At 37 meters tall, the Excalibur Tower is the tallest free-standing climbing wall in the world. A part of the Bjoeks climbing center, in the Dutch city of Groningen, Excalibur is the tallest thing for miles, offering a memorable panorama to climbers who manage to reach the top.

You’ll probably find considerably higher climbing walls set up on the side of buildings, bridges and dams, but as far as free-standing climbing walls go, Excalibur is the tallest, beating the Texas Stone Works wall by just a few inches. The 37-meter-high tower has an overhang of 36 feet, and is ideal for both beginner climbers and experts who will find themselves literally hanging in the air, due to the tower’s curvy shape.

According to both creators of the tower and climbers who have actually made it all the way to the top, the views from up there can prove a bit too much intimidating, considering the Netherlands aren’t known for their mountainous landscape, which makes the Excalibur the tallest thing as far as the eye can see.

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After carefully folding it on the banks of the Thames, artist Frank Bölter jumped into his origami boat and sailed it under the surprised gazes of passers-by.

Named “To The World’s End”, Frank Bölter’s paper boat was part of the Drift 10 art exhibition, in London. It was created out of giant sheets of paper that he and the public at the Canary Wharf Docks folded, using origami techniques. Reinforced with metal poles, the unusual sailing craft didn’t seem to sink, and its creator was so relaxed that he laid back and read a newspaper, while the public stared at him in awe.

This is not Frank Bölter first strange boat. In 2007, he put together a boat out of Tetrapack (the aluminum plated cardboard that milk cartons are made of) and sailed in it around Lauenburg harbour, in Germany. Just like “To The World’s End”, it was folded using origami techniques.

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A team of five LEGO enthusiasts have spent half a year working on an awesome map of Europe made of LEGO bricks.

The idea of building a large-scale LEGO map of Europe was first brought up in 2009, at a LEGO Fan Weekend event, and after months of careful planning, Vanessa Graf, Tanja Kusserow-Kurth, Torsten Scheer, Bruno Kurth and Tobias Reichling decided to actually start working on it. They began laying the first bricks in April 2010, and with the help of LEGO fans from around the world, the quintet managed to complete their masterpiece in September.

The giant LEGO map of Europe numbers an impressive 53,500 bricks, covers an area of 3.84 x 3.84 and features iconic monuments from all around the Old Continent.

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A group of cash-strapped Czech students have created Crazy Cleaning, a cleaning service performed by naked boys and girls.

The economic crisis has taken its toll on everybody, and young Czech students make no exception. Strapped for cash, they’ve come up with all sorts of ideas to get their hands on some, but none as crazy as Katka Kopecka’s, who decided to recruit some of her friends and open up a nude cleaning agency. The 21-year-old founder says she had to come up with something shocking to get out of a long-term financial slump, and since most people hate to clean, but love to stare at a nice naked body, a naked cleaning service was her best choice.

Crazy Cleaning currently offers 15 naked cleaners to choose from, and customers can opt for them wearing underwear, going topless or getting completely naked. An hour of complete cleaning service costs $240 and clients can just sit comfortably and watch the naked students do all the cleaning.

Now, before any feminists decide to complain about how women are discriminated and used as pieces of meat, you should know Crazy Cleaners offers both male and female nude cleaners. While Katka Kopecka understands how some people might consider this kind of service a form of masked prostitution, she says her business has nothing to do with that. She claims Crazy Cleaners receives many calls from business people with hectic schedules, who just like to come home and relax by looking at a nice naked body cleaning the house. Read More »

Jim is just trying to make some cool pancakes for his daughter Allie, but he’s gotten so good at it that his pancakes can truly be considered edible masterpieces.

If you’re familiar with sites like Neatorama or Laughing Squid, you probably already know all about Jim and his fabulous looking pancakes, but to those of you who don’t know about him yet, all I can say is prepare to meet the sweetest dad, ever!

Inspired by his father, who used to make him all kinds of crazy looking pancakes shaped like the moon, or a light bulb, Jim decided to do the same for his adorable daughter, Allie. Along the way, he became such an expert on making cool pancakes that he opened his own blog, where he documents all his creations. While it started out as a way of entertaining a toddler, it was just a matter of time before Jim’s Pancakes got the recognition it deserved. Some of the web’s most popular sites have covered his art of pancake making, and someone better throw a book deal at him soon, because the man makes the most incredible pancakes I’ve ever seen.

Below you’ll find a selection of Jim’s most impressive pancakes, but you can just head over to his blog for his entire collection and some nice video tutorials. Oh, and scroll down to the bottom to see his little blond angel, Allie.

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Kim Do-yeon, a 21-year-old woman from South Korea, has become an overnight celebrity in her native country, after admitting to being a chocolate addict on live television.

