Credit: www.uphaa.com

Cuy (guinea pig) – Peru

They may look cute in the classroom but a guinea pig on your plate looks less adorable. Peruvian families keep guinea pigs as they are a good source of protein for villagers living up in the Andes. Cuy, as they are called, are generally roasted before they are served with all limbs and the head attached. There is not a great deal of meat on them and the skin can be rather rubbery but otherwise they taste similar to rabbit.

Balut – Philippines

Sometimes described as “eggs with legs”, Balut is an utterly gruesome – by some Western standards – delicacy from the Philippines. A common, everyday food, it is a fertilised duck or chicken egg containing a nearly-developed embryo – including feathers, feet, et al – that is boiled and eaten straight out of the shell.

Fried Tarantulas – Cambodia

An arachnophobe’s worst nightmare comes fried and crunchy in Cambodia. In Phnom Penh markets and in the town of Skuon, locals deep fry spiders for locals and adventurous tourists alike. Buy one of these crispy snacks from a wandering hawker and you may even get to play with a live tarantula before tucking into one of his hairy brothers. The abdomen is only for the truly brave and is said to taste like “licking damp cobwebs.”

Casu Marzu – Sardinia

This is a Sardinian speciality that comes with a health warning. Most food that’s crawling with maggots finds its way into the bin but the decomposition of this “rotten cheese” is positively encouraged. Pecorino Sardo is set aside so that cheese flies can lay eggs inside the rind which then hatch into crawling maggots. These feed on the cheese, aiding fermentation and producing a pungent smell. Officially banned in the EU, the maggots are eaten live with the cheese, assuming they haven’t jumped away first – some can jump up to 15cm.

Live Octopus – Japan and Korea

Many Westerners would find the practice of eating squirming octopus legs particularly hard to digest. It can seem cruel to the bystander, especially when the octopuses wrap themselves around the diner’s chopsticks in an attempt not to be eaten.

Rat – Vietnam, China, Thailand, Laos

Rats destroy crops in rural Vietnam so farmers catch them, wrap them in banana leaves and sell them as a dinnertime treat. A roasted version can often be seen on the end of a stick in Thailand. Bats on a stick are also popular.

Seal Flipper Pie – Canada

Commonly eaten at Easter, seal flipper pie is a traditional dish from the Canadian province of Newfoundland. The internet is awash with recipes, usually featuring root vegetables, pork fat and a dash of Worcestershire sauce.

Smalahove (sheep’s head) – Norway

A traditional Christmas dish, Smalahove is made by boiling a salted lamb’s head (minus the wool and brains, thankfully) for around three hours. Etiquette dictates that the ears and eyes are eaten first, while they are still warm, before the rest of the head is consumed, from front to back. The tongue and eye muscles are considered the prime cuts.

Chicken Feet – Worldwide

A common part of Asian, Jamaican and Peruvian cuisine, chicken feet are often served in soup or with black bean sauce. The foot is largely cartilage, while there are lots of small bones, so they certainly aren’t for everyone.
And here’s a couple of drinks to help you wash down those disgusting dishes.

Cow Urine – India

Believed by many Hindus to possess therapeutic value, cow urine is sold in India alongside milk and yogurt. Earlier this year, one research centre in the holy city of Haridwar announced plans to launch a new cola to rival Pepsi and Coke – made entirely from this bovine by-product.

Seagull Wine – Arctic Circle

Seagull wine is an invention of Inuits in desperate need of a drink during those cold Arctic nights. Simply stuff a dead seagull (in bits, or whole) into a bottle of water and leave in the sun.

Civet Excrement Coffee – Asia

Considered a delicacy in parts of Asia, these coffee beans are roasted after passing through the digestive system of a civet. Farmers on coffee plantations allow the weasel-like creatures to eat their crop in order to collect their bean-filled droppings for a steamy and surprisingly chocolatey beverage. The beans can be bought in shops in London, including Selfridges.

