To mark the 70th anniversary of The Battle of Britain, farmer Tom Percy created a giant maze, shaped like a Spitfire fighter plane.

Tom Percy has made a name for himself, after creating a series of incredible corn field mazes, just outside Yorkshire town, in Britain. In previous years, he designed mazes shaped as an astronaut, the Statue of Liberty, the Flying Scotsman, Big Ben and a Viking longship. This year, he really outdid himself, creating one of the biggest mazes in the world, the size of 8 football fields.

Using GPS technology, Tom completed his giant Spitfire plane in just one week. And what’s even more amazing is that he managed to create an intricate maze, from over one million corn plants, inside the shape of the fighter plane.

Measuring over 1,000 feet in length, Tom Percy’s maze is the largest image of the famous World War 2 fighter.

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A hybrid of football and table tennis, headis is a fun, easy-to-play sport that’s becoming more and more popular with each passing day.

As you probably already guessed, headis is pretty similar to table tennis, only you have to hit the ball with your head. All you need to play headis is a regular tennis table and a special rubber ball with special bouncing properties, and that is probably the main reason why the sport is played by more people every day.

Headis was invented in 2006, by René Wegner, a sports science student at the University of Saarbruecker, in Germany. Because the football field was occupied, Wegner started hitting a football back and forth on a tennis table, with a fellow student. That’s when he got the idea for a new sport that soon spread throughout Germany.

While it may seem very similar to table tennis, headis is actually more comparable to badminton. Since players have to get behind and underneath the ball, they workout all parts of the body, at all times.

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Ziggy, a fluffy Pekingese dog, has taken the art world by storm, ever since his owner discovered his incredible talent for abstract painting.

Elizabeth Moncelli says her beloved Ziggy took up painting soon after he was old enough to hold a brush  between his teeth. Seeing he had a soft  spot for the arts, she encouraged him to use a brush, by attaching it to a paper roller which the dog bites on. Ziggy’s abstract paintings aren’t praised only by his owner, but also by her neighbors in Fallbrook, California, who spend up to $250 for one of his masterpieces.

But like all artists, Ziggy is pretty moody. He only picks up the brush when he is in the right frame of mind, and even then, he only paints for two minutes at most. These short bursts of artistic inspiration apparently take all the dog’s energy, so he usually takes a nap or starts looking for snacks after every painting session. That’s why Ziggy takes days, sometimes weeks to finish one of his paintings.

One of the most talented painters of the animal kingdom, Ziggy the Pekingese is an established artist.

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A real Super Mario fan spent months collecting plastic bottle caps in order to build a pixelated portrait of the lovely Princess Peach.

After saving her from the clutches of the evil dragon, several times, Instructables user skeplin decided to create a tribute to Princess Peach. With the help of his family, he managed to collect around 1,000 plastic bottle caps, in a few months time. His children were in charge of washing them, while skeplin prepared the 26 colors needed to complete the project.

He used a little bit of Perl and ImageMagick to figure out all the colors, then hand-painted every bottle cap using a dowel rod. Once that was done, he set and glued the bottle caps in place, on a 28×35 grid, and completed a lovely pixelated portrait of Princess Peach that now hangs proudly in his home.

It all sounds easy enough, but once youc check out all the steps, on Instructables, you’ll think twince before having a go at it, yourself. Video at the bottom.

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Xia Yu, a man who really believes in the concept of recycling, has built a functional boat out of 2,010 plastic bottles.

The 37-year-old boat builder gathered all the plastic bottles at a tea-house he manages in Xiangtan, central Hunan Province, China. Every time a customer left behind a plastic bottle, he just added it to his supply, until he got the number he needed to start construction on his boat.

This is not Xia Yu’s first plastic bottle boat. Last year, he built hos first one out of 1,500 plastic bottles and sailed 35 miles in it. This experience gave him the confidence to built a second, larger boat, to sail in all the way to Shanghai, for the World Expo. His second creation is seven meters long, features 5 sails ( the tallest of which las a special message that reads “Low carbon emission, beautiful world”) and has room for a six man crew.

Although when he began his journey to the Shanghai World Expo, in May, he expected it to last only 45 days, Xia Yu only arrived at the event on September 15, after sailing over 1,000 miles. He hopes his achievement will raise awareness to the environmental problems afecting our lives every day.

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Eco-pioneer Richard “Rishi” Sowa designed and built an artificial island kept afloat by 100,000 plastic bottles.

Spiral Island II is actually Rishi Sowa’s second artificial island. He built the first one in 1998, near Puerto Aventuras, using 250,000 plastic bottles to keep it afloat. Sadly, his recycled island was destroyed in 2005, when Hurricane Emily passed through the area. Most of Spiral Island was washed up on the beach, but Sowa decided to build a whole new island, in a safer area.

And that’s how Spiral Island II came to be. With the help of volunteers, Rishi Sowa gathered around 100,000 plastic bottles and hand-built his second recycled island, in a lagoon that offers protection from bad weather. The new island features a house, beaches, 2 ponds and a solar-powered waterfall, but its creator says Spiral Island II is and always will be an eco-work-in-progress. Although smaller than its predecessor (only 20 meters in diameter), you can expect the new Spiral Island to increase in size, significantly.

