02.20.2017 Photos by Sina Weibo Zhao Yongjiu, a 56-year-old street cleaner from Shenyang, China, recently won the internet after it was revealed that over the last three decades he has helped fund the education of 37 impoverished children by donating most of his monthly salary. Every day, the kindhearted sanitation worker leaves his home in Shenyang, China’s[…]
Fair State’s annual Co-Optoberfest brings Northeast Minneapolis together through beer, brats, and Bavarian-style merriment every fall. As rents rise and independent businesses in Minneapolis lose their leases to large national chains, a first-of-its-kind co-op found a solution. By Christa Hillstrom / 02.03.2017 After years of brewing at home, Evan Sallee and his partners at Fair[…]
01.16.2017 It’s hard to believe that a family with no construction experience could build a two-storey, five-bedroom house all by themselves, by watching tutorials on YouTube, but Cara Brookins and her four kids are living proof that it can be done. Their amazing story is now the subject of a book – ‘Rise, How a House[…]
01.09.2017 For the past four decades, billy barr – he insists his name be written with lower case letters only – has been living by himself in Gothic, Colorado, a ghost town deserted since the 1920s, passing the time by recording all sorts of data, from daily snowfalls, temperatures, snow melting, animal sightings, etc.. He never[…]
12.29.2016 Coming up with effective hand protection in dangerous environments like construction sites has been an elusive goal for many years, but Chilean inventor Jorge Sgombic claims to have finally come up with a truly safe solution. Boots with built-in toe protection have become a requirement on most construction sites these days, so foot safety[…]
By Alexa Erickson / 12.29.2016 Quit your job, travel the world, be free. There are a lot of movements gaining steam out there that promote quitting the rat race, embracing minimalism, putting experiences before owning things, lowering your carbon footprint, and embracing sustainability, among other admirable initiatives. With countless studies revealing how the typical American diet, job, and[…]
A London-based brewery has recently launched a unique service that uses cutting edge genetic profiling to create “the world’s most personalised beer”, based on the client’s DNA profile. And it “only” costs £25,000 ($30,550). Ciaran Giblin, the brewmaster of Meantime Brewery, was the world’s first brewer to have a beer tailored to his own DNA, and was so[…]
Tokyo Christmas Illuminations, Mikimoto Jumbo Christmas Tree By Muza-chan / 12.19.2011 Muza-chan’s Gate to Japan Since the number of Christians in Japan is relatively low (under 1%), the Christmas day is not a national holiday and the Christmas in Japan is mainly a commercial event. However, there are several typical Christmas customs and traditions taking[…]
12.22.2016 It’s not unusual for youth nowadays to speak more than one language, but 32-year-old Muhamed Mešić is not your typical polyglot. He can communicate fluently in 56 different languages and claims to understand over 70 of them. Ever since he was a little boy growing up in Tuzla, an industrial city in the former Yugoslavia (currently[…]
If you’re in need of some emotional advice, but have neither the time or the money to waste on a qualified therapist, this 11-year-old kid has you covered. Ciro Ortiz has set up shop in a New York subway station, and for a measly $2, he offers five-minute “emotional advice” sessions. Every Sunday, Ciro Ortiz spends[…]
12.19.2016 Pepper Bomb Your Mom is a new online service that allows you to send chocolate-covered Carolina Reaper peppers – the world’s hottest peppers – to your friends/enemies anonymously, for just $9.99. This past summer, 18-year-old friends Lizzy and Sabrina shot to internet fame after filming themselves doing the world’s hottest pepper challenge and posting the[…]
By Chris Agnos / 12.18.2016 Could Driverless Cars Change Our Concept of Ownership? The relationship between human beings and their cars has created a dramatic shift in the way we think about possibilities. Since their introduction about a century ago, cars have given many of us the feeling that we could go wherever we wanted.[…]
\ 12.16.2016 On December 9th, 2011, champion rock-climber Lai Chi-wai suffered a motorcycle accident that left him paralyzed from the waste down. On the same day, five years later, he climbed Hong Kong’s iconic Lion Rock once again, this time in a wheelchair. 33-year-old Lai Chi-wai is a four-time winner of the Asian Rock Climbing Championships, but[…]
12.14.2016 If you’re a dog lover visiting Bangkok, you simply must stop by the True Love Café, a wonderful place where you can get a taste of Thai cuisine, or enjoy some refreshments in the company of dozens of adorable huskies. The True Love Café opened in 2013, when Chotiros Ratanabirabongse, Paw for short, a long-time husky breeder, decided to[…]
By Xeni Jardin / 12.12.2016 “This is what happens when a terminally ill child dies in Santa’s arms.” Eric Schmitt-Matzen is a shopping mall Santa Claus guy. He is 6’1″ and 310 pounds, with an authentic pure white beard. When he’s not busy being Santa, he’s a mechanical engineer and the president of Packing Seals[…]
