This toy tower brings back memories…

If you’re lucky enough to be living near Legoland Windsor, in England, than you’ll be able to examine this toy wonder in person. It may look pointless but this baby climbed its way into the Guinness Book of Records as the World’s Tallest LEGO tower. The former record was of 96 feet but the Legoland Windsor tower measures a whopping 100 feet. It was built to resemble a Viking longboat mast, to mark the inauguration of the land of Vikings attraction in the theme park, but also to celebrate 50 years of LEGO.

The tower was built by children, one 20 cm portion at a time, portions that were then lifted by a crane and it took almost half a million LEGO pieces to build. The tower is held in place by wires.

How cute can these little guys get?!?

I know, I know, these are hardly oddities, but these furry critters caught my eye while I was surfing the web and I couldn’t resist not posting something about them. Although being too fat is as bad for animals as it is for us humans, unlike us they look cute enough to hug to death. But all cuteness aside, if you have an overweight pet, do something about them, start getting them to exercise, they may not understand but you’re doing them a big favor, probably even saving their lives. Overweight pets die prematurely, do to hart complications and in the best cases they lose the use of their limbs.

Now that’s as real horse power as you’ll ever get!

When you first look at the Naturmobil it resembles a normal, modern stagecoach, but as soon as you see the horse in the back, standing on some kind of treadmill, you start to sense something is fishy. The Naturmobil is the ultimate horse-powered vehicle, because unlike other modern cars it’s powered by an actual horse. Naturmobil is a symbol of helping to save the environment and proves how easy it is to build a vehicle that doesn’t need fossil fuel, all you need is a strong horse and a bit of imagination. That brings us to how the Naturmobil functions: you get the horse in the back on the conveyor belt, a pneumatic system lifts the front a little so the horse starts walking naturally. The power of its walking goes into a 36-gear gearbox and makes the car reach a speed of 25-30km/h, but on a long straight road it can even reach 70-80km/h. And don’t worry about the horse, the vehicle’s official site says, sensors in the suspension sense when the temperature of the horse gets to high, or it gets to tired, a DC motor steps in and runs Naturmobil at a constant speed. The horse also has several food and water recipients and even a doo-doo disposal system, so he’s quite comfortable.

I’m really a fan of environment-friendly vehicles, so any prototypes, no matter how wacky they are, have my deepest appreciation!

Coolest stunt I’ve seen in a while.

This driver must be crazy to attempt such a dangerous car stunt. Sure simply walking on a string while holding a pole as balance is no easy feat either, but driving a car is on a whole other level, ant the height would certainly kill the guy. I haven’t been able to find out where this took place but it must be some kind of new record.

I know it looks impossible, but it really isn’t…

You’re probably thinking something like “myeah, another fake set of images” but I assure you they are all the real deal. Actually stone balancing is a very old art, passed on from generation to generation and frequently practiced for a number of reasons. Some do it in exhibitions, just to show off their talents, while others perform rock balancing as a meditating ritual (Korean Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism and Yoga).

No matter the reason it is performed for, stone stacking or balancing is simply amazing, just for the fact that it defies all logic and probably even physics, I don’t know, I’m not really into science…

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Take this Photoshop!

As you’ve probably seen in many of my posts, I always like to congratulate Mother Nature whenever I find some of her masterpieces that exceed even the powers of the mighty god Photoshop. This time I’d like to introduce you to the amazing terraced thermal pools of Pamukkale, Turkey. One of the country’s most popular tourist attractions, Pamukkale, which means Cotton Castle in Turkish, is unique in the world, the hot turquoise waters bathing the pearl white calcium pools can’t be found anywhere else. The water from the hot springs runs off the plateau and the calcium that it contains deposits in the pool, giving the whole landscape that cotton look. That’s how Pamukkale was formed over millions of years, but as we’ve grown used to do, we humans have started to ruin everything in just a few years. Due to excessive tourism, the pools have started deteriorating and they’re currently closed to the public to preserve what’s left.

Even so, Pumakkale is a site worth visiting even if just to take some photos of the breathtaking scenery and to use the springs’ thermal waters, that are said to cure the eyes, asthma, rheumatism and more.

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Man would I like to have that baby in my living-room…

Unfortunately that is simply impossible, considering it is one of a kind and designed especially for UEFA Champion’s League Finals ad for Dutch beer, Amstel. Still only seeing it and imagining how playing foosball on a 22 player table would be like, is worth it. The table can be dismantled and packed into 6 cases for transportation. Who knows, maybe after they’ll have filmed the ad, they’ll auction it or something, so keep your ears open and your savings close by.

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Now this is what I call stretching it!

