Dogs are amazing creatures and Lilica, a Brazilian stray, is a perfect example of that. She lives in a junkyard, hangs out with a motley crew, and she makes sure her friends never go hungry. Every night, Lilica walks four miles in the dark, braving the rush hour traffic, just to bring food back to the other animals in her ‘family’ – a dog, a cat, a few chickens and a mule.

Lilica was abandoned at a junkyard in San Carlos, Brazil, when she was just a puppy. Neile Vaina Antonio, the junkyard caretaker, took her in and cared for her. As she grew, she became friends with all the other animals in the junkyard. It appears that they offer each other warmth, companionship and solidarity.

Three years ago, Lilica was pregnant and had eight puppies. As her responsibilities grew, she knew she had to find a way to provide food for her cubs, as there was little to be found at the junkyard. That’s when she started going out at night, walking for miles, in search of scraps. During one of her nightly travels, Lilica was lucky enough to meet dog-lover Lucia, who took pity on her.

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Zhang Wei, a retired soldier from Qingdao city, China’s Shandong Province, is a huge fan of Transformers. The 38-year-old has been collecting Transformers models of varying sizes since 2002. And when he got married, his wife joined him with great enthusiasm. Today, the couple’s home is filled with a massive collection of 380 models worth a whopping US $32,000.

Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bumblebee, Red Spider, Metroplex and pretty much every other transformer feature in Zhang’s collection, neatly arranged on special shelves fitted on to his living room walls. His favorite pastime is to dismantle each model and assemble it again.

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Boyhood is a groundbreaking coming-of-age film created by American film director and screenwriter Richard Linklater. While other coming-of-age films use different actors to play the protagonist at various ages, Boyhood uses the same boy to tell the fictitious tale of a child growing into a young adult.

The experimental film was shot over a span of 12 years and  lead actor Ellar Coltrane was chosen for the part of Mason in 2002, when he was only 7 years old. Since then, the cast of the movie had reunited every summer to shoot a new phase of the Mason’s life.

Cast alongside Ellar were actors Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette – Mason’s parents – who also aged naturally throughout the film, adding to the realism of the story. Mason’s sister is played by Linklater’s real-life daughter Lorelei, who grows from a young girl to an adult before our very eyes, as the movie progresses.

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Vin Los, a 24-year-old model from Montreal, wants to be the most famous man in the world. That sounds like an ambitious goal, but I’d say he’s taking way to seriously. Vin has actually tattooed the word ‘fame’ right across his forehead along with another 23 words  designed to make him stand out. The man’s face, neck and torso are haphazardly covered in an assortment of tattooed words and phrases.

If you’re able to ignore the tattoos, you’d notice that Vin is actually quite a handsome man with a perfectly chiseled body. Which is why I believe the tattoos are doing the opposite of what he intends – they’re actually taking away from his natural good looks. The fact that he’s covered his body with so many weird words like ‘lick’, ‘scream my name’ and ‘guilty’ is so unbelievable, that people actually thought the tattoos were fake.

So Vin recently created a video to prove that his tattoos were indeed real. In the footage, he is seen rubbing makeup off of his body using a wet rag, revealing the real tattoos underneath. His own name is revealed on his stomach in huge letters, along with words like ‘sex bomb’, ‘iconic’, ‘Tokyo’ and ‘New York’ on other parts of his body. He also has hair tattooed on his chest and stomach.

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Inakadate village, located near Hirosaki city in Japan’s Aomori prefecture, is one of the few places in the world where farming and art go hand-in-hand. The village is renowned for its unique form of landscape art created in paddy fields. These artistic paddies are so popular that they attract over 200,000 tourists a year.

For centuries, farming has been the main source of income for the people of Inakadate. The amount of farmland available to the relatively small population of 8,000 villagers is massive. Paddy fields make up over fifty percent of the entire village land. The soil in these lands is so fertile that the yield from the rice crop has consistently been higher than any other village or town in Japan.

In the early 1990s, archeologists discovered that the rice strains of Inakadate were over 2,000 years old. To celebrate this fact, and to make the village more attractive to visitors, the local tourism office hatched a plan – to make use of their abundant production of rice to attract more tourists. And that’s how their amazing rice paddy artworks were born.

