Hugo Chavez Rewards Three Millionth Twitter Follower with New Home (Guardian)

Lip-Sync Wedding Video Goes Viral (YouTube)

Online Shop Sells Salt Made from Human Tears (Independent)

10 World’s Creepiest Abandoned Missile Silos (Environmental Graffiti)

Cutting-Edge Technology – A Chicken De-Boning Robot (Daily Mail)

Is This the World’s Smallest Cowboy? (Digital Journal)

German Bride Is Auctioning Her Wedding Night to the Highest Bidder (Austrian Times)

12 Hilariously Honest Product Names (Oddee)

Live Fish Removed from Indian Boy’s Lungs (Daily Telegraph)

Man Divorces Wife after She Adopts 550 Cats (HuffPost)

In an attempt to make their pigs more comfortable, the people of Zhangpu Village, in China, have built a residential complex for them, made up of 600 small concrete houses.

Most pigs spend all their lives locked up in pens, just waiting to be slaughtered, but the lucky swine of Zhangpu are living the good life in their very own village. At first, the idea of moving the animals from their industrial complex didn’t appeal to the locals, primarily because of the $1,230 price tag of each needed villa, but critics were put to rest once everyone noticed how happy the pigs were and how fast they started growing. The pig’s happiness was actually the main goal of PigVille (not its official name), as it is believed relaxed animals have a more delicious meat.

Read More »

Beijing Sets “2 Flies”Limit for Public Toilets (BBC)

British Farmers Use Sun Cream to Save Piglets’ Bacon (Cumbria Crack)

Fujairah’s Amazing Bullfighting Tradition (Environmental Graffiti)

World’s Smallest Artificial Heart Saves Baby’s Life (Geekologie)

World’s Meatiest Sandwich Has 41 Different Cuts of Meat (Daily Mail)

Stuntman Skydives without Parachute (YouTube)

Zillion Dollar Fritata – World’s Most Expensive Omlet (Mirror)

Man Rides Mountain Bike Down 1,000 Steps (Newslite)

Delicately-Crafted Glass Sculptures (My Modern Met)

15 Freakish Creatures from the Depths of the Russian White Sea (Environmental Graffiti)

London Gallery Hosts Invisible Art Exhibition (NEWS)

The Man Who Ate His Own Brain (Yahoo)

Weird Concepts: Camel-Powered Desert Ambulance (Environmental Graffiti)

Off the Grid – Americans Living Outside Mainstream Society (Laughing Squid)

73-Year-Old Woman Climbs Mount Everest (HuffPost)

Man Runs Half-Marathon Inside Hot Air Balloon (Digital Journal)

Concept Artist’s Photos Spark Interpol Murder Hunt (Orange)

Star Trek Fan to Build Real-Life Version of the Enterprise (MNN)

The Giant Salt City 1200ft Beneath Detroit (Environmental Graffiti)

Guy Drinks 42 Cups of Coffee, Live to Tell the Story (Buzzfeed)

A yet unnamed 11-year-old girl from Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City has been making headlines in Asia, for her alleged uncontrollable power to set things around her on fire.

According to Vietnamese website Ngoisao, on May 12, a young girl living in the Tan Binh district of Ho Chi Minh has burned down almost the entire third floor of her family’s home. Her father says the child did not have access to any fire-inducing objects, and that the fire was caused by the super-energy in her body. How many times have we heard that one before, right? But while that may sound like the exaggerations of a parent looking for media attention, this is apparently not the first time this Vietnamese girl has caused things to burst into fire just by going near them.

Read More »

Greg Dunn is on his way to earning a doctorate in neuroscience, from the University of Pennsylvania, but he’s also passionate about pan-Asian art, so he decided to combine his two main interests into one unique art form.

Dunn paints neurons, the tiny cells that comprise our brain, using the Asian sumi-e style, an ancient technique that aims not just to reproduce the appearance of the subject, but to capture its soul. Sumi-e is regarded as the earliest expressionistic art form that captures the unseen. For example, East Asian Ink Brush Painting, as this style is commonly referred to, isn’t used to replicate a person’s appearance perfectly, but rather to express their temperament. In the same way, Greg Dunn doesn’t use photomicrographs as reference to paint a perfect picture of the neurons, but rather as a guide upon which he likes to add his own touch. Painting an exact replica of what he see would “rob the painting of sponteneity”, according to Dunn.

