Georgian media recently released disturbing footage of over 500 sheep killed by a single lightning strike while grazing on a mountain pasture in Ninotsminda, southern Georgia.

According to news reports, on August 9th, Nikolay Levanov, a sheep owner from the village of Tambovka, received a distressing phone call from his sheepherder telling him that over a hundred of his sheep had been killed in a thunderstorm. What Levanov didn’t know was that along with his own flock, nearly 400 other sheep had been killed by the same lightning strike. Luckily, the sheepherder himself had only been knocked unconscious by the lightning and eventually recovered.

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Giorgi Rostomashvili, a competitive strongman and weightlifter from Georgia, recently showed off his Herculean strength by pulling a 200-tonne boat using only his middle finger.

A viral video shows Rostomashvili holding onto a metal ladder to prevent him from being dragged into the water as he uses his middle finger to drag the “Tamara 2” into the port of Batumi. The 40-second video is heavily edited and doesn’t show the whole attempt, but according to national media reports, the young strongman managed to drag the heavy vessel 5 meters towards the shore.

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A landfill near the small city of Marneuli, in Georgia, recently turned into a chick hatchery, after the scorching heat caused hundreds of spoiled eggs disposed of by a local poultry farm to hatch.

A video posted on Sunday by Facebook user Sahid Bayramov shows the landfill crawling with cute yellowish chicks chirping continuously and looking for their mother. Also visible in the video is a large pile of eggs which is presumably where all the tiny birds came from. As you can imagine, the video quickly went viral on social media, before being picked up by national and international media.

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A mobile phone store chain in Georgia is experiencing a boost in iPhone sales after arranging for a priest to bless the entire Apple stock at one of their stores in Tbilisi. According to iPhone+ store manager Georgiy Machavariani, the holy ceremony has mollified fears and concerns that people have about iPhones being the “device of the devil”.

“We have a lot of customers that restrain from buying an iPhone for the sole reason that it is a so-called device of a devil,” he said. “In order to tackle this concern, we decided to sanctify our shop and have the phones blessed.” I guess the fear he is referring to has to do with the Apple logo, which people are probably associating with the forbidden fruit eaten by Adam and Eve.

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Joni Bakaradze died 18 years ago, at the age of 22, but instead of burying him in a cemetery, his family decided to keep his body preserved so that his son, who was just two at the time of his death, could see his father’s face.

For the first four years after Joni died, his mother, Tsiuri Kvaratskhelia, used embalming fluid to preserve his body, but after having a dream on night in which someone told her to use vodka instead, the woman from Bashi village, Georgia, switched to spirit liquid poultices. She has to use them every night, or the corpse will turn black. During the first ten years, Tsiuri changed her dead son’s clothes on his birthdays, but as she got older her illnesses prevented her from taking care of Joni the way she used too. She says the lack of care quickly becomes visible on his body, but as soon as she uses her alcohol-based embalming formula, his face turns white again. Read More »

Trust me on this, that headline has absolutely nothing rock’n’roll about it . Weirdly enough, it’s actually true and you can even go on to experience it yourself, provided you’re willing to travel.

Travel a little or a lot rather depends on where you’re starting from as you’ll have to go to Georgia in order to live this out. Oh, and that’s not Georgia, the American state, but Georgia a small country that sits borderline between Europe and Asia. In this rather remote country, that’s seen it’s fair share of misfortune over the years for various political issues, economic and social pressures and so on, you’ll be able to find an unusual bastion of hope.

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Considered the predecessor of modern Georgian rugby, Lelo Burti is a centuries-old game played every Easter, in the western village of Shukhuti.

Lelo Burti is played only once a year, on Easter Sunday, and only in Shukhuti. Men from the upper and lower parts of the village compete against each other struggling to get a leather ball to a river, on the outskirt’s of their opponents’ half. Whichever team reaches their goal first is declared the winner, there are no other rules.

The morning before the game, participants gather to drink wine from the empty leather ball, before it is filled with 16 kilograms of dirt topped up with some more wine. Before the game begins, the village’s Orthodox priest blesses the ball, and this seems to make it an even more coveted price, as neither of the two halves hold back in trying to control it. Lelo Burti is a primitive tradition that is carried out the same way as it was many generations ago – the two groups smash everything in their paths as they approach the village center, including fences, gardens and orchards, scale walls and scrabble across ditches. As soon as the ball is in play, the game turns into a festival of unrestrained aggression fueled by gallons of previously consumed wine, where getting the ball is all that counts.

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A a charity house in Tbilisi, Georgia organizes an annual “Super Grandmother and Super Grandfather” contest, to allow the elderly to fulfill their childhood dreams.

Every year, people aged over 70, from all over Georgia, come to Tbilisi to compete in the Super Grandmother and Super Grandfather contest, an event that allows them to display their artistic talents. Some play the piano, others dance, sing,and perform plays, but whether they win the coveted title of Super Grandmother and Super Grandfather or not, all contestants leave happy they were able to fulfill their dream of performing on stage.

Local and national television crews and reporters often attend the contest organized by the Ktharisis charity house, as some of the elderly contestants really are talented, and they want to speak to them, or write stories about them. Some contestants even make appearances on TV shows where they perform along established Georgian artists.

The 2011 edition of the super grandparents contest took place on January 5th.

I think there should be a “Super Grandmother and Super Grandfather” contest held in every contest around the world, to make the elderly feel like they have something nice to look forward to, every year. Well done, Georgia!

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