97-Year-Old Gets High-School Diploma (Yahoo)

The Oldest Tree in the World (Environmental Graffiti)

Spiders Invade Remote Indian Village (Russia Today)

Giant Robot Fish Is a Hit with Living Tank Mates (Geekologie)

World’s Oldest Backpacker Is 95-Years-Old (AOL)

Vampire Skeletons Unearthed in Bulgaria (Fox News)

Fat Woman’s Body Sets Crematorium on Fire (Digital Journal)

Brazilian Boy Wakes Up at Own Funeral, Then Dies Again (Gawker)

The Rocky Wonders of Bryce Canyon National Park (Environmental Graffiti)

Thousands of Indians Swallow Raw Fish to Cure Asthma (NY Daily News)

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A video shot in Japan recently went viral after it showed a bullfrog served in a Japanese restaurant still blinking and twitching on the plate, after being skinned alive and cut into pieces.

This is definitely one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen. Singaporean website STOMP recently released a series of photos and a video shot in a Japanese restaurant where apparently people like to eat bullfrogs while they’re still alive. The video shows a customer going into the restaurant and how the cook there simply picks up a big frog, sticks a knife in it, removes all its inedible innards and skins it alive. Then the focus moves on the smiling customers who enjoys a healthy serving of bullfrog sashimi while the animal is looking at her from her plate, blinking and twitching… That doesn’t seem to bother the young woman much, as she even gives the thumb-up sign for the quality of the dish. Read More »

Invented by Lewis Lavoie, Mural Mosaic is an artistic concept which brings together hundreds of artworks painted by various artists into one exceptional image.

Lewis Lavoie created his first mural mosaic in 1997, for a retaining wall next to an art gallery in St. Albert, Alberta, Canada. For this, the artist painted hundreds of individual paintings that were ultimately assembled to make up the face of Michelangelo’s David. It was a monumental achievement that helped Lavoie gain international attention for his unique style. But that was only the beginning of the mural mosaic movement, as seven years later Lewis takes his ingenious concept to the next level, by inviting 70 different artists to create the first community mural mosaic. During a live 24-hour painting marathon, each artist makes his contribution to the “Heritage Fiddler” mosaic.

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Song Changjiang, a lucky 27-year-old from Chengdu, China, has won the right to drive in a BMW 1 Series after keeping his hand glued to it for 4 days and three nights, in a bizarre contest.

What some people wouldn’t do for the chance to win a brand new BMW. Take the participants in the  ‘Who Can Keep Their Hand on the BMW‘ contest held in China’s Chengdu City. 120 contestants, aged between 18 and 40, signed up for the chance to win a BMW 1 Series. Organizers brought out a few vehicles, placed palm-shaped stickers on them, and all the participants had to do is keep their hands on them for as long as they could. Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? I thought so too, but judging by the photos taken during the competition, it was a real physical and mental test.

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Just in case you needed more proof that you don’t actually need designer labels to attract attention, here’s the story of Kara Koskowich, who created her prom dress out of old homework.

After graduation, most students never want to look at homework again, but 17-year-old Kara Koskowich actually decided to look good IN it, by making a unique prom dress out of her old math homework. “For me, it’s not a big, spend your money, you have to look this nice, you have to fit into this mould of grad,” the Canadian girl told CBC, so she decided on a more creative and far less expensive alternative to the classic prom dress. So instead of going window shopping, Kara started thinking about what would make a really interesting dress for prom. And although she had made up her mind since March, and even started working on the dress back then, she only barely managed to finish it in time for the big night. “I did most of it the last week because I’m that kind of person. I procrastinate,” Kara said.

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Susanne Eman weighs a staggering 540lbs (245kg) and unlike other brides-to-be, she actually wants to put on a lot more weight. To fulfill her bizarre goal of getting fatter for her wedding, Susanne is currently eating about 30,000 calories per day.

The 33-year-old, from Arizona, first made news headlines last year, when stories of her goal of reaching 1,600lbs appeared on the Internet and in various tabloids. Everyone was shocked that someone would actually want to become the world’s fattest person, and spend a small fortune in the process. Back then, Susanne revealed that she and her two boys, Gabriel, 16, and Brendin, 12, visit the supermarket and spend about eight hours filling six shopping carts with all kinds of foods. In order to reach the 800lbs-mark she had set for the end of 2011, the overweight single mom guzzled down about 20,000 calories a day. She didn’t reach her goal, but now the dedicated weight-gainer is getting married, and upped her daily intake to 30,000 calories, in order to become the world’s biggest bride.

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Invented by MIT’s Kelly Dobson, the ScreamBody is an ingenious device that allows you to let out all your rage and frustration without having to worry about it being socially inappropriate.

As a kid, I watched a lot of cartoons where characters would just scream inside a paper bag, because they couldn’t let out their pain at that exact time, and just “unload” all the screaming later. I remember wishing something like that existed in real life. As it turns out, it actually does, and it’s called a ScreamBody. Invented back in the mid 2000’s, by former MIT student Kelly Dobson, this strange-looking piece of equipment is actually a portable space for screaming that contains all of your loudly-expressed emotions and releases them at a later time. Exactly like they did in those cartoons I liked so much.

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Spike TV recently announced it’s working on a reality series called “Last Family on Earth” which will feature survivalists competing to show how resourceful they can be in various extreme situations. The winning family will receive a bunker in an undisclosed location, to improve their chances of surviving Armageddon.

