Johan Lorbeer - Gravity Defying Street Performer :

Johan Lorbeer is a German street performer who has gained fame for hanging several feet in the air in seemingly impossible positions. These still life Performance acts are hot and this one is called “Tarzan”, where the hell they got this name from is beyond me because I have never seen Tarzan do this.

In the act, Lorbeer casually hangs in mid-air several feet above the ground and leans his left arm stiffly against a building or wall as the other arm rests on his hip. Below him is a fairly large crowd The watching in amazement and taking pictures. At first I was almost certain this was a publicity stunt, but it is not. It is a fairly simple trick, but Lorbeer does a great job of capturing people’s imaginations and curiosity.

Photo Credits : Source1, Source2, Source3, Source4

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World's tallest mohawk stands 3 ft 8.6 inches :

A Japanese designer has been crowned by the Guinness Book of World Records for having the tallest mohawk haircut in the world. The tip of Kazuhiro Watanabe's spiked mohawk stands 3 ft 8.6 inches proud of his skull and earned him a place in the 2013 edition of the book, which is released on Thursday.
Watanabe unveiled his hair-do at a press event in New York on Wednesday to mark the launch of the new book. "It was a lot of work ... but I am happy to have achieved the world's No 1," 40-year-old Watanabe told reporters, adding that it had taken him 15 years to grow the mohawk to its present size.
To get it into shape takes three stylists, three cannisters of hair spray and a bottle of hair gel, Watanabe said.
Without gel and hairspray, the hair reaches his knees.

Photo Credits : Source1, Source2

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Man Has $230,000 Gold Shirt Made To Attract Women :

Calling all gold-diggers! Meet Money-lender Datta Phuge 32, from Pimpri -Chinchwad, who spent £14000 ($23,000) on a gold shirt that took 15 goldsmith 2 weeks to make on a 16 hours shift daily to complete. In a statement to Pune Mirror, Phuge said;

"I know that I'm not the best looking man in the world but surely no woman could fail to be dazzled by this shirt. Having a gold shirt has always been my dream and this shirt would be an embellishment to my reputation as the 'Gold man of Pimpri'.

The shirt was assembled on a fabric base of imported white velvet, and comes with six Swarovski crystal buttons and an intricate belt, also made of gold.

Photo Credits : Source

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The largest number of children ever born to one woman was 69 :

The greatest officially recorded number of children born to one mother is 69, to the wife of Feodor Vassilyev (b. 1707–c.1782), a peasant from Shuya, Russia. In 27 confinements she gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets.
        Numerous contemporaneous sources exist, which suggest that this seemingly improbably and statistically unlikely story is true. The case was reported to Moscow by the Monastery of Nikolsk on 27 Feb 1782, which had recorded every birth. It is noted that, by this time, only two of the children who were born in the period c. 1725–65 failed to survive their infancy.

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Spanish Runner, Intentionally Loses Race So Opponent Can Win :

A Spanish runner has shown the world that sometimes, just sometimes, winning isn't everything. Last month, Spanish athlete Ivan Fernandez Anaya impressed the world by giving up victory to do the right thing. According to El Pais, it happened as the 24-year-old raced a cross-country event in Burlada, Navarre on Dec. 2.
        In second place to Abel Mutai, the Kenyan athlete who won a bronze medal in the London Olympics, Anaya suddenly had a chance to surge ahead. According to El Pais, Mutai mistakenly thought the end of the race came about 10 meters sooner than it did, and stopped running.
        Then, he “looked back and saw the people telling him to keep going," Anaya told CNA. "But since he doesn't speak Spanish he didn't realize it." So Anaya slowed, guiding Mutai to the actual finish line.

And he didn't think much of it, either. Anaya told El Pais:
"I didn't deserve to win it. I did what I had to do. He was the rightful winner. He created a gap that I couldn't have closed if he hadn't made a mistake. As soon as I saw he was stopping, I knew I wasn't going to pass him."

Photo Credits : Source1, Source2

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Pablo Escobar was making so much money, he spent $2,500 a month on rubber bands to bundle up his stacks of cash :

Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was making so much money, he spent $2,500 a month on rubber bands to bundle up his stacks of cash. Pablo was earning so much that each year he writes off 10% of the money because the rats ate it in storage or it got damaged by water or lost.
         In most businesses, seeing a return on investment (ROI) of 100% would be more than enough for a company to thrive. By some estimates, notorious Colombian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar enjoyed an ROI of as much as 20,000%. Put another way, for every $1 he put into his business, he got about $200 in return.

Photo Credits : Source

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Ectrodactyly - Lobster-claw syndrome :

The word ectrodactyly comes from the Greek word ektroma, which means abortion and daktylos, which means finger; so it literally means, abortion (of a) finger. It occurs in 1 out of every 90,000 live births and was first described in 1936. The physical appearance is due to, “median clefts of the hands and feet and aplasia/or hypoplasia of the phalanges, metacarpals and metatarsals.” In other words, some fingers and toes are fused or missing. 
     Fortunately, people with this condition can lead normal lives, despite this physical abnormality. Highly successful radio host Bree Walker was born with Ectrodactyly, and she is an advocate for people with disabilities. 

Photo Credits :Source

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The Saga of Einstein’s Brain :

Pickled in a Jar for 43 Years and Driven Cross Country in a Trunk of a Buick!

