Oddity Central

Homeless Man Inspired by Hollywood Movie ‘The Terminal’ Is Living in Airport
Woman Turns Her Brooklyn Home into a Lush Urban Jungle
Man Swallows 40 Knives on Purpose, Lives to Tell the Tale

Homeless Man Inspired by Hollywood Movie ‘The Terminal’ Is Living in Airport

Posted: 22 Aug 2016 07:23 AM PDT

Inspired by the 2004 Tom Hanks film The Terminal, a homeless army veteran looking for a place to sleep recently decided to move into Heathrow Airport. He originally planned on staying for a couple of nights, but he’s been living there for almost a month.

A former member of the Parachute Regiment who served in Northern Ireland before working in private security, Simon Jones – fake name to protect his identity – fell on hard times after his business collapsed and his romantic relationship ended. Penniless and with no place to sleep, he remembered watching The Terminal, in which the main character is forced to live in an airport after war breaks out in his country leaving him stateless, and decided to crash at Heathrow Airport – the busiest in Europe – for a couple of nights.

“I suddenly lost everything when my business, which provided high-risk assignments and the training of personnel, collapsed. The business put an enormous strain on my relationship and we separated. I was suddenly homeless and, because all the bank accounts were in joint names, penniless,” Jones told English newspaper The Sunday Express. “I was mulling over what to do. I don't want to be a burden on anybody, so felt I couldn't stay on friends' floors for more than a night or two, especially since I can't pay my way. Then I remembered the Tom Hanks film about the bloke living at an airport. I realized there would be washing facilities and even free wi-fi.”

Posted: 22 Aug 2016 06:27 AM PDT

Fashion Model Summer Rayne Oakes has been living in a 1,200-square-foot converted industrial space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for 11 years, and during in that time she has managed to turn it into a stunning oasis filled with 500 plants, including a living wall, an irrigated vertical garden, a closet garden, edibles and exotic species.

“I think that the only way I’ve really been able to survive in New York is by surrounding myself with plants,” Oakes told Modern Farmer Magazine, which makes sense considering she grew up in a country house on five acres of land in rural northeastern Pennsylvania, surrounded by domestic animals and lots of plants. It was fashion modelling that first brought her to the Big Apple, but that, and everything else she has been involved in since relocating to the big city, has been about raising awareness to the environment.

“It was the modeling at start because at that point in time I wanted to look at how I could bring environmental awareness out to a wider audience,” Summer said in an interview with 6sqft. “I got kind of stuck on the idea that I could do it through fashion. Not that I had ever really been involved or interested in it, and I didn't even know how to get there other than by meeting people. Putting myself back into my 18-year-old self, it was the idea of wow, I think fashion could be a really cool way to disseminate environmental awareness.”

Summer-Rayne-Oakes-plants4

Posted: 22 Aug 2016 04:29 AM PDT

42-year-old Jarnail Singh was recently admitted to The Corporate Hospital in Gurdaspur, India, after complaining of severe stomach pains and general weakness. What he failed to mention was that he had voluntarily swallowed 40 sharp metal knives over the past couple of months.

After asking Singh a few questions and performing the routine checkup, doctors were puzzled about the cause of the pain, so they did an ultrasound. That revealed a large solid mass in the man’s stomach, which led medical staff to believe he was suffering from cancer. To confirm the diagnostic, they performed a gastroscopy – inserting an endoscopic camera in his stomach. The mass appeared metallic and doctors could identify shard of blades and wood, which was very unusual.

Jarnail-Singh-knives