The women of the Padaung tribe in northern Thailand hold the record for the longest necks in the world. According to tribal custom, even before they reach puberty, girls must start wearing iron coils around their necks and more and more are added through the years. The Padaung women say they only feel initial discomfort, as the distance between the ear lobe and the collar bone is stretched to 10 inches, double the average.

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Not a monument like I originally thought, but cool nontheless

Commissioned and unveiled last year by the Discovery Channel to promote one of its reality shows, London Ink, this giant swimmer swims his way through the grass on the South Bank of the river Thames, near Tower Bridge. first time I saw this work of art I thought it was meant to symbolize something like the British ambition or competitive spirit, not a lousy advertisement scheme. Oh well, at least it looks cool.

Source

That’s what I’d say this man is doing through his performances.

Johan Lorbeer is a German performing artist that became famous in his home country through his Still Life street shows. Through a very ingenious optical illusion, Lorbeer makes it seem like he is defying gravity just by leaning off buildings. Try to guess how he pulls this stunt off and learn if you guessed right by looking at the last photo.

Although he is clearly a brilliant artist and has been performing for quite some time, Johan Lorbeer is still semi-unknown on an international level. Here’s a link to his personal page.

It’s Segway meets motorcycle and it’s beautiful.

Believe it or not, this little beauty was built by 18 year-old Ben J.Poss Gulak who used Google StretchUp to draw up the plans, since he couldn’t afford professional software. Even though he had some help from motorcycle modders and robotics experts, he deserves to be congratulated.

Unveiled for the first time at the Toronto National Motorbike Show, Uno has two wheels but not one in front of the other, but right next to each other. It’s an electric vehicle with two micro-gyro engines, much like the Segway, one for forward and back and the other for turning. It only has one control, the on/off switch, everything else is done by leaning.

Ben came up with the idea of an eco-friendly vehicle when he was in China where “the smog was so thick, we never saw the sun.”

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Don’t look at the photos and video if you’re a big animal lover, it’s “a little” hard to take in…

This “bay of blood” set somewhere in the Faroe Islands is where hundreds, sometimes thousands of pilot whales are literally butchered alive by hungry locals. The hunt known as Grindadrap is centuries old and it hasn’t changed much since then, except for the power-boats, radios and echo-sounders which make life a lot easier for the butchers. They round the poor whales into the shore with the power-boats and when they get really close, the locals plunge into the waves and start hooking them to death in a horrific manner. Then they drag the carcasses to shore and start skinning them and splitting the meat and blubber between all the islands’ inhabitants.

The Faroes economy relies only on economic fishing, but that doesn’t give them the right to slaughter 544 Atlantic white sided dolphins in a single day, like they did in 1988.

recently, studies have shown that the meat and blubber of pilot whales contain high amounts of mercury, PCBs, DDT and dieldrin. For what they do every year these animals deserve to get much more than mercury poisoning. Read More »

That’s right folks there’s such a thing as a World Pizza Championship.

It’s hosted in Salsomaggiore Terme, Italy and it gathers tens of professional pizza makers from allover the world. The most impressive challenge of the entire contest is the pizza tossing, an acrobatic event involving the pizza dough. As you can see from the pics, these guys are true masters tossing giant pies into the air or spinning them on their fingers like basketballs and there are even synchronized-dancers performing with pizza dough. Must really cool to watch these guys go all out to take the title of best pizza maker in the world. So, if you’re ever in Italy…

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You know what happens if you drop a sweet mint into a bottle of coke right? What if 1500 people did it at the same time?

That’s what 1500 students from a University in Belgium tried to find out and also set a new world record for the world’s biggest Mentos fountain. It wasn’t the most important experiment in the lives of the young chemistry students, but I can bet it was the funniest one.

You can see the result of the experiment in the photos below, too bad I couldn’t find any more.

Source

Apparently there are those who think the Fuhrer was a hero.

Some of these people live in the Ukraine, where an Adolf Hitler action-figure has gone on sale. The $200 doll is compared to Barbie by sales-women in Kiev and, just like the famous blond, it comes complete with accessories and several changes of clothes. Although any form of Nazism or fascism is prohibited in the Ukraine, the dolls are already on sale and will be mas-produced starting this summer. This is a result of growing extreme right political sentiment and increasing xenophobia and racism.

It looks like some Ukrainians, especially the young ones, have forgotten that Hitler killed 3 million of them during WWII, including 1.5 million Jews. He wanted to turn the country into slave populated buffer zone with Russia, now they think he was a hero…that’s sad.

The doll comes with a spare head that gives Hitler a kinder face…because he was such a kind person?!?

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