While a vast majority of Indians continue to prefer sons, a small village in the Indian state of Rajasthan has its own unique tradition of celebrating their daughters. Since 2006, the residents of Piplantri village, in southern Rajasthan’s Rajsamand district, have been planting a whopping 111 trees to celebrate the birth of a girl!

Given that an average of 60 girls are born each year, the villagers have managed to plant over 250,000 trees so far – including varieties like Neem, Indian Rosewood, and Mango. The community of 8,000 residents is also dedicated to making sure that the trees survive and attain fruition as the girls grow up.

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When Margarita Suarez, from Merida, Mexico, passed away last week, her funeral service was attended by the most unusual mourners – stray dogs.

It’s utterly baffling that the dogs weren’t even from Cuernavaca, the city where Margarita gave her last breath. They were her companions from back home in Merida, where she used to feed them every single day. Photographs showing the dogs lying around the coffin have now gone viral online – receiving over 130,000 likes and 33,000 shares in only four days.

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A team of California scientists, or ‘biohackers’ as they call themselves, claim to have discovered a way for people to achieve night-vision without the use of special goggles. They recently conducted an experiment called Science for the Masses(SftM), in which they injected a volunteer’s eyes with a special liquid solution that gave him superhuman night-vision.

After receiving the injection, the volunteer – researcher Gabriel Licina – could supposedly see up to a distance of 50 meters in almost total darkness for several hours, and could spot people running among trees in dark conditions. In comparison, people who weren’t treated with the solution did not fare as well.

The mystifying solution apparently contains a substance called Chlorin e6 (Ce6), which is found in some deep-sea fish. It has light-amplification properties, and has also been used in cancer treatment research. By combining Ce6 with insulin and saline, the team was able to produce a solution that can improve vision in the dark.

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In a bid to achieve a tiny waist, 25-year-old  Aleira Avendano has been wearing a tight corset 23 hours a day, for the past six years. The result? She literally looks like an hourglass, with 34DD breasts, an enlarged derriere, and a shockingly slim 20-inch waist.

Aleira said that she began ‘waist’ training as a teenager. Her skinny core now attracts attention wherever she goes. “People stop what they’re doing and stare – everywhere I go I get attention,” she said. “People shout at me in the street – they can’t believe that figure is real.”

She does admit that wearing a corset was uncomfortable at first and it took her some time to get used to. But over time she got so used to it that her skin would start to itch when she took it off. And she says that she actually loves wearing it now. “I’m completely obsessed with belts and corsets – I even sleep with them on,” the busty Venezuelan model said. Read More »

A bizarre men’s toilet at a restaurant in Taiyuan city, in northern China’s Shanxi province, has a trio of realistic female mannequins placed behind the urinals. The weird arrangement has men standing face-to-face with these scantily-clad dolls while relieving themselves!

Predictably, several of the restaurant’s male customers have expressed discomfort with the toilet setup. They complained that they weren’t able to urinate because of the “sexy” models were staring at them.

“I walked back out again when I saw the women there because I thought at first I was in the wrong place, but then I realised it was the proper place and I tried to relieve myself, it just didn’t work,” said 24-year-old customer Sun Kao. “It was very off-putting having a good-looking woman even if it was a plastic one apparently staring at me as I tried to do my business.”

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Seattle-based Bridget Beth Collins mixes her love of nature with her interest in art to create stunning collages out of colorful flower petals, leaves, twigs and whatever plant materials she can get her hands on.

Collins, gathers materials for her collages from the areas surrounding her home in Ravenna, in Seattle. She then arranges the pieces into intricate shapes, using the natural colors to create a sense of depth. Through her intrinsic understanding or color and texture, she is able to transform flower petals into feathered birds, berries into sea creatures, and leaves into human faces.

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Scientists in Ecuador have discovered a new species of frog that is able to morph the texture of its skin – from spiny to smooth – within a matter of minutes. Aptly named ‘mutable rain frog’, the tiny, finger-nail sized creature is the first shape-shifting amphibian to ever be found.

According to a Livescience report, the mutable frogs were found in Reserva Las Gralarias, a protected cloud reserve forest on the western slopes of Ecuador’s Andes Mountains. The incredible discovery is credited to biologist Katherine Kryna and naturalist Tim Krynak, who have spent the past decade combing the reserve for rare frog species.

The duo first spotted the frog in 2006, when they had captured it on camera. On closer inspection of the photograph, they realised that it could be a new species. The frog’s spiny-textured skin stood out, so they started calling it ‘punk rocker’. “It wasn’t until we saw the amazing texture of its skin that we thought, ‘wow, this is something different,’” said Katherine.

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A father-and-son duo from Hunan, China, have come up with a fun and profitable business idea – creating giant Transformers robots replicas from used car parts and scrap metal.

Although they are farmers by profession, Yu Zhilin and his son Yu Lingyun switched to building the models in 2007, when they realised the potential in the Chinese market. And their hunch has proved right – they’ve managed cash in on the nation’s obsession with Transformers, the highest grossing film of all time in China. They now make one million yuan a year (nearly $170,000), selling their army of robots.

