Not only are they celebrating a new year, twins Betty Richards and Jenny Pelmore are celebrating their 100th birthdays!

Born half and hour apart in Manchester on New Year's Day 1908, the pair have barely been apart since and now live within a mile from each other in Cornwall.

The pair have survived five different monarchs, still both enjoy driving and even took up Spanish lessons at the age of 97 to keep their minds active.

Mrs Pelmore is an accomplished painter whilst her sister only recently stopped keeping bees.

Link -via Arbroath

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Isn’t it beautiful? -via Living the Scientific Life

Pro Traveler lists ten of the biggest, fastest, and scariest rollercoasters in the world. Just imagine, someone had to ride all these and more in order to rank them. Have you ridden any of these? Link

Crystal Island, the world’s biggest building, is set to be built in Moscow within five years. The plans are for a 27 million square foot interior! The cost? Four billlion dollars.

The statistics for the project are absolutely staggering; floor area alone will be four times the size of Pentagon in Washington DC. The incredible 1500 ft. tall multi use structure will feature 900 apartments, 3000 hotel rooms, an international school for 500 students, cinemas, a theater, sports complex and much more. There will also be a 16,500 space underground parking lot for all the visitors. The Crystal Island visitors will be able to enjoy panoramic views of Moscow on the viewing platforms located 980 ft. above ground.

Link -via Dark Roasted Blend

Every New Year in Germany and Scandinavia, it’s a tradition to watch Dinner for One, a comedy sketch written by British author Lauri Wylie for the theater in the 1920s. It’s also known as The 90th Birthday, or Der 90. Geburtstag. In the routine, Miss Sophie has outlived her friends, so her butler plays the part of each at the birthday dinner, which means he must drink multiple toasts! It’s one of 6 New Year Traditions from Around the World at mental_floss. Link

100 years ago today, Harry Bensley set off on a strange journey, in order to fulfill the requirements of a wager between John Pierpont Morgan and Hugh Cecil Lowther, 5th Earl of Lonsdale. The question was whether a man could walk around the world without being identified. The journey had 15 conditions, including that Bensley had to wear an iron mask from a suit of armor and push a baby carriage! Bensley spent the next six and a half years trying to fulfill the terms of the wager. Link

A king penguin living at the Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland has been promoted to the rank of honourable regimental sergeant major by the Norwegian Army.

Retired Major Nils Egelien of the Royal Norwegian Guards said: "It all started in 1961 when the King's Guard of Norway came to the military tattoo and we were very very interested in the king penguins.

"In 1972 we came back again and adopted a king penguin in the name of Nils Olav and the rank of lance corporal.

"In 1982 he was a corporal, in 87 a sergeant and in 1993 a regimental sergeant major."

The penguin that was promoted is the second Nils Olav, as the first to bear the name died in 1987. A bronze statue of the penguin will be made for the King of Norway. Link -via the Presurfer

Nicole Cotroneo at Girl Eats World is in St. Lucia, and has a delightful account of eating cocoa fresh from the tree in the Venus Rainforest Preserve. Link -via Grow-A-Brain

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A mashup of video from The Matrix and audio from Fight Club. They mesh so well, these movies must have more in common than I thought! -Thanks, kinomozg!

If you saw someone wearing these Hello Kitty contact lenses, you would miss everything they said because you would be busy trying to figure out what is wrong with their eyes. Come to think of it, my eyes are starting to hurt! Link -via Scribal Terror

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Make your own LED slippers, so you won’t trip over toys while making your way to the bathroom at night. They may also help you to avoid cats, but only if they are stationary. -via Unique Daily

(image credit: Reijo Kemppainen)
When the wind chill is below 0°F and the water is below freezing, surfing is the last thing on most people’s minds. Not so for Toronto surfers Mark Karvonen, Walter Tuokkola, and Geoff Johnson, who headed down to Lake Ontario to catch some waves. Why?

Mark: Because that's when the waves are at their best! Storms that track up the US, especially along the east coast, kick up some serious swells on Lake Ontario. A little snow storm won't keep us from the sport we love. In fact, we look forward to big storms because we know they bring waves with them.

Link -Thanks, photosapience!

A black hole in what has been nicknamed the “death star galaxy” is sending a jet of radiation and energy to a smaller neighboring galaxy. Millions of stars are in the path of the deadly stream, possibly with orbiting planets. Such an attack would render any planet lifeless. The cosmic violence is only about a million years old, and may stretch for another 10 to 100 million years. The two galaxies revolve around each other, and are 24,000 light years apart. The attack poses no danger to Earth, as the galaxies are over a billion light years away. Link -Thanks, Cheese Duck!

Inspired by a list of “best and worst quotes from 2007” and a trip to Krispy Kreme, Marty Z and his wife created this funny t-shirt design. http://www.cafepress.com/martyz -Thanks, Marty Z!

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How cool would it be to have your portrait done by a robot? The robot was designed by Sylvain Calinon, robot researcher at the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory (LASA).

When the robot recognizes a face in its field of view, it first grabs a snapshot of this face and extracts the relevant features and contours characterizing it. The robot then grabs a pen and start drawing the user's portrait, starting from the rough contours and adding details iteratively.

Link to Calinon’s site. -via Dump Trumpet