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When 63-year-old Ding Liang was found crying on a street in eastern China’s Hangzhou city, her story attracted widespread media coverage. The poor woman had traveled five hours from her village to meet her son and his newborn child. Unfortunately, the son refused to see her for the strangest of reasons – because she’s too ugly!

Ding’s confession has pretty much shocked the nation – her story is currently one of the most discussed in Chinese social media with hundreds of thousands of hits and comments. It all started when 53-year-old local man Hsin Pai spotted Ding standing outside a housing complex. He asked her what the matter was and the tired old woman spilled her guts to him.

Ding told Hsin that she was from a village outside Yuyao city, in the same province as Hangzhou. Years ago, her son moved to the city to pursue a college education – he did well at school, landed a job at an upmarket car dealership and got married. When Ding attended the wedding dressed like a peasant, the son was apparently mortified and too embarrassed to admit his relationship to her.

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Contrary to its name, Grundhofer’s Old Fashioned Meats carries a rather interesting and unique range of sausage meats. Their website boasts of 50 different flavors of fresh brats, including a few regulars – Turkey, Chicken and Three Cheese – and a few strange ones – Bloody Mary, Cherry Kool-aid and Blueberry. But the world-famous Gummy Bear brat has got to be their funkiest one yet.

Spencer Grundhofer, who founded the business in 1983 in his hometown of Hugo, Minnesota, says his love for meat developed quite early. “I started when I was 11, working at a local grocery store down the road.” Spencer quickly gained a reputation in the region as an expert in high-quality cuts of meat.

And his passion for meat took a weird turn a few years ago, when his friend decided to play a prank on him. Joe Berglund, a mechanic who works at the shop across from Grundhofer’s, gave Spencer a few friendly suggestions of what flavor brats to try. “So I gave him a list,” said Joe. “One of them happened to be Gummy brats. And he told me, ‘I’m not making those.’”

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Artist Augusto Esquivel is an expert at transforming mundane objects into spectacular works of art. One of his specialties is working with standard sewing buttons, which he uses to create stunning, larger-than-life celebrity portraits.

Augusto’s technique is as tedious as you’d imagine – it’s not an easy arranging thousands of buttons to form an easily recognisable pattern. To create a single portrait, he starts off by suspending hundreds of monofilament strings from the ceiling. Then, he threads black, white and grey buttons into those strings in a particular order.

Individually, these strings might not amount to much. But this is where Augusto works his magic – when he brings the strings together, pixelated images of popular icons emerge. Some of his most notable works include button portraits of stars like Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Salvador Dali and James Dean.

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More and more young couples in Hong Kong are turning to McDonald’s fast-food restaurants to fit their shoestring wedding budgets. With prices starting as low as $350 per wedding, the place is pretty much a steal – the deal includes the venue, decorations, audio equipment, food, gifts and invitations. The dream wedding has only one drawback – years later, couples will have to tell their kids that they got married at McDonald’s.

Surprisingly, not many couples are bothered by this. The demand for McDonald’s weddings is growing in Hong Kong – the wedding party program that was started in three locations in 2011, has now been extended to 15 branches. And, believe it or not, it’s not just about the money, there’s a sentimental value associated with getting hitched at McDonald’s.

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At an age when most people begin their business careers, German Sterligov was already a millionaire. He was only 24 years old when he founded the company that would make him one of the richest men in Russia. The financial empire he built – with offices in London and New York – ensured a lifetime of comfort for the young man. But his life today is the opposite of everything you’d imagine – after 15 years of fame and riches, he gave it all up in for the quiet life of a peasant living in the woods.

Sterligov’s life story is as interesting as it is unusual. Inspite of having been a very rich and powerful man, the 47-year-old feels that he is now far better placed to withstand the global economic crisis than most of the other Russian oligarchs. “I’m in clover compared to them,” he said in an interview, a few years ago. “I’m free here. I don’t depend on anyone and we’re totally self sufficient. Most of my friends thought I had taken leave of my senses but I think I have been proved right.”

In the early 1990s, as the Communist era was fading, Sterligov set up Russia’s first commodities exchange. The business grew quickly, and he soon became Russia’s first legal millionaire since the 1917 Revolution. At one point, he had over 2,500 employees and was getting along quite well with the Americans as a ‘new type’ of Russian. In the mid-2000s, at the helm of his success, he stunned the world by announcing his intention to run for the Russian presidency.

