Thanks to a couple of Swedish entrepreneurs, it might soon be possible to get a clean shave without the little nicks and cuts. They’ve done away with blades in their new invention ‘Skarp’, a futuristic razor that magically makes hair fall away when waved over skin!

Well, it’s not exactly magic. Skarp uses laser beams to assist in hair removal. The concept isn’t new, lasers have been used to eliminate body hair cosmetically and medically since 1989, when Morgan Gustavsson invented the IPL (Intense Pulse Light). He also wanted to bring lasers into everyday hair removal, but he couldn’t really do it before because the wavelengths could only cut through dark hair, not light or grey hair.

But now, Morgan and his partner Paul Binun claim to have discovered a part of hair molecules called chromophore shared by all humans irrespective of hair color. Chromophores can be cut easily with a particular wavelength of light. So they used the discovery to develop a commercial laser razor that can be used on any part of the body, by men and women.

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If you ever happen to visit Taiwan, you might be greeted to the sight of scantily-clad women in neon-lit glass kiosks by roadsides, waiting for men to pull over. Well, they’re not what you think!

These women are ‘Betel nut girls’ who peddle small snacks of tasty, stimulative betel nuts wrapped in betel leaves. They dress provocatively to attract potential buyers, but nuts is pretty much the only thing they sell.

The main roads are filled with around 60,000 such phone booth-style kiosks; they’re so much a part of the nation’s identity that they’re actually featured on old tourist guides. The women who operate the stalls are usually from poorer families, but according to news reports, the job pays more than housekeeping, waiting tables and other conventional jobs.

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A 70-year old man from Bursa, Turkey died last week, after spending the last 47 years in the city hospital, not because he was seriously ill, but because he didn’t have anywhere else to go.

Abdullah Kozan walked through the doors of Bursa State Hospital in 1968, just after completing his mandatory military service. He was admitted with a severe headache, but soon asked the doctors if he could stay there a while longer, because he really didn’t have anywhere else to go. He got along with the staff from the beginning and claimed that he actually enjoyed living in the hospital, so the administration kept registering him as a new patient every time he got discharged at the end of his treatment.

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If your childhood memories are filled with summers spent chasing fireflies, then you’re going to love this new theme park in China. It’s completely dedicated to the glowing insects that naturally illuminate their habitat at night.

The park, located at the East Lake Peony Garden in Wuhan city, central China’s Hubei province, is home to about 10,000 fireflies. The insects are divided into five separate zones – the flying zone, the observation zone, zero-distance contact zone, breeding zone, and the science popularization area. Each zone is meant to cater to different categories of visitors, right from casual visitors to researchers.

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When Abigail Kingston got engaged, she almost immediately decided on her wedding attire – a 120-year-old dress that’s been worn by 10 other brides from her mother’s side of the family since the late 1800s.

The ancient two-piece dress is a family heirloom, first worn by Kingston’s great-great-grandmother Mary Lowry Warren in 1895. None of Lowry’s daughters were interested in the large gown, so it was first re-worn by her granddaughter in the ’40s. Later, Kingston’s mother and aunts continued the tradition of getting married in the same dress.

Abigail herself has known about the dress since she was a little girl. “When I was younger, while I was playing piano at my parents’ house, there was a framed picture of the first six brides wearing the dress, so I would think, ‘Someday,’” she said. But when the day finally arrived, she and her mother Leslie had to track the dress down.

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Desperate for revenge, a spurned Chinese man wrote his girlfriend the most expensive hate mail ever. He claims to have scratched his message on to the screens of nine brand new iPhone 6s smartphones, just to show her how wealthy he’s become since she dumped him for an iPhone 6.

The messages, when put together, read: “Last September, you dumped me for my friend because of an iPhone 6. Thanks to you looking down on me, I could work harder (and become successful). On the first anniversary after we broke up, I present to you nine iPhone 6s to mourn our doomed relationship.”

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Stan Herd, a Kansas-based landscape artist, recently completed his very own museum-worthy masterpiece. Only, it can’t be moved because it’s actually made out of plants growing in a field!

The 1.2-acre crop art ‘painting’, located on field near Minneapolis, is a replica of Van Gogh’s 1889 masterpiece ‘Olive Trees’. Herd was commissioned to create it by the Minneapolis Institute of Art, where the Van Gogh original currently hangs. It took him six long months of digging, planting, and mowing a giant grass field before the ‘earthwork’ was finally complete on September 11. It is best viewed from high above, especially if you happen to be flying in to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

“When you’re on ground level you can’t tell what the cuts even look like, but when you get up there you can see the patterns,” said Rick King, board member of the Minneapolis Museum and the Metropolitan Airports Commission. “If you are landing from the southeast and flying northwest, it will be on your left-hand side as you approach the airport.”   

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If you love building sandcastles then here’s your chance to actually live in one. ‘Zand Hotels’ – the world’s first hotels constructed out of sand have opened in two Dutch towns – Oss and Sneek – to commemorate sand sculpture festivals held there each year.

