Over 900 people took part in the World’s Longest Lunch event, during the 2010 Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.

On March 12, Melbourne weather was almost perfect for the longest lunch in the world. nearly 1,000 hungry strangers gathered at a 400-meter-long table, and enjoyed several scrumptious dishes and various types of wine. The oriental theme of this unusual event included entertainment like dragon dances, martial arts and parasol dancers.

But the true unsung heroes of the 2010 World’s Longest Lunch were the servers. This disciplined fleet of swift-footed soldiers made sure everyone was served almost at the same time. And that’s no small feet.

Photos by Agencies via CCTV

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Toby Elles, a 22-year-old from Lancaster, Britain, set off to make himself a late-night snack, but got a lot more than he bargained for.

After drinking a few beers with his housemate, Toby thought some bacon would make a great snack before hitting the sack, so he put it into the frying pan, turned on the oven and lied down on the couch. An hour later, he woke up to a house filled with smoke and, worse still, burned bacon. It was a true culinary disaster that could have had dire consequences.

But after scraping the bacon off the pan, young Toby Elles learned miracles can  be born out of disasters. The face of Jesus Christ was staring back at him, from the pan! The greasy image had eyes, nose and all the distinctive features of our Lord. Toby now thinks it was, no doubt, some sort of miracle, and decided never to wash the sacred pan. He’s even taking into consideration placing it in a glass cabinet, so it can protect him, in the future.

All I have to say is this: If this doesn’t prove the divine nature of bacon, I don’t know what will!

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50-year-old Li Sanju, from Niwuei, China, has been eating only grass and roots, for the last year and a half, without any serious health problems.

The eccentric Chinese says the idea came to him, in October of 2008, while watching TV show, where he learned man can survive for 10 days without eating. This inspired him to live on water and stuff he could find on the mountain.  At first he gave up meat completely, but continued eating some rice. After a few weeks, he gave up on rice and only ate grass, roots and tree leaves.

After eating a lot of grass, Mr. Li suffered from diarrhea, for days in a row. He believed it was from the pesticides spayed on plants around the village, so he decided to only pick his food from up the mountain. He has lived like this for a year and a half, and says it made him healthier. The tumors he had on his right leg simply vanished, and he hasn’t had any other health problems.

Li Sanju says he rarely goes to the city these days, since there’s little for him to eat there. Someone offered him 10,000 yuan to eat a piece of meat, but he says he declined, for fear of dying.

I’m sure he and the sand-eating woman of Russia would really hit it off.

Photos by REX FEATURES via Dantri

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The small town of Cape West May, New Jersey is currently being “terrorized” by a group of “despicable” people who wrap trees, stop signs and even lamp posts in knitted covers.

You can clearly understand why the local authorities want them brought to justice, right? Of course you can’t, but they do offer a useful explanation: “It’s bright, it’s pretty … but in a community and in law your rules have to be consistent.” In other words, they want the people behind the Mystery Knitter project to come clean. But without the mystery, would something like this even be worth mentioning?

Signs of the Midnight Knitter first appeared in Cape West May, a few months ago, and since then more and more knitted covers keep showing up, over the cover of darkness. No one know who’s responsible for all this, but pretty much everyone loves their work (except authorities, of course).

One of the Midnight Knitter members told the Daily News a trio of knitters is knitting donated yarn and placing their work around the city, at night. He described their work as a form of graffiti, without the destructive effect. And everyone agrees it’s a lot better than someone spray-painting their walls.

via PressOfAtlanticCity

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Daniel Angerer, a young chef from New York, gave in to his curiosity and made some Mommy’s Milk Cheese, out of his wife’s breast milk.

Angerer says that, as a chef, he’s always curious about what different things taste like. The idea of making cheese out of human breast milk came to him while his wife was feeding their 4-weeks-old daughter. They pondered a while on whether it was ethical to use breast milk as the main ingredient, but since their daughter has more than enough frozen mommy’s milk, they decided it was ok.

It was reported that Daniel Angerer even treated customers of New York’s Klee Brasserie to his exotic cheese, and the New York Post quoted him as saying ” it tastes like cow’s-milk cheese, kind of sweet”. After the Health Department warned him about offering mother’s milk dairy in the restaurant, Angerer denied even considering offering his wife’s breast milk to anyone else.

