A 700-feet-long knitted ski hat, made in 1977, by Ginny Woodward, was recently showcased during Sandpoint’s Winter Carnival.

The Guinness Book of Records official website the record for the longest knitted hat is held by Germany, for a giant Santa Claus hat 22-feet-long and 49 feet in circumference. But the people of Sandpoint, Idaho have recently submitted an application for what they claim is truly the world’s longest ski hat, and to show they’re serious about their claim, they took the 700-meter-long ski hat for an outing, during the annual Sandpoint Winter Carnival.

According to press clippings at the Bonner County Historical Society & Museum, the hat was knitted back in 1977, by locals Ginny Woodward and Scott Hadley, who were looking for something to distract them from the long winters in the Panhandle. It was made using a punch card-operated knitting machine and weighs an impressive 80 pounds.

The world’s longest ski hat features 539 advertising panels of local business from around Sandpoint and Bonner County, in 1977. Out all these, only 25 are still around today.

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Now here’s an invention with a lot of potential – an ATM full of plates, glasses and porcelain figurines that you can break to calm yourself down.

If you haven’t done it yourself, I’m sure you’ve seen it in movies – breaking stuff to calm the nerves. Most housewives prefer kitchen items, like plates or glasses, but porcelain decorations work just as well. Pick them up, smash them into the floor/wall and feel yourself calm down almost instantly. It’s called destruction therapy, or destructotherapy and it really works (trust me on this one). The only problem is you can’t really practice it wherever you are, unless you fancy carrying a bunch of plates with you wherever you go.

Luckily designers Ronnie Yarisal and Katja Kublitz at Yarisal & Kublitz have come up with an ingenious solution – an ATM machine filled with whatever item you feel like smashing to calm down and release the pressure. Just like with other dispensers, all you have to do is punch in the product code, insert some coins, and there you have it – instant anger management session.

Brilliant idea, home someone actually starts producing these things.

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Sadie, a four-year-old Terrier-cross has learned to do pretty much everything her paralyzed owner can’t do anymore, including shopping and washing laundry.

Sue Line was paralyzed from the waist down, 40 years ago, after she was thrown from a car during a New Year’s Eve smash. Her family has always been very supportive, always helping her with daily chores, but four years ago she thought about getting a dog, for companionship. She brought Sadie home when she was just a few weeks old, and noticed her intelligence right from the start. But it wasn’t until she received training at dog charity – Dog AID (Assistance in Disability) that Sadie reached her full potential.

In just two years’ time, this amazing canine learned an almost endless list of ways to help her owner and improve her quality of life. When they go shopping together, Sadie always carries the bag, picks up groceries, and even reaches for the money in Sue’s purse, and hands it over to the store clerk. She also fills the washing machine, separating the loads into whites and darks, and locking the machine door before the washing cycle begins. She gets Sue her phone whenever it starts ringing, brings her the mail and even helps her undress.

Ms. Line says the hardest thing to teach Sadie was to ignore the smell of food when they go into restaurants. At first she was drooling all over the place, but after a few training sessions she’s now in complete control. The 61-year-old retired health trust manager, from Coventry, Britain, says Sadie has helped her regain some of her independence and gave her loved ones some time to breath, knowing Sadie’s on the job.

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Kayla Martell, a 21-year-old beauty pageant contestant, proved you don’t need natural hair to win a beauty contest, when she brought home the title of Miss Delaware and qualified for Miss America.

Young Kayla suffers from alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease that attacks her hair follicles and practically causes baldness. Despite her condition, Miss Martell competed in the beauty contest several times, but was finally thinking of giving up her dream of winning the Miss Delaware title. A meeting with five-year-old Lilliana Hakim, who suffered from the same condition she did, changed her mind and inspired her to keep on trying. And this time around, her dream came true as she was named Miss Delaware and got to represent her home state in the Miss America beauty pageant.

