It’s hard to believe the woman in the photo below is actually 46-year-old and a mother of two. Jung Da Yeon is known as momjjang ajumma in her native land of South Korea which means “mom with a striking figure”, and it’s easy to see why.

But Jung Da Yeon didn’t always look like this. In 2003, after going through two pregnancies, she weighed 70 kilograms and looked like a normal housewife. According to most media reports, she just woke up one day and decided to do something about her dissatisfaction with her figure and weight, and I don’t mean not looking in the mirror for a very long time but strict dieting and physical exercise. However, Jung told the Wall Street Journal she was actually motivated to lose weight to relieve back pain, and that the perfect figure was only a side-effect.  She managed to lose 20 kilograms in just three months, and after posting some photos of her new self, the ambitious mother triggered what came to be known as South Korea’s “momjjang syndrome”. Housewives all around the country followed her example and started working out in an attempt to achieve the same toned physique. Before she knew it, Jung Da Yeon was making appearances on television, launching weight-loss books and videos, and building her very own fitness empire. The 46-year-old’s fame spread beyond Korea’s borders to Japan, where she launched an exercise-themed video game for the Nintendo Wii and opened an education center to train Figure-robics specialists.

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It’s amazing how some people can use rudimentary tools like pencils and paper to trick the brain and make their artworks look like they’re coming to life. Alessandro Diddi is one of these rare talented artists who creates anamorphic drawings that seem ready to jump off the page.

“When people see my drawings they are often pleasantly surprised, they fail to understand exactly how I’ve managed to achieve the 3D look,” Alessandro Diddi told the Daily Mail. Such reactions are perfectly understandable, considering his pencil-drawn designs seem perfectly life-like. But that’s only because a lot of people don’t understand the art of anamorphic design. “When you understand the mechanism of the anamorphic design, you realize that putting together drawing like this is really not so difficult,” he says. It’s hard to demonstrate without giving viewers a 2D views of his creations, but the talented Mr. Diddi uses angles and shading to trick your eyes and brain into seeing something magical. This technique has been used by artist’s all around the world for some time now, but his drawings are definitely something special. Using simple props like pencils, a wedding ring or his hands, Alessandro Diddi really breathes life into every one of his amazing sketches.

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You would expect a modern-day Hercules who can rip phone books in half and bend steel wrenches and hammers with his hands to be a mountain of a man, but standing at 5 foot 6 inches and weighing 168 pounds, Dennis Rogers looks like an average 55-year-old. Still, he is considered to be the pound for pound world’s strongest man.

Dennis Rogers weighed less than 80 pounds when he entered high-school. He looked so frail that he was put in Special Education gym, and he believed he would never be big enough to do anything sports-related in his life. But during the early 70’s something changed in Dennis’ perception of who he was and what he was capable of. The strongman remembers he and his brothers once saw a television program about a man who could rip a deck of cards in half, and drove to the nearest store to buy one and try the trick themselves. He was in the driver’s seat when his brother handed him the deck, and he just tore it apart on his first attempt. That was one of the first times he realized what he was capable of. Since then, Dennis Rogers has become a World Arm-Wrestling Champion and Grandmaster Strongman capable of bending steel hammers and wrenches and even stopping aircrafts from taking off with his bare hands.

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To relax after a hard week’s work, Qatar’s car enthusiasts jump in their powerful 4×4 vehicles and drive out into the desert to engage in “dune bashing”, an adrenaline pumping pastime that has passengers hanging to the edge of their seats.

What do you do to relax on weekends? Hang out with your friends, go camping, or stay home and watch TV all day, that kind of stuff, right? In Qatar, the crazy rich have found a different, more dangerous way to unwind after a stressful week. They take their specially prepared Toyota and Nissan 4×4 vehicles to remote desert locations, deflate their tires for extra grip and surf the endless dunes, racing each other and performing unbelievable stunts. There is no police, no speed limits and no rules. The drivers are as skilled and experienced as they come, but accidents are still very common at dune bashing events, and some of them result in fatalities. But that doesn’t seem to scare the other drivers from engaging in this insane and exhilarating activity.

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If you thought the game of football couldn’t get any better, think again. Introducing Bubble Football, a new almost-sport that combines the popular game of football/soccer with zorbing.

Bubble Football is the brainchild of Henrik Elvestad and Johan Golden, two wacky Norwegians who thought football would be even more entertaining if players were encased in clear plastic zorbing balls. The first ever match was broadcast on Norwegian TV show “Golden Goal” at the end of 2011 as a gag, but after being posted on YouTube, the craze spread throughout Europe like wildfire. In the last few years, bubble football matches have been held everywhere from Italy to Latvia, and there are now even online store selling and renting equipment to anyone willing to try it.

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Furniture doesn’t come much more customizable than the Do Hit Chair from Droog Design. For the modest price of €6,553 ($8,500) you get a stainless steel cube and a sledgehammer to shape it into the chair of your dreams.

