Sometimes described as an English martial art, shin kicking is a centuries-old combat sport in which two participants kick each other in the shins until one of them falls down. Needless to say there is a lot of pain involved.

The origins of shin kicking are lost in the mists of time, but some experts say it started as a variation of wrestling, at least five or six hundred years ago. The brutal sport has been a part of the famous Cotsworld Olympik Games since the 17th centuries and it’s still practiced today. The rules of shin kicking are very straightforward: the two combatants grab each other’s collars and start kicking until one of them falls down. Although pushing or pulling is permitted, contestants have to kick their opponent in the shins at least once before they hit the ground for their win to count. Matches are won by the person who wins two out of three rounds. As you probably know, shin kicks really hurt, so participants are allowed to stuff their pants with straw in order to cushion the painful blows. Still, the organizers of the annual Shin Kicking Championship say the pain is so bad that the vast majority of participants never return. This year, Zak Warren, the previous champion actually defended his title, but it’s a very rare occurrence.

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Petrified pasta, juicy braised pork, rocky dried fruits and many other delicious-looking dishes are all part of China’s rare stone food banquets. The spread is nice to look at, but trying to sneak a bite will cost you a few teeth.

People in the mountainous regions of China know how to appreciate beautiful rocks, and some spend their whole lives gathering different kinds of rocks, scouring specialized stone shops and trekking through rugged mountain passes and desserts in search of unique additions to their collections. Strangely shaped or colored rocks are considered a feast for the eyes, and stones that resemble food are considered even more wonderful. It takes a lot of time and luck to find naturally shaped pieces of carnelian or jade that look good enough to eat, but dedicated stone collectors have proven it’s possible, on a number of occasions. Organizing stone food banquets is a long-standing Chinese tradition, and even in modern times it manages to draw media attention and keep stone collecting popular.

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How far would you go to lose weight? In Venezuela, beauty-conscious women who don’t have the willpower to go on a diet have plastic patches the size of a postage stamp sewn onto their tongues, which makes the consumption of solid foods extremely painful.

The so-called “Miracle Patch” weight loss method was invented in 2009, by Nikolas Chugay, a plastic surgeon from Beverly Hills who wanted to offer his patients an effective way to shed extra pounds without the risks of invasive surgical procedures. But while it can help people shed up to 30lbs a month, having the patch sewn on the top of the tongue does come with a series of side-effects. Some patients experience speech difficulties, while others have trouble sleeping, not to mention the excruciating pain felt when trying to move the tongue after it’s been patched up. The abrasive patch is made of marlex, a material  commonly used to repair hernias, and contains pores that make it adhere to the tongue if left on for too long. “The material has pores which allow for in-growth of tissue. If you leave it in for more than a month it starts to become incorporated into the tongue,” says Paul Chugay, who works with his father Nikolas at their Los Angeles practice. After that period, patients consult with nutritionists to keep their weight under control.

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If you’re tired of setting up notifications on your gadget in the hope that you’ll finally be reminded about your wedding anniversary on time, rejoice, because things are about to get a lot easier. The Remember Ring is a concept wedding ring that heats up 24 hours before the big day, letting you know it’s time to prepare a nice surprise for the wife.

Are you mad at yourself for never being able to remember your wedding anniversary? Do you wish that just once you could do something nice for your partner on your important day? You’re in luck, because you’d have to be suffering from Alzheimer’s not to remember it with the aptly named Remember Ring from Alaska Jewelry. The useful accessory looks like an ordinary wedding ring but is fitted with Hot Spot technology that makes it heat up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit on the day before the anniversary, making it impossible to ignore by the wearer. Every hour, the gadget gets hotter and hotter for 10 seconds, until it reaches peak temperature, reminding you the big days is just around the corner. The Rember Ring is fitted with a battery-charged micro-chip clock that converts the heat from your hand into electricity, which means it will never run out of power. “Using a micro thermopile, The Remember Ring converts the heat from your hand into electricity, keeping the battery charged and microchip clock running perpetually,” its makers say.

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Sick of having to clean up after irresponsible dog owners, authorities in Brunete, a small town 20 miles west of Madrid, came up with an ingenious way to keep the streets clean. They started sending the dog poo back to their owners in boxes marked “Lost Property”.

The council of Brunete had not approved a budget for the original street cleaning campaign, but advertising agency McCann was willing to do all the work for free. During the course of a week, more than a dozen volunteers patrolled the streets keeping an eye out for owners who didn’t clean up after their pets. As soon as they spotted an offender, they approached them and sparked up a conversation about their dog, trying to find out its name and breed. “With the name of the dog and the breed it was possible to identify the owner from the registered pet database held in the town hall,” a spokesman of the town council explained. As soon as the owner left, the volunteers picked up the poo and packaged them in cardboard boxes branded with the town hall insignia and marked as “Lost Property”. The smelly packages were then delivered by courier to the pet owners homes, along with a fine warning. Read More »

Long bus tours can be pretty boring, but Japan’s Star Fighter buses are so incredibly cool they just don’t give you a chance to get bored. If you think they look impressive on the outside, wait until you see what’s in store for passengers inside.