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Each time we feature hyper-realistic paintings on OC, I think, “This is the best I’ve ever seen.” But then we get to see another artist’s work, and I’m amazed all over again. This time it’s the work of New York-based Israeli painter Yigal Ozeri. I’m still having a hard time believing that these paintings aren’t actually photographs of women.

Seriously, there’s no denying the fact that Ozeri’s taken hyperrealism to a whole new level. You can’t spot a single brushstroke in these photograph-inspired paintings, that’s how perfect his work is. He starts each piece by photographing beautiful women in nature-themed sceneries, while staying hidden at a safe distance from his models. Back at his studio, he alters the shots with Photoshop and prints them out. Using the prints as a reference, Ozeri then spends days recreating them with oil on canvas

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The Americana municipality, in São Paulo, Brazil, is home to a very unique subculture – the Confederados. The members of this culture are the descendants of 10,000 Confederate refugees who chose to leave the United States after they lost the American Civil War. Today, the Confederados make up 10 percent of Americana’s population; they’ve managed to preserve the unique culture and traditions belonging to the Confederate South of the 19th century.

When the war ended in 1865, many former Confederates were unwilling to live under the rule of the Union. They were unhappy with the destruction of their pre-war lifestyle that included slavery. So when Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil sent recruiters to the Southern States of Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina and Texas to pick up experienced cotton farmers, many disgruntled Southerners jumped at the opportunity.

Slavery was still in existence in Brazil at the time, which greatly attracted the Southerners. Combined with their humiliating defeat at the hands of the Union, many felt that moving out of America was the only option available to them. Dom Pedro, who wanted to encourage the cultivation of cotton, made an offer they could not refuse – he offered them a package of tax breaks and grants, as well as a section of the Brazilian forest that they could call home. It was more than they could ever ask for – a chance to start over and create a new community with Southern values.

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One-year-old Kimberly Gordon was born under the most unusual circumstances. She was delivered last year by emergency C-section after her mother was struck by lightning in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Surprisingly, the miracle baby survived the electrical jolt, but with consequences – she now has the most adorable static hair that stands perfectly straight.

The bizarre event took place on July 4 last year, when Ian Gordon and his 38-weeks pregnant girlfriend Kendra Villanueva were outdoors watching the Independance Day fireworks. It began to rain and a thunderstorm soon followed, and the couple were forced to run for cover. As they passed under a tree, both of them were struck by lightning, knocking them out instantly.

According to Ian, the lightning traveled through his ears, jumped to Kendra’s body and left through her thumb. “They were both awake and looking at us,” said Lt. Ryan Perry of the Albuquerque Fire Department, who had rushed to their rescue. “But we knew that there was underlying injuries that we possibly couldn’t see that we needed to treat quickly and get them to the hospital.”

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Most DIY projects are fun and interesting, but here’s one that’s downright disturbing – a lonely Japanese kid converted his shower head into a doll that he now claims is his girlfriend. He recently posted step-by-step pictures of his project on the popular Chinese social networking website Weibo, where they went viral almost instantly. Some of the photographs of the ‘girlfriend’ are actually pretty creepy, so viewer discretion is advised.

To create his bizarre mannequin-girlfriend, 19-year-old Kiyuu Oikawa first taped a human mask onto his shower head. He then attached a balloon-stuffed piece of lingerie for the body and made stringy arms out of packing tape and wire. He painted the face pink, threw on a wig, and his girlfriend was pretty much ready.

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Notebook manufacturer Magnus Ferreus recently launched a quirky new product – the Onion Note. True to its name, the notebook will make you cry every time you scribble something in it. Thankfully, it doesn’t stink like an onion, it only has the same effect as cutting one.

The pages of the Onion Note have been treated with allyl propyl compounds – the same ones found in onion oil, which are responsible for bringing people to tears. You don’t have to chop up the pages for the oil to work, though. The heat caused by the friction of writing on the page will evaporate the compounds, releasing tear-inducing gas into your face.

According to Thomas, the CEO of Magnus Ferreus, we all spend a lot of time writing in notebooks, but we’ve never been emotionally moved by them. So he wanted to change that by introducing a revolutionary product we could use to ‘make notes in a dramatic way’. And what better way to do that than with an onion?

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