Created by Dutch designer Marijn van der Poll caused quite a lot of controversy when it was first revealed back in 2000. You’d expect a designer chair priced at several thousand dollars to be really special, and this one is, just not in the way that you would expect. Instead of shaping his masterpiece into something unique, van der Poll simply welded a stainless steel cube and left the design part to the buyer by throwing in a sledgehammer. So you basically pay €6,500 (€7,930 if you’re in the EU) for a steel cube and get to smash it for minutes or hours until you get the desired shape. If this sounds interesting, the Do Hit Chair is still available on the Droog website, but you could just run down to your local hardware store, get some steel sheets and a sledgehammer and just build your own for much less. And if you’re feeling uninspired, there’s even a YouTube video of Marijn van der Poll himself smashing away at a steel cube trying to make a chair. Or, if you’re too lazy to pound it with the sledgehammer yourself, you can have the designer pre-smash it for you, but the price for the chair goes up to $12,738. The default version sounds cheap now, doesn’t it?

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Aaron Evans is a natural-born athlete who can jump further and higher than most average humans. His signature move – jumping over cars moving towards him at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour.

Milwaukee-based Evans says he was just five years old when he discovered his talent for extreme jumps. He was watching a Bruce Lee movie when he saw the legendary martial artist run up a wall and do a backflip. Curious to see if he could pull off the same stunt, he went into the backyard and nailed it on his first try. He’s been pushing the limits of his incredible jumping abilities ever since, and today he holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest jump over three moving cars. That’s three vehicles coming at him at an average speed of 30 miles per hour. Most people would just jump out of the way, but not Aaron, he flips over them. “I pick a point as where I’m gonna meet it, and as soon as it gets there and I’m at a certain point, I get ready and take off,” the 25-year old acrobat tries to explain how he manages to clear the speeding obstacles every time. I just like to think of it as a real-life superpower.

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Located right next to the Princess Juliana International Airport, on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin, Maho Beach is a unique destination where tourist experience what it’s like to have jumbo jets flying just a few meters above their heads and get blown into the sea by their powerful jet engines.

Fine white sand and crystal clear water is not what makes Maho Beach such a popular tourist destination. There are hundreds of other such beautiful beaches in the Caribbean which aren’t located right next to a busy and noisy airport like Princess Juliana. But it’s precisely this little detail that makes this piece of paradise so remarkably unique. In order to land safely on the unusually short Runway 10, aircraft pilots have to make their final approach at minimal altitude, and that means flying just a few meters above the heads of thrill-seeking beach-goers. And we’re not talking light airplanes either, but jumbo jets like Boeing 747 and Airbus A380. Plane spotting has become so popular at Maho Beach that local entrepreneurs have built an entire business around it. Beach bar owners have put up boards of airplane arrivals and departures so people can plan their visit, and some even broadcast radio transmissions between the airport’s control tower and and the aircraft.

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The world famous Bushman of San Francisco, real name David Johnson, has been entertaining passers-by in Fisherman’s Wharf for over 30 years by hiding behind two Eucalyptus branches and jumping out at unsuspecting tourists as they walk by.

The Bushman of San Francisco is an alleged homeless man who rakes in a reported $60,000 a year from his original street performance, with just two Eucalyptus branches and the cardboard box he sits on. David Johnson was born in Indiana, where he worked as a crane operator crane operator, steel mill worker and truck driver before moving to San Francisco. Here he opened one of the first shoeshine stands on Market Street, but arthritis and growing competition from the busy Financial District forced him to look for a new way to make a living. After discovering some fallen branches under a tree, Johnson was inspired to use them in a street act that would eventually make him famous all around the world. Sitting on a makeshift stool, the Bushman hides behind the Eucalyptus branches waiting for tourists to walk by. When they get close enough, he jumps from behind the greenery or waves it in their direction scaring the daylights out of them, to the amusement of nearby spectators, many of whom reward his performance by throwing a quarter or a dollar into his jug.

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According to multiple Chinese media reports, wealthy and busy adults have found a new way to combat health issues caused by stress and strain – drinking human breast milk. They hire wet nurses who regularly provide the nutritious drink.

While many parents in China are struggling to find safe powdered milk for their babies, following a scandal over poisoned formula, rich and powerful adults from cities like Shenzen and Guangdong  are paying big bucks for fresh breast milk to keep in shape. The demand is apparently so great that companies are promoting and expanding their breast milk supply business from babies to adults. “Clients can choose to consume breast milk directly through breastfeeding … but they can always drink it from a breast pump if they feel uncomfortable,” Lin Jun, a manager of Xinxinyu Household Service Company told Chinese newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily. “Quite a few of our clients hire in-house wet nurses to ensure a supply of fresh breast milk on a daily base,” Lin said, adding that “wet nurses rarely raise objections as long as the price is right.” Apparently, most of those who indulge in drinking fresh breast milk are successful adults with high incomes and high-pressure jobs looking for a highly nutritious miracle cure to their health problems.

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The town of Greensburg, Indiana, is known as the “Tree City” for the over a dozen trees that have been growing out of the roof of the Decatur County Courthouse ever since 1870. They are believed to have sprouted from seeds in bird droppings.

