually practice chessboxing take it very seriously. In order to be a world class chess-boxer, one must have extensive boxing experience and be at least a Class A strength chess player. The basic idea in chessboxing is to combine the top combat sport with the number one thinking sport into a hybrid that requires competitors to give it their best both physically and mentally.

The history of chessboxing can be traced back to 1992, when French cartoonist Enki Bilal created The Nikopol Trilogy, a comic book that depicted a futuristic world where men boxed on a chessboard floor. The concept inspired Dutch artist Iepe Rubingh to create chessboxing and organize the first world championship, in 2003. Since then, the sport he been constantly gaining popularity and new members from all walks of life join every year.

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The Destruction Company is a member only Fight Club-like organization that allows rich Americans to smash stuff to smithereens, using an arsenal of weapons.

Destruction has been used as therapy to relieve stress for a few years now, and people seem willing to pay top dollar to take out their frustrations on stuff that can’t fight. Clubs offering people the chance to destroy old refrigerators, washing machines and things like that have been around for a while, but The Destruction Company only addresses frustrated rich folks who can afford to smash brand new things.  From a $10 set of plates to a $2,000 grand piano and even luxury cars worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, The Destruction Company offers whatever items you feel like releasing all your frustrations on.

This exclusive club is based at a secret location in New Jersey and new members can only join if they receive an invite from a current Destruction Company member. They are then called for an interview to decide if they have what it takes to join the club. They have to sign a legal waiver and respect the organization’s rules: no use of firearms, no living things or paperwork can be destroyed and no alcohol or drugs can be used during the destruction session. Members pay a confidential annual membership fee, plus the cost of every item they wish to destroy.

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They might look like computer-generated images, but Shi Jindian’s works are so real you can touch them. Using simple steel wire, the Chinese artist is able to create almost perfect replicas of anything from musical instruments to motorcycles.

For years, Shi Jindian looked for a material “that was brand new, completely untraditional” and when he worked with steel wire for the first time he knew he had found what he had been looking for. He created his own set of instruments, and by trial and error, he learned how to crochet the two-dimensional strands into three-dimensional models. His incredible-looking masterpieces start out as steel wrappings around the common objects he’s trying to replicate, and when the work is done, Jindian destroys or somehow extracts the object, leaving only the wire frame.

Looking at Shi Jindian’s wire sculptures it’s hard to understand how he gets every little detail just right, but I guess that’s what makes his art so unique and impressive.

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Miroslav Svoboda’s house, in Mutenice, the Czech Republic, has become a regular tourist magnet after he decorated it with 180,000 wine corks.

The idea of using wine corks to make his house more appealing came to Mr Svoboda two years ago, There was an empty circle space on one of the walls, and he decided to fill it with a drawing, but when he noticed his friends were pretty unimpressed he decided to fill the space with wine corks. The small town of Mutenice is located in the South Moravian wine region of the Czech Republic, so wine corks were fairly easy to come by. A passionate red wine drinker, Miroslav Svoboda saved his own corks, but also got them by the thousands from friends and neighbors.

The experienced bricklayer developed an entire process to clean the wine corks and make sure his decorative work passes the test of time. First he placed them in a disinfectant bath that removed the smell of wine and killed any germs that could have caused mold to appear. He then dried them in nets made from onion bags and cut them in half. Using cement, he fixed each piece of cork into place, by hand, into various shapes. Svoboda says his house is very old and has extremely thick walls, so he didn’t cover his house in corks for padding, but purely for aesthetic reasons.

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Wang Kang, a 25-year-old office worker from Shanghai, China, surprised his colleagues a few days ago, when he came to work wearing a home-made Iron Man suit.

