85-year-old Nguyen Van Chien, from Vietnam’s southern province of Tien Giang, hasn’t had a haircut since he was in the 12th grade, 70 years ago. As a result, his hair now 4-meters-long and weight 2 kilograms.

Even as a young boy, Nguyen Van Chien liked to let his hair grow long. He would braided it into a bun on top of his head to keep it from interfering with his daily activities, but one day, while he was in the 12th grade, his teachers advised him to cut his hair. He took their advice, but as soon as he got a haircut, he started experiencing a strange pain that not even painkillers could make go away. Before he cut his hair the man had had no health problems, not even a common flu, so he decided to let his hair grow, and never cut it again. It’s been 70 years since he made the decision, and now his “dragon tail”, as he calls his hair measured around 4 meters long and weighs over 2 kilograms.

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60-year-old Mangas Colaradas, born and raised in Swansea, Wales, has lived as a Native American Indian for the last two decades, after divorcing his wife. He wears traditional Apache clothing and respects their beliefs, but lives in a three-bed suburban house.

Mangas, who was apparently once known as “Mr. Davies”, refuses to disclose his former name and only answers to his Indian one, adopted in honor of a great Apache tribe leader. Regardless of what others may think of him, the British Apache says he’s the real deal, and that he dresses and lives like an Indian all the time. “I dress like this all the time, I’m not just some weekend Indian. I don’t put it on to show off, I put it on because I want to wear it”, Mangas was quoted by This Is South Wales. The father of six divorced his wife during the 1990s and embraced the Apache Indian lifestyle. In 1997, he even traveled to the US and tried to live on a Red Indian reservation, but wasn’t allowed to by the American Government. He then moved to Spain where he live in a tepee, in the mountains and forests around Torremolinos. “I prefer being out in the wild, watching the wolves or bats or spiders going by”, Mangas says.

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Chen Guanming, a 57-year-old farmer from China, spent over two years travelling about 60,000 kilometers, through 16 countries, enduring floods, war zones and extreme temperatures,  to reach London in time for the games and “spread Olympic spirit”.

The 2012 London Olympic Games may have ended, but remarkable stories related to the monumental event are still popping up. One such story is that of Chen Guanming, a simple farmer from a village in China’s Jiangsu province, who traveled all the way to London the only way he could afford to, by rickshaw. The daring traveler said he was inspired to go on this epic journey when he watched the English Prime-Minister accept the Olympic flag, in 2008, and the media invited those watching the live broadcast to the next edition of the games. Chen took that invitation quite seriously, and in 2009, he started putting all his papers in order and preparing for an unforgettable adventure. His long rickshaw ride began on May 23, 2010, in the village where he grows rice and other crops, and took him through 16 different countries, including Vietnam, Thailand, Pakistan or Italy.

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Sun Jifa, a Chinese farmer who lost both his arms after a homemade bomb exploded prematurely, built his own functional prosthetic limbs after he couldn’t afford to buy the one offerd by the hospital.

A few years back, 51-year-old Sun Jifa, from Guanmashan, Jilin province, northern China, was working on explosives designed for blast fishing when a bomb blew up prematurely leaving him without both his arms. He was taken to the hospital and treated, but when doctors proposed he wear a pair of prosthetics designed to make his everyday life easier, Sun realized he just couldn’t afford them. At the same time he knew he needed both his arms in order to work on the farm and provide for  his family. That’s when he decided to built his own artificial arms out of scrap metal. After eight years of planning and several prototypes, He finally has a pair of functional arms.

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A lot of people can’t imagine going through a day without taking at least one shower, but 66-year-old  Kailash Singh, from India, hasn’t taken a bath in over 38 years, and says he’s happier than a lot of people who wash their bodies every day.

But what can possibly make a man give up the daily ritual of bathing? Kailash says he told the decision in 1974, shortly after he got married, hoping this would help him have a son. He claims it was priest who guaranteed him a prized son if he followed his advice not to wash or cut his hair. Now, over 38 years later, Kailash Singh is probably the world’s smelliest man, has 6-foot-long dirty dreadlocks and is father to seven daughters and not a single son. despite having been failed by his religious guidance, the old man still doesn’t want to wash his body, and says only a son could change his mind. Although stranger things have happened, fathering a son at 66, with a 60-year-old wife is very unlikely.