Going on a Tokyo bus tour usually gives tourists a chance to catch a glimpse of Japan’s fascinating metropolis, but that’s not what the Star Fighter Tour operated by Willer Travel is about. In fact, their futuristic-looking buses don’t even have windows. So if it’s sightseeing you want, look elsewhere, but if you fancy an interactive space adventure right here on Earth, this is one Tokyo attraction you don’t want to miss. As you can see in the photo below, Star Fighter buses don’t look like ordinary tour buses. Their shiny silver paint job  is somewhat reminiscent of Star Trek, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg, because the real exciting stuff is on the inside. As you step aboard, the space shuttle-themed decor makes it hard to tell if you’re on a bus or a ship ready for take-off. There are hatches on the floor and air locks on the walls, and the normal windows have been replaced with “Hyper Windows”, which are really LED screens that show the infinite space outside, as soon as the tour starts.

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It’s not easy being beautiful, at least according to 21-year-old Dana Adiva, who says her looks are both a blessing and a curse. She is treated like a princess, but the same time women are jealous of her beauty, and men just can’t help staring at her.

Dana, an aspiring professional wrestler from Illinois, was recently featured on MTV’s “True Life” where she complained about being too beautiful. The young blonde claimed she has had people telling her how pretty she was all the time, but things got ugly when she got to high-school. “I got so much attention from all the guys, but I didn’t get along with any of the girls,” Adiva said.  “They were extremely jealous of me”. Things really got out of control when she started getting hate mail from other girls, which eventually forced her to drop out of school. And that’s only one of the tough things she has had to deal with because of her look. Apparently, it’s also affecting her chances of finding true love. “I’m hoping to find love someday but when you look like me it’s not easy. My looks get in the way,” Dana said. “When I walk into a bar I’m used to every guy staring at me,” but the men she is actually interested in never seem to take her seriously. Truly a tragedy, this is…

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From cooked insects to fermented bird meat, humans have been eating all kinds of outrageous foods for hundreds of years, but there are some things that I just wouldn’t dream of putting in my mouth. One of them is the anus-shaped Belgian chocolates sold by a cheeky British chocolaterie.

If you think the chocolate “Edible Anus” looks remarkably like the real thing, that’s because it’s made using a mold “crafted from the posterior” of the company’s “stunning butt model.” Feel like throwing up yet? There’s really no proof of that on their official website, so you’ll just have to take their word for it. The allegedly delicious treats are hand-crafted in the UK, and contain no artificial preservatives, if it’s any consolation. According to the geniuses behind this novelty desert, the Edible Anus is “the perfect gift for the whole family” and will “light up” Grandma’s face, as she “unwraps a homely selection of chocolate cracks”. I’m pretty sure my family would disown me if I sent them a box of these unique treats, but they’re actually a great gift idea for your proctologist. Read More »

In Japan, you don’t actually have to get thrown in jail to get a taste of prison food. The Prison cafeteria, in Abashiri, Hokkaido, specializes solely in food actually served inside Japanese prisons.

I’ve often wondered what jail food tastes like, but I was never curious enough to commit a crime and find out. Luckily, for like-minded Japanese, there is a place where they can sample prison-quality meals without having to give up their freedom. The Prison Cafeteria, at the Abashirishi Prison Museum, serves the same food that the genuine inmates of Abashirishi prison eat for lunch each day. As you can imagine, it’s pretty cheap, but the guys at RocketNews24, who visited the place and tried some of the courses on the menu say it’s also pretty tasty. I’ve heard some awful things about prison food, but it seems Japanese inmates have it pretty good. To be fair though, having to constantly keep an eye out for someone trying to shank you at lunch time, is just not worth trying this decent food in actual prison.

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Excavated Neanderthal bones often had traces of pollen around them, indicating that even back then flowers were used to celebrate the deceased. Japanese artist Hideki Tokushige uses animal bones to recreate various flowers, thus honoring the longstanding connection between the two.

“We’ve been creating paintings and sculptures for over 70,000 years and our relationship to bones is just as old,” Tokushige explains. “Everything around us – clothes, nuclear power plants, internet – can be traced back to the structure of bones.” Inspired by the cycle of life and death and the relationship between flowers and death, the Japanese artist started creating stunningly detailed Honebana, or bone flowers. It all started one day, when Hideki Tokushige was coming home from work. He saw a dead raccoon in the middle of the street, and instead of simply ignoring it or throwing it in a waste bin, he took it home, removed the bones and used them as an art medium. Originally trained in photography, Hideki found a way to assemble the bones into intricate floral sculptures that are shockingly beautiful to look at.