It happened on June 3rd, 2011. Kang walked into his office building wearing a metallic-looking costume and was immediately stopped by security. After explaining to them that he was actually an employee there they allowed him to go through to the office area where all his work mates stopped what they were doing and stared at the real-life Iron Man that just walked in. Everyone was speechless at first, but proceeded to congratulate Wang Kang for his incredible achievement, and started taking pictures. One of these ended up on China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo, and the young self-taught costume maker became an internet sensation.

Wang Kang got the idea of making his own Iron Man costume after seeing the 2008 blockbuster starring Robert Downey Junior, but actually started working on it on February 26, 2011, right in the living room of his rented apartment. The costume is mainly made of high density foam, wires and tubes, for which he only paid 3,000 yuan ($460). It also features the famous arc reactor which he made from glass. The whole thing took him three months to finish, but the reactions on his colleagues’ faces were totally worth the time and effort. After the office test, Kang took to the streets where he left everyone stunned, as well.

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When your body is covered with almost 7,000 metal piercings, one more ring really doesn’t seem that important, but for Elaine Davidson it was the most important one so far.

Looking at her, you’d probably think most normal men would run for the hills the minute they laid eyes on Elaine Davidson, the world’s most pierced woman, but she actually got a decent looking civil servant named Douglas Watson, who doesn’t have any visible piercings, to marry her. The 42-year-old former nurse was dressed in a classic white wedding dress that covered all of her body, except the face which was painted green and covered with 192 piercings. In case you’re wondering, no, she didn’t scare off the minister.

Brazilian-born Davidson first broke the record for most piercings in 2000, when Guinness examined her body and found 462 piercings, including 192 on her face. She’s come a long way since then and the last count revealed she now sports 6,925 piercings, weighing around three kilograms. Believe it or not, she never takes off any of her piercings. Read More »

22-year-old Staysha Randall had her arms legs and back pierced by 3,200 industrial strength needles, in order to set a new Guinness record, in Las Vegas.

Staysha, a Las Vegas performer who usually does escape acts and burlesque shows in which she demonstrates her physical strength set out to break the old record of 3,100 needles stuck in one person, in just one sitting. She and body piercer Bill ‘Danger’ Robins first set out to reach the 3,600 needle mark, but the pain was apparently so great Staysha called it quits after being pierced with 3,200 18-gauge, 1.5-inch-long needles.

The whole thing began at noon and ended after 7 hours and 28 minutes of excruciating pain for Randall, who didn’t take any pain medication nor drank alcohol because it would have made her blood thinner. The only way she could fight the pain was by biting on a paper towel wrapped in Saran Wrap. Read More »

Facebook is one powerful tool, and a 16-year-old German girl found that out the hard way, after she forgot to set her Facebook birthday party invitation as private and had her celebration crashed by 1,500 strangers.

The girl, known only as Thessa, had originally planned to invite only a few friends over at her house in Hamburg-Bramfeld, but mistakingly published the invitation on Facebook so that everyone could see it. Before long, the invitation went viral and around 15,000 people confirmed they would come to the party, even though they didn’t even know the girl. When Thessa’s parents found out, they made her cancel the invitation, announced the police and hired a private security firm to guard their house on the big day.

Even though public announcements that the party had been cancelled were made in hamburg, some 1,500 people showed up in front of Thessa’s house ready to party. Some of them had banners asking ‘Where is Thessa’, others brought presents, home-made cake, and plenty of alcohol, but they were all ready for a good time, and the 100 policemen present on the scene weren’t going to stop them. They started singing ‘Thessa, celebrating a birthday is not a crime’, in relation with the massive police presence on the premises, and although eleven revelers were detained, a police officer was injured and dozens of girls wearing flip-flops cut their feet on broken glass, Thessa’s party was abig hit.

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Rain Price is probably the world’s most embarrassed son, after his father waved goodbye to him dressed in all kinds of wacky costumes, as he went away in the school bus. This happened every day, for the entire school year.

