“She weighs more than 300lbs, is 25ft long and it takes 15 people to hold her. Now Medusa is set to slither into the record books as the world’s largest snake living in captivity. The massive python, which will be on display at the Edge of Hell haunted house attraction in Kansas City, eats a 40lb animal about once a week but could easily eat something weighing more than 100lbs. She will soon be visited by representatives from the Guinness Book of World Records who are coming to verify her new title.” w/ photos

“Zhang Nan was bathing with live eels to cleanse his skin when one rogue serpent took a liking to his manhood. The eel treatment in question is a similar concept to the popular London spas that offer fish pedicures. Thinking that the eels would make him look ten years younger, Nan dived into the water and let them feast upon layers of dead skin. But after laying in the spa bath, Nan felt a sharp pain and realised a small eel was working its way up his urethra and into his bladder. ‘I climbed into the bath and I could feel the eels nibbling my body. But then suddenly I felt a severe pain and realised a small eel had gone into the end of my penis,’ the 56-year-old from Honghu, Hubei province said. ‘I tried to hold it and take it out, but the eel was too slippery to be held and it disappeared up my penis.’ Rushing himself to hospital, the man underwent a three-hour operation to remove the six-inch eel which was dead by the time doctors found it.” w/ photo

“49-year-old Li Yanping lives in a modest 40-square-meter country house and barely survives on a meager income, but that hasn’t stopped her from taking care of dozens of abandoned children, most of them mentally or psychically handicapped. Born in 1964, in Mu village, Li married at the young age of 21 and soon had her first baby. Her story as a modern-day Mother Theresa began in 1989, shortly after her natural child was born, when her husband found a toddler abandoned on their doorstep. After examining it more carefully, the two realized the child suffered from deformities, but they took it in, fed it and took care of it, despite their financial shortcomings. But they could only take care of two babies for a while, and when milk shortages and lack of money became too much too handle, they made a desperate decision to give their own healthy son up for adoption. They figured someone would adopt a healthy baby, whereas the disabled child had almost no chance of survival.” w/ photos

“A seven-year-old girl suffered from horrific second-degree burns after her family of five started living in a car full of garbage at a Walmart parking lot. Justin Hamilton, 31, of Paisley, and Kristin Harris, 26, of Eustis, were arrested and charged with child neglect after police were called to inspect the vehicle in Mount Dora, Florida. Officers found the couple’s three children, the youngest of which is one years old, sleeping among garbage, days-old chicken bones and a container of spoiled milk. Illegal prescription drugs and a bottle of Patron tequila were also found in the car. Police immediately noticed their daughter’s red, scorched and blistering skin and called an ambulance. The two young boys, aged one and four, were taken into custody. ‘This breaks my heart,’ the children’s father, Hamilton, said from jail. ‘I understand how this looks, but it was a misunderstanding.” w/ photos

“Plastic surgery is being opted for increasingly by older people, with 83-year-old Marie Kolstad being the latest person to take the plunge. Ms. Kolstad, a widow who lives in Orange County, Calif., underwent a three-hour breast lift with implants on July 22, coming to a cost of about $8,000, reports The New York Times. Reasoning why she underwent the procedure, at her age, she said, “your breasts go in one direction and your brain goes in another.” “Physically, I’m in good health, and I just feel like, why not take advantage of it?” said Ms. Kolstad, who works full-time as a property manager. “My mother lived a long time, and I’m just taking it for granted that that will happen to me. And I want my children to be proud of what I look like,” she said, The New York Times reports. Kolstad is one of many septuagenarians, octogenarians and even nonagenarians who are polishing the sheen of their golden years with a little help from the plastic surgeon.” w/ photo

