World’s Strangest

An hour ago, we discussed 11 Natural Disasters That Led to Wars. Let’s switch that around. 1. Flooding of Babylon, 689 BCE The Assyrians still rank as one of history’s meanest groups of people: skinning captives alive, throwing babies on spears — all in a day’s work for these brutal empire-builders in the ancient Near East. So [...]

The streets of Nanjing, China, may not be paved with gold, but here’s the next best thing: a bus covered with 24-karat gold leaf. The distinctive “Golden Bus”, which began rolling on April 25th of 2011, is the centerpiece of a rather expensive promotion by a Nanjing jewelry store… expensive meaning 200,000 yuan (about $30,800). Usually [...]

(Video Link) Serkan Toto of CrunchGear informs us that this is a Japanese-language video of a Chinese vending machine that sells live crabs: This model is located in a subway station in Nanjing, China, and keeps the crabs at 5°C at all times. In other words, the crabs inside are alive, “hibernating” in a frozen state. A sign [...]

LEDs are the way to use tons and tons of lights and still use very little electricity. Artists, sculptors, and architects use LEDs to create stunning light displays, like this one found at the Italian Light Sculpture Festival in Nanjing, China. See more pictures from the festival and other LED art projects at WebEcoist. Link [...]

Will Sun Yongding – A Chinese man aims to hoping to set a new Guinness world record for swimming with arms and legs tiedSun Yongding has been practising his stunt in the Qinghuai River in Nanjing, eastern China’s Jiangsu Province.A helpful friend ties up the 47-year-old’s arms and legs before he throws himself into the [...]

Researchers Qiang Chen and Tie Jun Cui of Southeast University in Nanjing, China created a device that partially simulates the effects (to a limited scale) of a black hole. It bends light differently from a the way that a black hole does, but it will readily absorb it: The hole is the latest clever device to [...]

Last year, the Jiangsu Head Investment Group and the government of Nanjing, China held a competition for designing a museum for the automobile’s history and achievements. Italian architect Francesco Gatti and his team won with this entry featuring an interactive element: you drive into the museum. The architect describes the museum as a “movie sequence in [...]