Read More »

Most artists prefer to paint or draw their artistic portraits, but Surrey-based English artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey grow theirs from living grass.

We’ve featured some pretty amazing art here, on Oddity Central, but this probably takes the cake. English duo Ackroyd & Harvey have managed to harness the power of photosynthesis to fix photographic images onto the blades of growing grass. They expose plots of seeding grass to a 400-W projector bulb passing through a negative for prolonged periods of time,  and the varying densities of the negative’s lighter and darker areas produce a full range of midtones by controlling the light levels in each area. The light produces green, or darker tones, while lack of light produces lighter (yellow) tones. Within only a couple of weeks, you can see the green portraits literally emerging from the ground, but wait too long and they will simply fade away, just like old photos.

Read More »

Pedal-Powered Ferrari Is World’s Coolest Bike (Autoblog)

Man Wins $1 Million Cash Prize Six Times (Daily Mail)

17 Photos from the World’s Most Colorful Festival (Environmental Graffiti)

Man Completes Triathlon while Joggling (AOL)

Unique Display of 100,000 LED  Lights on a River in Tokyo (Laughing Squid)

Guy Gives Himself Magnet Implants to Attach iPod Nano to Wrist (Geekologie)

Bomb Disposal Robot Is Wedding Bearer at Unique Wedding (Gizmodo)

Japanese Company Launches Ice Bra To Keeps Women Cool This Summer (Huffpost)

Chinese Luxury Car Wash Uses Bikini Clad Models to Attract Customers (China Smack)

The World’s 13 Loneliest Outhouses (Environmental Graffiti)

Colored sand, a great deal of patience and his bare hands are all Joe Mangrum needs to create his incredible sand pantings on the sidewalks of New York.

Joe Mangrum was a painter for many years, but only started creating art with sand in the Fall of 2009. He chose to work with sand because it’s an ephemeral medium that can simply be swept away at the the end of the day, after he’s had a chance to express his talent and amaze passers-by. I never thought sprinkling colored sand through the bottom of your fist could lead to such amazing works of art, but Mangrum’s creations prove patience and talent are the basis of truly incredible things. The gifted street artist spends hours on end on his hands and knees sprinkling his colored sand onto the sidewalk to create ephemeral masterpieces that catch the eye of everyone around him.

Read More »

Glass-Floored Bathroom Built over 15-Storey Elevator Shaft (Geekologie)

Inside Michael Jackson’s Abandoned Fun Park (Environmental Graffiti)

3D Printing Process Lets You Be Your Own Favorite Action Figure (Discovery News)

Blind Man Builds Sports Car from Scratch (Orange News)

18 Kilogram Cat Could Be the World’s Fattest (Metro)

Iraqi Farmer Marries Two Cousins in One Night (Mid-Day)

10 Famous Balancing Rocks around the World (Amusing Planet)

Couple Get Married in Real Life after Virtual Courtship (Herald Sun)

Indian Cops Arrest 6-Year-Old Girl (The Register)

Burning the Dead on the Banks of the Ganges (Environmental Graffiti)

Misstravel.com is a creative new website that hooks up beautiful women with rich men. It’s essentially a dating service, but only meant for the wealthy and the attractive. Once registered, good looking women can go on a trip with generous rich men, who will, of course, take care of all the expenses.

Registering at misstravel.com is absolutely free. You could sign up either as an Attractive Traveler or a Generous Traveler. The former obviously gets to travel for free and the latter pays for the trip. According to the website, an Attractive Traveler account is meant for “beautiful people who want to travel for free” and the Generous Traveler option is for “generous members who are seeking to travel with a beautiful companion, and who are willing to pay for all travel expenses.” The Generous Travelers also need to pay the website when they decide to make communication with an Attractive Traveler.

Read More »

Some people will eat anything that moves or even crawls. While the rest of us are wrinkling our noses at them, they’re actually at an advantage, because insects are considered to be very rich in proteins. A group of Dutch insect munchers love their creepy crawly snacks so much they’re releasing a special Insect Cookbook, next week. Their creation is said to be dedicated to promoting insects as a great source of nourishment. I haven’t read it myself, but I’ve heard it contains some pretty unique recipes like how to add worms to your chocolate muffin mix, or grasshoppers on a mushroom risotto.