The world’s tallest man, 8 ft 1 in (246.5 cm) Sultan Kosen, welcomes the shortest man in the world, 2 ft 5.37 in (74.61 cm) He Pingping, to his native Turkey

A bottle is a rigid container with a neck that is narrower than the body and a “mouth.” Bottles are often made of glass, clay, plastic, aluminum or other impervious materials, and typically used to store liquids such as water, milk, soft drinks, beer, wine, cooking oil, medicine, shampoo, ink and chemicals. A device applied in the bottling line to seal the mouth of a bottle is termed an external bottle cap, closure , or internal stopper. A bottle can also be sealed by a conductive “innerseal” by using induction sealing.

By contrast, a jar has a relatively large mouth or opening.

The bottle has developed a millennia of use, with some of the earliest examples appearing in China, Phoenicia, Rome and Crete. The Chinese used bottles to store liquids.

Bottles are often recycled according to the SPI recycling code for the material. Some regions have a legally mandated deposit which is refunded after returning the bottle to the retailer

Weird drug urban legend Number One: Can LSD make you want to jump and shout?

Lysergic acid diethylamide commonly referred to as acid might make you want to shout, but the jumping part seems to be an urban legend. The weird effect LSD is alleged to have sends people jumping out of windows. Everyone has heard a story or two in which someone; often a famous person, takes the drug made popular in 1960’s by Timothy Leary, and then goes literally off the deep end.

Art Linkletter an American television celebrity in the 1950’s and 1960’s made this claim famous by convincing the public his 20-year-old daughter Diane Linkletter jumped to her death from her apartment window in the midst of an LSD induced hallucination. When it came to light his daughter’s autopsy results showed no evidence of LSD in her system Linkletter changed the story to her jumping during a ‘flashback’ after taking the drug in the recent past.

The problem with his theory is usually, this drug eliminates from the system quickly, and only rarely do some users have a secondary effect days or weeks after taking the drug. Over 70% of users never have a flashback, and while it is not known what causes them, this after effect is usually shorter in duration than when first taking the drug and it is a reduced experience from actually retaking the acid. It’s unlikely this would cause anyone to dive out a window.

The hallucinatory effect of LSD is most often fairly mild and involves a change in the senses or mingling of different perceptions. Side effects include panic attacks, extreme anxiety, paranoia and a sense of doom. These effects known a ‘bad trip’ are thought to occur when using the drug in an unfamiliar setting, around strangers, or when already feeling depressed, angry or having anxiety.

Weird drug urban legend Number Two: Toad Licking Gets You High

There’s no telling how licking a toad might make the amphibian feel, but it’s not going to even give you a buzz. Psychoactive toads are loaded with psychoactive substances of the same family bufotoxins can be derived from, but the substance is best obtained by milking the toad’s venom. To get enough venom from a Colorado River for instance you have to stroke it under the chin to stimulate its defensive response, then milk and dry the venom. The end product can induce psychedelic mind effects, but licking wouldn’t be effective. While there are some bufotoxins on a toad’s skin it wouldn’t be enough to have any effect. For all your effort in chasing down a toad all you’d be left with is a bad taste in your mouth.

Weird drug urban legend Number Three: Can Spanish Fly Get You Lucky?

More than likely slipping someone else Spanish fly will get you arrested. Spanish fly is actually an emerald green beetle also called cantharides. The crushed powder of Spanish fly is yellowish brown, brown or olive-brown in color with iridescent reflections. It smells bitter and has an overall unpleasant fragrance no one would add to their aroma therapy collection.

Crushed up Spanish fly is sometimes given to livestock to induce them to breed. When the substance passes through the urethral passages in the urine it causes inflammation in the genitals and an erection of the penis or clitoris is possible. As good as that might sound ordinarily this can be potentially painful and even deadly. When a human is given cantharides for the purpose of seduction they are actually in for a night of painful urination, fever and often a bloody discharge that would put a dramatic end to a romantic evening. There’s a possibility of permanent damage to the kidneys and genitals. The balance between the amount where there is no effect and an overdose is so small the person could easily be killed by Spanish fly.

