The Pumpkin Boat Race of Ludwigsburg Pumpkin Festival has people racing each other in hollowed out pumpkins, across Ludwigsburg Lake.

Known as the biggest pumpkin related event in the world, the Ludwigsburg Pumpkin Festival draws in pumpkin enthusiasts from all around the globe, every year. They travel to the small German town to see over 500,000 pumpkins, from 450 different varieties, arranged in all kinds of different shapes, from animals to abstract sculptures.

One of the most eagerly awaited events of the Ludwigsburg Pumpkin Festival is the pumpkin boat race. Giant pumpkins, some of them over 90 kg heavy, are hollowed out and launched onto Ludwigsburg Lake, and contestants have to paddle their way to the finish line, in the cheers of onlookers. I’m not sure what the prize is for winning such a bizarre boat race, but I could swear it’s something related to pumpkins.

If you’re a pumpkin lover yourself, you’ll be happy to know the Ludwigsburg Pumpkin Festival continues until early November.

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To mark the 70th anniversary of The Battle of Britain, farmer Tom Percy created a giant maze, shaped like a Spitfire fighter plane.

Tom Percy has made a name for himself, after creating a series of incredible corn field mazes, just outside Yorkshire town, in Britain. In previous years, he designed mazes shaped as an astronaut, the Statue of Liberty, the Flying Scotsman, Big Ben and a Viking longship. This year, he really outdid himself, creating one of the biggest mazes in the world, the size of 8 football fields.

Using GPS technology, Tom completed his giant Spitfire plane in just one week. And what’s even more amazing is that he managed to create an intricate maze, from over one million corn plants, inside the shape of the fighter plane.

Measuring over 1,000 feet in length, Tom Percy’s maze is the largest image of the famous World War 2 fighter.

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Xia Yu, a man who really believes in the concept of recycling, has built a functional boat out of 2,010 plastic bottles.

The 37-year-old boat builder gathered all the plastic bottles at a tea-house he manages in Xiangtan, central Hunan Province, China. Every time a customer left behind a plastic bottle, he just added it to his supply, until he got the number he needed to start construction on his boat.

This is not Xia Yu’s first plastic bottle boat. Last year, he built hos first one out of 1,500 plastic bottles and sailed 35 miles in it. This experience gave him the confidence to built a second, larger boat, to sail in all the way to Shanghai, for the World Expo. His second creation is seven meters long, features 5 sails ( the tallest of which las a special message that reads “Low carbon emission, beautiful world”) and has room for a six man crew.

Although when he began his journey to the Shanghai World Expo, in May, he expected it to last only 45 days, Xia Yu only arrived at the event on September 15, after sailing over 1,000 miles. He hopes his achievement will raise awareness to the environmental problems afecting our lives every day.

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It’s not everyday that you get to see a six-months-old girl playing with full frown pythons, but for Sidhi Siddharth Sinune this kind of snakes are everyday toys.

Because he can’t afford to buy his young daughter any toys, Sidhi’s farmer father, who tries to make ends meet as a snake catcher, admits he brings the dangerous reptiles home and lets her play with them. So while he and his wife are working in the fields, Sidhi spends her days in the lovely company of a creature that could kill her by constriction, or by swallowing her whole.

Sidhi’s father says she develops an unusual bond with the snakes, and that the reptiles love to play with her just as much as she loves playing with them. They let her squeeze them and even bithe on their tails with her gums .

While I completely understand how costly children’s toys can be, couldn’t this man carve or make something for his young daughter, instead of leaving her with a deadly python? Read More »

Mark Malkoff, a comedian and filmmaker from New York City, decided to spend five days in his tiny bathroom, as a sort of detox from Internet addiction.

Just like many other New-Yorkers, Mark spent most of his day online, browsing and checking his Twitter and Facebook pages, every other minute. He confesses he would sometimes be online from the moment he woke up until he went to sleep, and that interfered with pretty much all other aspects of his life. His addiction got so bad that he would excuse himself just to go to the bathroom and check his online accounts, when going on dates with his wife.

