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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When 27-year-old business school graduate Mason Wartman quit his Wall Street job to sell $1 pizza slices, to many of his friends it seemed like the anticlimax of a brilliant career. But the man was simply trying to achieve a different sort of greatness with his no-frills pizza shop, Rosa’s Fresh Pizza, in Philadelphia’s Center City. In the past one year, the shop has served 8,500 free slices of pizza to homeless people, by harnessing the generosity of its patrons.

The shop operates by a ‘pay it forward’ system – customers who walk in to buy pizza can also sponsor a slice for a homeless person. In this way, about 30 to 40 homeless people are able to eat for free at Rosa’s every single day.

Even before the pay-it-forward scheme was implemented, Rosa’s Pizza, which is located on an almost vacant block, used to always give away free slices to hungry homeless people in the neighborhood. But one day last March, a customer asked if he could pay for the next homeless person who walked in. Wartman immediately agreed, and then put up a sticky note on the wall, just to keep track of the pre-paid slice.

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Luxury travel company Oliver’s Travels is offering its wealthy clients an innovative wedding service – a sky clean up. For a hefty fee of over $150,000, they actually offer to pop clouds and induce rain up to a week before their wedding, in order to ensure clear blue skies on the day of the ceremony.

It might sound ridiculous, but cloud seeding is actually a legit scientific technique. It involves the firing of rockets filled with silver iodide crystals into rain clouds from a light aircraft, or from the ground. The icy silver particles freeze the water droplets in the clouds so that they continue to grow in size and eventually fall out of the cloud as snow, turning into rain just before hitting the ground.

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The Clink has recently been named the number one restaurant in Cardiff, Wales, by TripAdvisor, after getting more votes than all the other 945 restaurants in the Welsh capital. I know that doesn’t seem like the kind of news you normally read on OC, but The Clink isn’t your average restaurant – it’s staffed by inmates at HMP Cardiff, a Category D men’s prison!

Approximately 30 prisoners work a 40-hour week at The Clink, either in the kitchen or waiting tables, before returning to their cells at the end of each day. The restaurant also employs a team of trainers who work closely with the prisoners to come up with seasonal dishes made from locally sourced fresh ingredients. Some of the typical menu options include ‘venison and wild boar ragout with game sausage, chargrilled polenta and seasonal vegetables’ and ‘a celebration of rhubarb’.The inmates are paid £14 ($20) a week, but their biggest reward is the chance to turn their life around. Over time, the restaurant has managed to help reduce the reoffending rate of prisoners who worked there to 12.5 percent, compared to the national average of 47 percent.

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Kevin, a 27-year-old man from Chicago, has a very strange hobby – he wears body casts, even though he has no injuries! Kevin has been addicted to  plaster casts for the past 21 years, and he has spent over $50,000 on his bizarre fixation. Although he realizes it’s ridiculous, he has no idea how to stop.

On an episode of TLC’s popular My Strange Addiction show, Kevin explained that wearing the casts makes him feel snug and comfortable, and that the very act of putting one on gives him a rush. “It really gives me this high that I just can’t really get any other way. My blood starts pumping and I get really nervous. It’s just a rush.”

“I don’t have any broken bones, but I’m addicted to putting orthopedic casts on my body,” he said. “I’m perfectly fine, perfectly healthy. I like the feeling of the cast around me. I’ve done two full arm casts, two full leg casts. I’ve done two full leg casts and an arm cast. I’ve put on so many casts, it’s ridiculous.”

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They say everything’s bigger in Texas, and you’ll have a hard time finding better proof that the “Undisputable Cuz”, a humongous barbecue pit located at the Folsom residence along highway 290, in Brenham. The 40-ton, 75-foot monstrosity ventilated by seven chimneys is the world’s largest barbecue pit. It’s so huge that it needs to be carried around in a large truck and Local authorities have to issue special permits and escorts just to move the cooker down the road!

“It has 24 doors – 12 on this side, 12 on the other,” said owner Terry Folsom, proudly describing his prized possession. The pit can cook four tons of meat at a time, and also has a walk-in cooler with space for kegs attached to beer taps on the outside. Surprisingly, the heat that powers the beauty comes from a small fire that burns only a couple of cords of wood. A tube carries the heat along the length of the entire pit.

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Most of the 200-odd residents of the Alaskan town of Whittier all live in the same 14-story condominium – Begich Towers – located on the edge of town. The former Army barracks is often described as a ‘vertical town’ with walls so thin that keeping secrets is simply out of the question.

Apart from residential apartments, the one-of-a-kind settlement also houses a police station, a health clinic, a convenience store, a laundromat, and a church in the basement. It really is inconceivable how missionaries, bartenders, city council members, policemen, and even drug dealers can co-exist in the same building, share the same facilities, and ride in the same elevator.

As eccentric as this living arrangement sounds, it really does seem to work out for the residents of Whittier, mainly because of its size and the weather conditions. The town is rather inaccessible – you can only get there by sea, or take a long, one-lane tunnel through the mountains, which only runs one way at any given time. At night, the tunnel is closed completely.

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