While a lot of women resort to expensive plastic surgery to get rid of wrinkles, this woman just decided to nip the problem in the bud by not smiling. Believe it or not, 50-year-old Tess Christian claims she hasn’t smiled, laughed or giggled in the past 40 years!

Although Tess insists that she has a sense of humor, she said that she made a conscious decision not to laugh or smile – not even when her daughter was born – in order to maintain her youthful appearance. Admittedly, the technique seems to have worked in her favor.

“I don’t have wrinkles because I have trained myself to control my facial muscles,” she said. “Everyone asks if I’ve had Botox, but I haven’t, and I know that it’s thanks to the fact that I haven’t laughed or smiled since I was a teenager. My dedication has paid off, I don’t have a single line on my face.”

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Louisville-based online retailer Cuddle Clones Inc. is in the business of creating custom made stuffed replicas of house pets for animal lovers. Their clients are mostly people who are looking for a Cuddle Clone to replace their deceased pets. According to founder Jennifer Graham, her customers just want to hug their dog or cat again, even if it’s just an incredibly realistic replica.

Graham said she got the idea for Cuddle Clones a few years back when she was resting her head on her pet Rufus, a Great Dane. At the time, she thought it would be nice to have life-size plush version of Rufus. She submitted the idea to a few business plan competitions, and encouraged by the positive feedback, she decided to turn it into a reality.

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For over 100 years, the residents of Philadelphia have worked hard to keep the 200 block of Camac Street in great shape. It might seem odd to spend that much effort on a single street, but the place is maintained for historic reasons – it is the only street in the city still paved with wooden blocks!

Camac Street is one of the few remnants of the old-style Nicolson pavements that still exist in some cities across the US. While wood block pavement is believed to have originated in Russia, the construction technique was made popular in the mid-1800s by Samuel Nicolson, the superintendent of Boston and Roxbury Mill Corporation.

Nicolson is believed to have revived the wood-paving process in order to solve several problems posed by early paving methods. At the time, wood was viewed as a better alternative to the irregularly surfaced cobblestone streets. Wood was also abundant, while stone was scarce. And horse-traffic made less noise on wood-surfaced streets.

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While the age-old idiom tells us not to judge a book by its cover, this high-tech book-cover is designed to do the judging instead. Created by a group of artists at Amsterdam creative studio Moore, the book-sleeve has the ability to scan faces for prejudice. If it detects even the slightest hint of judgement, the book will simply refuse to open.

Aptly named ‘The Cover that Judges You’, the sleeve comes with an integrated camera at the top and facial-recognition software that scans the faces of people who approach it. “Our aim was to create a book cover that is human and approachable-hi-tech,” artist Thijs Biersteker said. “If you approach the book, the face-recognition system picks up your face and starts scanning it for signs of judgement.”

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Garlic is a great ingredient to cook with, but garlic-flavored cola is something I’m not sure I can digest, literally or figuratively. But believe it or not, the drink actually exists in Japan!

Locally known as ‘Jats Takkola’, the unusual drink was released last month. It is produced in the city of Aomori, often referred to as the garlic capital of Japan. Also known as ‘Garlic Town’, the city is well-known for the huge amount of garlic that is harvested every year in July. Local companies have produced several bizarre garlic-flavored products in the past, such as garlic beer and garlic ice cream, but latest offering, garlic cola, apparently took a fair bit of trial and error before they could make it palatable.

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Hanging over 9,000ft above sea level, near the top of Mt. Sommet de la Saulire, in the French Alps, the cable car was transformed by popular lodging rental website Airbnb into a stunning one-bedroom, two-bed apartment that can accommodate up to four guests. The setting is a part of the website’s ‘A Night At’ contest, which awards users 24-hour getaways at such exclusive locations.

Winners of the contest will be taken up to the mountain on snowmobiles and after a special Savoyard dinner under the stars, the guests will get to spend the night, quite literally, in the middle of nowhere. Because of the strong winds in the mountainous region, the one-bedroom, two-bed apartment will apparently be teetering all night long causing you to either freak out or get a better night’s sleep. Whatever the case, at least you will be waking up to a spectacular alpine view.

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The ‘Experience Helmet’ is a new, high-tech wearable device that allows people to hear electronic representations of their thoughts. It uses Electroencephalography (EEG) technology to translate brain activity into data. This basically means that the helmet can read your thoughts, convert it into sound, and play it back to you!

According to Aiste Noreikaite, who invented the helmet, it is meant to create an “audible reflection of one’s personal experience of the present moment.” Inspired by Buddhist meditation practices, the London-based artist said that she wanted to create a device to enhance self-awareness.

So she started with an ordinary bike helmet, took it apart, and installed an EEG wireless headset and headphones inside. Next, she researched ways to convert the data provided by the headset into sound. After much deliberation, she finally settled on pure electronic signals to represent brainwaves.

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Fearless daredevil Al the Jumper really lives up to his name – he actually jumps over speeding cars and motorcycles that are headed straight towards him at high speeds, and to make the experience more thrilling, he only leaps when the vehicle is about to run him over.

The Swedish stuntman,whose real name is Ousseyni Issa Gobitaca, has leaped over a variety of vehicles, including a Lamborghini supercar traveling at 80mph! You’ve got to watch the clip for yourself to realize how close Al comes to death before eluding it at the last possible moment. He explained that it’s all in the head – he prepares himself by picturing the moment and calculating everything in advance. “I see a picture of how everything will look before I leap and if I can do it in my head, I can do it in real life.”

