Things you won't believe.

There is so many stories in the world that are so interesting. This blog will show diverse real life stories that you really cannot believe happened.

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This is Marc Quinn’s most famous piece of work, Self, made using 4.5 litres of his own blood, which was slowly extracted from his body over a period of five months and frozen in a cast of his face. Quinn has been making these roughly every five years since 1991, and each one must be maintained carefully in fridges. The fragility of the media means exhibiting is difficult - the head has to be placed into a glass case which is chilled from underneath. It reminds the audience of the fragility of existence and the precise conditions necessary for the flourishing of life.

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The peace sign isn't actually what you think it is.

As we all know, hippies flaunting the peace sign proclaiming peace on the world, but actually, it is in fact the complete opposite of what the creator had in mind.

Gerald Holtom, a British graphic designer, came up with the peace sign in 1958 to be used to protest against nuclear weapons.

However, the primary image that Holtom was trying to portray was a 'human in despair'. The peace sign is actually a representation of a man who's lost hope and throwing his arms down in defeat. After the logo took off, Holtom regretted his depressing image and tried to change it by flipping the sign upside-down, resulting in a guy with his arms stretched into the air. However, it didn't quite catch on as the alternative, depressed, defeated stick man did. It became an inspirational symbol for every progressive movement of the late 20th century.

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The Colossal Elephant of Coney Island via Momondo

In 1884, the “Colossal Elephant” was buildt in Coney Island, NY. The Coney Island elephant cost $250,000 to build and stood 125 feet high (7 stories) and had 31 hotel rooms. Her legs were 60 feet in circumference (one leg housed a cigar store, another had a diorama, and the 2 others had circular staircases). The elephant faced the sea and gave visitors to the observatory great ocean vistas through slits in the elephant’s eyes. You could go to the top for a full 360 degree 50 mile view. At night, searchlights flashed erratically from her eyes. It was advertised as the 8th Wonder of the World. Unfortunately, it was destroyed by fire in 1896 after only 12 years of operation.

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Alien Resurrection - CGI? PAH.

The reviews of Alien: Resurrection were bad due to the use of 'bad CGI' aliens. When actually, the movie was done with puppets and model spaceships. The scene where the human/alien hybrid was sucked into space through the tiny hole in the spaceship was done entirely on set by creating plaster replicas and literally pulling it through the hole.

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The Hagfish (the fish version of Alien)

The Hagfish is an incredibly crafty creature and knows how to outsmart it's predators.  The Hagfish itself isn't much of a fish, more than just a huge mucus gland that eats and swims. As a response to physical attack, the Hagfish secretes a micro-fibrous slime and when combined with water it expands into a snot like consistency. Lucky for aquatic life, this thing lives in water.

The goo it secretes is very smart. With a single drop into a fish tank, the whole tank will in seconds become a tank of jelly (not advised when fish are present in the tank). The slime can bind to water with a lot higher ratio than it's own by unraveling the proteins to give it strength and durability.

Click here for a video

The goo doesn't just block up the enemies gills, it makes the fish impossible to grasp. 

Oh yeah, did I forget to mention it's mouth?

It's ok to cry.

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Pixel Vase Casting Machine 

Julian F Bond has made a sculpture tool to create clay vases with a blocky pixel / voxel like exterior. Video embedded below:

Julian Bond’s pixel vases are produced using a mould that is made up of over 1300 individual plaster sticks, measuring 10*10mm, which are able to be moved individually to form unique shapes. This is unlike a normal slip casting mould in that the mould is not fixed. Once the user is happy with the design, clay slip is poured into the mould. The cast vessel is then removed and fired. The technique allows rapid manufacturing of individual ceramic objects; the simplicity of the machine also means that someone that has no experience in ceramics can use it to produce their own pieces. JulianFBond.co.uk

[Via Yatzer]

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Leonard Nimoy came up with the Vulcan salute last minute

This is probably the most iconic hand gesture from television, you know, when you hold your fingers but split them down the middle (like a super thick peace sign) and was first shown in 1967, episode 'Amok Time'.

Before Leonard Nimoy stepped in, the Vulcan salute was for one to kneel in front of the other and then, the standie to grab his shoulders (seems a bit too close for my comfort to greet someone) It's hard to imagine this version becoming so widespread and iconic, especially considering that sci-fi fans in general are about as comfortable with human contact as Vulcans themselves.

Nimoy was aware of this, and he pointed out on the set that in a previous episode the Vulcans had established this gesture would be an invasion of privacy, so he suggested changing the shoulder rub to something simpler and not so creepy at conventions.

