Oddity Central

Oddity Central

Eiffel Tower Nose Jobs, the Latest Plastic Surgery Trend in China

Posted: 05 Feb 2014 03:00 AM PST

In a bid to increase their job prospects after college, Chinese students are resorting to a bizarre practice – Eiffel Tower nose jobs. The latest trend in plastic surgery promises to create a nose that is classic, slender and sloping, similar to the sweeping curve of the Eiffel Tower.

Surgeon Wang Xuming, the brains behind the procedure, said: "We are influenced by the beauty of the Eiffel Tower, we are not content to just add something to the nose, we reconstruct it." The surgery costs about US $10,000 and involves the enlarging of the nose using tissue from the forehead.

Hundreds of posters advertising the procedure are plastered all over Chongqing city, where surgeon Xuming runs his practice. It shows a Western-looking woman with an almost-too-perfect nose, against a silhouette of the Eiffel Tower. Interestingly, many young women in China are eager to achieve a western appearance, as they believe it will give them an edge in the highly competitive job market.

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The European Space Agency Has a Sound System So Powerful It Can Kill You

Posted: 05 Feb 2014 02:00 AM PST

For those of you who like your music loud, here's a fun fact: sound can kill! Only if it's greater than 135 decibels, that is. You're not likely to get such high-power sound waves on your iPod, but there does exist a sound system that could kill you – the European Space Agency's monster sound horn.

The horn is the most powerful of its kind in Europe. When turned to maximum volume, there's absolutely no chance of survival. It is a part of ESA's Large European Acoustic Facility (LEAF), a test chamber used to perform acoustic noise tests on spacecrafts to make sure no damage occurs during rocket launches.

The sound test chamber is 16.4 m tall, 11 m wide and 9 m deep; one of its walls houses the massive horn. When nitrogen is shot through the horn, it can produce incredibly powerful sound – over 154 decibels. The effect is something like standing close to multiple jets taking off at once – enough to permanently deafen a human.

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Pointing the Way: The Mysterious Giant Arrows Scattered Across America

Posted: 05 Feb 2014 01:00 AM PST

So what if there were no high-tech GPS devices in the 1920s? Back then the US Postal Service invented its own navigation system – giant concrete arrows that pointed the way to Air Mail pilots.

When America's first Transcontinental Air Mail route opened in 1920, pilots faced difficulties in navigating the coast-to-coast route over the American Midwest. This was a time when radar and other modern flight planning implements were yet to be invented.

The very first pilots had to traverse the route relying on landmarks, which weren't always visible during bad weather. So in 1923, Congress approved the construction of a network of beacons to make the route navigable in the rain or the dark.

These beacons consisted of massive concrete arrows, painted bright yellow, set into the land about 10 miles apart. The arrows were illuminated by 50-foot-towers with powerful rotating gas lights. Visible from a height of 10,000 meters, the arrows helped pilots find their way during the worst weather and at night. They were also located close to emergency airfields just in case airplanes needed to make an emergency landing.

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