Ben Underwood lives with his family in the suburbs of Sacramento, California where he attends his local high school. Like any other 14-year-old boy, he loves to play with his friends and chat to girls his age, with whom he seems popular. He looks like any other boy, until he removes his $4,600, hand-crafted eyes. Ben is blind and, like other blind people, relies on some specialist equipment to survive. He uses talking computer software and a Braille machine to help with his homework.
Ben does not have a guide dog, uses no stick, and does not even use his hands to aid his mobility. Instead, he has developed something of a super sense: he is the only person in the world who navigates using clicks. As he walks, he makes a continuous clicking noise with his tongue. As these clicks echo around him, he is able to draw up a detailed mental plan of his surroundings and adjust his direction accordingly.
So accurate is his technique that he is even able to go rollerblading on the street, negotiating narrow gaps between parked cars that even sighted children might find challenging. In fact, Ben’s mother, Aquanetta, inds that her son is far more attentive to the dangers of the road than his friends, always the first to move onto the pavement when a car approaches.
Ben first noticed his talent at the age of seven, when at summer camp. While it began as just a habit, Ben explains, he soon realised that it had potential benefits for navigation. He began to practise every day and developed the system to the point it is at today. It is the fact that Ben is entirely self-taught that is perhaps most astonishing and has led people to use the term ‘genius’ when referring to the boy. (Excerpt from demand.five.tv)
With so many superhero movies around, such as
Spiderman or Hulk, we are used to see people with special abilities in
fiction. But people with amazing abilities actually do exist in real
life; here's a list of 10 of the most amazing of these people! 1 The Incredible Brain (Daniel Tammet)
Daniel Paul Tammet is a British high-functioning autistic savant gifted
with a facility for mathematical calculations, sequence memory, and
natural language learning. He was born with congenital childhood
epilepsy. Experiencing numbers as colors or sensations is a
well-documented form of synesthesia, but the detail and specificity of
Tammet's mental imagery of numbers is unique. In his mind, he says, each
number up to 10,000 has its own unique shape and feel, that he can
"see" results of calculations as landscapes, and that he can "sense"
whether a number is prime or composite. He has described his visual
image of 289 as particularly ugly, 333 as particularly attractive, and
pi as beautiful. Tammet not only verbally describes these visions, but
also creates artwork, particularly watercolor paintings, such as his
painting of Pi.
Tammet holds the European record for memorising and recounting pi to
22,514 digits in just over five hours. He also speaks a variety of
languages including English, French, Finnish, German, Spanish,
Lithuanian, Romanian, Estonian, Icelandic, Welsh and Esperanto. He
particularly likes Estonian, because it is rich in vowels. Tammet is
creating a new language called Mänti. Tammet is capable of learning new
languages very quickly. To prove this for the Channel Five documentary,
Tammet was challenged to learn Icelandic in one week. Seven days later
he appeared on Icelandic television conversing in Icelandic, with his
Icelandic language instructor saying it was "not human."
2 The Boy with Sonar Vision (Ben Underwood)
Ben Underwoodtaught is blind, both of his eyes were removed (cancer)
when he was 3. Yet, he plays basketball, rides on a bicycle, and lives a
quite normal life. He taught himself to use echo location to navigate
around the world. With no guide-dogs, he doesn't even need hands: he
uses sound. Ben makes a short click sound that bounces back from
objects. Amazingly, his ears pick up the ecos to let him know where the
objects are. He's the only person in the world who sees using nothing
but eco location, like a sonar or a dolphin.
3 The Rubberboy (Daniel Browning Smith)
Five time Guiness Record holder, The Rubberboy is the most flexible man
alive and the most famous contortionist. He has been in many
professional basketball or baseball games and on The Tonight Show with
Jay Leno, ESPN's Sports Center, Oprah Winfrey, Ripley's Believe It or
Not, Cirque du Soleil, Best Damn Sports Show Period, The Discovery
Channel, Men in Black 2, HBO's Carnivale, and CSI: NY and American got a
talent. He dislocates his arms to crawl through an unstrung tennis
racquet. He performs contortion handstands and unique acrobatics.
