Top 10 INSANE Ideas That Actually Worked!

 How did one man make a million dollars of one webpage?

 What is the Air Force doing buying up thousands of Playstation 3s?

 Find out in 10 Wild Ideas That Actually Worked!

 Number 10.

 "Let The Sunshine In"

 The town of Viganella sits nestled in the Alps of Northern Italy, it is so deep in the mountains that there were months on end that Viganella, with a population of around 200, went without sunlight.

 In order to combat this problem and keep the vampires at bay, they came up with an idea that sounds like the beginnings of a plan from a supervillain--they built a gigantic mirror.

 The mirror is made of a 26 by 16 foot sheet of reflective steel and is controlled by a computer which helps it to track the sun's position and shoot those healthy rays back on Viganella during the dark times.

 The mirror was completed in 2006, and in a celebration dubbed the 'Day of Light' it was unveiled and officially put into use.

 Another town in Norway, called Rjukan, long suffered from the same problem so they too decided to use mirrors to shed some light.

 In 2013, Rjukan completed a set of three mirrors each with an area of about 17 square meters.

 These mirrors have more of a focused reflection than that of Viganella as they are used to create a 6,500 square foot area of sunlight right onto the town square.

 Number 9.

 "Two-Faced Tactic"

 How do you defend against man-eating tigers that will pounce when your back is turned?

 You find a way to make it look like you are always facing them.

 That's exactly what a group of Indian workers did in the Sundarbans.

 The Sundarbans is a thick forest region in the Bay of Bengal and is home to large portion of Bengal Tigers who have been known to hunt human prey.

 It had long been a part of legend and survival theories that these tigers would only attack humans when there backs were turned but it took a Science Club of Calcutta student in 1986, to find what seems like an equal parts obvious and silly solution: Wear a mask on the back of your head, so the tiger thinks you are always looking at them.

 They saw immediate results from a small sample size but once the trend caught on the proof that the masks were effective was overwhelming.

 Over the next three years no one wearing a mask became tiger lunch whereas before the masks the fatalities from such attacks were a staggering 60 per year.

 Though some believe that eventually the tigers will catch on the tradition still continues to this day.

 The Indian Forestry Service even hands out masks to all of their workers who enter The Sundarbans.

 Number 8.

 "Super Snow Blower"

 Up until the 1960s when a blizzard hit and covered runways and train tracks, travel and shipping came to virtual standstill sometimes lasting days on end.

 But Russians and Americans got an ingenious idea 'why not modify these outdated jet engines we have lying around that can reach temperatures upwards of one thousand degrees and shoot thousands of pounds of force into super snow blowers?'.

 The idea worked even better than expected with the Russians using them to quickly clear runways and Americans hooking them up to train tracks and making it possible to clear extensive areas of snow in a matter of hours.

 Though they have proven extremely expensive to keep running as they use incredible amounts of fuel they are still in use today.

 In Boston, one of these snow blowing behemoths is aptly named Snowzilla, and using a jet engine that dates to the 1950s is brought out whenever the a blizzard bogs down the Metro-North railway.

 Snowzilla is 27 feet long and weighs over 26,000 pounds and has even been loaned out when other cities need its super-blower services.

 Number 7.

 "Shade Balls"

 How can a black ball about 4 inches in diameter help to save valuable drinking water?

 Well by itself--not much--but when you take millions of these balls and drop them in a water reservoir they can not only save water but help to keep it clean.

 These are what have become known as shade balls and they were the ingenious idea of biologist Brian White and have proven effective in reducing evaporation and the growth of microorganisms.

 They do this by shading the water which deters bacteria as they thrive in sunlight.

 The shade also cools the temperature of the water which can help stop the production of carcinogens that are known to sometimes affect water supplies.

 The state of California has already gone gung-ho on the shade ball movement by dumping millions upon millions of them in its various reservoirs.

 This has been a significant contributor to the reduction of wasted water in the state.

 The droughts in California have been getting more and more severe so saving water has never been more important as it is now.

 Number 6.

 "Musical Roads"

 What sound like something that would only be real in the realm of Mario Kart, musical roads are actually a real thing, though still in their relative infancy.

 Though there are now various types of these roads in Korea, Denmark and the United States the first ones were created in Japan by Hokkaido Industrial Research.

 The roads are designed with specialized grooves in them so that when you drive over them different tones resonate from the vibration of the car.

 Of course for many of the roads you have to be going exactly the right speed limit, otherwise the song will be distorted or you won't hear it at all.

 In the U.S., a portion of Route 66 was recently turned into one of these melody roads sp that 'America the Beautiful' can be heard from your cars vibrations.

 Number 5.

 "Money Page"

 This idea didn't save live or change the world but it as far as hair-brained money making schemes goes it hard to top this idea that everyone probably wishes they would have thought of first.

 In Wiltshire, England 2005, in order to pay his tuition for the Business Management degree he had just started pursuing, 21 year old English student Alex Tew got a brilliant yet simple idea that would end up paying for school and more.

 He thought 'what if I can make a website that consists of grid of a million pixels and then sell those pixels as ad-space for $1 a pop?.'

 He called this project the Million Dollar Homepage and not only was it a success the site went viral and Alex had sold every pixel in under six months.