Whether he commercialized it or not, I think making cheese out of human breast milk is strange enough. If you’d like to try out check out Daniel’s Angerer’s blog, for the full recipe.

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The American card-stacking master has just beaten his own previous world record, by completing a model of the Venetian Macau hotel and casino, made completely out of playing cards.

Brian Berg, the man behind the famous key-card hotel, spent 44 days working on the amazing model, using a total of 218,792 playing cards. The fragile piece of architecture, which is now on display in the heart of Macau’s Cotai Strip, was Berg’s most challenging project yet.

The playing card model of the Venetian Macau weighs an impressive 272 Kg, is 35 feet long and 10 feet tall. The most impressive thing about Brian Berg’s masterpiece is it contains no glue of tape.

Photos via Daylife

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Designed and built by Jili David, voted the most influential Czech artist of the last 20 years, this impressive work of art was unveiled on March 9, in the Franz Kafka Square of Prague.

Made using 85,741 metal keys, the sculpture symbolizes the 20 years that have passed since the Velvet Revolution. Keys were picked as the main theme because jangling keys were the symbol of pro-democratic rallies, organized by Vaclav Havel, in 1989.

The 6-meter-tall artistic construction spells the  word “Revoluce” (Revolution) with the lower letters considerably distorted. There has been some controversy regarding Jili David’s key sculpture, because the work was commissioned by international telecommunications company, Vodafone, who also collected the keys. Money from an international company, for a national symbol raised some questions in the Czech Republic.

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Made by the guys at RoboSteel, an Irish company specialized in creating artistic sculptures out of scrap metal, this Optimus Prime replica is the best I’ve ever seen.

Characterized as “the most amazing steel sculpture ever created by RoboSteel” this Optimus Prime sculpture is made of over 5,000 recycled steel parts, collected from a car, a boat, a motorbike, a dishwasher, a television and others. It’s 2.5 meters tall and weighs an impressive 550 kilograms.

Recycled Optimus Prime has been coated with several layers of strong, protective lacquer, and all the sharp edges were removed. Now it’s ready to guard your home against Decepticons, provided you’re willing to fork out 5,500 euro for it. It may not be as big as the Transformer drying laundry in Taiwan, but it definitely looks better.

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Sujet Salee is a 29-year-old Thai boxer who fought his way to becoming a champion, despite being blind, since birth.

Sujet began his boxing career in October of 2008 and since ten has won 5 fights and drew once. He fights against other boxers, who are blindfolded to even the scales. According to his trainers, Sujet Salee has an edge over his opponents, because of his heightened remaining senses. As soon as he makes contact with his opponent he begins attacking, often knocking him down with an elbow hit.

The blind champion’s father was a Muay Thai fighter, and, in spite of his handicap, Sujet wanted to walk in his footsteps. At first, he admits he didn’t think he could handle it, but after years of training, he has become a season fighter, able to fight anyone in a match of blind Thai boxing.

Cherdchai Sangketkij, owner of the boxing camp where Sujet Salee trains, has been blind for 20 years, and understands Sujet’s desire to succeed. He hopes, one day blind, Thai boxing will become a national sport for the blind, and not be perceived as a violation of the rights of the handicapped.

Photos by REUTERS via Reuters

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69-year-old Ruth Flowers is a living example that age shouldn’t get in the way of things you’re passionate about. Like Bette Calman, the Yoga super-granny, Ruth does extraordinary things, for her age.

Known as “Mammy Rock“, around the European club scene, Ruth Flowers is probably the oldest professional DJ in the world. The British granny wears bling-bling headphones, trendy clothes and sports an electrifying hear-do as she works the turntables in popular clubs, in France.

Mammy Rock’s career began when she was 65. Her grandson was celebrating his birthday in a London nightclub, and asked Ruth to join him and his friends. There were a few problems with the bouncers, who didn’t feel right letting a senior citizen inside such an establishment, but as soon as she stepped in, Mammy Rock was bewitched by the lively atmosphere that made her feel so much younger.

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A Russian ship enthusiast spent two and a half years working on a 1:200 scale model of the RMS Titanic, made mainly out of paper.

A Ukrainian forum user that goes by the name of Henschel has posted some interesting photos of a Titanic model, on which he has been working for over 2 and a half years. Apparently he studied blueprints of the iconic ship from books and online, before he began his work.