After his death in 1955, Einstein’s brain was removed – without permission from his family – by Thomas Stoltz Harvey, the Princeton Hospital pathologist who conducted the autopsy. Harvey took the brain home and kept it in a jar. He was later fired from his job for refusing to relinquish the organ.
         Many years later, Harvey, who by then had gotten permission from Hans Albert to study Einstein’s brain, sent slices of Einstein’s brain to various scientists throughout the world. One of these scientists was Marian Diamond of UC Berkeley, who discovered that compared to a normal person, Einstein had significantly more glial cells in the region of the brain that is responsible for synthesizing information.
In another study, Sandra Witelson of McMaster University found that Einstein’s brain lacked a particular "wrinkle" in the brain called the Sylvian fissure. Witelson speculated that this unusual anatomy allowed neurons in Einstein’s brain to communicate better with each other. Other studies had suggested that Einstein’s brain was denser, and that the inferior parietal lobe, which is often associated with mathematical ability, was larger than normal brains.
         The saga of Einsteins brain can be quite strange at times: in the early 1990s, Harvey went with freelance writer Michael Paterniti on a cross-country trip to California to meet Einstein’s granddaughter. They drove off from New Jersey in Harvey’s Buick Skylark with Einstein’s brain sloshing inside a jar in the trunk! Paterniti later wrote his experience in the book Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein’s Brain
       

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Life up in a Korowai tree house - West Papua, Indonesia :

The korowai, also called the Kolufo, are a people of southeastern Papua (i.e., the southeastern part of the western part of New Guinea. They number about 3,000. Until 1970, they were unaware of the existence of any people besides themselves. The majority of the Korowai clans live in tree houses on their isolated territory.

 The distinctive high stilt architecture of the Korowai houses, well above flood-water levels, is a form of defensive fortification- to disrupt rival clans from capturing people (especially women and children) for slavery or cannibalism. The height and girth of the common ironwood stilts also serves to protect the house from arson attacks in which huts are set alight and the inhabitants smoked out.

Photo Credits : Source

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Meet the real-life Popeye and his 31 inch biceps :

Egyptian-born bodybuilder has just had his 31 inch biceps crowned the biggest in the world. Moustafa Ismail, 24, has spent ten years pumping iron twice a day and his upper arms now havethe same circumference as a grown man’s waist.

The bodybuilder was so dedicated to bulking up his arms he moved his whole family to America to gain access to better workout equipment. Mr Ismail, who lives with his wife Carolina, started bodybuilding ten years ago in a bid to keep fit. But after hitting the gym he received hundreds of compliments on his bulging biceps and decided to concentrate all of his efforts on making them even bigger.

 Photo Credits : Source1, Source2, Source3

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The wildest superhero ever - Rick Rojatt :

 

 If ever there was a story that needed to be made into a feature film, it’s the story of Rick Rojatt – The Human Fly. His most famous stunt was almost certainly the one you see pictured above, he mounted himself atop a Douglas DC-8 wearing a thin cotton suit, gave the  thumbs up and was then flown at speeds in excess of 280 mph at 5000ft. The plane encountered a light rain shower during the flight and pain of being hit by water droplets at almost 300mph was so excruciating that Rick passed out, then needed 6 weeks of hospitalisation to recover.

The comic book company Marvel created a character based around The Human Fly with the catchphrase “The wildest superhero ever, because he’s real!” and Rick Rojatt would travel around the country, always in costume, to attend charity events. These events were elaborately staged and there’d invariably be a comic book villain waiting at each event to steal the money that had been raised. The Human Fly would triumph over him in the end and the children in attendance would almost lose their minds with glee.

The last recorded stunt performed by The Human Fly took place at the Montreal Olympic Stadium in 1977, he was to ride a specially built rocket-powered Harley-Davidson over 27 busses with a view to beating Evel Knievel’s world record of 13.

Photo Credits : Source1, Source2, Source3, Source4

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Billionaire Sheikh Carves His Name in Desert So Big It Can Be Seen From Space :

 Billionaire Arab Sheikh Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan, 63, carved his name into the desert SO BIG that it can be seen from space. His name ‘HAMAD’ is sketched on an island, using his limitless fortune, he hired a crew to dig his name into the sand on an island he owns called Al Futaisi. The name is two miles across and the carved letters are a kilometer high. The name is so big that it can be seen from space and the “H”, first “A” and a bit of the “M” have been turned into waterways. The letters are dug so deep, they form waterways.

Photo Credits : Source1, Source2

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The Magnetic Man - Liew Thow Lin :

 Liew Thow Lin, a 70-year-old retired contractor in Malaysia, recently made news for pulling a car twenty meters along a level surface by means of an iron chain hooked to an iron plate on his midriff. He says that he discovered he had the amazing ability to make objects stick “magnetically” to his skin, and now he’s added car-pulling to his repertoire.

After reading an article about a family in Taiwan who possessed such power, he says he took several iron objects and put them on his abdomen, and to his surprise, all the objects including an iron, stuck on his skin and didn’t fall down.

Picture credits :  Source

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Maeklong Railway Market-Thailand :

Maeklong Railway Market, located in Samut Songkhram, Thailand, around 37 miles west of Bangkok, looks like any other open-air market in Asia. There are tropical fruits and vegetables such as lychee, durian, and mango in big brightly colored piles, variety of dried spices, pastes and herbs, freshly caught seafood and other local foods. The crowd weave their way around in between vendors, picking up whatever they need for the day. The market is sheltered by low-hanging awnings/umbrellas and if you look closely, you will notice that you are actually walking on train rails.

Once the train is gone, the vendors push back the stalls and awnings into position and everything goes back to normal as if nothing has happened. After all the market has been here for generations way before when the railway was set up in 1905. Thais call this place Talad Rom Hoop Market which literally translates to “Market Umbrella Pulldown”.

Photo Credits : http://uncoveringtheworld.wordpress.com/2012/12/30/903/

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