A contest organised by Airbnb is offering three lucky winners the chance to spend a night in the company of full-grown sharks. The winners and their guests will get access to a transparent glass bedroom submerged in the 33-foot deep Paris Aquarium inhabited by 35 sharks.

Interested applicants, who must be 18 years or older and in good health, can apply for the contest through the Airbnb website. “On the 11, 12, and 13 of April, the Paris Aquarium opens its doors for a night of total immersion in a room full of sharks,” the website states. “And not just any room: you will sleep in a circular bed, with a breathtaking view of the world of sharks.” If it’s any reassurance, the unique bedroom was apparently tested for durability in the waters of the Mediterranean.

The unusual event will be hosted by free diver, photographer, and shark enthusiast Fred Buyle, and a marine biologist will provide the winners with an exclusive course on sharks – their mysterious lives and their role in the ocean’s delicate ecosystem.

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She’s probably not done shedding her baby teeth, but 9-year-old Milla Bizzotto is tougher than most adults. The four-foot-tall, 53-pound third grader from South Florida recently shocked the world with her incredible physical fitness, becoming the youngest person in the world to complete the 24-hour Battlefrog Xtreme race, an outdoor fitness event designed by Navy SEALs.  

“I don’t want to play video games,” she explained in an interview with The Miami Herald. “I don’t want to hoverboard. I don’t want to do things to make life easier. I want to be comfortable being uncomfortable. I have one body and it’s all I want and all I love.”

“I’m fearless,” she added. “And knowing I’m inspiring people makes me more fearless. It is hard, but that doesn’t stop me.”

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‘Mad’ Mike Hughes, a stunt-lover from Los Angeles, is planning to attempt the longest and possibly the most dangerous rocket jump in history. He’s going to launch himself in a rocket across the Palo Duro Canyon in Texas, hopefully breaking his own previous record of jumping 1,374 feet.

Hughes, who calls himself the ‘Current King of the Daredevils’, will perform the stunt on April 2 at The Palo Duro Zipline Adventure Park, located 25 miles from Amarillo. He’ll be using the steam-powered X-2 Steam Rocket, powered by pressure rather than rocket fuel. The tank is expected to build up sufficient pressure to launch him off a steel ramp and set him sailing across the Park area and over the ‘Grand Canyon’ of Texas. Hughes will finish the stunt by deploying a parachute to land safely on the ground. Tickets to view the highly dangerous stunt will be sold at the Park on the day of the event itself.

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For the past 59 years, the residents of Sweetwater, Texas, have been coming together during the second weekend of March to celebrate the ‘World’s Largest Rattlesnake Roundup’, a four-day event that features the beheading and skinning of thousands of rattlesnakes in front of a live audience.

Annual rattlesnake roundups are common in several areas of the rural Midwest and Southern United States, but the event at Sweetwater is considered by far the largest of them all. Launched in 1958 by the Junior Chamber of Commerce (Jaycees), it used to be the most effective way to control the region’s heavy snake population responsible for the death of cattle and humans alike.

And while the festival’s original premise might not be relevant anymore, the event still manages to draw up to 30,000 visitors each year, including out-of-state snake hunting teams and tourists from other countries. Just last year , a whopping 3,780 pounds – that’s tens of thousands – of rattlesnake were netted and thrown live into a pit, from where they were taken out and killed, one at a time.

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Team Fighting Championship (TFC) is a new, rather brutal sport that originated in Latvia and is gaining popularity in other European countries as well. Two four or five-member teams face each other in a ring, beating the living daylights out of each other until all the members of a team are down.

The fights are held in a 40×40 ring set up in an empty 30,000-sq.ft. warehouse, in an undisclosed location in Latvia, with no audience present. Five referees stationed inside the ring supervise the fight, but the rules are so relaxed that the refs can’t really stop fighters from inflicting serious damage. Players use moves from various fighting styles, they get kicked when they’re down, and at times two or more men gang up against one opponent. The fights are so vicious that they only last a few minutes, with most participants leaving the ring bleeding or unconscious.

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There’s a special football league in England dedicated to helping men keep up their weight-loss resolutions each year. Aptly named ‘Man v Fat’, the league caters exclusively to overweight men with a body-mass index (BMI) of 30 or above. Teams win points for matches won, as well as pounds lost during the 14-week competition.

