Plougastel, a small village in France’s Brittany region, is offering a prize of €2,000 ($2,250) to whoever can decipher a 230-year-old inscription carved into a nearby rock-slab.

Discovered just a few years ago, the mysterious rock is located in a cove accessible only at low tide. It features 20 lines of writing in a “language” that so far no one has been able to crack, two years  – 1786 and 1787 – as well as carved images of a ship with sails and rudder, and a sacred heart. Local academics have been struggling to decipher the centuries-old images for some time now, but so far all they’ve come up with is theories. Some believe that the writing may be in old Breton or Basque, while others think that whoever carved it into the rock slab may have been semi-illiterate.

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American student Barclay Oudersluys is making headlines for attempting a 100-day coast-to-coast run, inspired by the movie Forrest Gump. He set off on the epic journey on Saturday, from California’s Santa Monica Yacht Harbor and Pier, and he plans to reach Marshall Point Lighthouse in Maine at the end of 100 days. That’s a total of 3,200 miles, with 32 miles to cover per day.

Barclay is calling his attempt ‘Project Gump’, as it was inspired by the protagonist of the 1994 film Forrest Gump. Although the route covered by Tom Hanks’s character isn’t completely revealed in the movie, Barclay has managed to chart a course quite similar to it, by studying contextual clues.

“I don’t really know what made me want to do it,” he said. “Forrest Gump is my favorite movie. And so when I decided to do this run, I looked up the two points where he had gone to and decided then.” The course he’s charted will take him through California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

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26-year-old Luke Cameron has performed a good deed every day for an entire year, and he says that the exercise has completely transformed his life. The Cheltenham resident made the vow when a close friend died from cancer last year, and since then, he has been doing at least one nice thing every single day. He estimates that he has spent close to £3,000 ($4,700) on good deeds in the past year.

“In a world of taking selfies with your besties and Instagramming pictures of your new handbag and Rolex watch, we forget to think about anyone else but ourselves,” he said. “Our generation has forgotten to care about others, because we are too self-obsessed to even care what others are going through.”

Luke runs a website called TheGoodDeedDiary.com, on which he documents every single good deed or kind gesture – ranging from taking the trash out for his elderly neighbor, or baking cakes for his family and friends. He has also purchased meals for several people at McDonald’s, and even paid for a stranger’s petrol just because they stood next to him in the line. Luke now has over 12,000 followers on his corresponding Facebook page, and more than 6,000 followers on Twitter.

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Australian Andrew Hellinga recently set a new Guinness Record after riding his bicycle for 337km backwards in a 24 hour challenge to raise money for the poverty-stricken children of Zambia.

Hellinga started the marathon on October 7^th at 6 a.m. and made just one brief stop to mark the 182 km milestone that made him the new Guinness world record holder for the longest distance traveled while cycling backwards. “I had to stop for a quick rest and to share the excitement with my support crew,” he said. After a quick celebration, he continued this difficult challenge hoping to make it to 300km within the 24-hour limit. Not only did he pull through and reached the 300km milestone, but he cycled for another few dozen kilometers, covering a staggering distance of 337km.  After withstanding the ever-changing weather, he ended the lengthy ride with a smile on his face.

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Mary Saba, a young Australian woman whose favorite hobby is creating funny costumes, challenged herself to wear a different one every day for a whole year. Since most of her costume were homemade, Mary only needed $440 to reach her goal.

Even before she started her original project, Mary’s friends called her “costume queen” for the time and passion she put into every one of her wacky outfits. She had always enjoyed creating funny attires and having people walk up to her just to say how cool they think she looks. “Most people have regular hobbies – reading, writing, dancing, playing sports – but I always received most enjoyment from creating a really funny costume,” Mary writes on her Theme-Me blog, where she documented her personal challenge. The idea to create and wear 365 different costumes came to her around Christmas, in 2011, when she decided to dress in a series of green and red outfits every day during the last week of work, as a way of getting into the festive spirit of the Holidays. One day, she overheard some of her colleagues discussing which ones of her costumes they liked most, and that’s when she realized just how much her dressing habit entertained those around her. Mary then thought of The Uniform Project, where a girl pledged to style a black dress differently everyday for 365 days as an exercise in sustainable fashion, and it all just came together in her head.

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Tough Guy is a traditional English challenge, in which the participants have to use every ounce of their energy just to get to the finish line. to give you an idea of how tough this event is, the promoters say that the US S.E.A.L.S. “Grinder” Assault Course is the only thing that barely comes close in terms of difficulty.

Photo: A-punkt/Wikimedia Commons