 The final 1,000 pixels sold at auction in early 2006 for $38,100.

 Alex ended up making over $37,000 more than what seemed like a pipe-dream goal of a million dollars.

 Some of the most prominent advertisers were that of Yahoo!, The Times and the comedy rock-band Tenacious D.

 The Million Dollar Homepage holds a significant place in the evolution of online crowdfunding, being both an innovative idea and an almost perfect example of economic fundamentals at work.

 But on the flipside it could be a dangerous sign of capitalism run amok.

 Number 4.

 "Dolphin Saving Giant"

 Veterinarians at an aquarium in Fushun, China had a problem, two dolphins had accidentally swallowed sharp plastic debris that has fallen into their tanks.

 The veterinarians had tried everything to remove them, but were unsuccessful as any instrument they used would be blocked by the constriction of the animals stomachs.

 The situation was becoming dire as the dolphins started to show signs of significant fatigue, depression and loss of appetite.

 The vets thought to themselves 'if only we had long enough arms to reach in their and pull out the plastic ourselves'.

 Then it donned on them.

 Maybe our arms aren't long enough but we might know of someone who would be up to the task.

 So who would have arms long enough to reach all the way down into a dolphin's stomach?

 Why, the world's tallest man of course.

 With a height of 7 feet and 8.95 inches and arms that are almost 3 and a half feet long, Mongolian Bao Xishun was happy to help.

 After the proper precautionary measures were taken, such as wrapping the dolphin's teeth in towels and gently holding their heads back, Bao was able to reach in and extract most of the pieces from the dolphins stomach.

 Though he was unable to grab some of the smaller pieces, the most dangerous parts were removed and the dolphins were able to digest the leftovers.

 The dolphins were able to make a full recovery and live healthy lives at the Royal Jidi Ocean World, thank to the heroics of this friendly giant.

 Number 3.

 "Six-Legged Stitches"

 Modern stitches weren't invented until the 1920s, of course there had been other versions involving the thread and needle for centuries, but before that type of precise wound-care, people had to make due with anything they could find laying around in their environment to stop the bleeding.

 Certain civilizations like the ancient Chinese found a solution in Dorylus ants.

 Also known as driver ants, these six-legged pests have some of the largest mandibles of any genus of ants and along with it the strongest bites of these mound-building insects.

 Though their bite can be quite painful, several ancient people in places like South America, Africa and Asia used the ants unique attributes to their advantage.

 In order to quickly close gashes, driver ants were used as a form of ancient stitches.

 A person would hold the skin together and then have the ant bite the wounded person and hold the wound closed.

 They would then twist of the body of the ant off while its locked mandibles stayed in place, repeating this process along the entirety of the wound.

 Though we are unsure of who came up with this crazy idea first it is a genius way of using one's natural surroundings for survival.

 Number 2.

 "Silly Savior"

 Silly string is messy and colorful and that's about it.

 Or that's what any normal person might think anyway.

 The truth is this common New Year's Eve party favor actually has a practical use and has probably saved lives.

 In what you would think would only be something you would see in a movie about child spies or the result of a clown soldier being forced into active duty, silly string is commonly used to detect tripwire.

 In fact, this party-gag is so useful to soldiers, one woman gathered up and shipped 80,000 cans of silly string and sent it to her son and his fellow troops in Iraq in 2007.

 Why is this aerosol plastic goo often considered a nuisance to those enjoying the splendors of civilian life so much so as to be banned in several American cities, so effective at detecting dangerous booby traps?

 Because of its cheap cost, bright color, sticky properties and ability to be shot distances up to 12 feet.

 Soldiers can spray silly string all over a possibly hazardous area and quickly identify tripwire that are sometimes made of extremely fine fishing lure.

 Silly string was originally invented in a failed attempt to create a spray on cast so its inventor has to be proud that it is finally being put to a use that can help people and probably in an even more important way at that.

 As it was invented in 1972, this trick may have been known about for years, but the tactic didn't become commonplace on the battlefield until the 21st century.

 Whoever first got the idea, though maybe a bit funny in the head for having the string on them in the first place, is a hero and real-life MacGyver.

 Number 1."Condor Cluster"

 Most of what the military does nowadays doesn't involve boots on the ground but satellites, drones and powerful computers.

 To be ahead of the enemy the United States needs to be constantly innovating and improving their computers but the problem is the computers needed to perform complicated tasks like radar enhancement and processing high-resolution satellite imagery are very expensive.

 Meanwhile article game systems are being churned out by companies like Sony and Microsoft with incredible processing power and selling them at a price that the average consumer can afford.

 Seeing this, the U.S. Air Force got a wild idea, 'instead of building a supercomputer from scratch, why not buy up hundred of these article-game systems then connect and customize them to do the necessary computations?'

 The idea worked to resounding success and helped to save millions of dollars along the way.

 In what is called a condor cluster, The United States Air Force Research Laboratory connected just over 1,700 PlayStation 3s creating the Department of Defense's fastest interactive computer system capable of half a quadrillion operations a second.

 This type of speed used to cost over $20 million dollars but the Condor Cluster only cost around $2 million and uses only one-tenth of the power.