On November 2nd, Kim Do-yeon made an appearance on a Korean TV show, where she confessed to consuming large quantities of chocolate every day. You couldn’t tell by her slim figure, but the young Korean says she has eaten over 1.2 tons of chocolate in the last six years alone. As she demonstrated in the television studio, Kim Do-yeon loves chocolate in all its forms. Whether she’s drinking it from a glass, eating it mixed with noodles or steamed rice, she just can’t get enough of it. To quench her craving for chocolate, Kim Do-yeon says she melts small pots of chocolate every day and mixes with everything she eats, even meat.

Her TV appearance scored a record audience, and chocolate addict Kim Do-yeon became a real overnight celebrity.

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Measuring twenty-six inches in length and weighing a massive 3 pounds, Vat19’s giant gummy worm is 128 times larger than the ordinary worms you love to chew on.

Gummy bears are really good, but let’s face it, there way to small, and sometimes a whole bag of them isn’t enough to satisfy your craving of gooey goodness. The guys of Vat19 realized the seriousness of this issues and decided to finally do something about it. That’s pretty much how the world’s largest gummy worm was born.

Just like its smaller brothers, this chewy behemoth has a ribbed body, a nice smiley face so you know if you’re biting on its head or tail, and comes in a variety of dual flavors. The whole thing packs about 4,000 calories, but with a shelf life of around a year, you don’t have to rush and finish it all in one go.

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German artist Ralf Schmerberg has created a bizarre-looking igloo, in the middle of Hamburg, to send a message about the country’s uncontrolled waste of energy.

Entitled “Wastefulness is the biggest source of Energy”, Schemerberg’s igloo aims to raise awareness to the amount of energy people are wasting nowadays. A huge electrical meter set up outside the igloo shows passers-by how much electrical energy the 322 old fridges would consume, and is meant to inspire them to think carefully about how much energy they are wasting every day. According to recent studies, Germany could save up to 40% of its energy, if everyday people would use electricity more efficiently.

The refrigerator igloo was sponsored by a German energy provider and will be exhibited in Hamburg’s Gänsemarkt until November 9th. The bizarre installation is 5.6 meters high and 11 meters in diameter, and was built using 322 old refrigerators and 1,718 meters of wire. On the inside, visitors can admire a funny electrical installations made up of colorful blinking lights.

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David Reynolds, from Southampton, England, has spent over 10,000 hours gluing 250,000 matchsticks into a veritable matchstick armada of 20 legendary ships.

The 51-year-old retired oil rig worker first made headlines last year, when the Guinness Book of Records acknowledged his oil rig replica as the largest matchstick model in the world, numbering 4,075,000 matchsticks. But the matchstick master didn’t sleep on his laurel after this notable success. He kept on gluing matchsticks and this year he finally completed his amazing collection of 20 famous ships, including Nelson’s HMS Victory, the Cutty Sark, Queen Mary and even the Titanic.

The creator says he was inspired by the city of Southampton and England’s seafaring history, but the fact that his father worked on board the Queen Mary, and his life at sea as an oil rig worker also had something to do with it. He considers his intricate matchstick models a tribute to the men and women who  risked their lives at sea, throughout history.

Asked if he uses official plans from museums, to get every detail right, David Reynolds said that would cost him up to 1,000 pounds for each ship, so he prefers to use whatever photos and models he can find and do his own drawings. Each ship in his matchstick armada has taken between four and seven months to complete, and cost between 300 and 400 British pounds. The entire fleet took him around 10 years to build, and he says the hardest part was recreating the anchors, lifeboats and safety robes, as they take  tremendous patience and time.

Mister Reynolds discovered the art of matchstick model making when his son bought him a kit, when he was housebound after serious surgery. It started off as a hobby, but quickly turned into a passion that continues to bring him worldwide recognition.

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30-year-old Chen Wei-yih is set to defy Asian perception of single independent women as failures, by marrying herself, on November 6.

The young Taiwanese from Taipei has been dreaming about getting married ever since she was just a little girl. Now that she’s all grown up, she’s ready to put on the traditional white dress and veil and finally tie the knot…with herself. Like many other Asian women, Chen Wei-yih focused most of her attention on her career and hasn’t been able to find a suitable partner. While other girls go as far as stripping in public to find husbands, Chen decided it’s more important to first love herself before she loves others, and asked her own hand in marriage.

The wedding ceremony is set to take place on November 6, when Chen Wei-yih will put on her wedding dress and go out for a gourmet meal with family members and 30 of her closest friends. After the wedding, Chen and her beloved self will leave on a romantic honeymoon to Autralia.

Chen-Wei-yih courage to challenge social perception in such an original way has inspired many, and her Facebook wall has been assaulted with messages of encouragement and appreciation, sent mostly by young Asian women like herself.

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Dutch artist Wieki Somers pushes the boundaries of recycling in her project “Consume or Conserve”, which plays with the idea of turning our loved ones’ ashes into everyday household items.

