Six thirsty Norwegian cyclists were accidentally poisoned last week, during the ‘Fredagsbirken’ race in Rena, near Oslo, when they mistook samples of liquid detergent for sports drinks and gulped down the stuff . All six of them were rushed to the emergency ward of a nearby hospital for treatment.

It all started when Lilleborg, the makers of ‘Omo Activ & Sport’ liquid detergent, handed out free samples to all the competitors, before the race. “Since this clothes washing detergent is especially developed for training clothes, we thought it would be relevant to give it to our contestants,” said organizer Ingunn Rønningen. “They could use it to wash their training clothes after the event.”

While most participants understood that it was washing liquid, some of them apparently thought it was an energy drink. According to the organizers, the samples were clearly labelled as detergents. They even told cyclists not to mix the liquid with drinking water. In spite of these warnings, there were people who just didn’t get the message. When the organizers realized that some of the cyclists got ill, they put up large signs to stop the others from repeating the mistake.

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When you go to Rob Ferrel for a haircut, you know you’re in for something really special. The professional hair artist can sculpt logos, designs, patterns and even celebrity faces on a head of hair. He runs his own salon called Rob the Original Barbershop, in San Antonio, where he works his magic every single day.

At first glance, some of Ferrel’s customers look like they’ve got stuff painted on the back of their heads. But take a closer look and you’ll realize that it’s all hair. Super-talented Ferrel discovered his special gift only eight years ago, when a kid walked into the barbershop he worked at and asked for a small little swirl.

“From there I started doing stars and more complex designs, team logos” he said. “And then I wanted to do something different and stand out, so I did portraits. Now if they bring me any image, I can replicate it in their hair”. Back in 2006, Ferrel’s clients had to bring him images of the portraits they wanted, but now, with the help of modern technology, he can just look up the image on his phone and sculpt it freehand, using regular tools like trimmers and clippers.

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Alcohol-fueled productions of Shakespeare’s plays are the latest trend among theater circles in New York and other American cities. Several theatrical groups are experimenting with boozy versions of some of the brilliant playwright’s greatest works – with amazing results! Audiences seem to love watching drunk actors bungling lines at their favorite bars and pubs.

The Drunk Shakespeare Society is one of the groups at the forefront of the movement. Founded by Scott Griffin in New York, the team of actors perform Shakespeare’s plays while drunk, weaving improv comedy into the text. They proudly describe themselves as a ‘company of professional drinkers with a serious Shakespeare problem’. They routinely perform at various bars across the city, and they’re currently putting on a limited engagement at Quinn’s Bar & Grill near Times Square. Anarchy rules at these performances, as they invite the audience to drink along with them.

Griffin believes that audiences are drawn to the spontaneity of the act – these are anything-can-happen performances that simply cannot be replicated. “You can see so many amazing things YouTube and digital entertainment. What’s the point of going out to see live performance?” he asked. “You have to do things people can’t get at home.”

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When Indian teenager Bhaskar Shri passed away in a car accident, his loyal dog Tommy refused to leave his graveside for two whole weeks. The sweet old canine reportedly went without food the entire time, guarding the grave in the outskirts of Chennai city through 15 hot days and freezing nights.

Bhaskar was a construction worker who loved dogs dearly – he had adopted Tommy five years ago and the pair of them quickly became inseparable. When Bhaskar became victim to a terrible road collision, Tommy was heartbroken. The dog simply refused to part with his master and mourned by his graveside for 15 days.

Emaciated Tommy was finally rescued a fortnight later by Dawn Williams, an animal rescue officer at the non-profit Blue Cross of India. “I first spotted the brown dog sitting on a fresh grave one evening as I happened to walk past in the first week of August, but at the time I didn’t think anything of it,” she said.

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A young couple from Orlando, Florida, have found the perfect way to organise their dream wedding without spending a penny. Courtney McKenzie and her fiancé Jamil Newell are opting for a corporate-sponsored ‘social’ wedding and honeymoon, which means their special moments will feature all sorts of product endorsements and ads.

Courtney, who works in social media and runs a marketing company, is the brains behind the idea. “I thought, why not couple my two loves: my soon to be husband Jamil and my love for marketing?” she said. Jamil isn’t complaining either – after all, who wouldn’t want an all-expense paid wedding and honeymoon?