The gesture had nothing to do with hippies or about him being Jewish... It was in fact from an event in his childhood when he was in a synagogue and saw Jewish priests blessing the audience by doing a gesture with both hands to represent the Hebrew letter 'shin' which means 'Lord' or 'Eternal Spirit'.

He then showed this gesture to the director, who agreed on the idea but chose to opt for just one hand instead of two.

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Just gonna take out the trash

lol nope

This is a coconut crab. Feel free to google and weep

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This is a genuine product.

Serious

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This is in fact an actual event from last year when Gary Kasparov was attacked by a peniscopter during a press conference.

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this is a woman in England with a growth abnormality causing her legs to reach enormous size.

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Parents leave baby in the boot of their car to attend a concert (then deny it's existence)

German parents Annika and Daniel were planning to attend a concert, however, they both neglected to think of the idea of using a baby sitter, and, realizing they couldn't leave the baby at home nor did they want to waste a good ticket, so they set off including the 8 month old and instead of doing the ideal thing and one person enjoys an hour then switches so the child has constant attention, they locked the baby in the boot of their car and set off for their day of fun. They did however, parked in the shade and opened the window a little... Despite the fact they left soiled nappies, uneaten food and dirty laundry.

Eventually, some people heard crying coming from the car and called the police, who broke into the car and rescued Anton (the baby) and sent him to hospital. An announcer in the concert requested the parents to identify themselves and Annika and Daniel refused to come forward. 

They seemed to think that the 7 hour concert was a great idea and the baby would have an awesome time in the boot of the car.

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Ways the world is harvesting energy pt1 - cow poo

80 million metric tons of methane is produced yearly just from cow crap. This amounts to 28% of the world's atmospheric methane. There is a process called anaerobic digestion, in which farmers are able to harness the power of the poo by having the methane gas separated from the solids and liquids, then converting the gas into heat or electricity. Not only does it produce enough to power the farm the cows live on, but the excess energy can be fed back into the power grid and used elsewhere, providing energy to literally hundreds or even thousands of homes every year.

your computer could be running on my shit, haha.

It also gives farmers somewhere to put all the turds. I mean, say you own 650 cows, they produce 40,000 gallons of poo a day. In just over two weeks, you would have enough faeces to fill an olympic sized swimming pool. (50 metres worth of poo) but now you could use all that crap to help power up to 300 homes each year!

Not only that, but it also means it cuts down on pollutants such as methane in the atmosphere (which is 20 times more harmful to the atmosphere than CO2). And if that's not enough for you, the process of the digestion removes the ammonia in the poo which results in an odor reduction of 97% (because we all know how disgusting it is to drive past a farmers field on a hot day).

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Man who preferred prison over paying alimony

H. Beatty Chadwick and Bobbie Applegate lives the classic love story. Met, fell in love, got married, then realized they despised each other and ended in a lengthy bitter divorce. The divorce settlement required Chadwick to give $2.5 million to his ex-wife, but Chadwick insisted he had lost all the money in an overseas investment.

However, like any wife would, called bullshit and presented evidence that Chadwick was just hiding the money in foreign bank accounts. The judge went in her favour but he still continued to deny having the money. So the judge jailed him for contempt until Chadwick decided to give up and pay the money.

That was in 1995. He finally came out of prison in 2009 (that's 14 years of fuck you that's my money) Chadwick appealed to any court that he didn't have the money, but every court upheld the original ruling, including the Supreme Court. Twice. His own lawyer didn't believe him either, claiming that he should be released because 'there's something to be said for letting Beatty out the door and following him. Nothing else has worked'.

In 2009, a judge ultimately ordered that Chadwick should be released, because 'imprisoning him clearly had no effect' and so the 14 year grudge match finally ended, with Beatty Chadwick becoming the most stubborn guy in the history of.. forever.

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A cheap computer chip accidently announces a Nuclear War

At 2am, 3rd of June 1980, An air force staffer deep within the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) was working when he noticed that on the screen readout that usually read '0 incoming missiles' suddenly read '2 incoming missiles'. This seemed bad enough, but then times that by 110. '220 incoming missiles'. Alarms were going everywhere and the Air Force freaked across the whole of  the country. Bombers were sent out carrying nuclear bombs and even the National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski woke up to see what was going on.

However, before anyone could actually fire anything, people began to notice there wasn't hundreds of warheads appearing on their radar screens. The alerts were cancelled, the bombers all landed and everyone sighed with relief.

Three days later, they discovered that the malfunction was a simple computer chip that was malfunctioning inside the NORAD computers causing the display to show 2 instead of 0 (pretty funny huh?) The chip that caused this crisis cost only 46 cents.