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You’ve probably never heard of her, but Taiwanese vegetable seller Chen Shu-chu has done more for the needy than many of the world’s rich and famous. Earning a modest living selling vegetables at the market, the Asian hero has so far managed to donate over $322,000 to various charities.

“Money serves its purpose only when it is used for those who need it,” Chen Shu-chu once told a newspaper, and throughout the years, the dedicated philanthropist made sure her hard earned cash was indeed used for the right causes. Inspired by her own difficult and impoverished childhood, Chen decided to dedicate her life to helping those less fortunate than her. Even though she earned a modest income selling vegetables in Taitung County’s central market, in eastern Taiwan, the 61-year-old led a frugal life and donated almost all of her money to charities. You’d think there wouldn’t be much to give away, but Chen Shu-chu has so far made substantial donations, including  $32,000 for a children’s fund, $144,000 to build a library at a school she attended and $32,000 to a local orphanage where she also offers financial support to three children. In total, the world’s most generous vegatable seller has so far donated over $300,000, and she’s not planning on stopping.

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In a time when man has so many communication tools at his disposal, it seems odd that someone would use a horse to get their message across to the world. But that’s exactly what Vincent Gabriel Kirouac did to promote chivalry and polite manners in Canada.

It’s not every day that you get to see a man in full knight regalia, riding a horse through the busy streets of Canadian cities like Ottawa, but that’s just what Vincent Kirouac has been doing during the last few months. “I’m crossing Canada on horseback dressed as a knight, to remind people of the values of long ago, such as devotion,” he told the National Post. And believe it or not, his unique strategy seems to be working as he manages to steal smiles from people everywhere he goes and even some friendly invitations from total strangers. “You ask for the hospitality and they say ‘yes’ all the time,” he told CBC.

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I know what you’re thinking, we’re all pretty much addicted to water, but we don’t feel like drinking it every moment of every day, and we certainly don’t consume over six gallons of it, daily. But Sasha Kennedy does, and that definitely makes her a water addict.

Drinking plenty of water is generally regarded as healthy advice, but they say too much of a good think can sometimes be bad for you, and 26-year-old Sasha Kennedy, from Essex, England, is certainly overdoing it. The young mother of two says she drinks about 25 liters of water a day, and can hardly go one hour without water, even at night. Because of her strange addiction, Sasha is forced to carry bottles of water with her, everywhere she goes, and has to use the bathroom up to 40 times a day.

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26-year-old Lawrence Edmonds is a man with a taste for religion. In the last 13 months he has traveled 5,000 around England, licking 42 Anglican Cathedrals.

I know what you’re thinking, but Lawrence isn’t mad, at least not officially. This bizarre journey of his is the result of a bet two of his friends made at a pub, one night. Adam challenged Dan to lick every Anglican cathedral in the UK. If he agreed and failed to perform the task, Dan would have to run naked around the York Minster, but if he did do it in time, Adam would have to perform the streak. After talking with Dan and learning he had only licked Exeter Cathedral, he asked Adam if he could take the bet in Dan’s place. His friend accepted so he started traveling around England, taking photos of himself licking various holy cathedrals, and posting them all on a blog. So far he has put his tongue on 42 edifices, but recently discovered he has 20 more to go in order to win the bet.

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Ok, so we’ve had plenty of doll-like Internet celebrities featured on Oddity Central, but Yohio, a Japanese visual kei singer is pushing the envelope even further, as he’s actually a 16-year-old Swedish bot who looks like an anime girl.