The couple, who love traveling, will be getting married this winter at their dream wedding destination – Thailand. The wedding ceremony itself will take place on December 14, and they plan to spend the next 11 days traveling in South East Asia, doing exciting things like elephant trekking, scuba diving, and bamboo river rafting.

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The talented Sumie painters of Kousyuuya Studio in Nikko, Japan can paint the body of a dragon with a single stroke of the brush. The delicate technique is known as ‘hitofude ryuu’, which literally means ‘dragon with one stroke’, and it’s been around for four generations.

Watching these painters create a perfect dragon – with all the shades and scales – in just a couple of seconds is a true delight. It all looks so effortless, but there’s a lot of hard work and practice involved in getting the stroke right.

To create a single dragon painting, the Sumie artists first make the ornate head with various flourishes, using a smaller brush. Then, they dip a much larger sumie brush into the desired paint color and simply swipe it across the canvas in one swift movement. You really have to watch a video to realize the brilliance of the technique.

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16-year-old Ann Makosinski, from Victoria, Canada, has come up with a marvelous invention – a flashlight powered solely by body-heat. Her project won second prize at a local science fair, and made it all the way to the 2013 Google Science Fair, where she was declared the winner for her age group. She also updated it to a handsfree version this year – a body-heat powered headlamp, for which she won the 2014 Weston Youth Innovation Award.

Ann’s project is truly remarkable for its sheer simplicity and brilliance. I mean, it isn’t every day that you come across a light source that doesn’t use batteries, solar power, or wind energy. The device just powers on as soon as you hold it in your palm. If that isn’t genius, I don’t know what is!

The secret behind Ann’s invention is thermoelectric technology, and devices called Peltier tiles. And it’s really surprising that no one’s ever thought to use that kind of technology to power a flashlight before. Think of all the AA batteries we could avoid using!

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While most people prefer their ice-cream frozen, Baghdad-based artist Othman Toma likes it melted. He uses multi-colored melting treats as a medium for his art, instead of normal paint. And it works incredibly well. In fact, to the untrained eye, his artworks seem painted with regular watercolors.

Toma paints all sorts of stuff using ice cream – lions, tigers, women’s faces, popular monuments, and more. It’s  just marvelous how he manages to get such a wide array of colors with very few shades of the cold dessert. All he needs to do is reach out into his freezer, and he’s ready to paint!

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Kong Keng, a 2-year-old kid from Khnor village in Cambodia, is being hailed as a miracle baby with special healing powers. Thousands of people are traveling from as far as Laos and Vietnam, believing that even a glimpse of Kong will help cure them of their ailments. He appears to be the last ray of hope in a nation that doesn’t exactly have the world’s best healthcare system.

Hundreds of people throng outside Kong’s single-room wooden home every single day. It’s a motley crowd of handicapped people in wheelchairs, and ailing, dying patients on stretchers. Phat Soen, Kong’s 21-year-old mother, brings the boy out and places a row of eucalyptus balm bottles in front of him. She then guides his hand over each bottle – his touch is believed to transfer healing powers to the balm.

The toddler’s healing powers were discovered by an accidental healing ‘miracle’ that occurred a few months ago. “The miracle happened to my brother,” said Sung Bahn, Kong’s uncle. “He was paralyzed from the waist down after a motorcycle accident. Doctors couldn’t cure him and neither could the Kru Khmers (traditional Cambodian healers).”

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Multi-talented British artist Ben Long has been making exquisite illustrations on the dusty rear doors of commercial trucks since the early 2000s. The 35-year-old uses only one finger to ‘scribe into the layer of dirt built-up from exhaust emissions’.

He calls the project ‘The Great Travelling Art Exhibition’, which is an ongoing series of his mobile canvases traveling all over the UK. Long, who studied at the Camberwell College of Art and Design in London, describes the project as an expansion of the ‘daubing and crude slogans that commonly adorn commercial freight vehicles’.

The idea for the drawings came to him during his early days as an artist, when he had little financial backing. By using dusty trucks as his canvas, he was able to express his creativity without a studio or a gallery. Although he has now advanced in his art career, Long continues to draw on greight vehicles, because it helps him appeal to people who don’t relate to the kind of contemporary art that is generally displayed in museums and galleries.