One of the most impressive DIY projects ever attempted, Spiral Island has inspired volunteers to come to Mexico and help Rishi Sowa improve his creation. But while some believe it a perfect environmental design, built entirely of recycled materials, there is some controversy surrounding Spiral Island. There are those who believe that if the island gets destroyed by a hurricane, again, the materials used to build it (mainly plastic bottles, sand, mangrove plants) will litter the waters of the Atlantic.

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I don’t know no one has ever thought about making a desk out of recycled books, before, but having one in a library seems natural enough. The lovely book desk you see below is located in the TU Delft architecture bibliotheek, which is a library in the Dutch city of Delft. Made of what looks like thousands of recycled books, this incredible looking desk stays true to its origins as well as its purpose.

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Hundreds of odd sports fans gathered in Minsk, Belarus, for the 8th edition of the country’s Cell-phone Throwing Championship.

It may not be the only competition of its kind in the world, but the phone throwing championship of Belarus is definitely the most important, at least for Belorussians. They take so much interest in this wacky event that they actually film and televise it.

The 8th edition of the Cell-phone Throwing Championship took place last Saturday, and consisted of several phone throwing events, including long distance throwing and precision tossing, where contestants had to throw their mobile devices into plastic buckets. Throwers received scores from a group of judges, and although prizes were not revealed, I’m pretty sure winners got a new phone.

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I love fat, deep fried food just as much as everyone else, but deep fried macaroni and cheese, or Twinkies? Why not!

The Park Slope Chip Shop, a Brooklin take-away restaurant ran by a British couple, has made a name for itself by promising to deep fry anything you want. The restaurant opened back in 2001, when its owners, Chris Sell and Suzanne Hackett, missed their native British delicacies, and decided to introduce New York to good ol’ English batter. The deep frying madness began at a restaurant staff party, where they deep fried a Mars bar. It was delicious, so they tried the process with other foods, and added them to the menu.

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It’s not everyday that you get to see a six-months-old girl playing with full frown pythons, but for Sidhi Siddharth Sinune this kind of snakes are everyday toys.

Because he can’t afford to buy his young daughter any toys, Sidhi’s farmer father, who tries to make ends meet as a snake catcher, admits he brings the dangerous reptiles home and lets her play with them. So while he and his wife are working in the fields, Sidhi spends her days in the lovely company of a creature that could kill her by constriction, or by swallowing her whole.

Sidhi’s father says she develops an unusual bond with the snakes, and that the reptiles love to play with her just as much as she loves playing with them. They let her squeeze them and even bithe on their tails with her gums .

While I completely understand how costly children’s toys can be, couldn’t this man carve or make something for his young daughter, instead of leaving her with a deadly python? Read More »

Mark Malkoff, a comedian and filmmaker from New York City, decided to spend five days in his tiny bathroom, as a sort of detox from Internet addiction.

Just like many other New-Yorkers, Mark spent most of his day online, browsing and checking his Twitter and Facebook pages, every other minute. He confesses he would sometimes be online from the moment he woke up until he went to sleep, and that interfered with pretty much all other aspects of his life. His addiction got so bad that he would excuse himself just to go to the bathroom and check his online accounts, when going on dates with his wife.

But unlike most people in his situation, the Queens-based comedian decided to do something about it, and since his bathroom was the only place he could think of where he wouldn’t have any distractions or temptation, he set his goal on spending five days in there. It might not seem like such a big deal, but Mark Malkoff‘s bathroom is smaller than an Alcatraz jail cell, and it’s pink…

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Wang Luyao, a junior student at the Commercial Service College in Wuhan, has built a perfectly functional boat out of sheets of paper.

In an attempt to raise awareness about recycling, and green living in general, Wang used his paper boat to cross from one side of the Hanjiang River to the other. Escorted by two normal canoes, the young student jumped in his paper boat and rowed the 800-meter distance in just seven minutes, proving that boats made of recycled paper really are an environment-friendly solution.

Wang Luyao’s paper boat is 1.9 meters long, 1.2 meters wide, weighs 45 kg, and is made out of raw sheets of paper that the young student collected, himself.

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Every March, the Wat Bang Phra temple of Nakhom Pathom, Thailand, becomes the scene of a weird celebration, known as  the Wat Bang Phra Tattoo Festival.

While in most western countries tattoos are viewed as an art form, in Thailand, a country with a culture deeply rooted in superstition and spirituality, tattoos are considered more than just skin deep artworks. The traditional Thai tattoos, known as “Sak Yant”, are believed to have magical powers, and people get them done at temples, for protection against evil spirits, and as good luck charms. Many members of Thai police, army, and the underworld think some tattoos have the power to stop bullets and blades from piercing their skin.

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Norway, like all Scandinavian countries, has always taken pride in trying to live in harmony with nature, instead of conquering it, and its old turf roofs are a perfect example.

Houses with their roofs looking like small meadows may seem a little strange in these modern times, but until the late 19th century, turf roofs were the most common type of roofs in rural Norway. Nowadays, inhabited turf-roof houses are very rare, as the Norwegians have turned most of them into museum exhibits.

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To most South-Africans they are known as the “Black Death, but to 13-year-old Luke Michaelides, two wild African Buffalos have become his best friends.

The African Buffalo is one of the “big five” African species credited with killing over 200 people every year, in South Africa alone. Some specimens grow up to 6 feet tall and 11 feet long, and can weigh up to 1,350 kg. They can easily rip apart a full grown man, let alone a 13-year-old, but that hasn’t stop Luke from becoming friends with “Hop-a-long” and her offspring “Skip-a-long”.

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