4 Mister Eat-it-All (Michel Lotito)
Michel Lotito (born 1950) is a French entertainer, famous as the
consumer of undigestables, and is known as Monsieur Mangetout (Mister
Eat-it-all). Lotito's performances are the consumption of metal, glass,
rubber and so on in items such as bicycles, televisions, a Cessna 150,
and smaller items which are disassembled, cut-up and swallowed. The
aircraft took roughly two years to be 'eaten' from 1978 to 1980. He
began eating unusual material while a child and has been performing
publicly since 1966. Lotito does not often suffer from ill-effects due
to his diet, even after the consumption of materials usually considered
poisonous. When performing he consumes around a kilogram of material
daily, preceding it with mineral oil and drinking considerable
quantities of water during the 'meal'. He apparently possesses a stomach
and intestine with walls of twice the expected thickness, and his
digestive acids are, allegedly, unusually powerful, allowing him to
digest a certain portion of his metallic meals.
5 King Tooth (Rathakrishnan Velu)
On August 30, 2007, the eve of Malaysia's 50th Independence Day,
Rathakrishnan Velu (or Raja Gigi, as he is known locally) broke his own
world record for pulling train with his teeth, this time with 6 coaches
attached weighing 297.1 tons over a distance of 2.8 metres at the Old
Kuala Lumpur Railway Station. Raja Gigi, from Tampin in Malaysia learned
a technique of concentrating his powers to any part of his body from an
Indian guru at a young age of 14.
6 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. Since this "gift'' is also
present in three of his sons and two grandchildren, he figures it's
hereditary.
7 The Man who doesn't Sleep (Thai Ngoc)
Sixty-four-year-old Thai Ngoc, known as Hai Ngoc, said he could not
sleep at night after getting a fever in 1973, and has counted infinite
numbers of sheep during more than 11,700 consecutive sleepless nights.
"I don't know whether the insomnia has impacted my health or not. But
I'm still healthy and can farm normally like others," Ngoc said. Proving
his health, the elderly resident of Que Trung commune, Que Son district
said he can carry two 50kg bags of fertilizer down 4km of road to
return home every day. His wife said, "My husband used to sleep well,
but these days, even liquor cannot put him down." She said when Ngoc
went to Da Nang for a medical examination, doctors gave him a clean bill
of health, except a minor decline in liver function. Ngoc currently
lives on his 5ha farm at the foot of a mountain busy with farming and
taking care of pigs and chickens all day. His six children live at their
house in Que Trung. Ngoc often does extra farm work or guards his farm
at night to prevent theft, saying he used three months of sleepless
nights to dig two large ponds to raise fish.
8 The Torture King (Tim Cridland)
Tim Cridland doesn't seem to feel pain like the rest of people. He
astounded everyone by pushing needles into his arms without flinching
and he now performs a terrifying act for audiences all over America.
Scientific tests have shown that Tim can tolerate much higher levels of
pain than are humanly possible. He explains that, by using mind over
matter, he is able to push skewers through his body and put up with
extreme heat and cold unharmed - but to do this safely he has
extensively studied human anatomy, because puncturing an artery could be
fatal.
9 The Lion Whisperer (Kevin Richardson)
Animal behaviourist Kevin Richardson says he relies on instinct to win
the hearts and form an intimate bond with the big cats. He can spend the
night curled up with them without the slightest fear of being attacked.
His magic works not only work for lions but other animals such as
cheetahs, leopards and even hyenas do not hold a threat against him.
Lions are his favourites and its a wonder how he can play, carress,
cuddle with them whose teeth are sharp enough to bite through thick
steel. Its a dangerous job but to Kevin, its more of a passion for him.
10 The Eye-Popping Man (Claudio Pinto)
Claudio Pinto can pop both of his eyes 4 cm (about 1 and a half inch) or
95% out of their sockets. He's now aiming (poppin'?) for a world
record. Mr Pinto has undergone various tests and doctors say they have
never seen or heard of a person who can pop the eyes as much as him. Mr
Pinto, from Belo Horizonte, said: "It is a pretty easy way to make
money. "I can pop my eyes out four centimetres each, it is a gift from
God, I feel blessed."
The fast-disappearing Amazon rainforest harbors some amazing creatures. Most of us have heard of vampire bats, piranhas and the anaconda, but among the forest’s inhabitants are weird and wonderful animals just as bizarre as the more famous ones, if not more so. Here are 10 of the most bizarre Amazon rainforest animals you’ve likely never heard of.
10 Kinkajou
This relative of the raccoon has golden fur and a tail that can grip branches. Also called the honey bear, it lives in trees and mainly eats fruit. It uses its five inch-long tongue to grasp hanging fruit and also to lick nectar from flowers.
9 Electric Eel Dwelling in murky rivers, the electric eel delivers hundreds of volts that can stun a human. Deaths attributed to this animal are most likely from drowning when the paralyzed victim is unable to swim. The eel uses its “power” to kill prey and to navigate in poor visibility. Despite its name, the electric eel is not closely related to true eels but is the largest member of a group of electric fish called knife fish.