Some say Kayla Martell won the title because, unlike the previous times she competed, she wore a wig to conceal her condition. Asked how she feels on the matter, the bubbly beauty queen responded “not at all. I hope the judges picked me because I knew I could fulfill the jobs of Miss Delaware.” She added that she only wears the wig on occasions, because it makes her feel more approachable, but she usually prefers the natural look.

Kayla started losing her hair when she was just 10 years old. She noticed her part was widening, and when that turned into a bald spot, doctors diagnosed her with alopecia areata. Though it wasn’t easy going through her teen years with a disease like this, she handled it with grace, and is now using her position as Miss Delaware to find and help other people who have alopecia.

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Terje Isungset, one of the world’s most talented percussionists, creates ice music with instruments he carves out of pure glacier ice.

Born in the Norwegian village of Geilo, Isungset grew up surrounded by a family of musicians, and grew up to be one of the most innovative percussionists of our time, Over the years, he has created musical instruments out of natural materials like arctic birch, granite, slate, but the thing he is most passionate about is making ice music, a style that he pioneered through the creation of ice instruments.

Isungset first fell in love with ice music in the year 2000, when the commission for the Lillehammer Winter Olympic Games asked him to compose and play in a frozen waterfall. He was already renown for creating musical instruments out of other primitive materials, but he had never worked with ice. He took it as a challenge and managed to compose a greatly appreciated minimalist composition with just whatever the river provided – ice, water, stone and some wood.

Terje Isungset describes the process of making ice music and ice instruments as hard work and a continuing learning process. Most of his tools are made of pure glacier ice, so clear you can see through meters of it. He just cuts the ice cubes with a knife and carves them into instruments. Most of his creations are percussion tools, but he has been known to make an ice guitar, an ice harp, a trumpet and even a fiddle.

While Terje Isungset’s ice music can’t exactly be referred to as radically new (considering man actually started making using with whatever materials nature provided him with), it’s definitely a breath of fresh air, in this modern age.

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Jim Woodring, creator of a series of popular comic books, has unveiled a seven-foot-long pen that actually works.

The recently finished writing tool, dubbed “Nibbus Maximus” was recently showcased at the Gage Academy of Art, in Seattle, in front of over one hundred people. Considering this was practically the first time he used the Nibbus Maximus, apart from a few tests he did with the nib, he handled it pretty well and managed to both write and draw with it.

While attaching a 1 1/2 foot-long nib to a 5 1/2 foot-long wooden handle may not seem very difficult to do, there’s a reason most people thought it couldn’t be done. Jim put a lot of effort into making the tip of his giant pen, especially getting the surface tension just right, so it holds the ink and releases it on paper, properly. Eventually, his beautiful hand-engraved, brass-plated steel nib did just what it was designed to do.

But why go through the trouble of making a giant tool, like the Nibbus Maximus, right? Well, because people said it couldn’t be done and Jim Woodring knew that it could, so he just had to prove it to everybody.

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A Chinese family claims property developers have demolished the staircase in their apartment building to force them to move out.

What do you do when you really need a piece of land, but just can’t talk one last family into giving up their home? That calls for desperate measures, but this developer went a bit too far when it decided to actually destroy an entire staircase, to prevent a family from reaching their home on the top floor.

According to 42-year-old Zhao Yanhong, the Mianyang Yachuan Property Company wants to tear down this apartment building, in order to build a much more profitable factory, and her family is all that stands in their way. Apparently, they hired thugs to “convince” other residents to leave their homes, but there was no forcing out the family on the seventh floor. So, one day, they turned up with machinery that knocked down the entire staircase, all the way to that last apartment.

Now, the remaining residents can only enter and exit their home through ladders and climbing what’s left of the old staircase, which is very dangerous. They’ve already sued the property developer, and judges have ordered that all work be suspended for six months, while they investigate. Also, a new staircase is to be constructed for Yahong’s family.

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Can you bring dead wood back to life? No, but you can turn them into trees again! This was the slogan that fueled Greenpeace and Ogvily’s campaign to help people realize the dangers of cutting down millions of trees to create disposable chopsticks.

