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Thursday 5 July 2012

Real-life Superheroes: People with Extra Ordinary Abilities


Boy With The Incredible Brain (Daniel Tammet)

Daniel Paul Tammet is a British high-functioning autistic savant gifted with a facility for mathematical calculations, sequence memory, and natural language learning. He was born with congenital childhood epilepsy. In his mind, he says, each number up to 10,000 has its own unique shape and feel, that he can "see" results of calculations as landscapes, and that he can "sense" whether a number is prime or composite. He has described his visual image of 289 as particularly ugly, 333 as particularly attractive, and pi as beautiful. Tammet holds the European record for memorising and recounting pi to 22,514 digits in just over five hours. He also speaks a variety of languages including English, French, Finnish, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, Romanian, Estonian, Icelandic, Welsh and Esperanto. Tammet is creating a new language called Mänti. Tammet is capable of learning new languages very quickly. To prove this for the Channel Five documentary, Tammet was challenged to learn Icelandic in one week. Seven days later he appeared on Icelandic television conversing in Icelandic, with his Icelandic language instructor saying it was "not human."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLziFMF4DHA&feature=player_embedded


The Boy with Sonar Vision (Ben Underwood)

Ben Underwoodtaught is blind, both of his eyes were removed (cancer) when he was 3. Yet, he plays basketball, rides on a bicycle, and lives a quite normal life. He taught himself to use echo location to navigate around the world. With no guide-dogs, he doesn't even need hands: he uses sound. Ben makes a short click sound that bounces back from objects. Amazingly, his ears pick up the ecos to let him know where the objects are. He's the only person in the world who sees using nothing but eco location, like a sonar or a dolphin. 


The Magnetic Man (Liew Thow Lin)

Liew Thow Lin, a 70-year-old retired contractor in Malaysia, recently made news for pulling a car twenty meters along a level surface by means of an iron chain hooked to an iron plate on his midriff. He says that he discovered he had the amazing ability to make objects stick "magnetically" to his skin, and now he's added car-pulling to his repertoire. After reading an article about a family in Taiwan who possessed such power, he says he took several iron objects and put them on his abdomen, and to his surprise, all the objects including an iron, stuck on his skin and didn't fall down. Since this "gift'' is also present in three of his sons and two grandchildren, he figures it's hereditary.



The Lion Whisperer (Kevin Richardson)


Animal behaviourist Kevin Richardson says he relies on instinct to win the hearts and form an intimate bond with the big cats. He can spend the night curled up with them without the slightest fear of being attacked. His magic works not only work for lions but other animals such as cheetahs, leopards and even hyenas do not hold a threat against him. Lions are his favourites and its a wonder how he can play, carress, cuddle with them whose teeth are sharp enough to bite through thick steel. Its a dangerous job but to Kevin, its more of a passion for him. 


The Eye-Popping Man (Claudio Pinto)


Claudio Pinto can pop both of his eyes 4 cm (about 1 and a half inch) or 95% out of their sockets. He's now aiming (poppin'?) for a world record. Mr Pinto has undergone various tests and doctors say they have never seen or heard of a person who can pop the eyes as much as him. Mr Pinto, from Belo Horizonte, said: "It is a pretty easy way to make money. "I can pop my eyes out four centimetres each, it is a gift from God, I feel blessed." 


The Torture King (Tim Cridland)


Tim Cridland doesn't seem to feel pain like the rest of people. He astounded everyone by pushing needles into his arms without flinching and he now performs a terrifying act for audiences all over America. Scientific tests have shown that Tim can tolerate much higher levels of pain than are humanly possible. He explains that, by using mind over matter, he is able to push skewers through his body and put up with extreme heat and cold unharmed - but to do this safely he has extensively studied human anatomy, because puncturing an artery could be fatal. 


The Rubberboy (Daniel Browning Smith)


Five time Guiness Record holder, The Rubberboy is the most flexible man alive and the most famous contortionist. He has been in many professional basketball or baseball games and on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, ESPN's Sports Center, Oprah Winfrey, Ripley's Believe It or Not, Cirque du Soleil, Best Damn Sports Show Period, The Discovery Channel, Men in Black 2, HBO's Carnivale, and CSI: NY and American got a talent. He dislocates his arms to crawl through an unstrung tennis racquet. He performs contortion handstands and unique acrobatics.


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