A giant whisky bottle, his choice for burial

He wants his funeral to be a celebration rather than a mourning. So he has made arrangements to go on his last journey in a giant whisky bottle.

It’s not unusual for people to choose their coffins before they die, but 48-year-old Anto Wickham’s choice is a rather strange one. He’s gone and spent $50,000 on a 10-foot casket shaped like a bottle of Jack Daniels whisky.

Although h is choice might be bizarre, Wickham, a former soldier, has a pretty valid reason for choosing it. After witnessing the death of eight Army pals during the Iraq war, he began to plan his own funeral.

“While working in Iraq I had a very close call,” said Wickham, who spent 22 years with the Royal Irish Regiment. “Over a 28-day period in February 2007, I was attacked 74 times and there were some days we would get three or four hits in one day. I was attacked by heavy machine gun fire, IEDs and roadside bombs.”

“I lost eight colleagues. At the time I thought I would have to plan my funeral because something could go wrong.” Wickham realised that he didn’t want a normal funeral, it had to be a celebration of life because he had been to ‘too many funerals of colleagues where they were very sad occasions’.

So the father-of-six decided to go for something completely different.

Wickham’s favourite drink happens to be Jack Daniels, so he was toying around with the idea of using it as a theme for his own funeral. And when he was at home on leave, he saw a TV program about Crazy Coffins, a company that specialises in unique, outrageous caskets. “I asked would it be possible to make it and the answer was yes.”

According to John Gill, the owner of Crazy Coffins, “this design was very complicated because there are so many curves in a Jack Daniels bottle and it is almost cut like a diamond.

“We have never had to do so much sign-writing before either. We built it bit by bit because the man was fighting fit and healthy so we knew there was no rush.”

The coffin was finally ready after several months of work, and Wickham flew in from Afghanistan - where he now works as a private security guard - just to take his first glimpse of it.

“It is absolutely fantastic,” he exclaimed. “When I opened it I could not believe the detail and the artwork. They have done a fantastic job. It is just amazing.”

Wickham admitted that it was a bit strange to get into the coffin at first. But he’s now gotten used to it and even posed for a few photographs as well. Wickham says he also has other ideas to make his burial more exciting exciting: “My headstone is going to have a solar-panelled iPad.

I plan to leave a video message with pictures of the coffin from start to finish.”

A fish with a see-through head

Known by the name of 'Macropinna microstoma' the Pacific Barreleye fish has a weird and other-worldly appearance. If you happen to meet him face to face underwater you will think it as some kind of evil spirit.

The Pacific Barreleye fish gets its name from large eyes that are literally shaped like barrels, topped with beautiful green lenses. And add to it the most weirdest thing is its head, which is completely transparent and filled with fluid. This unique creature lives at depths of around 2,000 to 2,600 ft. The Pacific Barreleye’s see-through head may seem weird, but it has a very clear purpose - to help it see better in the dark waters that it inhabits.

The Barreleye’s eyes have been found to be incredibly sensitive, snapping up any stream of light available. Unlike most other fish, both the eyes are in the front of the head and point in the same direction, which gives it amazing binocular vision. So the Barreleye is able to spot faint objects that other fish cannot, making it a feared predator.

It’s extremely fascinating, how it searches for prey. It starts off by staying still, eyes pointed upward in search of prey. Sometimes the eyes are rotated to face forwards, or the eyes are still and the body is rotated so that the mouth is pointing in the same direction as the eyes. When tiny silhouettes of prey are spotted, the Barreleye moves in exactly the same direction to catch them. Its flat, horizontal fins help it to swim very precisely.

This method is so efficient that it is sometimes able to even snatch food away from the stinging tentacles of other deep sea creatures. Its mouth is really tiny, so that’s of great help as well, and the transparent shield makes it immune to stings.

The Pacific Barreleye was discovered in 1939, but it hasn’t been spotted alive since 2004 off California’s central coast by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MABRI).

Its biological system apparently has flaws; it is said to be rather sensitive to pressure. When fished up, it’s head would shatter somewhere along the way and only mangled specimens would come up in the nets. MABRI was successful in finding the only such fish with its soft dome intact, measuring about six inches in length.

Real-life Spider-Man’s unbelievable climbs

He is called the real-life Spiderman.In the case of fictitious Spiderman it is known that he spins a web and uses it to swing across walls.Anyhow American rock climber Alex Honnold uses just his bare hands and fingers to climb any terrain.

He had an incredibly good start recently when he climbed El Sandero Luminoso, a 1,500 feet limestone wall route without the use of any safety gear.

While most parties generally take two days to complete the climb, Alex completed it in just three hours, by clinging to tiny crevices all the way up. “I would stop at the occasional good foothold and shake it out, but for the most part I kept a very steady pace,” he said.

A week in advance, Alex took the help of fellow climber and North Face team member Cedar Wright to clean and prepare the route. Together, they also pioneered the final thousand feet of terrain to the true summit.

“I climbed the route four times with Alex, and each time I was struck by how complex and tenuous the climbing is,” said Wright. “There are hundreds of hand and foot moves to remember, and at times it’s just a few millimetres of your fingers and toes that are keeping you connected to the wall.

Mostly I just tried not to think about him soloing the route while I was up there because it was so terrifying.”

But Alex seems completely unfazed. “It felt pretty straight-forward,” he said. “Once I started up, I was like this is awesome. I didn’t blow a single foot - like a ballerina.”