Two hundred volunteers from various Beijing universities answered Greenpeace’s call and set out to gather 80,000 used wooden chopsticks, from restaurants around the Chinese capital. They cleaned them all up and then assisted artist Xu Yinhai in assembling them into four life-like trees. It was no easy task, but Green peace hopes this effort will inspire Chinese people to be more conscientious about their use of resources.

According to statistics from China’s Forest Ministry, the country produces 57 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks, which require over 1.18 million square meters of forests. Since China’s wood resources are very limited (ranking 139th in the world) its people have to ask themselves if it’s worth sacrificing 3.8 million trees a year, for something they just throw away after a meal.

The chopstick trees were planted on December 20, 2010, in one of the most popular malls in Beijing, The Place, in the Chaoyang district, and are planned to be displayed at universities and art venues around the city.

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The winter holidays are now behind us, but it seems I missed one of the biggest pranks of 2010 – the green river of Goldstream Park.

It happened on December 29, 2010, in Victoria’s peaceful Goldstream Park. The waters of the river suddenly became neon green, and everyone passing by it rubbed their eyes to make sure what they were seeing wasn’t just an illusion. It was very real, but was it that made Goldstream River look so alien-like? After an hour or so, the fluorescent coloring vanished, but the questions about the bizarre phenomenon remained unanswered.

After analyzing the neon-green water, the local Environment Ministry said it was the result of a chemical called “fluorescein”. Neither the substance itself nor its products of degradation are toxic, and experts believe that fish and their habitat were not affected, judging by the concentration and flow rate of the river.

Authorities haven’t yet identified the culprits, but believed the dumping of fluorescein in the Goldstream River was just a holiday season prank.

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Damien Hirst‘s latest artwork, a baby’s skull cast in platinum and encrusted with 8,000 diamonds, has caused quite an outrage among parenting groups who think it’s offensive and deeply disturbing.

Hirst has made quite a name for himself, as a controversial artist who has previously dissected sheep and pickled a shark and showed them off as artworks. As disgusting as this sounds, it earned him an international reputation and a multi-million dollar fortune. But some say the bad boy of the art world has gone a little to far with his latest creation, “For Heaven’s Sake”.

He took a baby skull from a 19th century pathology collection he acquired, made a platinum cast and encrusted it with 8,000 diamonds. The piece is the centerpiece of a new exhibition scheduled to open later this month, in Hong Kong, but it has already made headlines, after parenting groups labeled it as troubling. “Mr Hirst may not have intended to be insensitive with his new work, but the fact is it will have a profound effect on many people who will find the subject deeply disturbing.” said Sally Russell, founder of the Netmums parenting group.

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American artist Chris Cole uses scrap metal parts to explore the border between nature and industry, by creating unique mechanical creatures.

As a young boy, Chris grew up in the American Northwest, surrounded by an abundance of wildlife that later influenced his art. At the same time, he always had a passion for all things mechanical, and would often take stuff apart, only to put them back together in a radical new way. Nowadays, he creates moving creatures, especially from the avian and aquatic reigns, from various scrap metal parts, connected by heavy bolts and operated by bicycle chains and small motors.

While he is still fascinated by machinery, and was greatly influenced by the visionaries of the industrial revolution, Chris Cole is very concerned with man’s “disconnection with the natural world”, and his work represents a “regression  from mechanism back to organism.”

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Cathy Ward, a 49-year-old die-hard fan of the Twilight franchise,  got a full-back tattoo of the main characters, to show appreciation for helping her lose weight.

That’s right, Twilight actually helped someone lose weight, which is kind of ironic, because watching movies and reading books doesn’t exactly strike me as an active lifestyle. But in Cathy’s case, the interest in the vampire saga kept her away from stuffing her face all the time and helped her shed 14 dress sizes in just six months. All it took was for her to watch the first movie in the series, and she was hooked. She went out and bought all the books and DVDs, and dedicated most of her spare time to Twilight.

