Sima Humboldt
Sima Humboldt is an enormous sinkhole located in Venezuela.
Skovshoved Petrol Station
Skovshoved Petrol Station is a historic, still-operating filling station in Skovshoved at the northern outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark. First opened in 1936, it was designed by Arne Jacobsen and is an example of the functionalist style typical of the time.
Angelo d’Arrigo
Angelo d'Arrigo was an Italian aviator, of French origin, who held a number of world records in the field of flight, principally with microlights and hang gliders, with or without motors. In 2003 he flew 5,500 kilometres from northern Siberia to the Caspian Sea in Iran in the company of a flock of Siberian Cranes who had been born in captivity and, due to imprinting, considered him their parent: the bird is at risk of extinction and in order to try to save the species, Russian ornithologists hatched this plan: have the eggs incubated under Angelo's hang-glider, so the chicks saw this as they hatched. Have Angelo be with the chicks as they fledge. And when they were ready to fly, have them fly alongside Angelo so they would consider him their mentor. That way, he could show them the traditional migratory route for their species. They had no other way to learn it.
La Castiglione
La Castiglione was an Italian courtesan and secret agent who achieved notoriety as a mistress of Emperor Napoleon III of France. She was an advocate for Italian unification through the influence she had upon the Emperor. She was also a significant figure in the early history of photography as a collaborator of photographer Pierre-Louis Pierson.
Mikhail Krug
Mikhail Krug was a Russian singer, one of the leading singers of the style of songs known as blatnaya pesnya (songs about criminals). A significant portion of Mikhail Krug's songs invoke the secret code of Russian prisons and the symbolism of prisoner tattoos. They describe the emotional emptiness and the despair of the prisoners who are separated from their families and loved ones. He also wrote many love songs, and songs about Tver. Krug liked to associate with criminal elements, which inspired his music and his diamond ring was a gift from the notorious criminal Khobot. In writing his songs, Krug used a 1924 dictionary of underworld slang, compiled by the NKVD. In the late evening of June 30, 2002, Mikhail Krug was fatally wounded in his Tver house by unknown intruders. He died in a hospital a few hours later.
Capela dos Ossos
In Renaissance Europe, long before the concept of organ donation could have been envisioned, cadavers were given a new life as architectural ornaments, and skeletons were put to use as building materials. Why continue piling up bones in an ossuary when you could put them to practical use-or better yet, turn them into a thing of beauty? Thus began the oddest interior-decorating style in history: rooms made entirely of human bones.
Irving Lazar
The world's most fabled agent, Lazar was just over five feet tall. Humphrey Bogart (who dubbed him Swifty, after Lazar made five movie deals for him in as many hours), once said his agent was the only man alive who cheated at croquet by walking through the hoop after the ball. Bogart was one of the few actors Lazar represented; he preferred writers, who liked working in solitude, whereas actors needed constant, time-consuming reassurance. He conducted most of his business over the telephone. "Some day he'll have to have an operation to have the phone removed from his ear," his client Garson Kanin said. The dapper agent's clientele also included Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Billy Wilder, Neil Simon, Richard Rodgers, Lerner and Loewe, Lillian Hellman and Ernest Hemingway.
Train surfing
The phenomenon of riding on the outside of trains came with the appearance of the first railway lines. On a series of first railroads, riding on rooftops and footboards of trains was common, but over time, starting from the second half of the 19th century, with an increase in the sizes and speed of trains, passenger coaches began to be produced fully covered and insulated from streets with a placement of all passenger seats inside carriages in order to improve the safety of passengers and prevent people falling from a moving train. However, some individuals have continued riding on the outside of trains.
Sutyagin House
Based in the Russian city of Archangelsk, ex-gangster Nikolai originally intended the building to contain two floors but couldn’t help himself when he realized there was nothing to stop him adding more on top.
Solovetsky Islands
The Solovetsky Islands of northern Russia are probably best known for the Solovetsky Monastery, a great medieval monastery that became a notorious Soviet prison camp. But these remote islands were sacred for thousands of years before the monastery's foundation in 1429, as evidenced by an array of stone alignments, circles, and mysterious labyrinths that can still be seen there today.