Based in Solihull, in the West Midlands, the league was started two years ago by 37-year-old Andrew Shanahan. Andrew said he came up with the idea because he was sick of traditional weight-loss classes filled with women. “There was no help for me, and all the classes seemed tailored to women’s needs. I remember going to a Weight Watchers meeting and I was the only guy there. It was embarrassing and I was so out of my depth. The leader was talking about when you’re on your period you can go up or down in weight and I just thought, that’s not my issue. That’s really not what’s affecting me.”

“I started Man v Fat because I was morbidly obese and experienced first-hand the difficulties men face during weight loss,” he said. “I was 17 stone in 2013 and now I’m just over 12 stone, but I was shocked at how little support blokes get for weight loss.”

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Every year, the prettiest student at Komaba High School, in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward, is crowned the winner of their annual beauty pageant. That doesn’t sound so odd, but here’s the catch – it’s an all-boys institution so the title of ‘Miss Komaba High School’ actually goes to a boy!

The pageant is a part of ‘Culture Day’ festivities held in schools across Japan around this time of year. The festival happens over a three-day weekend, with art installations, music recitals, movie screenings, and even haunted houses on display at every school. And for the past few years, Komaba High School has also included a one-of-a-kind beauty contest for boys. Students style their hair, don wigs and makeup, and slip into skirts for the contest, and they’re all judged on how well they can pull off the ‘cute girl’ look and attitude.

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Texas-based Paige Chenault loves birthdays, and believes everyone should have a chance to celebrate theirs. So she hosts beautiful parties for homeless children, giving them birthday celebrations they’ll remember for the rest of their lives. She started with a few parties in Dallas and went on to found a non profit called The Birthday Party Project, with chapters across the US.

Chenault, a former wedding planner, is perfect for the job because of her extensive experience. It all started when she read a magazine on a plane about kids’ birthday parties, when she was pregnant with her daughter. “I was just dreaming about all the great stuff that I could do for my daughter, just because I was an event planner, so I thought, ‘If anybody could throw a big bash, it was going to be me for my kid,’” she said.

And then she picked up another magazine and read about poor children in Haiti who didn’t have anything. That’s when it struck her that there are millions of children in the world who not only have shelter or food, but would never be able to enjoy the kind of celebration she had in mind. “That’s where the idea came from, and it really started stirring in me,” she said.

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With Halloween just around the corner, scary houses around the world are churning up new ways to spook the bejesus out of people. The latest is ‘17th Door’ in Tustin, California, guaranteed to give you one of the ‘scariest’ experience in the world. So much so that you actually have to sign a waiver before entering.

The house is a fictional medical college called Gluttire with 17 rooms, each more terrifying than the last. They’re meant to provide you a glimpse into the demented mind of a first-year student named Paula. She is tormented by her past, and she also grapples with drugs, anorexia, and suicidal tendencies.

Visitors are locked in each room for about 90 seconds, with only grotesque monsters for company. The monsters are free to touch and even lick them. All five senses are engaged, with foul scents, extreme temperatures, detailed visuals, startling sounds, and even a few taste tests. When the bell rings, it’s time to move on to the next, scarier room. And there’s only one way to end the experience: Yell ‘Mercy’! Read More »

Although most young Argentinians aren’t even thinking about marriage these days, they seem quite fond of wedding ceremonies. So they’ve come up with a bizarre party trend of fake weddings, where groups of 20- and 30-somethings get together to attend wedding-themed parties complete with fake bride and groom.

The idea was the brainchild of 26-year-old publicist Martin Acerbi, who, a couple of years ago, organised a fake wedding with four of his friends in La Plata, about 32 miles away from Buenos Aires. “It all started two years ago with a group of friends: we realised we hadn’t been to a wedding in a long time because hardly anybody is getting married anymore,” Acerbi says.

To his surprise, the event was a huge success which got him thinking about a new business. The friends went on to found ‘Falsa Boda’, a fake wedding organising company, in November 2013. They rent out real wedding locations, hire caterers, florists, and DJs, and make everything look like a real wedding. Except, there is no ‘happily ever after’.