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After dating for several years and failing to find the man of her dreams, a 40-year-old woman from Houston, Texas, decided to marry herself in an elaborate ceremony that involved friends and family.

Yasmin Eleby’s wedding was quite similar to a traditional one, except the bride wore purple, there was no groom, and it was the bride’s mother, not her father who walked her down the aisle.  Since self-weddings aren’t legally recognized in the U.S., the ceremony – conducted by three ministers – was described as a spiritual one. Yasmin made heartfelt vows to forgive, honor, and love… herself!

“I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support that was shown to me during my celebration of love and life,” Yasmin wrote on Facebook, after the ceremony. She also added that she “couldn’t imagine the ceremony being any more poignant and meaningful.”

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A Kosovan Hitler lookalike is making news for claiming to be the reincarnation of the infamous German dictator. Emin Djinovci regularly stuns locals by walking around the town of Mitrovica, in the partially recognised state of Kosovo, with a toothbrush moustache and jet black hair brushed over to one side.

Mitrovica is a city of simmering ethnic tensions and political instability. Emin moved there from Germany in 1998, to join the fight of the Kosovan Albanians for secession from Serbia. But it wasn’t until he returned to Germany for a surgery to treat multiple war wounds, that he realized he could make a living by dressing himself up as Hitler.

“It was when I was there for my operation that I was forced to grow out part of my mustache. The doctors would come into my room and just look at me,” he recalled. So he realized the potential for profit, and when he got back to Kosovo, he started to impersonating Hitler and charging for photographs. Read More »

A water main burst during an ice cold storm in the small Siberian town of Dudinka, causing the streets to promptly freeze into solid blocks of ice. The water that had burst out of several broken pipes flooded the streets, and subsequently froze as temperatures dropped to -40C during the night. When residents emerged from their homes after the storm was over, they found their town had completely frozen over.

Although several homes had no water or electricity during and immediately after the storm, many of the 22,000 Dudinka residents still had access to the internet, so they were able to share shocking images of their frozen streets on social media. Some of the photos show vehicles encased in four-foot thick ice, with only the tops visible, while others show massive icicles clinging to building exteriors.

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Since 1988, California home builder Peter Cohen has spent over $50,000 converting his Goleta property into a cat haven for his 15 rescue cats. The house now has a series of high walkways, tunnels, ramps and perches designed to make his favorite felines feel comfortable and entirely at home.

When Cohen first purchased the house it came with two cats, but one tragically died after it was hit by a car. Soon after, the second cat Cookie was also hit by a vehicle and she had to go through reconstructive surgery to recover. That’s when Cohen decided that Cookie would be a house cat, and he started changing the interiors to her liking. He also went to the shelter to adopt some more cats, so that Cookie could have new friends. “It sort of went from there,” he explained.

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Have you ever read a book so engaging that you just couldn’t put it down, fearing that it might explode if you did? Well, bestselling author James Patterson decided to turn that fear into a reality with a self-destructing book that literally explodes 24 hours after it’s been opened.

The self-destructing book is actually a marketing scheme to promote Patterson’s newly released novel, Private Vegas. The unique book comes with a hefty price tag of $294,038, but includes a first-class ticket to an undisclosed location, two nights’ stay in a luxury hotel, 14-karat gold-plated binoculars and a five-course dinner with the author.

The promotional video for this one-of-a-kind book is really quite hilarious. “Welcome to an experience that will blow your mind,” its protagonist says. “Hopefully not literally.” It describes the feeling of reading the book as ‘the most thrilling experience money can buy, created by James Patterson’. Although it doesn’t clarify exactly how the book will explode once the time is up, the experience will involve a bomb squad for safety purposes.

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After their highly successful 2013 product Sprayable Energy, Silicon Valley startup Sprayable are back with a new product involving transdermal technology – ‘Sprayable Sleep’. It is the world’s first topical melatonin spray that helps you fall asleep naturally and wake up refreshed.

While melatonin pills have long since been used to treat sleep related disorders, the makers of Sprayable Sleep claim it has several benefits over the pills. Ben Yu, 22, and his partner Devan Soni, 35, say that the effectiveness of the hormone in the pill form could be lost to the digestive process, but this doesn’t happen with the spray.

“Sprayable gives you the exact level of melatonin you need (often 30 times less than you ingest with pills) and delivers it gradually over time – mimicking how your body naturally produces and uses melatonin,” the creators said. “Sprayable Sleep puts you in control of your sleep. Whether you’re traveling and have jet lag or are working the night shift, Sprayable will help you get sleep when you want so you’re refreshed and alert when you need it most.”

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Only a few years ago, if someone had told you that it was possible to build a home without the noisy, dusty eyesore that is the construction site, you’d probably have thought they were crazy. Yet, Chinese company WinSun Decoration Design Engineering Co has made this possible – they’re actually printing homes now, using one of those revolutionary 3D printers.

WinSun made headlines in March last year, when the printed 10 different one-story, 200 square-meter houses, using nothing but industrial construction waste and a 3D printer. Each building cost $4,800 to make. Now, they’re in the news again with two new additions – a five-story apartment building and a 1,100 square meter villa.

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