I always thought celebrating New Year’s was all about fun. How can bathing in ice-cold water be considered and enjoyable experience…unless you’re a seal or a penguin?

About 6,500 Dutch gathered on Scheveningen Beach, in The Hague, for a quick splash in the waves, to celebrate the coming of a new year. Both young and old, most of the crazy swimmers said they do this kind of thing for kicks, because being normal is simply too boring. I agree with that, but swimming in water with a temperature of just 6 degrees Celsius? No thanks, I think I’d rather jump out of an airplane.

via Prikola

Often shortened to El Camino del Rey, this dangerous walkway has claimed many lives in recent years.

El Caminito del Rey was built in 1901 as a connection between the power plants of Chorro Falls and Gaitanejo Falls. It took four years to finish and in 1905 Alfonso XIII, King of Spain, crossed the walkway for the inauguration, thus giving it its name, The King’s Walkway.

Built along the steep walls of a narrow gorge, in the Malaga region, El Caminito del Rey has deteriorated severely in the last years and after four people died crossing it, in 1999 and 2000, the authorities decided to close it off to tourists. It’s only 1 meter wide and it stands 300 meters above the river floating in the area. Onlly a small part of the walkway has handrails and much of the concrete  walkway has collapsed, leaving only the steel beam that originally held it up.

Despite the efforts to keep tourists away from El Caminito del Rey, many still sneak past security in search of adrenalin-induced thrills. In 2006, the regional government of Andalusia approved a restoration plan of 7 million euro.

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Starting this January, the Arlanda Airport, in Stockholm, Sweden, has become home to the world’s first plane-hotel.

The idea of creating a hotel in an old 747 jumbo-jet belongs to Oscar Dios, a 36-years-old businessman that hopes the outrageous location will draw in lots of clients. The plane had been abandoned for six years, after flying for Singapore Airlines, PanAm and the Swedish leasing company Transjet, ever since 1976.

Since it was taking up a lot of space, something had to be done about it, so Dios’ idea was accepted immediately. The Jumbo Hostel can accomodate 74 people, at the moment, in 25 simple, 70’s style rooms. The jet’s upper deck has been transformed into a conference hall, while the cockpit has been converted into a wedding chappel.

The Jumbo Hostel already has 200 reservations.

No, electronics are not recycled the same way as ordinary trash. Electronics have their own graveyard, and it’s called Guiyu.

Guiyu is a town in China that is known as the largest electronic waste site on the planet. One million tons of electronics waste are shipped here every year, mostly from North America, Japan and South Korea. Since 1995, Guiyu has been attracting peasants from the area to work as electronics processors. They only receive about $1,50 for a sixteen hours work-day collecting valuable metals and usable parts from broken devices.

Guiyu is a very dangerous work environment, with some of the highest levels of dioxin ever recorded. The soil is saturated with led and other heavy metals while the water from the area is undrinkable. People that visit Guiyu experience strange headaches and metallic taste in their mouths.

Despite this, Guiyu’s electronic waste business is very profitable,  each year producing more than$75 million.

Silkworms are extraordinary creatures that play a huge economic role in the world of man.

If you didn’t know the silkworm is the only completely domesticated insect in the world, which means it can not survive naturally in the wild.They are bread for their precious cocoon, that is processed into the precious material we know as silk.

Silkworms are only fed mulberry tree leaves, on which they nibble non-stop, day and night. This causes them to grow incredibly fast and start creating their precious cocoon. That is made out of a continuous silk thread between 300m and 900 m long.

Koreans appreciate the silkworm as a delicacy as they are a great source of protein and after they die they become infected with Beauveria bassiana fungus, which is used in Chinese traditional medicine.

Impressive food-art that makes you want to play with your food.

Fruit and vegetables can become real works o art in the hands of a person with imagination and the pics below are proof of that.

The GAZ-13 Chaika is an old, rare Soviet limousine with a sinister history.

GAZ -13 Chaika is clear proof the soviets had class when it came to building luxury vehicles and its design is appreciated by collectors in modern days. Only 3,719 Chaika limousines were ever built so they are prized treasures for auto enthusiasts, but for the Russians who remember the days of the comunist regime, they are just a dark memory.