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Boxwars is a fast-growing entertainment phenomenon that takes the childhood pastime of playing with cardboard boxes to a whole new level. Participants use reclaimed cardboard to create the full range of battle gear – armour, weapons, monster trucks, tanks, gigantic animals, and more. Then they put on monumental battle shows during which every creation is completely destroyed!

Boxwars is the brainchild of Australian friends Hoss Siegel and Ross Koger, who came up with it nearly a decade ago over drinks. “There was a lot of drinking involved,” Koger said in an interview. “We sort of imagined this concept one day, and thought yeah let’s give it a go. We did it at a party and had a great time, and thought let’s do this again!”

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A new adaptation of the Shakespeare classic King Lear features a bizarre cast – one human and nine sheep! 24-year-old Alasdair Saksena plays the human, a director who tries to persuade his cast of sheep to perform the tragedy. ‘King Lear with Sheep’ is, needless to say, every bit as absurd and hilarious as it sounds.

The play is the brainchild of actor Saksena, writer Missouri Williams, and producer Lucie Elven – all in their early 20s. The idea came about after Missouri, having worked on a tour of King Lear with a human cast, got sick of them. “There’s little references to sheep within the text that I think planted the idea in Missouri’s head,” Saksena said. “And so she decided to do King Lear with sheep and me. And I thought, you can’t really say no to that, can you?”

According to Saksena, the reason why this adaptation works is the thin line between tragedy and comedy. “Lear is so tragic and sheep are so untragic that it just sort of works – it comes together and is either desperately sad or desperately funny depending on what mood is catching at that particular point of time,” he explained. Read More »

The East Bay Rats, a legendary motorcycle club in Oakland offers an innovative solution to barroom brawls – Fight Parties. Since 1996, the club has organised Friday Fight Nights – putting potential troublemakers (and anyone else who volunteers) in a boxing ring at the clubhouse and giving them a chance to work the violence out of their system.

According to East Bay Rats founder Trevor Latham, everybody has a violent streak in them and Fight Nights give people a safe space to test the limit of their courage. “Why not?” he asked. “The worst that can happen is you get a bloody nose.”

Over the years, Friday Fight Nights have become insanely popular, with the courtyard around the ring jam packed with spectators. Everyone who wants to fight gets a chance – it’s usually guys vs. guys and women vs. women, but you don’t have to be a professional fighter to get into the ring.  Participants range from bartenders and photographers, to bodybuilders, college students, lab technicians or musicians. That’s what this tradition is all about – real fights between real people.

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Horror and gore fans are never going to tire of the timeless classic Jaws. And to enhance the experience, they’re coming up with bigger, scarier ways to watch Steven Spelberg’s blockbuster. The latest idea is to have the audience watch it on a giant screen while sited on rubber rings floating on a lake, at night. It’s all fun and games until someone yells “Shark!”, then panic ensues.

The event, aptly dubbed ‘Jaws on the Water’, is being hosted by Alamo Drafthouse, a theater in Austin, Texas. They actually first hosted the special screening over a decade ago,and to celebrate the film’s 40th anniversary they’re bringing it back at the beginning of August.

“It’s one of the most talked about events we’ve ever produced: back in 2002, we invited the brave people of Austin to join us for a special screening of JAWS where we would point our giant outdoor Rolling Roadshow screen toward the water, and the audience would all watch while floating on inner tubes,” the cinema chain wrote on their website. “It’s still one of the most talked about events we’ve ever produced, and so after years of hearing those stories whispered, we decided it was FINALLY time to bring the event back, and to bring it back in a BIG way!”

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Visitors at the 37th annual Lady of the Lake Festival in Irvinestown, Northern Ireland’s Fermanagh county, were in for a stinky surprise – a sheep dung spitting competition that literally left participants with a bad taste in their mouth.

The bizarre contest, organised by local hotelier Joe Mahon, had participants take mouthfuls of sheep dung and spit it out with gusto to see who could spit the farthest. For some reason, Mahon appeared top be the most excited of the lot, even allowing sheep to poop on his face. Ugh!

Mahon is apparently well known in the town for his quirky event ideas during the festival. This year, inspired by an emu dung-spitting competition from Africa, he decided to replicate it with sheep. Festival organisers took to Facebook to find volunteers to take part in the bizarre contest. The winner was promised £100($155). 44 people finally signed up, joining Mahon on a dung spitting spree.

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