But unlike most people in his situation, the Queens-based comedian decided to do something about it, and since his bathroom was the only place he could think of where he wouldn’t have any distractions or temptation, he set his goal on spending five days in there. It might not seem like such a big deal, but Mark Malkoff‘s bathroom is smaller than an Alcatraz jail cell, and it’s pink…

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Wang Luyao, a junior student at the Commercial Service College in Wuhan, has built a perfectly functional boat out of sheets of paper.

In an attempt to raise awareness about recycling, and green living in general, Wang used his paper boat to cross from one side of the Hanjiang River to the other. Escorted by two normal canoes, the young student jumped in his paper boat and rowed the 800-meter distance in just seven minutes, proving that boats made of recycled paper really are an environment-friendly solution.

Wang Luyao’s paper boat is 1.9 meters long, 1.2 meters wide, weighs 45 kg, and is made out of raw sheets of paper that the young student collected, himself.

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Switzerland and Belgium may be the world’s most famous chocolate-making countries, but tiny Armenia has just stolen some of their spotlight by creating the largest chocolate bar, ever.

The sweet event took place in Armenia’s capital of Yerevan, and was organized by the Grand Candy Factory – a local chocolate making company – as a way to celebrate to celebrate its 10 years of existence. Guinness Book representatives were invited to take part in the unveiling of the chocolate monster created, and to make sure this event goes into the record books.

The giant chocolate bar weighs 4,400 kilograms, is 224 inches long, 110 inches wide, 10 inches thick and is made from cocoa beans from Ghana. In the following weeks, the world’s biggest chocolate down will be chipped into pieces and handed out to freely around Yerevan.

The previous record for the world’s biggest chocolate bar was set in 2007, in Italy.

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Chris Verschueren, a 53-year-old French fries maker, from the Belgian village of Kastel, has set a new world record after cooking and selling French fries for 83 consecutive hours.

Verschueren turned on his deep fryer on Friday morning and didn’t stop frying potato chips until Monday evening. During this cooking marathon, the tenacious chip-maker only took a 100 minute break to shower and do some stretching. After cooking up 1,500 kilograms of potatoes, Chris Verschueren had this to say: “My fingers are burnt, my feet are sore and my wrist is painful, but it doesn’t matter, I’m going to party now.”

Although he couldn’t reach his goal of selling 1,500 bags of French fries, the national Belgian dish, Verschueren managed to break the old record for non-stop French fry making, of 72 hours, set in 1987 by a British cook.

Apart from his passion for making French fries and the desire to have his name mentioned in the record books, Chris Verschueren took on this challenge to raise funds for a children’s hospital.

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47 -year-old Steve Wozniak, a lure fisherman from California, has traveled the world over, in his quest to catch as many different species of fish as possible. So far he managed to catch 1,000 species, from a colorful Threadfin Butterflyfish to a 410 kilogram shark.

Believe it or not, Steve Wozniak has spent the last 10 years, and $75,000 traveling to 63 different countries in the search for new species of fish to put on his list. He flew over 1 million air miles, and spent over 20,000 hours holding his trusty rod and hoping for a bite. But all his efforts paid out when he finally caught his 1,000th fish species, a Norwegian coalfish, and set a new world record.

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Yesterday, thousands of redheads gathered in the Dutch city of Breda, for the fifth edition of the Red Head Festival. Participants were asked to come dressed in white, a color that really compliments their hair color, and were able to take part in all kinds of fun activities, workshops and even a fashion show.

The main criteria for attending the Red Hair Festival is that participants have natural red hair, but the event itself is not all about the hair, but the color read, in general. This unique event can be traced back to 2005, when Dutch painter Bart Rouwenhorst advertised for 15 red-haired models he wanted to paint. 150 people answered his ad and the painting session turned into an annual event for redheads. Last year , 4,000 redheads attended the Red Head Festival, and their number surpassed 5,000 in 2010.

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One of the wackiest competitions in the world, the World Gravy Wrestling Championship drew in quite a crowd this year, at the Rose n’ Bowl pub, in Stacksteads, Britain.

Over 1,000 people gathered at the famous Lancashire venue, to watch 24 competitors get down and dirty in a pool of gravy. All the contestants had to do to defeat their opponents was get most of the applause, after the 2 minute-long wrestling match. To do this, they wore funny costumes and tried to impress the audience by performing special moves.