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A heavy downpour can spoil the best of plans, but who says you can’t have fun with a bit of rain? Proving the fact is Seattle-based magician and artist Peregrine Church, with his rain-activated street art, called ‘rainworks’. These paintings are invisible to the naked eye when dry, only making an appearance when it rains!

Church said that he’s passionate about making things that make the world a more interesting place. “Rainworks are pieces of street art that only appear when they’re wet,” he explained, “and they’re messages or images designed to make people’s rainy day a little bit better.” He calls it the “ideal Seattle art” because of the constant rains in the city.

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If you happen to be cruising along County Road 400, in Johnson County, Indiana, you’re bound to stumble upon one of America’s strangest landmarks – a grave located dead in the middle of the road.

The grave apparently dates back to before Amity village even had a paved road. In 1831, a 37-year-old woman named Nancy Kerlin died in the area, survived by her husband and 11 children. Keeping with her wishes, her husband William Barnett buried her at her favorite spot on a small hill, overlooking Sugar Creek. While road crews generally tend to flatten out such obstructions, in this case, they made sure to pour the asphalt around the grave. Why? Because they were terrified!

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San Francisco-based rock band ‘ArnoCorps’ is the world’s first musical group to feature lyrics that are based exclusively on the films of Arnold Schwarzenegger. The lyrics mainly parallel movie dialogs and plots from Arnold’s action flicks in the 1980s, like The Terminator, Predator and Total Recall.

ArnoCorps is generally regarded as the pioneer of Action-Adventure Hardcore Rock and Roll. Founded in 2001, the group consists of six members who look like highly-trained militant Austrian action-rock heros. Each member has a pseudonym and a heroic backstory. At every performance, they are clothed in combat fatigues and camouflage paint, and they address the audience in ‘ballsy’ accents.

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Located in the city of Chelyabinsk, in Russia, is a unique house built almost entirely of champagne bottles. The architectural oddity is the handiwork of a local resident, 52-year-old Hamidullah Ilchibaev. Fondly referred to as ‘Palace Oz’, the place is now a popular landmark in the region.

The idea for the house was not a random one – Hamidullah has always been interested in constructing things out of beer and vodka bottles. His children had always admired his work, and encouraged him to build a house someday. But he always thought it was impossible to do.

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Nepalese eye doctor Sanduk Ruit is being hailed as a miracle worker – he has single-handedly managed to restore the eyesight of over 100,000 people across two continents. All it takes him is a simple, five-minute procedure!

According to WHO statistics, 90 percent of the world’s blind population live in low-income areas, and 80 percent suffer from easily treatable conditions. But because of poverty and limited access to public health services, they are unable to seek treatment. Sanduk Ruit, driven by a belief that the world’s poorest people deserve high-quality eye care, has made it his life’s mission to treat such people. So he devised a quick five-minute technique that enables large droves of patients to be treated in a short period of time.

His genius technique involves making a small incision in the patient’s eye through which the cloudy cataract impairing the vision is removed. He then replaces it with an inexpensive artificial lens. He offers this surgery to scores of poor patients all over the world, and also teaches it to countless eye surgeons in the hope of curing as many blind people as possible.

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Not many people working in the film industry are aware of a 1930’s Hollywood actor-turned-agent named Marty Martin, so it’s rather baffling that 10-year-old Ryan is familiar with the man’s life and work. In fact, Ryan is able to recount vivid and stunningly accurate descriptions of the actor and the era he lived in, even those that have never been documented. And he’s able to do so because he claims to be the incarnation of Martin himself!

Ryan, who lives in Muskogee, Oklahoma, was born to Baptist parents in 2005. When he was only four years old, he started having nightmares that his parents had no idea how to stop. He would often talk about his heart exploding, and of Hollywood, a place that is several thousands of miles away from Oklahoma. According to Ryan’s mom Cyndi, he would always talk in a matter-of-fact manner during these incidents.

After a year, Cyndi said that Ryan confided to her about his  reincarnation. “He said, ‘Mom, I have something I need to tell you. I used to be somebody else,’” she said. Being a Baptist, Cyndi’s first reaction was to deny everything and hide it from her husband, but she slowly became curious as Ryan revealed more details of his past life, especially because he would cry and beg for his mom to take him ‘home’. “His stories were so detailed and extensive, that it just wasn’t like a child could have made it up,” Cyndi said.

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51-year-old German artist Ragna Reusch-Klinkenberg is an expert at carving miniscule figures out of toothpicks and pencil tips that are so tiny you need a magnifying glass to actually see them properly! Some of Ragna’s figurines include animals like cats and giraffes, inanimate objects like toothbrushes, and even famous politicians.

Ragna, who holds a degree in graphic design, says her real passion lies in working with wood. She’s been passionate about carving since her childhood. She started carving erasers at school using small forks and later moved on to carving wooden clothespins and selling the miniatures she made at craft markets.

“Once I had forgotten my clothespin blanks, but I found a toothpick in my pocket,” she recalled. So she tried working with it, and fell in love right away.

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