Student Wears Jeans for 15 Months without Washing Them

Josh Le, a student at the University of Alberta, wore a pair of skin-tight jeans from September 2009 to December 2010, without washing them, just to see how much bacteria would build-up on them

The pair of jeans in question was actually made of raw denim, which isn’t treated with any chemicals, so Le thought they would make a perfect home for bacteria, in the course of 15 months. He declared he wore them almost every day, which is pretty amazing, considering that apart from a few wear marks, they looked pretty clean.

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Former Milkman Builds His Own Milk Bottle Museum

33-year-old Paul Luke, a retired milkman from Essex, England, was forced to build a mini museum for his impressive collection of over 10,000 milk bottles.

Paul collected his first milk bottle in 1987, when he was just nine years old, but as times went by, his passion got out of hand, and he is now the proud owner of 10,000 milk bottles, with the oldest ones dating back to the 1890s. His parents encouraged him to pursue his hobby, because they thought it kept him busy and out of trouble, and he actually started his collection on his parents’ window sill.

In the meantime, he has had to build a miniature museum in his back garden, because his house simply wasn’t big enough for his collection, anymore. All of his milk bottles are either embossed or pyroglazed by a milk company and some of them are the only ones left in existence, which makes Paul Luke think of his collection as a record of the milk industry.

The unique bottles in Paul’s collection, from companies that went out of business decades ago, certainly have financial value, but the dedicated milkman never thought about its monetary value. He is still actively collecting milk bottles.

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Knokkers – Combining Pool and Bowling in One New Sport

Played on a table four times the size of a regular pool table, Knokkers is a new sport that combines elements from both billiards and bowling.

Back in 1985, Steve Wienecke, from Fredericktown, Missouri, was playing in a local pool league, and one day he got it in his head that it would be great to actually play on the table. The former semi-pro football player and cage fighter, currently working as a parole and probation assistant is also an inventor in his spare time, so once the idea was born in his head, it was bound to become reality. His other inventions were deemed unoriginal, but he knew no one had ever built a giant pool table like the one he had in mind.

The idea for his Knokkers table lingered in his head for quite a while, but Steve finally started working on it in 2008. His wife originally thought he was crazy, but seeing his idea take shape, she began encouraging him to realize his dream. Local businesses provided the materials our inventor needed (38 railroad ties, five truckloads of gravel, and 4. 1/4 yards of concrete) and after 200 hours of hard labor, his Knokkers table was complete. “It’s exactly like a regulations pool table, only everything is scaled up four times.Even the dimensions of the pockets are the same, just a lot bigger.” said Steve Wienecke.

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Nonseum – A Museum for Inventions That Nobody Needs

Nonseum is a quirky museum for crazy ideas and inventions that no one could really find a use for in real life.

Located in the small village of  Herrnbaumgarten, about an hour’s drive from Vienna, and close to the Czech border, Nonseum is one of the wackiest tourist destinations in Europe. It was created in 1983, by Fritz Gall and Friedl Umscheid, two locals who decided to offer a home to exotic inventions that never really took off. The idea came to them one day, while they were enjoying some beers, and saw a waitress turn over a stained table cloth, thus reusing it. That’s when they realized everything, no matter how crappy it is, deserves a second chance. They established the Nonseum – a museum for useless inventions – in a local building and started searching for exhibits.

Now, the Nonmuseum has hundreds of useless items on display, and has just celebrated its 100,000th visitor. Among the many eccentric inventions of this unusual museum, you can find a Portable Anonymizer that’s supposed to keep your identity a secret in real life, a foldable  snow sled, a guillotine for finger nails, and even a Champagne Cork Catcher – a device that keeps the cork from flying away when you pop open the bottle.

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Tottori Sand Dunes – Japan’s Unique Desert Formation

Many people will tell you there are no deserts in Japan, but while the Tottori Sand Dunes may not be the size of the Sahara, they sure look a lot like a desert to me.

The reason most people don’t refer to the Tottori Sand Dunes as a desert has to do with the amount of rainfall in the area. Japan is known for its humidity and rain, and although summer temperatures in the sand dunes exceeds 60 degrees Celsius, t gets far too much rain to qualify as a real desert. Regardless of their technical classification, the Tottori Sand Dunes are one of the strangest sights in Japan, and one of its most popular tourist attractions.

