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Travis Fessler of Florence, Kentucky breaks the world record of putting the most Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches in his mouth by stuffing 11 roaches into his mouth at one time. This beats the previous record of 9 which was set by Jungle John Lamedica. The recod was broken by Fessler to promote Mayhem Mansion a charity haunted house in Morning View, Kentucky.

-via J-Walk Blog

Update: Check out Travis Fessler's website and business. And the site for information on Mayhem Mansion, the charity haunted house.

Today is the United Nations first ever Global Handwashing Day.

Unicef says using soap to wash hands, particularly after contact with excreta, can reduce diarrhoeal diseases by over 40% and respiratory infections by 30%.

Diarrhoea and respiratory infections are the main cause for child deaths in India.

Nearly half the population of South Asia has no access to toilets, whilst in sub-Saharan Africa this figure is as low as 28%.

With such poor sanitation standards, it is little surprise that children in the region are susceptible to diarrhoea, hepatitis and pneumonia - often leading to their deaths, the UN says.

The UN is celebrating 2008 as the International Year of Sanitation.

Have you washed your hands? Link -via Simply Left Behind, where you'll find more links on the subject.

Here's a roundup of articles on research done on the doctor-patient relationship and statistics about medical care. Who knew that surgeons are (on average) taller and better-looking than other doctors? Other results cover more important subjects, like misdiagnosis or incorrect medication instructions. Link -Thanks, Karen!

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The grey-headed flying fox {wiki} is born while its mother hangs upside down! It seems counterproductive, but the I suppose the bat mother knows what she's doing. This was recorded at the Royalk BATanical Gardens last Sunday. -via Arbroath

This PC has been modded into a Battlestar Galactica tribute!

This Battlestar Galactica PC is the most impressive case mods I've seen in a long while, from the front side-loading optical drive player—located behind a laser-cut transparent BSG medallion, so you can actually see the disc spinning—to the opening side bay to see the interior of the PC to the front LCD screens to the top spacecraft carrier bay, with functioning runway lights.

See more photo and videos at Gizmodo. Link -Thanks, Jon Jason!

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Watch as a farmer in Colombia processes coca leaves into cocaine. It's a nasty procedure. -via Digg

The National Hockey League has changed quite a bit over the past few years. Can you name all 30 current NHL teams in 5 minutes? That's the challenge today in the mental_floss Lunchtime Quiz. I didn't even try, as I knew I would fail miserably. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/19307

Diana has been collecting sketches of the comic book super hero Nightcrawler for four years! Now she is sharing all 192 of them online, with links to the original artists. Link -Thanks, Diana Nock!

There are around 2,000 19th century octagonal houses scattered around the United States. Mark Twain wrote his greatest novels while staying in one. P.T. Barnum owned one. The man behind this design was Orson Squire Fowler, a ministerial student, phrenologist, self-taught architect, and sex researcher.

“Why,” asked Fowler, was there” so little progress in architecture when there is so much in other matters! Why continue to build in the same square form of all past ages?” Orson Fowler knew close to nothing about architecture, he had never built a home, much less been trained in architectural design. In appropriate new age style, Fowler looked to nature for his design reforms. “She has ten thousand globular or cylindrical forms to one square one” Fowler wrote “Why not then adopt this spherical form of house?” Not being completely impractical, Fowler knew truly cylindrical houses would be far too expensive and difficult to construct. The compromise was the octagon.

Fowler published “The Octagon House: A Home For All, or A New, Cheap, Convenient, and Superior Mode of Building” In 1848. The book was well received, perhaps because along with the octagon shape, Fowler suggested a gravity-fed water system with indoor plumbing, central heating and natural gas lighting in his design, features that regardless of the house shape were a vast improvement over other current house designs. The book went through 9 printings with hundreds of Inkwell houses sprouting up within the decade.

Curious Expeditions has the story of Orson Squire Fowler and his 8-sided houses, plus many links to more octagonal home resources. http://curiousexpeditions.org/?p=376

Artist Brigid Berlin is exhibiting ten years worth of her needlepoint work, including a series of New York Post covers. The show will run October 21st through November 22nd at the John McWhinnie and Glenn Horowitz Bookseller in New York. http://animalnewyork.com/news/2008/10/artist-needles-the-post.php -Thanks, Bucky Turco!

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Ringo Starr no longer has time for fan mail. Alrighty then. -via Arbroath

National Geographic Channel and Channel 4 will present a documentary in Britain featuring photographs of various animal species before they are born. Extraordinary Animals In The Womb will air October 20th.

Ground-breaking photographic techniques, plus state-of-the-art graphics, 4-D scanning techniques and the most sophisticated natural history models ever, have all been used to provide an unparalleled glimpse into a world that few of us would ever expect to see.

For the first time ever, we can follow the embryonic journey of four different animals: our kangaroo, the lemon shark, the Emperor penguin, and the parasitic wasp. And one of the most jaw-dropping sequences is a glimpse of the joey just before he is born - a mass of kicking legs and punching arms, raring to go.

Not all the stories are cute and cuddly. Lemon shark fetuses eat their siblings! The Mail Online has a sneak peak with photographs of several species, including a larger image of the kitten shown here. Link -via Unique Daily

How well do you know the US states? They all have nicknames, but in today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss you'll only be tested on 15 of them. I scored 53%, and I kicked myself a couple of times when I found out the correct answers. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/19206

Mark Shields took a 1978 Corvette and turned it into a 1989 Batmobile! Link -via Dark Roasted Blend

See more pictures at Shields' website.

If someone told you there was a nice job for you IF you got a tattoo on your face, wouldn't you want to confirm it first? Two men in Indonesia didn't question the offer.

The pair had their faces permanently inked after village chief Sawiyono told them he had received a text message from a government official offering them work as Jakarta intelligence officers.

The official, who said it was a job requirement to have their faces tattooed with dragons, was later discovered to be a hoaxer — but not before Nanang, 30, and Bambang, 40, had already undergone the painful and disfiguring procedure.

Sawiyono, the village chief who passed along the message, was horrified when he double checked and found it was a hoax. Nanang and Bambang have filed a police report. Link -via Fark