“A U.S.soldier who had most of his leg muscle blown off in Afghanistan has become the first to see it grow back in a pioneering experimental operation. Marine Isaias Hernandez lost 70 per cent of his right thigh muscles when an enemy mortar exploded as he tried to carry out repairs to a truck in Afghanistan. With such severe muscle damage Hernandez would ordinarily have had his leg amputated. But a re-think in the way soldiers are treated led to the wounded warrior being injected with a growth promoting substance extracted from pig bladders. The revolutionary treatment gives hope to the hundreds of maimed veterans returning from conflicts with severe limb trauma.” w/ photos

“Look at that mouth go!”

“The first Lehigh Valley Wing Challenge at Buckeye Tavern drew a track star, a three-time wing-eating champion and a guy who once got thrown out of a Chinese buffet. But the last man standing turned out to be a 50-year-old business development director of an accounting firm. Martin “Rooster Hogburn” Russo downed 170 wings, snatching the title by three wings. A first-time competitive eater, Russo was the only one in the contest to stand as he cleaned the wings to the bone with one bite. “I didn’t really have plan,” said Russo of South Whitehall Township. “It was just go.” Russo was one of 21 contestants who competed in the event at the Lower Macungie Township tavern. The proceeds from the tavern event at 3741 Brookside Road will go to the Lower Macungie Township Fire Department and Lower Macungie’s Bethany United Methodist Church.” w/ video

“He got into a fenced in area behind our office. Couldn’t quite figure out how he got in there because all of fencing goes tight to the ground and the two gates into the area were both closed. After watching this dude for a while, we finally figured it out.” — greatplainspkg

“The world’s greatest pizza cutter, Trevor Hyatt, cuts pizzas. Known worldwide for the ability to cut pizzas in a fraction of a second he demonstrates his skill with style and ease (steeze). Entertain your brain with some cheesy fun.” — SkateIslam

“You don’t have to travel all the way to Scotland’s Loch Ness to search for a real monster. There may be one lurking in water much closer to home. For those who doubt such things, just ask the folks who live near Mississippi’s Chotard Lake. In February, a fisherman pulled a 327-pound, 8 1/2-foot-long prehistoric-looking alligator gar from the freshwater site.  One well-known angler, Jeremy Wade, doesn’t know the meaning of the phrase “the big one that got away.” As host of the hugely popular Animal Planet series, “River Monsters,” the 55-year-old biologist’s life is a series of detective stories as he travels the world searching for unimaginable creatures that lurk in the murky depths of inland waterways.” w/ photos

“Most people have ordinary stuff like nuclear reactors in their basement, but not Dan Reeves. For the last 9 years he’s been putting together a Van’s RV-7A airplane kit in his basement, and that’s not just a little R/C model, the RV-7A one can take two people as high as 25,000 feet.  His main problem is that while he was putting it together, he didn’t really think too much about how he was going to get it out once it was done. So last week he hired a contractor to dig up his yard and knock down the basement wall, creating a ramp that he and a bunch of friends used to drag it out into the light of day.” w/ photo + video

“A big country on a small scale – model makers in St Petersburg take on the miniaturization of Russia.”

“An Ohio woman who just turned 100 years old has taken customer loyalty to the extreme: She’s still using a bank savings account that’s been around almost as long as she has, since the year before World War I. June Gregg recently mentioned to a friend that her account is the same one her father opened for her in January 1913, when she wasn’t even a year-and-a-half old. The friend told the people at Gregg’s small-town bank in southern Ohio. “That perked my ears up, because I was like, ’1913?!’” said Doug Shoemaker, general manager of what’s now a Huntington National Bank branch in this community, 45 miles south of Columbus. The bank’s investigation found out that not only was it the same account, but also that the account number changed only once, when Columbus-based Huntington acquired the plainly-named Savings Bank in the early 1980s, Shoemaker said.” w/ photos

“She may be a grandmother, but don’t call her old. Ernestine Shepherd, 74, of Baltimore has been crowned by the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest competitive female bodybuilder ever. She told the Washington Post: ‘Age is nothing but a number’. Ms Shepherd has impeccably toned ‘six-pack’ abs that are the marvel of her Baltimore fitness centre. Her husband of 54 years, Collin Shepherd, says he ‘has trouble keeping guys away from her’. The Shepherds live in Baltimore with their son, 53, and grandson, 14. Ms Shepherd does some modelling and teaches fitness classes, and told the Washington Post, ‘If you are going to try to motivate people, you have to live that part’. She also trains rigorously with Yohnnie Shambourger, 57,a former Mr Universe who won the gold medal in bodybuilding at the Pan American Games in 1995. Mr Shambourger told the Post: ‘The six-pack is her signature. When she walks in a room and you see her six-pack, you say, “Ohh! Okay!” w/ photos