Instead of burying or cremating a beloved family member, wouldn’t you rather give this person a second life as a vacuum cleaner, or a toaster? This way you could cherish them forever, and they in term could feel useful by helping you with your daily chores. And would having our household items made from someone dear make us more attached to them, instead of quickly throwing them away as waste? That’s basically the idea behind Wieki Somers’ sculptures made from human ashes. Depicting weird scenes featuring toasters and dead birds, vacuum cleaners and dung beetles, and weighing scales and bees, these unusual artworks also come with a plaque stating the name and lifetime of the person they were created from.

For her human ashes sculpture series, Wieki Somers used donated remains and a 3D printer.

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Sculptor Ian Brennan has spent 5,000 hours, in the last 17 years, carving a piece of timber into a miniature replica of admiral Nelson’s famous HMS Victory.

60-year-old Brennan, from Warsash, England, only became a full-time sculptor when he was 34, but in just five years time he became a sculptor of the Royal House. That’s how he ended up doing restorative work on the real HMS Victory, for about a year. As recognition for a job well done, Ian Brennan received a piece of timber from the legendary ship, which he later decided to use as material for a small scale replica of the Victory.

While you may think centuries old wood would be easier to carve, this particular piece of timber was as hard as concrete, and Ian had to much more work into it than expected. 5,000 hours, throughout 17 years, to be exact, during which he went through several pairs of overalls and cut himself countless times. Just like the original HMS Victory, Ian’s replica features 104 guns, 37 sails, flags bearing Nelson’s inspirational signal ‘England expects every man to do his duty’, as well as 200 feet of intricate rope.

Ian Brennan knew he only had one chance at doing something like this, as he would never again get another piece of timber from the original HMS Victory, so he made sure his 47-inch replica was just perfect. His family has been very supportive throughout the 17 years of work, although I’m sure his wife Suzanne wished her husband spent more of his free time with her.

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Dieter Kapsch, a 38-year-old Austrian flight attendant has managed to collect 1,760 airplane spoons from 447 airlines.

The young flight attendant started gathering airplane spoons 13 years ago, after going on a holiday in Spain, with his sister Gunda. While they were flying towards their destination, she suggested they take one of the spoons, as it may prove useful on their vacation. After returning home, he ended up with the spoon, and every time he used it, it reminded him of his nice time in Spain. From there on he decided to collect as many airline spoons as possible, and he stayed true to his goal.

Dietrich says his family and friends have been very supportive and have added to it every time they got the opportunity. He is now the proud owner of 1,760 different airline spoons, some dating back to the 1920s and 1930s, when companies like Pan Am were still around. While some of his spoons are of unknown origin, he relies on the Internet to solve the mystery of his collectibles. Check out his Flickr stream and see if you can recognize any of the logos from his yet untraceable spoons.

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Often referred to as the “Future Water World”, the village of Sandu’ao is China’s largest community living on the sea.

Located in China’s Fujian Province, just 30 kilometers from downtown Ningde City, Sandu’ao is one of just few settlements built on water. It’s basically a huge self-sustaining floating village, where inhabitants need not set foot on dry land to ensure their survival. Making use of homemade and purchased boats, they make their living fishing and ocean farming. believe it or not Sandu’ao has its own floating postal service, convenience store, police station and even a series of restaurants.

After being devastated by aerial bombardments, during the Japanese invasion of World War 2, Sandu’ao went through a decade of rebuilding and development and is now China’s largest cultivation base of yellow croakers and various other seafood, including shellfish, shrimp and giant prawns. The sea farming is carried out in tens of thousands of cages and fishing nets that seen from a distance make a memorable sight many call “plantation on the sea”.

Just like most Chinese villages, Sandu’ao features modest houses made of wood, the only difference is they are built on sturdy pontoons made of bamboo and wood, wired to plastic barrels and pieces of PVC, to ensure buoyancy. Because in which it’s placed is completely cut off from the open sea, no waves threaten the peace of Sandu’ao and the pontoons simply sway gracefully on the calm waters.

An important source of seafood for the entire country, Sanu’ao is also becoming an increasingly popular tourist attraction for travelers eager to experience everyday life on water.

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Two die-hard Iron Man fans chose the streets of London as the best place to show off the cool homemade costumes they worked so hard to complete.

32-year-old John Bekkensten, from Norway, is an established sculptor for the movie industry, with works featured in blockbuster hits like “Gladiator”. “Braveheart”, “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” and others. But John is also a big fan of Iron Man, so apart form his official projects, he spent over a year replicating the costumes of the popular hero and his sidekick, War Machine, out of fiberglass and plastic.

John ended up wearing the much cooler War Machine costume, while his buddy got the chance to be Iron Man. Together they got on double decker buses, took picture with London guards and managed to stun pretty much everyone they passed by.

If you’re interested in cool movie props, be sure to check out John Bekkensten official site.

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