In the year 1870, the citizens of Greensburg began to notice what looked like a small sprig growing on the northwest corner of the courthouse tower. No one paid much attention to it at first, but as the shrub grew into a young tree, it became the talk of the town. A few years later, five new sprouts were spotted on the tower roof, threatening to form a small grove atop the 110-foot-tall tower. Authorities were worried the tree roots might cause irreparable damage to the roof, so in 1888 a steeplejack was hired to cut down the smaller trees, leaving just one, which in time grew to about fifteen feet with a diameter of almost five inches at its base. It continued to brave the storms for many years, until it finally died, and was removed to a place in the Decatur County Historical Society Museum. But that was not the end of the now famous courthouse tower tree. In the meantime, another tree appeared on the southeast corner of the tower, and grew to a considerable height in just a few years time.

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Hombo Batu or Stone Jumping is an ancient ritual of Nias Island, North Sumatra, with young men leaping over stone walls over two-meters tall. The tradition was born out of inter-tribal conflicts and was once potentially deadly as the walls were covered with spikes and sharpened bamboo sticks.

Centuries ago, Nias Island was divided into several regions ruled by landlords or warlords. It was not a hereditary position, nor was it gained by force, but rather through entertainment of the masses. Whoever threw more parties known as “owasa” gained the favor of local communities and became their leader. But organizing these festive events didn’t come cheap, and the island’s landlords would constantly fight each other and use the spoils of war as funding. To start a war, they needed able brave men who had to prove their worth at drafting challenges. Becoming a soldier was a big honor for the young men of Nias and earned them a higher social status in the community, but physical attributes and weapon mastery were not enough to convince their leaders. They also had to jump over a 2.3-meter-tall stone wall without touching it. To make things even harder for candidates, the top of the obstacle was covered with spikes and sharp bamboo sticks, and the jumps often resulted in serious injuries and even deaths. According to some sources, Hombo Batu was also a way of training soldiers to jump over walls during a siege and light the enemy’s camp ablaze with torches.

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The things people will put themselves through to give up smoking. Case in point İbrahim Yücel, a 42-year-old smoker from Kütahya, Turkey who recently decided to wear a locked metal cage over his head to fight his addiction.

İbrahim Yücel has been smoking for the last 26 years, and despite several attempts to quit he couldn’t break his two-packs-a-day dirty habit. Every year, on his three children’s birthdays and on his wedding anniversary he would give up cigarettes, but he never went more than a few days without them. His family, his friends and co-workers all tried to convince him to stop using tobacco cigarettes, but he just couldn’t do it. After losing his father to smoking-induced lung cancer a few months ago, İbrahim realized smoking just wasn’t worth losing his life over and putting his wife and children through the same hardships. But the Turkish technician also knew he lacked the willpower to quit by usual means, so he came up with a rather unusual solution. Inspired by motorcycle helmets, he decided to build a metal wire cage that would prevent him from lighting up no matter how badly he craved a cigarette.

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It’s called the Swing at the End of the World and it could literally be the end of you, as this extreme attraction in the mountains of Ecuador lets thrill-seekers swing over an abyss without any safety measures whatsoever.

Hiking up the path to Bellavista from the edge of Baños, Ecuador, you reach a viewpoint and a seismic monitoring station named La Casa del Árbol (The Treehouse). As the name suggests it’s a small house built in a tree, at the edge of a canyon. The view from up here alone is worth the trip, but for adrenalin junkies, La Casa del Árbol offers a unique bonus – a swing hanging over the precipice. Believe it or not many of the people who come here actually use it just to see what it’s like to swing into the void, and the internet is full of scary photos of them hanging over the abyss. It’s reportedly a great way to keep yourself entertained when the clouds block the view of Ecuador’s rumbling Tungurahua volcano, but just I can’t stop thinking about the possibility of one of the lines, or the thin metal beam supporting it breaking which would most likely cause the rider to fall to his death. I know, I’m a coward, no need to rub it in.

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At the Ka Tron Restaurant, in Bangkok, Thailand, food is handled like heavy artillery. Its famous fried chickens are set ablaze and launched from a massive catapult at unicycle-riding waiters who catch them on metal skewers. How is that for dinner and a show?

Popularly known as the “Flying Chicken Restaurant”, Ka Tron proves a great gimmick really can make up for average food. Hardly any of the dishes served here are prepared in a truly unique way, they are just your run of the mill Thai recipes, but it’s the way they are served that sets this place apart from all the other eateries not only in Thailand, but the whole world. The chicken is carried out on a silver platter not to the diners, but to a long platform raised a couple of feet above the ground in the middle of the outdoor dining area, and set on one of the several metal catapults. A waiter riding a unicycle makes his way to the platform and stops a few feet away of the loaded catapult. As he struggles to keep his balance and concentrate on what comes next, the edible projectile is set on fire and launched from the medieval artillery device. The chicken soars through the air and most often than not lands on metal skewers the waiter holds in both his hands, in his mouth and on his head.

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