After losing the weight, Cathy wanted a permanent reminder that it was all thanks to the Twilight saga, so she got a small tattoo, which eventually turned into a full-back artwork. She spent 22 hours in the tattoo artist’s chair and paid over $3,000 for the custom Twilight work of art. But money was never an issue for Cathy Ward, because, as she sees it, she could have spent her money eating and drinking, instead she chose to do it on something she’s passionate about.

While many people would say she has more than enough ink covering her body, this Twilight fan says she’s not about to stop here. Cathy plans to cover her entire torso and arms with Twilight-inspired tattoos, hopefully before she celebrates her 50th birthday. A big fan of Robert Pattinson, she wants to get a tattoo of his character, Edward Cullen, on her abdomen.

Cathy Ward hopes to, one day, meet the cast of Twilight, so she can show them her impressive body art.

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Margarita Mileva, an architect working in New York City, is taking the fashion world by storm with her unique dresses made from thousands of rubber bands.

Margarita first captured the attention of the fashion world with her line of rubber band accessories – M2, an offshoot of Milev Architects. The daughter of two artists took things to a whole new level, back in September 2010, when she showcased her first rubber band dress, a beautiful cocktail frock, made entirely from differently colored rubber bands.

Her latest creation, the “RB Dress“, was originally created for “Wear Is Art”, a design competition in Berlin, but it continued to attract attention even after the contest ended. Milev constructed the dress by hand, painstakingly weaving an astounding 14, 235 rubber bands into an haute-couture gown. That’s approximately 4 kilograms of rubber bands.

The practicing architect/fashion designer says she was inspired by the works of German-Swiss painter Klee and the early Bauhaus pioneers: “I was intrigued by the pastel colors used together with the black, darker ones; the black outlines and texture-like “fabric” of his (Klee’s) works. For me also of utmost importance is color theory, which he developed and taught to Bauhaus students.”

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The hippo is regarded as he most dangerous animal in Africa, but that hasn’t stopped a South African animal lover from making friends with one.

40-year-old Marius Els breeds around 20 different animal species, on his wildlife ranch, near Petrus Steynlakes, South Africa, but he has a real soft spot for Humphrey, a 6-year-old hippo that’s like a son to him. While all of his friends are too scared to go near the animal, and his wife told him not to get too close, Marius climbs on Humhprey’s back  as he swims across a 200-meter-wide lake.

Marius has raised Humphrey since he was just five months old, and over the years, the two have developed a special relationship that people just don’t understand. Most of the world may look upon hippos with fear, but he considers Humphrey to be like a son, although the 1,200 ton creature could chew through him with ease. But, apart from occasionally throwing Marius off his back in the water, Humphrey acts very friendly around his owner, especially after Marius offers him a feats of his favorite treat, apples.

Despite the special friendship with Marius, Humphrey feels very lonely at this point in his life. He had another good friend, a goat, but she got eaten by a jackal, so now he’s all by himself. Marius says he’s been trying to get a tamed female companion for Humphrey, but there’s no such thing in Africa right now, and bringing in a wild one would be too dangerous. If the untamed female isn’t younger than he is, they would just kill each other. On the other hand, he can’t release Humphrey in the wild, because the other male hippos would almost definitely kill him in a fight. At least Humphrey will also have Marius to keep him company

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Jimmy Tomczak, a young entrepreneur from Michigan, is taking the footwear world by storm, with his original line of shoes made from recycled billboards, Paper Feet.

Jimmy says he’s an outdoors guy who likes to walk barefoot as much as possible, but he always felt like he needed something to protect his soles from the hot asphalt. So, one day, he decided to create some sort of revolutionary footwear that had to be tear resistant, waterproof and light enough to make people feel like they were actually barefoot.

The first thing he tried was Tyvek, a material mostly used on FedEx envelopes, but even though it was puncture-proof and waterproof, it was way too thin for footwear. But when someone suggested he use an old billboard as tarp for his leaky roof, Mr. Tomczak knew he had found the material he was looking for. Billboards are five times as thick as shower curtains, and just light enough for his revolutionary “foot condoms”

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