The androgynous look isn’t exactly something new in music. Singers like David Bowie, Boy George and even Marylin Manson have used their feminine features to their advantage for years, but they never took it as far as Yohio, a Swedish teen who has taken Japan by storm with his anime girl looks, guitar skills and knowledge of the Japanese language. The 16-year-old became an online sensation outside the Land of the Rising Sun when a video of a a pale blonde-hair girl with big black eyes and pigtails singing in Japanese made the rounds of popular Internet media outlets. People were left stunned when they realized the beautiful performer was actually a 16-year-old dude, from Sweden.

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This is one of the most unbelievable stories I have come across in a while, and had my doubts about its authenticity at first, but after reading about it on some reputed websites, my worries were put to rest.

The story was recently made public by Reddit user ‘Naruhodo‘, who linked to a bunch of photos of a Mad-Max-style motorcycle apparently built out of the parts of a broken-down Citroen 2CV, by a man stranded in the Sahara Desert. Pretty unbelievable stuff, only it turned out to be absolutely 100% true. It all happened back in 1993, when Frenchman Emile Leray was on a solo trip in Northern Africa, driving his specially prepared Citroen 2CV. His car broke down in the middle of the desert, tens of kilometers from the nearest settlement. To survive, the French MacGyver created a motorcycle out of parts of his broken down car.

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Dr Emil Chynn, a successful New York surgeon, has tired of traditional dating methods, so he’s offering tens of thousands of dollars to whoever helps him find the woman of his dreams.

So what does a person do in order to “outsource” the work of finding a suitable life partner? Well, the latest thing Dr. Chynn did was post an eye-catching personal ad in Columbia University’s alumni magazine. The advert in the Spring 2012 issue of the magazine reads: “LASEK SURGEON: Featured in NY Times/Wall Street Journal. Dartmouth, Columbia, Harvard, Emory, NYU degrees. Seeks smart, sweet, skinny SWF, 30, for marriage. $10,000 donation to your charity for intro!” The young surgeon says he chose that number because it’s what a good matchmaker in New York City charges, so he the money to charity, instead.

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A yet unnamed 11-year-old girl from Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City has been making headlines in Asia, for her alleged uncontrollable power to set things around her on fire.

According to Vietnamese website Ngoisao, on May 12, a young girl living in the Tan Binh district of Ho Chi Minh has burned down almost the entire third floor of her family’s home. Her father says the child did not have access to any fire-inducing objects, and that the fire was caused by the super-energy in her body. How many times have we heard that one before, right? But while that may sound like the exaggerations of a parent looking for media attention, this is apparently not the first time this Vietnamese girl has caused things to burst into fire just by going near them.

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When someone famous, like the former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, goes on a hunger strike, the whole world knows about it, but Irom Sharmila Chanu, an ordinary woman from India, has been on a political fast for the last 12 years, and hardly anyone even knows she exists.

Irom Sharmila Chanu, also known as the Iron Lady of Manipur, went on a hunger strike on November 4, 2000 in an effort to  have the Government of India withdraw the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA) from Manipur and other parts of India. This draconian act practically gives the military the power to do as they wish, as it prohibits any legal or judicial proceedings against army personnel without the previous sanction of the Central Government. It has taken away the people’s right to protest against atrocities or engage in any lawful democratic activity. Simple civilians can easily be labeled as ‘terrorists’ or ‘suspects’ and taken into custody. According to official figures, 25,000 people have been killed in Manipur alone, since this Act came into force, in 1980. Back then, there were only four insurgent groups in the area, now there are 25 on the army’s watch list.

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Lawyers usually sport classic hairstyles, slick suits and expensive cars, but not Patrick Brysbaert. His Mohawk hairdo, multiple face piercings and leather pants make him probably the most eccentric lawyer in the world.

“Lawyers should dare to show what is under their robes. We represent the whole society, so even people who are a little different, like me”, Brysbaert says. Twenty years ago he looked like just another lawyer – he had short hair, always wore a classic suit and drove a boring Saab to work. Then, after he broke up with his partner, Patrick decided to quit his profession and started operating a cafe in Antwerp, Belgium. During this period of “true liberation” the former legal worker got a full back tattoo, an erotic drawing on his shoulder, had various parts of his face pierced and changed his hairstyle to a Mohawk. Finally, he was himself.

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