Soviet leaders loved the GAZ-13 Chaika and so did the senior KGB officers of the 60s and 70s, but for average Russians the Chaika was just a symbol of the power the Comunist Party had over them. The large rear seat of the GAZ-13 Chaika made it easy for KGB operatives to simply drive by “suspicious” citizens and pull them inside.

Very few GAZ-13 Chaika are around today, since Russian policy had them destrtoyed after they completed their duty cycle.

“The Sculpture imitates the natural landscape of the adjacent London Plane Trees, while the changing pattern of the lights reveals and reflect the never ending rhythm of the surrounding domestic, financial and commercial activities” This  is how artist Pierre Vivant described his work of art, when he completed it in 1998.

The Traffic Light Tree can be found on the traffic control roundabout, at the junctions of Heron Quay Bank, Marsh Wall and Wesferry Road.

Barbie dolls may be forever young, but the real-life Barbie ages just like every one of us.

The woman you see in the photos is Angelyne, a local pseudo-celebrity in Los Angeles and Hollywood, who compares herself to the famous Barbie. She started gaining notoriety when a series of billboards featuring her started popping up around Los Angeles, in the early 80s. She made an appearence on television, during that time, on an Alan Thicke show, but since then her bilboards got more coverage than she has.

Angelyne drives a pink Corvette with the shortened “ANGLYNE” license plates and has a pink maltese named Buddha. Though it was believed a wealthy husband pays for all the Angelyne billboards around LA, Angelyne, who is single, credits “investors: for financing her advertising.

Angelyne once had a billboard that said “Barbie wishes she were me”. I bet it’s the other way around now.

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Mustaches are very popular in Hindu countries like India and I’m not talking the kind of “childish” mustache Brad Pit recently grew, but serious muffs you can wrap around your fingers. I wonder how these guys drink milk and yoghurt.

The world is getting weirder and weirder each year. After hail fell in Africa a few months ago, now it snowed in Las Vegas for the first time ever. We’re talking about the Nevada Desert here, snow isn’t supposed to fall in the desert. But, as you can see from the photos the impossible just became possible. I wonder what’s next, the ice cap will start to melt? Oh…wait…

The artists that gather every year, in the Chinese city of Harbin, to create icy masterpieces, have really outdone themselves in 2008. For the 25th edition of the Harbin Ice and Snow Sculpting Festival, over 2,000 ice sculputures were revealed to the audience, spread-out over a surface of over 400 square meters.

Over 140 thousand cubic meters of ice and over 100 cubic meters of snow were used to create the freezing works of art.

Now here’s something you don’t see very often in a cemetery, a naked woman. And she’s sculpted on top of somebody’s grave too. Nice piece of artwork and the perfect company for the afterlife if you ask me. When I go, that’s exactly the grave stone I want.

Doctors can’t really explain why jessica Cox was born with no hands. None of the prenatal tests her mother took showed there was anything wrong with her. And yet she was born with this rare congenital disease, but also with a great spirit.

Jessica started using her legs for things most of us can only do with our hands, from a very young age. She learned how to eat, how to write and throughout her childhood she got involved in activities like dancing, swimming and gymnastics. She took up tae-kwan-do at the age of 10 and she got her black belt at 14. She has a no-restrictions driving license, she flies planes and she can type 25 words a minute.

Jessica Cox is certainly not to be pitied, if something she should be envyed because she has done some things many of us will probably never do, and she did it with no hands.

Impossible is nothing!

I love that motto and it fits Aaron Fotheringham perfectly. He’s a 17-year old Extreme wheelchair athlete, competing against BMX riders in skate-park competitions. Fotheringham suffers from Spida Bifida and has been spending his life in a wheelchair since the age of 8. As a young kid he used to watch his brother ride his BMX at the skate-park and one day he took his advice and started riding in his wheelchair. He loved it so much he never stopped since. He got a new, lighter wheelchair, with four-wheel suspension that allowed him to perform most of the tricks BMX riders perform.

In 2006 Aaron Fotheringham ranked forth in a BMX competition in Sunny Springs Skate Park. He has suffered many injuries while practicing his tricks although he first tries them out on cushions and on hard plastic sheets before performing them on skateboard ramps.

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