Over 2,000 liters of past-its-before-date gravy was supplied for the 2010 World Gravy Wrestling Championship, all of it made following a special local recipe. Hopefully wrestlers didn’t swallow too much of it…

The World Gravy Wrestling Championship is a fun event that aims to raise money for charity, despite the competitive streak of most competitors. This year’s winners were Elliot Rooke, who was dressed as a bunny, and Elisa Samson, who wrestled as Little Bo Peep, in the ladies’ contest.

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Narasamma, a 92-year-old woman from Bangalore, India, says he hasn’t had a drink of water since she was 14-years old.

Narasamma is completely aware of how bizarre her claim may be for some people, and that is precisely why she never told anyone, but her closest family members, about her non-existent water drinking habits. The 92-year-old told Mid Day she just never feels the need to drink water, and that her body works well enough with the two cups of coffee she drinks every day.

But the old woman claims things weren’t always like this, on the contrary. When she was 14 years old, Narasamma developed a weird condition that caused her throat to get extremely dry, and she would drink up to 10 liters of water a day. That, in turn caused her body to swell up to the point where she had no more control over her limbs. Scared, her parents took her to Ayurvedic doctors, who suggested a 48-day-long steam therapy that would help her eliminate excess water through sweat. She got better, but after her ailment returned, she vowed never to drink water again.

Asked how she lives her life without water, Narasamma said she relies only on Ayurvedic medicine (because pills require her to drink water), and wears wet clothes, during the summer, to survive the heat and regulate her body’s water level. She only eats rice, dry fruits and nuts,  spends five hours a day praying, and fasts at least 10 days a month.

In the year 2000, Narasamma went on a 36-day tour of northern and southern India, with no food and water. She claims she sipped just 3 cups of coffee throughout her entire journey. Doctors say water is indispensable to the human body, but in rare cases our organism finds different ways of getting the water it needs. To prove her claim, the old woman would have to be thoroughly tested.

Narasamma’s claim may seem preposterous, but a few months ago,  Indian Yogi Prahlad Jani startled scientists when he proved he can survive without eating or drinking water.

Hundreds of young Mexican scouts gathered in the main square of Mexico City, on Sunday, August 30, to create what may be the largest scout badge in the world. The outline of the scout lily was traced beforehand, and the scouts had to fill the entire design with over 1.65 million differently colored used metal cans. Not only is this the largest scout badge ever created, but it also sends a strong message about the need to recycle.

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Ten-month-old Lei Lei, also known as the “Michelin baby“, has become somewhat of an Internet celebrity after photos of him were published on a Chinese government site.

The young boy had scientists scratching their heads, when he was brought to the hospital, earlier this month, on account of a fever. At just ten months, he weighs a whopping 20 kilograms, about the average weight of a normal six year-old. He is currently in a hospital, undergoing some tests that will hopefully reveal some hints about his abnormal size and weight.

Lel Lei’s parents say the boy has quite an appetite, and that he spends most of his days juts breast-feeding and sleeping. He also instinctively puts everything he touches into his mouth, and tries to munch on it.

The Michelin Baby is just the tip of the iceberg, as the obesity problem because more and more serious in China. As the country’s economy keeps growing, millions of people are becoming sedentary and developing weight problems. Over 60 million Chinese are obese, and over 200 million are overweight.

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Ever since she first saw R2-D2 for the first time, in A New Hope, when she was just a little girl, Bonnie Burton developed a crush on the little robot. Now that she’s all grown up, the geeky Star Wars fan decided to follow her heart and marry the droid of her dreams.

After countless disappointments from humans who simply didn’t get her geeky attitude, Bonnie decided droids are way better than boys anyway, and used the Star Wars Celebration V event, on August 13, as an opportunity to officially marry R2-D2, her longtime crush. So, during a ceremony presided by non other than the evil Darth Maul, good ol’ R2 and Bonnie became droid and wife.

Bonnie was given away at the altar by Steve Sansweet, Fan Relations Director at Lucasfilm, and had R2-KT as maid of honor, while R2-D2 had Darth Vader as best man.

Ms. Porter realizes her marriage to a droid won’t be accepted by everyone, but they had just too many things in common and she just couldn’t suppress her feelings. All I can say is I hope they’ll be happy together!

Check out more photos of the happy event here, and a video of the ceremony here.

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