Weird drug urban legend Number Four: There’s no real Zombie drug

There are no drugs that make you start yearning for brains to munch on, but the idea of a drug that can place you in a stupefied or near death state shouldn’t be dismissed as quickly. Yes, oddly enough there are two drugs that can put you temporarily at least in someone else’s thrall.

Powder from grounded up Puffer fish has been used in several cultures to give a victim the appearance of death. While it sounds like the stuff of horror movies the toxin in the Puffer fish renders a person completely paralyzed with a low heart and breathing rate. In at least one documented case a victim claimed he was so drugged, buried by his own family, and then dug up by those who had poisoned him for the purpose of having him work on a farm as slave labor.

Zombie drug is also a name given to the medicine scopolamine. This drug is used in very small amounts for the treatment of motion sickness, and Parkinson’s disease. Criminals use the drug to render a victim helpless. At certain concentrations the drug leaves the victim conscious, but with no free will. The victim usually wakes with no memory of what happened while under the drug’s influence. Used mostly as a ‘date rape’ drug scopolamine has also been used to gain information from victims such as their bank account number and passwords. At high levels this drug is deadly.

Weird drug urban legend Number Five: No drug can truly make you forget

A few drugs actually can make you forget your troubles, unfortunately your name, address, and life history disappear too. For instance, Mirapex used since 1997 to treat Parkinson’s and restless leg symptoms lost patients the memories of what they did the day before they took the medicine. Certain statins used in lowering cholesterol lost some patient’s long term memories like high school graduation. Worse for others was coming home to find a person they didn’t know who insisted they were married and had children. Fortunately going off the medicines got them their memories and their lives back in order.

Toronto From airplane

Sydney from airplane

Rio De Janeiro from Airplane

Recife-Brazil from airplane

Perth-Australia from airplane

Paris from airplane

NY From airplane

Niagara Falls from airplane

Miami from airplane

Mexico from airplane

London from airplane

Las Vegas from airplane night

Honolulu from airplane

Hong-Kong from airplane

Helsinki from airplane

Dallas from airplane night

Chicago from airplane

Australia Brisbane from airplane

More people than you realize have some condition that makes their physical bodies different from the majority. Many try to hide those differences out of self-consciousness, even though the anomaly might be something you’d never notice anyway. Then there are some who celebrate their differences with a clever tattoo that provokes smiles and puts people at ease.

This guy turned his amputated hand into a finger with a giant tattoo of a fingernail!

Hopefully, now no one will ask what happened to him.

Was it the *F* word or the *L* word? If it was the second option, take it as a warning against trusting in luck.

What is available to cut below the line? Amputee Orlando Wallace shows off his tattoo - and the dark side of his sense of humor.

After mastectomies due to breast cancer, some women opt not to undergo reconstruction surgery. Instead of hiding their experience, a few decide to celebrate it by tattooing a beautiful and/or significant design on their chests.

Staff Sgt. Matt Lammers had already won a Purple Heart following a duty-related injury. Now he has another — after losing three limbs in Iraq. He shows off thetattoo that survived, saying, “This is what they didn’t get.”

Arm wrestling is a sport with two participants. Each participant places one arm, both put either the right or left, on a surface, with their elbows bent and touching the surface, and they grip each other’s hand. The goal is to pin the other’s arm onto the surface, with the winner’s arm over the loser’s arm.

Claire Herritz has been declared the 2009 arm wrestling championship help in Cairo, Egypt.

Arm wrestling puts enormous torque/twist on the upper arm’s humerus bone to a degree seen in few other physical activities. Most people’s bones are not accustomed to being significantly stressed in this direction, and injuries can occur surprisingly easily. The arm typically fails because of a diagonal break at or below the midpoint between the shoulder and the elbow.