8 Poison Dart Frog These brightly colored frogs are among the most toxic creatures on earth. Their coloration serves to warn potential predators. Some species’ toxin is so virulent that merely touching the animal can deliver a lethal dose. Scientists prefer to call them poison frogs, because in fact they are not widely used by Indians for dart poison. Called “curare” its main ingredient is from toxic vines.
7 Bullet Ant The world’s largest ant grows to the size of your pinky and has a bite to match. It also stings like a wasp. Unlike most ants it is solitary during the day, although it lives in a colony, in a nest usually at the base of a tree. The origin of the name is uncertain. Perhaps being the size of a bullet is the reason, or because the pain of its sting is akin to a bullet. Another name is 24 hour ant, because of the time for the pain of the sting to wear off. Some local tribes have a coming of age ceremony in which the young man has to endure repeated stings without making a sound. (Women are spared the ordeal.)
6 Jesus Lizard When fleeing from predators, this reptile runs along the surface of water such as a pond or stream. The lizard reaches about 5 miles per hour this way. It propels itself along the water, using surface tension to briefly support its weight. The lizard’s toes have flaps of skin to create a broader surface and an air pocket to enhance the surface tension. But the “miracle” soon gives way to physics and the lizard is forced to swim.
5 Fishing Bat Eschewing the typical bat diet of insects, the world’s largest species of bat has claws like an osprey’s. It’s also called the bulldog bat because of its dog-like snout. In the dark of night, it swoop down on fish whose surface ripples it detects using its sonar. No other species of bat is able to fish.
4 Glass Frog The glass frog’s flesh is entirely transparent, allowing you to see the internal organs, including the heart pumping away. The flesh thus takes on the hue of surrounding vegetation, making the frog hard to see.
3 Peanut Head Bug This weird looking insect has a bulbous protuberance from its head that looks remarkably like unshelled peanut. The significance of this seeming encumbrance is uncertain, although scientists believe it may mimic a lizard’s head, and thus deter curious predators. The insect is otherwise defenseless although its wings bear spots that look like an owl’s eyes, all part of its arsenal of deception.
2 Potoo During the day, the potoo rests atop a dead branch, perfectly still and with plumage that mimics its resting place, blending in with its surroundings. It is nocturnal, catching flying insects, so its statue-like behavior during the day serves to hide it from predators. In the next, the chicks also freeze in position, but instead resembling fungi.
1 Candiru Fish This nasty creature, also called the toothpick fish, has been reported to swim up the urogenital tract of bathers and lodges itself therein. Removal by surgery is the only treatment. In nature, the pencil-shaped fish parasitizes the waste ducts of aquatic animals, and apparently finds human orifices irresistible. Courtesy: listverse.com
Email This
BlogThis!
Share to Twitter
Share to Facebook
His name is "Ata" - short for Atacama - and no, he's not an alien, report researchers from Stanford University in the film “Sirius.” Rather, the six-inch partially-mummified specimen was male and appears to have survived for as many as six to eight years after birth, despite his small size.
Theories that the body was an aborted fetus do not hold, researchers argue, based on studies measuring its bone density and epiphyseal plate.
“Obviously, it was breathing, it was eating it was metabolizing,” Garry Nolan, the director of stem biology at the university said.
And while he admits it “calls into question how big the thing might have been when it was born,” it appears to be nothing else but an “interesting mutation.”
The findings were first located near an abandoned church in the Chilean Atacama desert, from where it derives its name. According to a Chilean local newspaper, the small figure was wrapped in a white cloth upon discovery.
UFO enthusiasts were quick to assign the specimen’s origins as extraterrestrial, especially given several of its characteristics that have come to be associated with aliens, including an oversized head. The fact that the body was scaly and dark and boasted nine ribs didn’t help. In fact, the skeleton was considered an important element in the documentary in which extraterrestrial activist Steven Greer proposes to prove not only that aliens are real, but that the government is working very hard to cover up their existence.
Greer, a physician himself, explained that the team “obtained excellent DNA material by surgically dissecting the distal ends of two right anterior ribs” from the specimen that “clearly contained bone marrow material.”
However, not everyone is convinced the specimen is not an alien – including Greer. As far as he is concerned, the fact that they were able to prove that it was once a living organism is a step in the right direction. Courtesy: www.natureworldnews.com
Email This
BlogThis!
Share to Twitter
Share to Facebook