Stretching along the coast east of Tottori City, in the Tottori Prefecture, the Tottori Sand Dunes measure 2 kilometers from North to South and around 16 kilometers from East to West. They have existed for over 100,000 years, and research suggests they were formed from  the sediments brought down from the Chukogu Mountains by the Sendai River, collected by the ocean currents and prevailing winds off the Sea of Japan.

The highest of the Tottori Sand Dunes measure around 90 meters high, and thanks to the frequent rains,they have slopes of up to 40 degrees steep, making them a favorite destinations for sand boarding enthusiasts. The best time to visit this odd place is early in the morning, before other groups of tourists have a chance to trample over the sand ripples, but moonlight walks across the dunes is also an unforgettable experience. During the summer afternoons, the exposed sand reaches temperatures of up to 65 degrees Celsius, which makes barefoot walking quite pleasant.

The Tottori Sand Dunes are not the only strange sand dunes in the world. The Dune of Pyla, in France is actually surrounded by acres of green forest.

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Vietnamese Artist Turns Recycled Timber into Intricate Mosaics

Nguyen Van Vien is a talented artist who collects all kinds of discarded piece of timber and uses them to create incredibly beautiful wooden mosaics.

The Vietnamese village of Khuc Toai has long been famous for its traditional carpentry, but a local artist is taking things to a whole new level with his original painting-like mosaics made from various types of recycled wood. Born in 1957, Nguyen Van Vien has always had a passion for the arts, and at age 19 he left his home village to study at the Indochina College of Fine Arts, in Hanoi. But it was a very difficult period for the Vietnamese, so after just two years of school, he had to return home and support his family. He turned to traditional carpentry, which barely earned him enough to put food on the table, but everything was about to change for the better.

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New Sega Toylet Lets You Play with Your Pee

The SEGA Corporation has released a wacky toilet prototype, called SEGA Toylet, that lets you play video games with your urine stream. Just when you thought Japanese toilets couldn’t get any weirder, right?

Since the conventional gaming industry is getting pretty crowded these days, Japanese video gaming giant decided to try its luck in a whole new, untapped niche – toilet gaming. It actually isn’t s stupid as it sounds; whether they try to clean the toilet bowl with their stream, or aim it at a certain point, for some reason guys can’t help play with their urine stream, so why not capitalize on that?

The SEGA Toylet features a pressure sensor strategically placed in the public urinal, and a small display that shows the data from the sensor in the form of video games. So far, SEGA has come up with four games for their toilet entertainment system:

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The Photo-Like Ballpoint Pen Drawings of Juan Francisco Casas

They might look like sharp photographs of ordinary people, but the images below are actually ballpoint pen drawings created by artist Juan Francisco Casas.

34-year-old Casas, from Spain, was originally a traditional painter,but started experimenting with the ballpoint pen as a joke, just to see if he could draw something so realistic people would think it’s a photo. It all started six years ago, when he began reproducing photos of nights out with his friends, and he liked it so much that he never gave it up. The joke eventually turned into a quest to show that “it’s not about what material you use, it’s what you do with it.”

In 2004, Juan Francisco Casas submitted one of his ballpoint pen drawings to a national art competition, in Spain. He thought the judges would probably treat it as a joke, seeing most of the entries were actual oil paintings, but he won second place, and things just starting moving from there. Now he’s a well known artist who exhibits his works in galleries around the world and sells them for thousands of euros, each.

His amazing works, measuring up to 10 feet high, take up to 14 ballpoint pens and up to two weeks to complete, but the final result is absolutely mind blowing. The only drawback of the ballpoint pen is that errors can’t easily be erased, so Juan tries to be extremely careful, especially towards the final stages of the drawing process.

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Rat Loving Couple Has 27 Rodent Pets

Most people see rats as filthy pests that inspire disgust and fear, but for Kevin and Kate Rattray, they are just cute furry pets that make their lives better.

Members of the Yorkshire Rat Club, these two Brits really have a thing for rats,and say they are among the most intelligent and interactive pets a person could have. Kate had her first pet rats while she was still in university, but Kevin grew up on the farm, where rats were looked upon as vermin which had to be exterminated. But right after they adopted their first rat, in 2006, his opinion changed radically and he’s now quite fond of his brood.