The natural tendency of an inexperienced arm wrestler is to push the hand, wrist, and shoulder in the same coordinated direction, against the force being applied by the opponent.[citation needed] This is how we throw a baseball or hit a tennis ball.

However, turning one’s shoulder this way simply adds to the torque already being applied to the humerus by the opponent. US Arm Sports advises of the danger of “letting your shoulder get inside your hand.” It is better to pivot your shoulders so that you never look away from your hand.

Size is an issue that breeders continually grapple with. The pet market demands a small pig. What is so interesting to me as a past commercial pig breeder, is that people think a ninety pound potbelly is BIG. Just let that person come to the farm and check out a seven hundred-pound sow. This commercial sow will be as docile and sweet as my ninety-pound potbelly sow, there’s just a whole lot more of her.

What is a micro-mini pig? What is a tea cup pig? What is a miniature potbellied pig?

Unfortunately, the use of the word miniature has been misinterpreted since the beginning of the potbellied pig revolution. What I mean by miniature is that compared to a commercial hog a potbellied pig is much, much smaller. A three year old commercial sow will weigh as much as eight hundred pounds. Compare this to a three-year-old potbellied sow weighing ninety pounds. Potbellied pigs are naturally small. By selectively breeding smaller pigs, the resulting offspring will eventually become smaller. Potbellied pig breeders are involved in this long, arduous process and in due time there may be an actual miniature potbellied pig.

Personally, I have yet to see a micro-mini or tea cup pig. The claim that a full-grown pig is only six inches tall is inconceivable to me. You must remember that I’m from Missouri, the Show Me State; and, to date I have not seen a pig this size. The unusually small pigs I have seen appeared unhealthy and stunted, lacking good bone structure, proper conformation, and good general body condition.

I would love to find a reliable breeder who could produce with consistency a smaller potbellied pig with excellent conformation and good bone. Breeders in the industry are striving to attain just this goal. But the general public need not be misled. They should expect that a mature, purebred, potbellied pig weigh between 60 and 175 pounds. This is smaller in dimension than many house dogs. People get so hung up on the weight of a pet pig. The issue should not be the pounds of the pig, but her health, movement, and social versatility in terms of how she will fit into one’s lifestyle.

Serious breeders will continue to work at the task of producing quality potbellied pigs who demonstrate sound conformation and good disposition, along with characteristics that are pleasing and make for a healthy potbellied pig.

Micro Mini Pigs video:

A Wish Tree is an individual tree, usually distinguished by species, position or appearance, which is used as an object of wishes and offerings. Such trees are identified as possessing a special religious or spiritual value. By tradition, believers make votive offerings in order to gain from that nature spirit, saint or goddess fulfillment of a wish. The High Force Waterfall has a coin only wish tree in the grounds of the waterfall.

In Hindu mythology, the banyan tree is also called kalpavriksha, meaning “wish- fulfilling tree”, as it represents eternal life because of its seemingly ever-expanding branches. The Wishing Tree or Kissing Tree was made at Christmas or Yuletide before pine trees were introduced by Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840. An evergreen bough was hung with apples, sweetmeats, and candles and decked with ribbons representing wishes. At the summit of the Fereneze Braes in Neilston, Renfrewshire, Scotland, there was an old hawthorn, well known locally as “The Kissing Tree”. The story goes that if a young man could drive a nail fully into the thorn tree with a single blow, then he would be entitled to “ae fond kiss” on the spot from his sweetheart. Success in the task was considered proof of his suitability as a good suitor for the young lady. The original tree fell in around 1860, but in 1910, a replacement was said to exist. Driving a nail into the tree may link the custom with that of driving coins into trees as noted above. In parts of Yorkshire, a tree with two spreading branches which also formed a bower over the point of branching, was known as a Wish Tree by children who would climb onto the junction and make a wish.

A plumber whose arm was left twisted grotesquely out of shape in an accident ten months ago has had an operation to correct it ‘cancelled four times’.