Apparently, the main material used to build this model was paper punch cards. He also made good use of drawing paper, yarn, fishing line and wire. The paper components were covered with waterproof varnish, and the RMS survived the bathtub test, as you can see in one of the photos, below.

Henschel also fitted his paper Titanic with some electrical equipment, powered by a 6-volt battery, located below deck. The rudder is operated via remote-control and the entire ship is illuminated by small light bulbs and LEDs.

The awesome paper Titanic model apparently cost around $125 to complete. Pretty cheap for such a thing of beauty. Te photos aren’t exactly HD, but you can get an idea of how much work went into this project.

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A 200-year old willow processing company has recently targeted the coffin business, and apparently had great success.

P H Coate & Son’s English Willow Coffins, from Somerset, England,  has started offering dead people an alternative to traditional wooden coffins. Some individuals are just bored by the same old wooden coffins, as if they died and have been buried in them too many times. Anyway, John Parfitt and company say willow is the more popular pick these days, because of it alluring aesthetics (cough!) and environmental reasons.

Willow coffins are hand-crafted by skilled willow basket masters (that explains why they look more like coffin-shaped baskets), using a traditional method, and clients have a selection to pick from. Environmentalist are going to go mad for these babies, but what about those artistic wooden coffins from Ghana, what happens to them?

Photos by Matt Cardy/Getty Images Europe via Zimbio

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A team of wacky scientists from BBC1’s “Bang Goes the Theory” TV show, have converted a 1988 Volkswagen Scirocco into a coffee-powered car, nicknamed Car-puccino.

As revolutionary as this concept sounds, it’s more of a fun project than a cost-efficient one. The idea behind Car-puccino is relatively simple: coffee, like wood or coal, has traces of carbon in it, so it burns. Use a bucket load of coffee, heat it enough to break it down into hydrogen and carbon monoxide, direct the gases towards the engine, and you’ve got yourself a running vehicle.

That sounds easy enough, but there is a down-side to using coffee as fuel. First of all, it’s between 25 and 50 times more expensive than petrol. Car-puccino is schedule to journey 210 miles, from Manchester to London, and the team estimates it will burn through 70 kilos of coffee. Multiply that by 13-26 British pounds per kilo (depending on the quality and brand) and you get some pretty big numbers. Plus, Car-puccino will have to pull over every 60 miles or so, so the crew can clean up the filters of tar.

Pretty original idea, but I doubt we’ll ever see Car-puccino go into production. I wonder what the exhaust fumes smell like, though…Espresso?

Daily Mail via AutoRoyalty

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Zhang Ruifang, a 100-year old woman, from China’s Henan Province, has a strange horn coming out of the left side of her forehead.

This reminds me so much of the horned lady, but Zhang’s horn is much more…horn-like. The 1-century-old woman says her bizarre horn started growing last year, and now measures between 5 and 6 cm in length. Although the horn causes her no pain, I can only imagine how unhappy this poor woman is with her situation. Read More »

For Dr. Val Kolpakov, a dentist from Saginaw, Michigan, dentistry is more than just a profession, it’s a hobby. He managed to put together the largest collection of toothpastes in the world, just for fun.

Doctor Kolpakov began collecting toothpastes after reading about Carsten Gutzeit, a German who had collected 500 tubes of toothpaste. He thought that was a great hobby for a man of his profession, so he started contacting all his dentist friends, from foreign countries, and asked them to send him whatever toothpastes they used there. He also started a website, toothpasteworld.com, and began searching for toothpastes on eBay.

His impressive toothpaste collection now stands at 1,800, and includes various flavors, from chocolate, to bamboo and several alcoholic drinks. The most valuable item in Dr. Val’s collection, is an antique Georgian tooth powder box, from 1801, that he paid $1,500 for. Back then toothpaste wasn’t even invented.

Another interesting item is the radioactive Doramund toothpaste, dating back to World War 2, when people believed radioactive materials would help rebuild gum tissue.

A new Guinness Book category has been approved, specifically for Doctor Kolpakov, and now all he need do is submit proof that he has the world’s largest collection of toothpastes.

Photos by Ashley L. Conti/ The Saginaw News via mlive

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