Kevin and Kate say they’ve never had that parental instinct for kids, a gap successfully filled by the 27 rats they have to take care of, every day. Even their friends have learned to accept the furry pets, and some of them even play with them when they visit.

The Rattray rat loving couple will soon be featured on Channel 4, in the documentary “First Cut”, which explores their unique household, and their unusual relationship with 27 rat pets.

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Man Takes-On Ridiculously Long Name, Simply Because He Could

Barnaby Marmaduke Aloysius Benjy Cobweb Dartagnan Egbert Felix Gaspar Humbert Ignatius Jayden Kasper Leroy Maximilian Neddy Obiajulu Pepin Quilliam Rosencrantz Sexton Teddy Upwood Vivatma Wayland Xylon Yardley Zachary Usansky – this is the soon-to-be world’s longest name, 197-letters-long.

36-year-old Barnaby Usansky, an unemployed Brit from Edinburgh, Scotland, says he has always been fascinated with words and old traditional names, and since the law doesn’t forbid it, he decided to take on all his favorite names. One of which, believe it or not, is Marmaduke. But his attention-grabbing scheme failed to impress most of his friends and acquaintances, who insist on calling him by his old name, Nick. “Everybody ignores my new name. They insist on calling me Nick, which isn’t one of my names any more.” states Barnaby.

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Leao – The Dog Who Refuses to Leave His Owner’s Graveside

A photo of a Brazilian dog siting by his owner’s muddy grave, near Rio de Janeiro, has been circulating around the Internet and touching the hearts of millions. His name is Leao and simply refuses to leave the graveside of his owner Cristina Maria Cesario Santana, who died during the terrible landslides that devastated Brazil, last week. The photos below were taken during the second consecutive day in which Leao sat by his owner’s final resting place, and showing the entire world that loyalty goes way beyond the grave.

These photos of Leao remind me of the true story of Hachiko, another monument of canine loyalty that has inspired Japanese dog lovers for years.

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The Broken Vinyl Portraits of Mr. Brainwash

French street-artist Thierry Guetta, also known as Mr. Brainwash, has created a series of portraits of international pop icons, out of broken vinyls and CDs.

Mr. Brainwash, rumored to be friends with legendary street artist Banksy, has probably smashed thousands of old vinyls into pieces, to create the artworks for his latest collection, entitled “Icons”. Though they all look like they’ve been drawn with a stencil, each of them is made exclusively out of broken pieces of vinyl and CDs. The intricate facial expressions were achieved by using quarter inch vinyl cuts, while chiseled CDs were used to reproduce the shine of sunglasses.

“I had to find something that nobody in the world of art had done. I wanted to take singers that spent their whole lives singing for us and make them live forever with what they sold.” Mr. Brainwash said about his incredible vinyl portraits.

His unique portrait of Jim Morrison reportedly sold for $100,000, and others had a price tag of three times that much.

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Artist Recreates Da Vinci’s Last Supper Out of Laundry Lint

Michigan-based artist Laura Bell has created a unique replica of Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, exclusively out of colored laundry lint. The fluffy masterpiece measures 14 feet long by 4 feet tall.

The amateur artist from Roscommon, Michigan, was inspired to create this amazing artwork 10 years ago, when she saw a laundry lint portrait at the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Wisconsin Dells Odditorium. In 2009, encouraged by her husband, Laura began working on her one-of-kind replica of The Last Supper, for the 2010 Art Prize competition, held in Grand Rapids.

As you can imagine, making a painting from laundry lint couldn’t have been easy. Laura Bell spent seven months just collecting the laundry lint she needed for her special project. The lint she collected from her own dryer was always the same color, so she tried laundramat lint, but that always had shades of gray. Eventually, she ended up buying different color towels and washing and drying them separately, to get just the right colors for her masterpiece.

Laura estimates she spent 700-800 hours just doing laundry to collect the needed material, plus another 200 hours putting it together in her unusual replica of The Last Supper. The artist says most people who see it are amazed it was created out of basic laundry lint that hasn’t been colored or dyed, while for some, seeing such a unique work of art is a spiritual experience.

Laura Bell’s The Last Supper made from lint was recently acquired by Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, and will soon find its place in one of the company’s 32 odditoriums around the world.

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World’s Longest Ski Hat Is 700-Feet-Long

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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Anger Release ATM Is the Latest in Anger Management

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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