Torron Eeles, 50, has been left unable to work since falling down the stairs and now fears he may lose his home after being denied incapacity benefit.

The father-of-three today hit out at the NHS for the ‘unacceptable delays’, but East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust said Mr Eeles had his operation cancelled on ‘only’ two occasions on clinical safety grounds.

His left arm has hung limply by his side since he fractured the humerus bone in December 2008.

Mr Eeles, from Welham Green, Hertfordshire, applied for employment and support allowance but a doctor ruled he is ineligible for both because he can turn on a tap.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218927/Plumber-shattered-arm-left-horrifically-bent-shape-operation-cancelled-times.html#ixzz0TQt1C0S7

He said: ‘This whole situation is absolutely disgusting. I have never heard of anyone else having a broken arm for ten months.

‘It’s been so long the bones have knitted back together. Sleeping is really uncomfortable because whenever I roll over my arm gets in the way.

‘I’m a kitchen fitter and plumber by trade but I can’t even slice a loaf of bread let alone work.

‘This has been going on and on and it’s a complete nightmare.’

Mr Eeles fractured his arm on December 3 and was rushed straight to casualty where doctors put his arm in plaster.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218927/Plumber-shattered-arm-left-horrifically-bent-shape-operation-cancelled-times.html#ixzz0TQt46WQK

But within a few weeks a specialist said the bones were too far apart and that surgeons would have to insert a metal plate because there was too much movement in the arm.

Mr Eeles claims his first two operations at the Queen Elizabeth II hospital in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, were cancelled due to a lack of beds and operating time respectively.

His third operation in February was postponed after he was found to have high blood pressure, while the fourth, scheduled for May, was abandoned because of concerns about his smoking.

The plaster was removed from Mr Eeles’ arm after three months and he was given a wrist sling, which he branded ‘totally useless’.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218927/Plumber-shattered-arm-left-horrifically-bent-shape-operation-cancelled-times.html#ixzz0TQt6OiSA

He said: ‘My arm just flops about but the sling wasn’t doing anything. The plaster didn’t make a blind bit of difference after a couple of weeks either.

‘How the Jobcentre can say I’m fit I don’t know. I was on incapacity benefit until a few weeks ago when I went to be assessed by a doctor in Luton.

‘He said because I can turn on a tap and I can lift my arm I don’t qualify for help.

‘Now I’m worried about losing my house. I’ve got a mortgage on it and there are credit cards debts I’m struggling to pay because I can’t work.’

Nick Carver, the chief executive of the East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust, insisted computer records showed the trust had only cancelled two operations and that proceeding with the operations could have put Mr Eeles’s life at risk.

Mr Carver said: ‘Mr Eeles’ operation was cancelled only twice - and then both on clinical safety grounds.

‘The first time was back in February when his blood pressure was found to be high.

‘As his surgery was not an emergency, our surgeons took the right action in referring Mr Eeles to his GP so his blood pressure could be brought under control.

‘His second operation in May 2009 was also cancelled, this time because he had failed to act on our surgeon’s advice that Mr Eeles that he should give up smoking.

‘In cancelling Mr Eeles’ two operation dates, our surgeons were acting on clinical grounds only.

‘If they are guilty of anything, then it is of having the best clinical interests of their patients at heart.’

Boomer may be a buster: Measuring 3 feet tall at the shoulders and 7 feet long from nose to destructive wagging tail, his owner thinks she may have the world’s tallest living dog.

Caryn Weber says her 3-year-old Landseer Newfoundland keeps all four paws on the floor when he drinks from the kitchen faucet in her family’s farm house in eastern North Dakota.

Boomer can stare into a car window eye to eye with a driver. A 20-pound bag of dry dog food lasts a couple of weeks.

Weber says the fluffy black and white dog “comes into the house and his tail is so high everything gets knocked around.”

Weber plans to send Boomer’s measurements to Guinness World Records. The previous record holder was a nearly 4-foot-tall Great Dane that died this summer.