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A Swedish journalist decided to teach his two young sons – who were obsessed with war-based video games – what real war is all about. So he took them to visit Israel and Syria to show them the harsh realities that exist in war-torn regions, and make them realise what guns are really used for. The trip lasted 10 days, and when the boys got back, they were completely transformed.

The idea for the trip came at the dinner table one night last year, when Leo, 11, and Frank, 10 begged their father Carl-Magnus Helgegren to buy them the latest Call of Duty game. He was quite concerned with their obsession for the popular shooter – he wondered if his boys actually realized the real effect that war has on its victims.

So Helgegren devised a brilliant plan to impart a much needed lesson. He cut a deal with his sons – if they agreed to travel with him to an area plagued by war and spend time with war victims, he would buy them any video game of their choice on their return.

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Like many other couples their age, 49-year-old Mandy Jones and her husband Gary, 48, were struggling to save their failing marriage. That’s when they hit upon a unique solution – they decided to give the 1950s lifestyle a try. Now, the couple from Staffordshire claim that the change has actually saved their marriage.

So what’s so great about the fifties that it could bring Gary and Mandy closer to each other? Well, some might find this regressive, but Mandy says that she now cooks for her husband every night, just like most women did back then. So Gary gets to come home from work every night to a ‘dutiful’ wife and a wholesome 1950s dinner.

And that’s not all – Mandy, a part-time caterer, spends all her free time cooking, cleaning and darning Gary’s socks. She dresses in vintage frocks, drives a 1949 Chevrolet and listens to rockabilly records on her jukebox. She strongly believes that all women should adopt a similar lifestyle if they want to keep their man happy.

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An elderly Chinese couple were recently forced to go to court to teach their freeloading son a lesson. Xu Qing, the 29-year-old son, never went to work because he found it too boring. He chose a life of comfort at his parents’ home instead, where all his needs were being met. But the situation got out of hand when he brought his girlfriend to live with him, and expected the same service for her as well.

It all started when Qing, an only child, left university; he simply refused to go to work like other people his age. His mother, Xu Hsing, cooked and cleaned for him out of love. Qing was the typical spoilt son – he ate, slept and surfed the internet all day long. His father Ku managed to find him a job, but he quit after only three months because it was too dull.

Soon, Qing managed to meet a jobless woman online, and the pair hit it off. She moved in with the family after dating Qing for only a month. The parents were horrified, and much to their chagrin, discovered that they were expected to cook and clean for the girlfriend as well! This was the last straw – they put down an ultimatum asking Qing to get a job or move out.

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Tonawanda Island, a small patch of land located just off the city of North Tonawanda, in Niagara County, New York, is currently suffering from a serious case of cats. Hundreds of abandoned felines freely roam the 85-acre island, and they’re multiplying at an alarming rate. Believe it or not, there are already more cats than people on the island!

“This is a small island with a big cat problem,” said islander Danielle Cooligan. Most of these cats are forgotten or unwanted pets who were left to fend for themselves. “They’re just everywhere,” said Wayne Howard of North Tonawanda. “People drop them off. I’ve caught people dumping them on the road; they just unload them on the island.”

While most of the island’s human residents are seasonal, the cats live there all year round. Most of them hide during the day and come out at night. “The messes they make, especially the feces around the island and where people walk, it’s disgusting,” Howard added. “I’ve caught them on my boat a few times and they made messes; they’re just a problem.”

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Gigi Barker, a British furniture designer and owner of Studio 9191, has come up with a new range of seating that looks and feels a lot like the human body. The seats are designed to mimic bulbous, podgy human flesh. And they’re oddly comforting, as Gigi’s customers reluctantly admit.

Although the seats are made of leather – the closest material to human skin that she could find – they’re so oddly shaped that they aren’t instantly recognisable. And that’s exactly the effect that she was hoping to achieve with the project, which she calls ‘A Body of Skin’.

Through the project, Gigi wanted to explore people’s reactions to furniture that is strangely familiar to the sight, smell and touch, but not recognisable. “That made the viewers question how to interact with the shapes and to form their own conclusions,” she said.

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