For obvious reasons, many people aren’t too enthusiastic about the Insect Cookbook, but a few feel that it couldn’t be coming out at a better time. According to Marcel Dicke, a professor at Wageningen University, the world population is expected to hit 9 billion by 2050, and there may not be sufficient land to raise livestock that meets everybody’s needs. We might just have to turn to bugs as a protein alternative. The university also said the nutritional value of insects is quite similar to that of meat, and it is more environmentally friendly to raise insects instead of livestock. “I see this as the next step towards the introduction of insects on restaurant menus in the Netherlands. I also expect people to buy the book and start cooking with insects at home,” says Dicke. However, he does admit that there might be some resistance towards insect foods, especially from the countries where people consume large portions of meat.

Read More »

The Creation Museum, located in Portland, Kentucky, is a $27million museum dedicated to the Creationist theory. Creationism, which opposes the concept of evolution, is based on the Christian Genesis story that God created heaven and earth. Spectacular multimedia displays that use Hollywood technology depict the story of Genesis at the Creation Museum. Tens of thousands of people from all over the US pay regular visits to the place dedicated to God and how he created our world. One visitor proclaims, “I finally realized today that God made time. He made the dates, He made the 24 hours, He gave this to us.”

According to the Creationist theory, the world has not been evolving for millions of years (as stated by the theory of evolution), but was created only 6,000 years ago. Calling scientific experiments and proofs as ‘based on a ton of assumptions’, the videos played at the museum’s auditorium state that it is better to “start with the word of someone who has seen everything from the beginning and told us exactly what happened.” That someone, they say, is God. Some of the other attractions at the museum include life-size models of Noah and his Ark, Adam, Eve, and other characters from the Bible. Also on display are a few fragments of Torah scrolls that were supposedly saved from the clutches of Saddam, in Iraq.

Read More »

There’s something very satisfying about hitting a ball into a hole with a golf club. And for those who don’t have access to great golf clubs or even mini golf courses in the neighborhood, and also for those who would like to avoid the formal nature of the sport, there’s always Urban Golf. This slightly altered version of golf can be played, well, absolutely anywhere you please.

Urban golf gets its name from the very urban landscape that it has been adapted for. In other words, it’s simply golf played in a city environment – potholed streets and black asphalt, building sites and car parks, with the city’s everyday life creating obstacles. The excitement of the game comes from the fact that each day poses a new obstacle, a new course, and new challenges. Lampposts serve as trees, buildings as wooded areas and drains, bunkers. Interestingly, the concept of urban golf has been around since 1992, when Torsten Schilling began playing golf in areas surrounding his office in Berlin. Today the sport has evolved into a real movement, with many supporters and members around the world.

Read More »

Jo and Dominique Pillet’s home ‘Utopix’ is like something right out of a fairy tale. They started work on it about 30 years ago, and although it was completed as of 2010, it continues to evolve. The beauty of the house is not just in the construction, but the patience and perseverance put in by its builders, given that the land it stands on was considered to be barren. Utopix is located on an 11 hectare (27 acre) plot in Causse de Sauveterre, Lozere, France. Causses are sparsely populated plateaus of limestone. The limestone soil does not hold water and so the terrain is very much like a desert, but that didn’t stop this French family from fulfilling their dream.

The Pillets got married in the 70s and purchased their plot of land with the intention of building a beautiful home. Being artists themselves, they wanted to create something that was both functional and aesthetically pleasing. It’s been a long journey with several hurdles, but the couple has managed to complete the task and quite beautifully in fact. The construction project was started in 1979, and Jo Pillet mostly worked on it alone, or with the help of a few friends. He mostly made use of the abundant limestone in the region, structuring it in the form of igloos. The domed structures were then reinforced with concrete and wood, and later covered with stones to give them a cave-like feel. After two whole decades, the building finally began to take shape in 1992. Utopix has been quite popular since then, with local newspapers carrying stories, and several visitors coming to see it regularly.

Read More »