“A sixty-one-year-old woman is attempting an unprecedented 103-mile swim from Havana to the Florida Keys – without a shark cage. Diana Nyad, an endurance swimmer who holds the world record for open-water swimming with no shark cage, set off from Cuba Sunday night. The jaunt is expected to take 60 hours. “I want it to be a moment for thousands, and I dare say millions of people my age, who are going to look and say, ’60!”‘ Nyad said at a news conference. “The joke is 60 is the new 40, and it’s true. We are a younger generation than the 60 that went before us.” She’ll be escorted by a team of 45 in boats, including shark wranglers, nutritionists, navigators and doctors. She will stop every 45 minutes for 20-second breaks to drink water, juice, sports drinks. She will take a two-minute break every 90 minutes to rest and eat bread or peanut butter.” w/ photo

“A live rat found in a loaf of bread in the city of Townsville in Queensland, Australia, turned out to be a mouse. So that’s OK then. The rodent had chewed a hole in the bag containing the loaf – an occurrence the local health department reckons happened during transportation of the loaf from the Helga’s Bread factory that produced it, rather than in the Coles supermarket in which it was bought. The lady who found the mouse, who wishes to remain anonymous (the shopper not the rodent, that is), clocked that the slices of her loaf had holes in them as she loaded her shopping into a car with a friend. The pair then noticed a tail, before the friend spied a rodent apparently scurrying around inside the packaging. ‘I was horrified… I didn’t even want to hold the bag I was that shocked,’ said the bread-buyer. ‘Imagine a rat in a loaf of bread you eat every day of your life. It has turned me off Helga’s Bread at the moment, it’s traumatizing.” w/ photo

“Zhang Bin, a 15-year-old boy who was stabbed in the head with a large sword, has miraculously survived. The teenager had invited school friends to his house, but one guest brought the dangerous weapon. Measuring 50cm, it’s not known exactly how the sword penetrated 5cm deep into Zhang’s forehead. However, he was lucky to be alive after doctors at a local hospital refused to operate – citing inexperience. ‘Three classmates came to visit me at home and one of them brought a sword. He stood 7-9 feet away from me,’ explained Zhang as he recovered in bed. ‘I don’t know how the sword could fly to me and stab into my head. ‘I felt sharp pains and a large amount of blood streamed down.’ After being turned away by local doctors, the boy was then faced with a four-hour drive the the nearest hospital in Changsha where surgeons delicately removed the object.” w/ photos

“At 72,000 square feet, a gigantic private residence being built south of Ozark is stirring plenty of talk — at home and far way. Todd Wiesehan, planning and zoning administrator for Christian County, is fielding calls from all over the U.S. about the massive home. “It’s got to the point where it’s capturing national attention,” he said. The residence — called Pensmore — is to be the home of Steven Huff, chairman of Wisconsin-based TF Concrete Forming Systems. Huff has family ties in Missouri, Wiesehan said. It’s not clear why Huff is building such a large home — messages left at his office were not returned — but a website does try to explain its existence, much to the relief of Wiesehan… All the speculation over its sheer size — once completed, it will be considered one of the largest residential homes in the U.S. — and the fact that it’s being made of concrete has caused plenty of rumors to go around, Wiesehan said.” w/ photos

“The largest gun ever built was the ‘Gustav Gun’ built in Essen, Germany in 1941 by the firm of Friedrich Krupp A.G. Upholding a tradition of naming heavy cannon after family members, the Gustav Gun was named after the invalid head of the Krupp family – Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach. The strategic weapon of its day, the Gustav Gun was built at the direct order of Adolf Hitler for the express purpose of crushing Maginot Line forts protecting the French frontier. To accomplish this, Krupp designed a giant railway gun weighing 1,344 tons with a bore diameter of 31.5″ and served by a 500 man crew commanded by a major-general. Two types of projectiles were fired using a 3,000lb. charge of smokeless powder: a 10,584 lb. high explosive (HE) shell and a 16,540 lb. concrete-piercing projectile. Craters from the HE shells measured 30-ft. wide and 30-ft. deep while the concrete piercing projectile proved capable of penetrating 264-ft. of reinforced concrete before exploding! Maximum range was 23 miles with HE shells and 29 miles with concrete piercing projectiles. Muzzle velocity was approximately 2700 f.p.s.” w/ photos