The calendar of the ancient Mayan civilization predicts the world will end in December of 2012, and with rumors of an impending zombie apocalypse and news stories about crazy cannibals spurring up in the last few weeks, some people are finding it hard not to succumb to the paranoia. So I guess the Spike television network couldn’t have picked a better time to announce their upcoming reality show, Last Family on Earth, in which several families of convinced survivalists will complete to win an actual underground bunker.

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Larry Richardson, from Mulvane, Kansas, spent 11 years building a 150-foot replica of the Golden Gate Bridge, out of 90 tons of concrete and lots of salvaged materials.

War veteran Larry Richardson has had only two great loves in his life, his wife Barbara and the Golden Gate Bridge, which he has dreamed of visiting since he was a senior at Derby High School, in 1967. “I proposed to Barbara over the phone after we’d had one date,” Larry told the Derby Informer. “I was a senior in high school and she was a sophomore. I don’t think she believed I was serious.” But he also told her to wait until he got a chance to see the Golden Gate Bridge he was so  fascinated by. It didn’t take very long, as he drove over the great American landmark in February of 1968, on his way to Vietnam, for a tour duty. It was dark outside, and although he had fulfilled his dream of seeing it in person, he remembers wishing he got a chance to walk on it for a bit and admiring all the details.

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Tucked away into a small inland hollow, right in the middle of a meadow, Playa de Gulpiyuri is one of the most amazing beaches in the world.

We’ve certainly featured some unique places here, on Oddity Central, and even a few incredible beaches, like the hot water beach of New Zealand or California’s glass beach, but none like the beach of Gulpiyuri. Located near the charming town of Llanes, on the northern coast of Spain, Gulpiyuri Beach is unlike anything I have ever seen, or even imagined existed outside of fantasy books or fictional planets. Imagine walking over 100 meters from the sea shoreline and stumbling over a small charming beach right in the middle of a green meadow. And while you may find other beaches completely hidden from the open sea, around the world, this one is actually fully tidal and even has waves bathing the small strip of golden sand.

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If you’re looking for answers to questions like “what kind of men are women looking for?”, or if you want to learn how to strike up a conversation with an attractive woman, the Babe Master school in Tel Aviv, Israel, will teach you everything you need to know.

And who better to teach you how to pick up women, than an actual woman, right? Sharon Rubinstein inaugurated the Babe Master school, after her book, “What She Wants”, proved a big hit among Israeli men. Readers kept emailing her with more questions about how to get women interested in them, and she realized the book just wasn’t enough. “It’s like learning swimming from a book! Same idea!” she thought, and made the decision to create a practical course for men who wanted to learn the secrets of becoming babe magnets. Sharon created the Babe Master website, men started applying for her courses, and the rest is history…

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In her 2007 self-portrait series, Booty, Julie Heffernan painted herself dressed in creepy dresses made from dead animal carcasses.

David Cohen, art critic of The New York Sun, describes Julie Heffernan’s paintings as “a hybrid of genres and styles, mixing allegory, portraiture, history painting, and still life, while in title they are all presented as self portraits.” The American painter uses self-portraits and a mix of history, art and high fashion to offer the viewer a wealth of visual entertainment. But her 2007 series, called Booty, is by far the most intriguing. In this colorful collection of portraits, the artist presents herself draped in pompous dresses made of dead animal carcasses, flowers and fruits. Like Heffernan’s other art series, these bizarre-yet-beautiful paintings are a constant dilemma between the gorgeous and the grotesque, attraction and repulsion.

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Bruce Campbell, a 62-year-old self-confessed nerd from Oregon, USA, has spent the last 10 years converting a 727-200 passenger jet into his dream home.

We’ve seen airplanes converted into living space before, like the 747 jumbo jet hostel in Stockholm, or the Boeing 707 plane hotel of Costa Rica, but Bruce Campbell’s work is the most impressive we’ve ever seen, because he did it all by himself.  The Building Services & Environmental Engineer bought the old 727-200 plane for $100,000 and spent at least another $100,000 on logistics costs like having it moved from the airport to his home, and temporarily removing the wings and tail. On AirplaneHome.com, the website dedicated to his ambitious project, Campell says planes like his aren’t that expensive nowadays, and costs can be significantly lowered if you work on the project during the summer, instead of a La Nina hurricane winter, like he did.

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Like many other animal lovers, Dutch artist Bart Jansen found it hard to part with his pet cat, Orville, after he was hit by a car. So he decided to turn the dead feline into a unique piece of artwork called the Orvillecopter.

Jansen named his beloved pet after the famous aviator Orville Wright, so I guess it makes perfect sense that he decided to turn the cat into a remote-controlled helicopter. After having the Orville stuffed by a taxidermist, the artist teamed up with radio-controlled helicopter expert Arjen Beltman to make the cat fly for the first time. Beltman designed a custom mechanism and attached it to the stuffed cat to create a truly bizarre flying machine called the Orvillecopter. Bart Jansen unveiled his unique creation on Saturday, at  the Kunstrai art festival in Amsterdam, and described it as half cat, half machine.

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Trisha Paytas is a blonde lingerie model from Los Angeles who has recently made headlines after being featured on TLC’s show My Strange Addiction for her unhealthy obsession with tanning.

Lots of girls out there put their health on the line every time they lay on a tanning bed, but Trisha Paytas takes artificial tanning to a whole other level. She’s been visiting tanning salons almost every day, sometimes twice a day, ever since she was 14 years old. The bubbly blonde, 24, says she has so far spent over $52,000 on keeping her skin tone dark, and doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. She is fully aware of the risks she takes every time she goes into a tanning salon, but says she’d rather look good dead and tanned than pale and alive. Way to think positive…

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