Florencio Sanchidrián has been slicing Iberian ham (jamon) for the last three decades and today his name is synonymous with the Spanish delicacy. The 55-year-old is regarded as the world’s best ham slicer in the world, and he charges accordingly for his services – a reported $4,000 to slice a leg of ham. Born in the[…]
imgur 12.05.2016 Most of us don’t pay much attention to light bulbs. They play a very important role in our lives, but when it comes to aesthetics, most of them are nothing special. But there was once a company that produced the most amazing flower light bulbs, and luckily some of its creations are still[…]
11.23.2016 Urban Rigger, a housing and architect firm in Denmark, has come up with an eco-friendly way to provide affordable and comfortable accommodations to cash-strapped students living in big cities. Their innovative “container dorms” are made up of modified shipping containers floating on a platform in urban harbors. For many students, having to save money[…]
It’s only an hour. What difference could it make? / Shutterstock By Dr. Michael J. Decker and Dr. Elizabeth Damato Decker – Associate Professor of Nursing, Physiology, and Biophysics Damato – Associate Professor of Nursing Case Western Reserve University On Sunday in (most) of the United States, we again advanced the time on our[…]
11.25.2016 Featuring perfectly replicated seams, soles and shoelaces, as well as impressively realistic finish, these life-size chocolate shoes seem made of genuine brown leather. The “Gentleman’s Radiance” chocolate line is the creation of master chocolatier Motohiro Okai of Rihga Royal Hotel’s chocolate boutique L’éclat, in Osaka, Japan. Each leather show measures 26 centimeters (10.2 inches) in length, and is crafted exclusively from chocolate, including[…]
11.25.2016 The 80 inhabitants of a small Spanish village by the name of Cerezales del Condado have all become millionaires overnight, after inheriting roughly $210 million from Antonino Fernández, the founder of the world famous Corona Brewery. Fernández was born and raised in Cerezales del Condado, before emigrating to Mexico in 1949, at the age of 32, to work[…]
11.22.2016 The Yangtze River Bridge in Nanjing, China, is one of the most popular suicide spots in the world, and also the place where one man has spent all his weekends and holidays over the last 13 years trying to convince people out of ending their lives. He has so far been able to save[…]
11.15.2016 Chinsekikan, or The Hall of Curious Rocks is a unique museum in the Japanese town Saitama, just outside Tokyo, where visitors can admire close to 1,000 rocks that resemble human faces. This outlandish tourist attraction is the work of the late Shozo Hayama, a rock enthusiast who spent 50 years of his life collecting[…]
07.11.2016 When it comes to weird tourist attractions, it’s hard to beat a stuffed black bear that died of what many people consider the worst cocaine overdose in history. Nicknamed Pablo EscoBear, the unique tourist attraction is currently on display at the Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall, in Lexington. On December 23, 1985, the New York[…]
CCTV 11.18.2016 Home made bread has become very popular in Sweden over the last few years, so popular in fact that the country has its very own dough hotel – a place where people can drop off their precious sourdough knowing that it will be cared for properly until they return. No it’s not a joke, such[…]
By David Pescovitz / 11.15.2016 David Manucso, the pioneering New York City DJ who launched the underground dance music scene with his in 1970 club The Loft, has died. He was 72. Mancuso’s exquisite taste in music and his mission to host inclusive parties safe for GLBTQ people and other marginalized communities made him a[…]
11.15.2016 Photos by Weibo Chinese companies have been known to subject their employees to some of the most unusual and degrading punishments imaginable, but this latest one takes the cake. According to recent new reports, a company Hanzhong, Shaanxi province, decided to punish who failed to meet their sales targets by feeding them a disgusting cocktail of[…]
By David Pescovitz / 11.07.2016 When you logged into AOL in the 1990s, you were greeted with the voice of Elwood Edwards. Last night, Brandee Barker was headed to one of Hillary Clinton’s Ohio campaign headquarters for canvassing when she happened to meet Edwards. He was her Uber driver! OMG OMG my @Uber driver in[…]
11.03.2016 When driving at night, there’s nothing quite as annoying as being blinded by the full-beam headlights of another vehicle. Recognizing this problem, the police department recently started punishing offenders by making them stare at their own headlights for a full minute. Hopefully, this will make them see the error of their ways. On November 1st,[…]
Spring forward, fall back … why? / Shutterstock By Dr. Laura Grant / 11.02.2016 Assistant Professor of Economics McKenna College Today the sun is shining during my commute home from work. But this weekend, public service announcements will remind us to “fall back,” ending daylight saving time (DST) by setting our clocks an hour earlier[…]