While the sixteen-year-old found his father’s daily ritual embarrassing, especially since this was his sophomore year, for Dale Price this was a special way of saying ‘ I love you’ to his son. On the first day of school, he went out of the house dressed pretty normally and waved goodbye to Rain, who thought it was going to be just another school year. But that all changed on day 2, when Dale came out wearing a San Diego Chargers helmet. Things just got worse from then on, as Dale started wearing ever stranger outfits, including a wedding dress, a Wonder Woman costume, a Star Trek Uniform and even sat on a toilet with pants pulled down reading the paper and waving goodbye.

Rain’s colleagues actually loved his father’s goofy habit and were looking forward to seeing what he was dressed in, every day. They would laugh, roll down the windows and wave back at him. But the teenager isn’t planning on rewarding his father for his efforts, as he says his year-long feeling of embarrassment is reward enough. Luckily, the end of the school year finally came on June 2, and Dale saw him off one last time, dressed in a pirate costume he had stored from a Halloween celebration.

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Considered to be America’s no. 1 spiderweb artist, Emil Fiore, known as Rocky, collects various kinds of spiderwebs and uses them to create unique artworks which he sells on his website, Whirled Wide Webs.

Rocky, 58, says he read about how to catch spiderwebs when he was just a kid. The little Golden Guide suggested to spray the web with hairspray and dust it with talcum powder, and because he learned a spider’s web normally lasts only a few hours, this preservation concept stuck in his head for years. He always loved the outdoors, but he only got the idea of collecting spiderwebs in his early 20s. He was experimenting with stained glass and at one point decided to spray paint one of the webs in his vegetable garden and sandwich it between two pieces of glass. It worked, but after 10 years it began to fall apart, and he switched to using just one piece of glass and varnish.

Rocky Fiore usually collects his spiderwebs from the forests around his hometown, Dumont, New Jersey. He spray paints them silver on a dark piece of glass and sells them as artworks for up to $200 a pop. The pray caught in the spiderweb remains as part of the artwork as it adds to the story of the piece.

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Napoleon, a four-year-old Dutch Friesian stallion, has developed a talent for painting after working with artist Sergio Caballero and his worked are now on display at the Mutt art gallery, in Barcelona.

The Dutch Friesian horse breed is famous for being very responsive to dressage, but I doubt too many people thought a horse could be taught how to paint. One of those who did was Catalan artist Sergio Caballero, who one day got the idea of working with animal painters. he asked his friend, a horse owner, if he could teach a horse to paint, and that’s when he met the beautiful black stallion, Napoleon.

The two started working together; Sergio prepared the canvases and put the brush into Napoleon’s mouth and the horse would shake his head and make bold strokes of acrylic color. It doesn’t sound very complicated, but Caballero calls it abstract expressionism, and three private collectors have already bought Napoleon’s works for between €3,300 and €6,000.

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Wat Prommanee, a Buddhist temple, 66 miles northeast of Bangkok, offers believers the chance to lay in a coffin for a few moments, then rise up and feel reborn…

I for one find coffins to be really creepy and I wouldn’t dream of lying down in one if someone paid me all the money in the world, but at Wat Prommanee people actually wait in line and pay a fee for a chance to do just that. It’s one of the strangest ceremonies in the world, but one that has been rising in popularity ever since the temple started practicing it, over six years ago. Nine colorful coffins dominate the main hall of Wat Prommanee Temple, and hundreds of people lie down in them every day, playing dead for about a minute and a half, listening to religious chants, and rise up at command feeling cleansed and relaxed.

Wat Prommanee basically offers a daily resurrection service that many Thais believe washes away bad luck and helps prolong their life. It makes sense that people wish for a second chance in life, especially when confronted with serious issues, but lying down in a decorated coffin hardly seems like a solution. I mean, what if it doesn’t change anything, right? Well, they just go back and do it again. The ceremony apparently relaxes them and gives them positive thoughts, so many people come back to Wat Prommanee Temple for the chance to be reborn several times over a few years. All they have to do is pay a small fee. Read More »