In a bid to get people to take climate change more seriously, Italian adventurer Alex Bellini is going to live on an iceberg until it melts. He plans to take on the challenge in the spring of 2015, on an iceberg in Greenland. He expects that he’ll have to live there alone for at least eight to twelve months.

Alex, who is now based in the UK, plans to live inside a survival capsule while on the iceberg. “Survival capsules are sort of floating Kevlar saucers, four meters in diameter, which are used as lifeboats on oil platforms,” he explained. “I will live in the capsule on the iceberg until it melts – which generally happens within eight months – or up to a maximum of one year.”

“Then, I’ll go adrift in the Atlantic Ocean, inside my capsule again, until I wash ashore.” He plans to carry 300 kilos of dehydrated food and electronic equipment along with him. Although he is yet to pick the perfect iceberg to live on, he said it would most probably be broad and flat, about 60 by 20 meters.

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A Belarusian family from the village of Zacherevye, 250 kilometers north of Minsk, is raising an entire family of wolves as pets. It’s been five years since the Selekhs took in a group of young wild wolves, and they’ve got the beasts completely domesticated now. In fact, the pet wolves’ behavior is quite opposite to what people normally expect from them.

Wolves are supposed to be instinctively wild, and follow a strict code of hierarchy within the pack – they are led by an alpha couple. But the Selekh wolves display none of these characteristics. They are quite a joyful lot instead, playing games and entertaining 10-year-old Alisa Selekh. They even take turns giving the girl piggyback rides through the Selekhs’ front garden.

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Mark Bustos is a New York hair stylist with a heart of gold. He spends his Sundays – his only day off from work at an upscale salon – giving free haircuts and shaves to the homeless. His heartwarming story has gone viral on Instagram, where he posts photographs of his unusual weekend escapades.

Every Sunday, Mark sets out through the city in search of anyone who might need a trim or a shave. Once he spots someone who fits the description, he approaches them with a simple phrase: “I want to do something nice for you today.” He then proceeds with the haircut and repeats the process for up to six different people.

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If you want to stay in shape, but don’t have the time to go to the gym, the Mobile Gym is the solution you’ve been looking for. It’s basically a large bus filled with the latest fitness equipment, hardwood floors and air conditioners. You can find everything you need for a complete workout, and here’s the best part – you don’t need to go to the gym, the gym comes to you!

The idea for the Mobile Gym was thought up by Adam Zickerman, founder of InForm Fitnes, a popular chain of gyms across the United States. When his customers requested a place to workout in the Hamptons, he realized that building a new gym over there wasn’t feasible. But inspiration hit him and he was able to solve the problem when he ordered lunch from a food truck one afternoon.

“I realized I could solve the problem by putting a gym on a truck!” said Zickerman, who is also the author of the New York Times bestseller ‘Power of 10’. “We know that people are busy and that is why we are offering this service.”

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Nigerian faith healer TB Joshua, who also happens to be a millionaire, is claiming that his patented holy water can cure people suffering from the deadly Ebola virus. He reportedly sent 4,000 bottles of the special water as a part of an aid package to Sierra Leone, via a private jet that cost $50,000. He is believed to have sent a cash donation of the same size, along with the water.

The news of Joshua’s holy water comes at a time when doctors and health workers are already trying to convince people in the rural areas that science could help them more than prayers or witchcraft. Nonetheless, the cash donation is certainly the need of the hour to stem the outbreak of Ebola in the West African nation.

The donation was confirmed by the office of Sierra Leone president Ernest Bai Koroma – the statement revealed that the cash was meant to ‘feed those affected by the Ebola outbreak’. The office, however, made no mention of the controversial holy water.

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Fruit vendors in China came up with a novel idea to sell peaches for the romantic Qixi festival on August 2. They put a sexy spin on the otherwise innocent fruit by slipping some specially designed panties on them! It’s actually quite amusing, how closely the lingerie-donning peaches resemble a woman’s backside.

It all started when a fruit vendor in Nanjing decided to slip underwear onto a few of his peaches. According to Yao Xiao Yang, founder of ‘Fruithunters, he was inspired by literature. “What we understand about fruit is too simple; fruits are wonderful presents given to us by nature,” he explained.

“Fruit being sexy is widely accepted in world literature. Names of many fruits are self-evident, such as Sodom apple and Venus nipple peach. On an ancient Egyptian script pomegranate meant breasts, a French poet compared women’s butts to melons under the sunshine and James Joyce made similar comparisons in Ulysses.”

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A teenage boy from Corsicana, Texas, recently ran away from home and found refuge in the unlikeliest of places – at Walmart! Employees of the Corsicana Walmart discovered the 14-year-old kid after he had been living at the store for four days straight. To their great surprise, he had built a secret hidden compound for himself where he managed to live undetected.

News channels in the U.S. have released exclusive photographs of the two campsites that the teenager had built. One was located on the baby products-aisle, behind big stroller boxes. The second one was behind stacks of paper towels and toilet paper on a different aisle.

Surprisingly, customers who had walked down these aisles didn’t have the slightest suspicion of the teenager’s presence. “You never expect that you’re at Walmart and someone has been living there for four days. That’s crazy,” said Walmart customer Myrna Aguilar.

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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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American investigative journalist and activist, James O’Keefe, recently made headlines for donning an Osama bin Laden costume. Halloween is still months away, but O’Keefe’s attire had a different purpose – he was attempting to illustrate the lack of security along the U.S.-Mexico border in West Texas. He was actually able to cross the Rio Grande River from Mexico into Texas undetected, dressed as Osama.

