Spiral Island "made with 250,000 bottles"

Spiral Island I was a floating artificial island in a lagoon near Puerto Aventuras, on the Caribbean coast of Mexico south of Cancún. It was built by British eco-pioneer Richart (or "Rishi") Sowa beginning in 1998; he filled nets with empty discarded plastic bottles to support a structure of plywood and bamboo, on which he poured sand and planted numerous plants, including mangroves. It was destroyed by Hurricane Emily in 2005.[1] Sowa has built a new Spiral Island II in Isla Mujeres, Mexico.

The original island sported a two-story house, a solar oven, a self-composting toilet, and three beaches. He used some 250,000 bottles for the 66ft (20 m) by 54 ft (16 m) structure. The mangroves were planted to help keep the island cool, and some of them rose up to 15 ft (5 m) high.

Sowa is a musician, artist, and carpenter. Now in his fifties, he is an environmentalist who believes in recycling and low-impact living.

A book about Rishi's journey in building the original island and his philosophies, titled Spiralogically Speaking written by the German author Tanja Samed along with Rishi, is due to be released in 2008.

Spiral Island has been featured in a number of newspapers and TV documentaries around the world, and was featured in an episode of the Ripley's Believe It or Not! TV show.
source : www.wikipedia.com

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Climb the Rabbit's Hill

Colletto Fava is a 5,000 foot (1,500 m) high hill in the northern Piedmont region of Italy. In 2005, a massive pink stuffed bunny was finished being erected on the side of the mountain.

Members of the Viennese art group Gelatin that erected it not only expect people to observe the art work, but also for hikers to climb it and relax on the top.

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Welcome to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is a village on the island of Anglesey in Wales. It is best known for having the longest officially recognised place name in the United Kingdom, and one of the longest in the world.

The village's long name was contrived in the 1860s for the prestige of having the longest name of a railway station in Great Britain, and could not be considered an authentic word in the Welsh language. A translation into English would yield "St Mary's church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool and the church of St Tysilio of the red cave".

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Climb the World's steepest street

The quiet suburban street of Baldwin Street, in New Zealand's southern city of Dunedin, is reputed to be the world's steepest street.

At its maximum, the slope of Baldwin Street is approximately 1:2.86 (20° or 38%) - that is, for every 2.86 metres travelled horizontally, the altitude rises by 1 metre. Read More..

A Christian Chapel decorated by the bones of 40,000 people

The Sedlec Ossuary is a small Christian chapel, located beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints in the Czech Republic.

The ossuary contains approximately 40,000 human skeletons which have been artistically arranged to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel. Read More..

The smallest park in the world: 452 in2

Mill Ends Park in Portland, Oregon is the smallest park in the world, according to the Guinness Book of Records. The "park" is a 2 foot (610 mm) wide circle which in 1948 was intended to be the site for a light pole.

The small circle has featured many unusual items through the decades, including a swimming pool for butterflies (complete with diving board) and a miniature ferris wheel (which was delivered by a regular-sized crane). Read More..

The Mojave Lonely Phone Booth

The Mojave Phone Booth was a lone telephone booth in the Mojave National Preserve which attracted an online following in 1997, due to its unusual location. The booth was 15 miles from the nearest interstate highway, and miles from any buildings.

Fans called the booth attempting to get a reply, and a few took trips to the booth to answer, often camping out at the site. The story inspired the creation of a motion picture, Mojave Phone Booth, due for release in 2006.

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Erving's Location. Population: 1

Erving's Location is situated in Coos County, New Hampshire. In New Hampshire, locations, grants, townships (which are different from towns), and purchases are unincorporated portions of a county which are not part of any town and have limited self-government (if any, as many are uninhabited).

According to the 2000 census, one person lived in Erving's Location. Some have speculated that the census statistics for Erving's Location could have been a computer glitch.

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A museum devoted to the Penis

The Icelandic Phallological Museum in Husavík, Iceland, is a museum devoted to phallology. The museum currently has 154 specimens displayed like hunting trophies, embalmed in formaldehyde, or dried in display cases.

The museum attempts to collect penis specimens from every mammal extant in Iceland, including several species that are endangered or currently extinct in Icelandic waters. Read More..

Thank you for Fucking, Austria

Fucking is a small settlement (population c. 150) in Austria. The village is known to have existed as "Fucking" since at least 1070.

The settlement's most famous feature is a traffic sign with its name on it beside which English-speaking tourists often stop to have their photograph taken. The sign is the most commonly stolen street sign in Austria. Significant amounts of public funds are spent on replacing the stolen signs.
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Sealand: a micronation on the waters of the North Se

Flag

The Principality of Sealand

Currency

Sealand was founded as a sovereign Principality in 1967 in international waters, six miles off the eastern shores of Britain. In late June of 2006, the island suffered a devastating fire which destroyed much of the country's administrative centre and the main power generation facility which serves its population and industries. Fortunately, back-up systems exist which permit its activities to continue but the disaster has compromised significantly the quality of life of its inhabitants and the continued development of the island's economic and social growth.

The history of Sealand is a story of a struggle for liberty. Sealand was founded on the principle that any group of people dissatisfied with the oppressive laws and restrictions of existing nation states may declare independence in any place not claimed to be under the jurisdiction of another sovereign entity. The location chosen was Roughs Tower, an island fortress created in World War II by Britain and subsequently abandoned to the jurisdiction of the High Seas. The independence of Sealand was upheld in a 1968 British court decision where the judge held that Roughs Tower stood in international waters and did not fall under the legal jurisdiction of the United Kingdom. This gave birth to Sealand's national motto of E Mare Libertas, or "From the Sea, Freedom".

The official language of Sealand is English and the Sealand Dollar has a fixed exchange rate of one U.S. dollar. Passports and stamps have been in circulation since 1969 and the latter decade of the 20th century saw an impressive expansion in its activity both socially and industrially as it began to develop a growing economic base which underscored its long-standing membership of the international community of States.

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"Ghost Island" Hashima Island

Hashima Island (??; meaning "Border Island"), commonly called Gunkanjima (???; meaning "Battleship Island").The island was populated from 1887 to 1974 as a coal mining facility. The island's most notable features are the abandoned concrete buildings and the sea wall surrounding it.

"Battleship Island" is an English translation of the Japanese nickname for Hashima Island, Gunkanjima. The island's nickname came from its apparent resemblance to a battleship, or gunkan (jima is a mutation of shima) due to its high sea-walls.

It also is known as the Ghost Island. It is known for its coal mines and their operation during the industrialization of Japan. Mitsubishi bought the island in 1890 and began the project, the aim of which was retrieving coal from the bottom of the sea. They built Japan's first large concrete building, a block of apartments in 1916 to accommodate their burgeoning ranks of workers, and to protect against typhoon destruction.

In 1959, its population density was 835 people per hectare (83,500 people/km^2) for the whole island, or 1,391 per hectare (139,100 people/km^2) for the residential district, the highest population density ever recorded worldwide.

As petroleum replaced coal in Japan in the 1960s, coal mines began shutting down all over the country, and Hashima's mines were no exception. Mitsubishi officially announced the closing of the mine in 1974, and today it is empty and bare, which is why it's called the Ghost Island.





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A Very Thin Building

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