The two pop-up hotels have fully furnished one-room suites, hidden inside eight-meter sculptures. One is modeled after the iconic Bedrock homes from the Flintstones, and the other has a Chinese theme, with dragons, the Great Wall of China, and the Terracotta Army as decorations. Believe it or not, these sand hotels have all the modern amenities, like electricity, running water, glass windows, king size beds, soft carpets, luxurious bathrooms and Wi-Fi!

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Move over, humans, it seems animals need makeovers too. It’s all the rage in South Korea right now as pet owners are actually paying for cosmetic surgery for their furry companions!

Some of the popular procedures include tail shortening and ear trimming for dogs, to make them ‘cute’ with pointy ears. Fat reduction is another popular surgery, along with stretch marks removal, wrinkle smoothing, double eyelid removal and even botox injections. These procedures start from $60 and ostensibly run into the thousands.  

It’s not entirely surprising, given that South Korea is the plastic surgery capital of the world. This is the place where tourists become unrecognisable to the extent that they need special doctor certificates to return to their native lands after having work done on their faces. So it was only a matter of time before people started thinking of botoxing their pets as well.

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A Chinese kid was in the news recently for flaunting his wealth in one of the most extravagant marriage proposals in recent times. He arranged a fleet of luxury cars in the shape of a heart before asking his high school sweetheart to marry him. The stunt worked its magic and he got a the answer he desired.

According to news reports, the Guangzhou-based entrepreneur who had dropped out of college to found his own company, decided on the bombastic proposal to make sure no one steals his girl away. They have been dating since junior high, but she has just started attending college, so to make sure no one even attempts any moves on her, he proposed preemptively. He rented a fleet of expensive cars and drove them to his girlfriend’s college dorm.

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In a bid to explore alternative methods of growing produce, an Italian company has created the world’s first underwater farm. The futuristic station – aptly named Nemo’s Garden – consists of five transparent biospheres anchored to the bottom of the sea off the coast of Savona, Italy. They’re being used to grow strawberries, basil, beans, garlic, and lettuce.

“The main target of this project is to create alternative sources of plant production in areas where environmental conditions make it difficult to grow crops through conventional farming, including lack of fresh water, fertile soils, and extreme temperature changes,” said project spokesperson Luca Gamberini. “We are trying to find an alternative and economically viable technology enabling efficient production.”

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Believe it or not, the day has finally come when people can have their iPads wait in line every time a new iPhone is released! A woman named Lucy Kelly was the first to try it out – she sent an iPad robot to stand proxy for her at an Apple store in Sydney, just before the launch of the new iPhone 6s.

The robot, also named Lucy, consists of an iPad attached to a Segway-type device. Created by Californian company Double Robotics, it allows a person to be virtually present anywhere without actually having to be there. And the company that Kelly works for – Atomic 212 – happened to order six of these robots to play with at their office.

“We use them for everything, just to show new technology,” Kelly said. “It is a cool demonstration of what the future of technology will be. We are obsessed with them.” So on the eve of the iPhone 6s release in Sydney last Thursday, Lucy the robot arrived to take the fourth place in the long line of Apple fans.

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Fusing bits of metal together hardly qualifies as art, unless it’s the handiwork of a welding master like Richard Lauth. The 23-year-old professional welder from Chicago creates beautiful portraits, themed sculptures, decorations, and models using nothing but metal and a welding machine

Lauth is an Operating Engineer and member of the trade union Local 150 by day, but he likes to spend his free time using his welding skills on artistic pursuits. Or as he writes on Instagram, he loves making “cool s***” out of metal. Some of his pieces include metal portraits of popular characters like Stormtroopers and Minions, animal faces, and small metal sculptures of everyday objects.

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This Russian teenager is turning heads in his hometown of Krasnoyarsk for looking like a walking, talking X-Ray. The entire right side of his face is covered with a skull tattoo, complete with gaping eye sockets, blackened nose, and perfectly traced bones and teeth. He’s even colored his right eyeball black for a hollow effect!

Nikita Lesnoy was fascinated by tattoos as a child, ever since he saw one made by his father. As he grew older he began to research the subject more, eventually getting his first tattoo at age 15. And now at 18 years, half of his face is inked with a skull. He works at a tattoo parlour himself, so his bizarre face hasn’t affected his career.

“Nobody worries about my look too much in my line of work, because I also have my dream job working in a tattoo studio,” he said. But he admitted that people on the streets are often shocked by his appearance. Nearly everyone gapes at him, some in admiration, others in disgust. Read More »

A Korean couple are taking Instagram by storm with their phenomenal body transformation photographs. In a short span of five months, they have gone from ‘somewhat chubby’ to super-lean workout machines!

Song Jin Yoo and Shin Ji Hoo been exercising together at the gym for the past five months – spending three hours a day on aerobic exercise and one-and-a-half hours lifting weights twice a week. They have recently shared their amazing results on a Korean Facebook pace titled ‘Dieting is the Best Plastic Surgery’. Their before-and-after simply left everyone speechless and soon went viral in Korea.

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