Hercules, is the world's biggest dog ever according to Guinness World Records, weighing 282 pounds with a 38 inch neck. In this picture, this massive pet is almost as big as his owner's horse. This makes the daily task of walking the dog like walking the donkey.
With "paws the size of softballs" (reports the Boston Herald), the three-year-old monster is far larger and heavier than his breed's standard 200lb. limit. Hercules owner Mr. Flynn says that Hercules weight is natural and not induced by a bizarre diet: "I fed him normal food and he just grew".... and grew. and grew. and grew.
Dede aka the Tree Man had a successful surgery to remove almost 90% of his tree-like growths. Here's his after surgery video after spending more than 9 months in a Indonesian hospital.
Here's a satellite image of the Earth showing the sunlight and clouds. This image was taken today, Dec. 28, 2008 at 21:00 UTC. The picture on the left is dawn, while the right is dusk.
In the early 21th century, the world was shocked by parasitic twins we heard from the news. Like the Chinese girl, Sanju Bhagat and recently Lakshmi. The 19th and 20th centuries had it's shares also. Here are some of them.
Myrtlye Corbin, born in Lincoln County, Tennessee in 1868.
Jean Libbera, born in 1884 in Rome, Italy.
Francesco A. Lentini, born in 1889 in Siracusa, Sicily.
Ernie Defort, born in Manitoba, Canada on July 7, 1931.
Betty Lou Williams, born on January 10, 1932 in Albany, Georgia.
If you ever tired of the comfort of your car from the car manufacturing giants, why not make your own, out of wood. Here's some of the bravest who took the challenge.
Dede, aka "The Tree Man" who had some of his tree-like warts removed in a surgery this year, said those tree-like warts are growing again.
After under going surgery early this year, Dede were able to eat, use cellphone and go fishing on his own. But now as the warts are growing again, he needs some assistance again.
As his tree-like growths are growing, doctors said that he needs at least two operation a year for him to use his hands.
Seen here is Dede after his operation early this year.
"Those (warts) that were removed are growing again and started to reappear after I returned home," he said, adding that for a time he could go fishing and use a cell phone but now needed assistance again for such activity.
"We have told him that his disease could not be 100 per cent cured. In the previous operation, we only tried to increase his quality of life," said Rachmat Dinata, one of a team of doctors treating him at the Hasan Sadikin hospital in Bandung, a city near his village.
The Kitti's Hog-nosed bat is considered as the world's smallest mammal as of today. It's length is about 29–33 millimetres and weight approximately 2 grams. It is also know as the the bumblebee bat due to it's size. This bat specie is a native of western Thailand and southeast Burma. They live in limestone caves along the rivers.
Kitti's Hog-nosed Bat is the smallest species of bat and one of the world's smallest mammals. It has a reddish-brown or grey coat, with a distinctive pig-like snout. Colonies range greatly in size, with an average of 100 individuals per cave. The bat feeds during short activity periods in the evening and dawn, foraging around nearby forest areas for insects. Females give birth annually to a single offspring.
At 3.05 x 1.8, the Quay House is the smallest house in Great Britain. It is found on the Quay, hence the name, in Conwy, Wales and is listed in the Guinness Book of Records of it's small dimensions.
It has been lived in since the Sixteenth Century. It was even inhabited by a family at one point. It was lived in until 1900, when the owner was a 6ft 3 inch fisherman named Robert Jones. The rooms were too small for him to stand up in fully and he was eventually forced to move out when the council declared the house unfit for human habitation. The house is still owned by his descendants.
It's hard to believe that this 29-year-old, innocent-looking woman named Sarah Pender is the most wanted woman in America right now. She is serving a 110-year sentence before she escaped in August from the Rockville Correctional Facility in Indiana. Pender was convicted in 2002 on two counts of murder of her two roommates.
While serving her sentence, prison authorities believe Pender befriended a correctional officer, who allegedly helped her escape. Prison security footage on the day she escaped shows Pender walking toward a prison exit at the same time the guard drove into the facility to get gasoline. Authorities believe the guard hid her in the vehicle and drove her off the prison grounds where she met up with her get-away driver.
“Sarah Pender is a dangerous fugitive and poses a threat to anyone she comes in contact with,” said Director John F. Clark of the United States Marshals Service. “Pender’s addition as a 15 Most Wanted fugitive underscores our commitment to use all of our available resources to bring her to justice.”
Here at The XO Directory, we seldom encounter Google ads with typo error, not like ads with eye-catching header. So when we do encounter one, it's worth sharing here. Here's one in the red box. Does he mean "to" or "tp"? Or it's just us being sleepy.
In advertising, eye-catching header text is the key to success. But sometimes advertisers push it to the limit that it becomes irrelevant to the product. See for example this "Man Eating Snake" Ad from Shopping.com that can be seen in Google ads.
Gaston Aguirre, an Argentinean Soccer player accidentally kills a pigeon with the soccer ball during their game in Buenos Aires. The birds were in the fields when the players scrambling for the ball came. And when Aguirre kicked the ball for the goal, one pigeon were not lucky enough.
"I kicked the ball and, poor pigeon," the San Lorenzo defender said. "Now I will be remembered as the pigeon killer."
Aguirre hit the bird in the 2-1 victory against Tigre in a three-team round-robin for the Argentine league title. Surrounded by opponents, he kicked the ball toward the goal and in the direction of a group of pigeons on the grass near the corner.
Year 2008 has not yet ended so you could name your baby with one of the most famous names of the year. Here's a list to choose from the top ten baby girl and boy names of 2008.
This 66-years-old woman from West Virginia has the world's heaviest neck tumor. At the time of surgery the tumor weighed 8 kg. Below is the picture of her before and after the surgery.
Sixty-six year old woman from West Virginia suffered neck tumor from twenty-two years. Due to her tumor, she could not move out of house. Tampa plastic surgeon C. N. Guerriere removed tumor weighing 8kgs from her neck and gave her a new life to move out of home. The tumor was so large that it stymied even MRI scans.
US President George Bush certainly knows how to dodge shoes (not bullets). He was in a state visit last week in Iraq and during press conference, an Iraqi reporter tossed his shoes to the president. Watch this video to see the action.
Chinese farmers came up with this "brilliant" idea to make eagles afraid of chickens. Now the predator becomes the prey. :)
A hen pecks an eagle. Chinese farmers are trapping eagles and other birds of prey and throwing them trussed up into chicken pens to make them so scared of poultry that they never return
This is another heroic act by a dog. This time, instead a dog rescuing an injured dog from oncoming highway traffic, it's dog rescuing a rodeo man from being killed or fatally injured by by a raging bull.
A dog from Chile who is now considered a hero, rescued an injured dog from oncoming highway traffic. The scene was caught by a traffic camera. After thousands viewed the heroic act in video websites, some viewers offered to adopt the hero dog but the dog was nowhere to be found after running away from the scene when authorities arrived.
Warning to burglar, this could also happen to you. A burglar in Malaysia was caught by authorities after being stucked in a haunted house for three days. He claimed a ghost kept him from leaving the house.
Police official Abdul Marlik Hakim Johar told The Star newspaper the house's owners found the 36-year-old man fatigued and dehydrated when they returned from vacation Thursday.
The man told police that every time he tried to escape, a "supernatural figure" shoved him to the ground.