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Statistics show a growing number of American families are replacing cats and dogs with chicken as household pets, so I guess it’s no wonder we’re starting to see things like chicken outfits, diapers and saddles being sold online.

Julie Baker is the owner of Pampered Chickens, an online business that sells a variety of accessories for pet chickens. She got the idea for bird diapers when her feathered friends started spending less time in the backyard and more time inside the house. They were making a mess, so she tried sewing chicken-sized cloth diapers, added some buttons and strapped them on the birds. It worked like a charm, and before long the idea turned into a business. These days Julie sells between 50 and 100 chicken diapers, as well fashionable outfits and protective saddles to urban hen owners across the United States. “Saddles are almost more useful than the diaper, quite frankly,” Baker told The Salt. “A rooster isn’t particularly kind to a hen when they mate. He grabs her by the back and pulls her feathers out. The hen ends up with a completely bare back. It gets raw and bleeds a little bit.” Her family has been a part of the poultry show community for a long time, and when friends saw her pets’ colorful garments, they started asking where she got them. before she new it, orders started rolling in.

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A tenth of an amp is enough to kill an ordinary human being, but Raj Mohan Nair is anything but ordinary. This human conductor is able to withstand several amps of electricity passing through his body without suffering any bodily harm.

Electricity Mohan or Electro-Man, as Raj has come to be known all around the world has an amazing super-power. Just a small a mount of electricity can be fatal to most humans, but this man can conduct several amps and survive unscathed. There’s nothing super-human about his looks, but connected to an electrical power source, Raj Mohan Nair can do extraordinary things. He doesn’t shoot lightning bolts from his hands or anything, but he can power up a light bulb or an electric blender by grabbing two live wires and allowing massive amounts of current to pass through his body. He might not seem like a superhero worthy of his own comic book, but it’s a lot more than the rest of us mortals can withstand. If these wires touched any other human’s body, the electricity would cause their organs to fail and stop their heart, but not Mohan’s. With one wire in his mouth for better conductivity and the other anywhere else on his body, Mohan lets the electrical current run through him and into whatever other device he’s trying to power on.

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A Japanese artist known only as “Upunushu”, has created an amazingly detailed replica of Matsumoto Castle, a National Treasure of Japan, using only pieces of corrugated cardboard.

Cardboard is certainly not the easiest medium to work with when trying to recreate an architectural wonder like Matsumoto Castle, but Japanese artist, Upunushu, proves it can definitely be done. According to footage posted on Japanese video sharing site NicoNicoDouga and other media reports, this young master spent an entire week just planning the project, and another six months cutting out all the necessary pieces and assembling them as a model of the famous Crow Castle. It certainly wasn’t the shortest modelling project, but in terms of cost, this stunning piece of art couldn’t have been cheaper. Using cardboard boxes as the main material of her build, the talented artist spent just ¥300 ($2.95) on supplies. Apparently, just getting the castle’s stone base right took Upunushu two months to complete, as she had to glue each cardboard brick individually. The talented Upunushu has been creating incredible cardboard models ever since she was in fifth grade. Now in her mid-twenties, the artist has improves a lot since her early years, and plans to build even more intricate replicas.

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The 50-acre expanse of Brimham Moor in North Yorkshire, England is home to a number of curious rock formations shaped by tens of thousands of years of erosion, but the most impressive of all is Idol Rock, a 200-ton monolith balancing on a tiny pyramidal base.

The 15-foot high Idol Rock looks like it’s about to crumble, but it never does. Weighing an estimated 200 tons, the giant rock formation has been performing its amazing balancing act for as long as anyone can remember, defying the laws of physics and leaving the visitors of Brimham Moor scratching their heads in awe. Also known as The Druids Idol or The Druid’s Writing Desk, this unique attraction sits on a tiny lump of rock only one foot in circumference. Photos of it have been circulating on the internet for years, with many claiming it is just the result of Photoshop manipulation, but the Idol of Brimham is very real, an example of Mother Nature’s artistic talent.

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Have you ever seen a cow that you simply couldn’t help want to cuddle? I hadn’t, until I saw these photos of extremely fluffy show calves that look like they’re modelling for some kind of bovine fashion magazine.

I first spotted these real-life plush cows on Reddit a few days ago, and I simply fell in love with them. Not in a deranged way, but I just found them irresistible and wished I had one of my own so I could sink my face in its fluffiness. Okay, enough about my weird self. These cows don’t belong to any particular breed. They are show calves, a cross between two different high-quality breeds, bred for bovine show-business. That means that apart from their genetic characteristics, owners go out of their way to make sure the cows look their best. Special feeding, basic manners training and grooming are all part of the show calf world, and believe me when I tell you a lot of effort goes into styling cattle. Just think of them as girls, but with their very own conditioners, hair sprays and lotions. Show calf trimming is also considered an art form among cattle enthusiasts, as it gives the animals that Photoshop-like boxy shape. But as you can see in the photos below, the results are nothing short of spectacular.

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