O’Keefe, who is well-known for his headline-grabbing sting videos that often involve disguise and trickery, also recorded himself in the act of crossing the border. He released the footage on Monday, calling it ‘Project Veritas’. In the video, he can be seen crossing into Mexico twice – once in regular clothes and the second time dressed in an army costume and an Osama Halloween mask. His video release arrived amidst a national debate in America about border security.

“Project Veritas has just returned from the U.S.-Mexican border,” the video description states. “What we discovered there should worry every American. Here in West Texas, the border is just a muddy sliver of river.” And then the video goes on to show O’Keefe splashing his way through the Rio Grande to the other side, effectively entering another country.

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A struggling South Korean Major League baseball team has come up with a novel idea to boost players’ morale. They’re replacing human fans with robots called ‘Fanbots’, all in a bid to improve the atmosphere at their matches.

The promo video for ‘Fanbot – the world’s first cheering robot’ rides high on the emotions involved while watching a match. “Fans of Hanwha Eagles always come to the stadium to cheer for the team,” the video states. “But those who cannot come to the stadium watch the game on the web or on their phones and cheer through commenting online. What if there was a robot cheering for those fans?”

It’s not easy being a fan of the Hanwha Eagles – most fans are subject to ridicule because of the team’s poor performance. The Hanwha Eagles have suffered over 400 losses in the past five years. Fans of the team are regarded with sympathy – they’ve even been dubbed ‘Buddhist Saints’ and ‘Hanwha Chickens’ by fans of other teams. The humiliation has been so great that many fans don’t feel like attending games anymore. Others simply do not have the time.

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When we wrote about Datta Phuge, an Indian businessman who owns a 3.2-kilogram solid gold shirt, we thought that his was a unique story. But it turns out there are other rich men in India obsessed with gold – like Pankaj Parakh, a businessman and local politician who celebrated his 45th birthday by gifting himself a 4-kilogram gold shirt worth over $200,000.

Pankaj is a textile magnate from the town of Yeola, near Mumbai city, who made his millions through his clothing empire. He now wants to make sure the rest of the world knows about his success. And what better way to flash his wealth than by wearing it? So he commissioned the solid gold shirt that he wore on the occasion of his birthday, last Friday.

The yellow metal shirt was designed by Bafna Jewellers in the nearby city of Nashik. The garment was then meticulously executed at Shanti Jewellers in Mumbai, by a team of 20 select artisans who spent 3,200 hours over the past two months ‘sewing’ the shirt.

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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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He Qin-jiao, a 13-year-old girl from China’s Hunan Province is a prime example of what being a true kind-hearted human being is all about. Believe it or not, this fragile little girl somehow carried her polio-stricken best friend and classmate on her back, to and from school, every day, for three years. That’s a four-mile round trip, just to be clear. Qin-jiao’s story has touched Chinese internet users’ hearts so deeply that they’re now calling her ‘China’s most beautiful student’ .

When Qin-jiao was 9 years old, she realised that her best friend, He Ying-hui, couldn’t come to school anymore as she was disabled by polio and her family couldn’t carry her. So Qin-jiao decided to take up the responsibility herself. The loyal friend carried He to school for three long years, until the local government heard about her devotion, and finally gave Ying-hui her very own wheelchair in September of last year.

But Qin-jiao’s dedication towards her friend didn’t stop ther. She still wakes up at 6am, finishes her house chores and rushes to Ying-hui’s house to push her to school. When they finally reach their destination, she carries her friend on her back up to their classroom, on the second floor.

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Threadsmiths, a Melbourne-based clothing and technology company, has created a special t-shirt that could very well revolutionize the garment industry. Their new line of 100 percent cotton t-shirts , called ‘The Cavalier’, are made of a material that repels both water and dirt. The highly resilient garments have been put through a range of tests, and miraculously, they’ve passed every single one.

Pour a cup of water on these babies and they’ll remain dry as a bone. Splash Cola or Gatorade directly on to them and all that colored liquid simply beads up and rolls off the fabric. Hose them down with a high pressure stream and they still won’t hold a drop of water. It sounds like magic, but it’s all pure science.

The technology used to create these shirts is an extreme form of water-proofing that involves modifying the fundamental nature of surfaces, making them super-hydrophobic. The company website states: “Our shirts emulate the natural hydrophobic properties of the lotus leaf.” Instead of getting absorbed by the fabric, liquids just form into droplets that slide off of it.

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For nearly 50 years, Don Ritchie saved the lives of people who were on the verge of suicide. During his lifetime, he managed to stop 160 people from plunging to their deaths at Australia’s most famous suicide point – a cliff called ‘the Gap’ – with just a kind word and a smile. Although he passed away a couple of years ago at age 85, he is still fondly remembered as ‘the Angel of the Gap’.

Ritchie was an extraordinary gentleman who deliberately chose to live right across the street from The Gap, just so he could continue saving lives. He would wake up every morning and look out of the window for “anyone standing too close to the precipice.” If he saw someone and thought they might jump, he would simply walk over with his palms facing up, smile, and say: “Is there something I could do to help you?”

That sounds incredibly simple, but the trick worked – Ritchie managed to strike a conversation with these people and ended up inviting them back to his house for tea or breakfast. “And that was all that was often needed to turn people around, and he would say not to underestimate the power of a kind word and a smile,” said his daughter Sue Ritchie Bereny.

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