San Juan Parangaricutiro was destroyed during the formation of the Parícutin volcano in 1943. Along with the village of Parícutin, San Juan Parangaricutiro was buried beneath ash and lava. The tops of cathedrals in old San Juan Parangaricutiro still protrude from the volcanic deposits.
The lighthouse tower is 23 metres high, and, when the lighthouse was built, it was 200 metres inland; and there were no large dunes around it. With time the sea moved in closer, and, simultaneously, the wind blew large amounts of sand up from the cliff. The sand piled up in front of and around the lighthouse. It filled the well and ruined the kitchen gardens. To suppress the sand pine grates were set in and lyme grass and helmet was planted in the dune. The only result was that the dune just grew larger. The more that was planted, the more the dune grew. At last the sand was so high that at times it was impossible to see the light from the sea. On August 1. 1968 the struggle was given up and the lighthouse was lit for the last time.
Salar de Uyuni is the world's largest salt flat. It is located in southwest Bolivia, near the crest of the Andes, and is elevated 3,656 meters above the mean sea level. It is covered by a few meters of salt crust, which has an extraordinary flatness with the average altitude variations within one meter over the entire area of the Salar. The crust serves as a source of salt and covers a pool of brine, which is exceptionally rich in lithium. It contains 50 to 70% of the world's lithium reserves, which has yet to be extracted.
A tessellated pavement is a rare erosional feature formed in flat sedimentary rock formations lying on some ocean shores. The pavement bears this name because the rock has fractured into polygonal blocks that resemble tiles, or tessellations. The cracks (or joints) were formed when the rock fractured through the action of stress on the Earth's crust and subsequently were modified by sand and wave action.
The Granite Mountain Records Vault is a large archive and vault owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints excavated 600 feet into the north side of Little Cottonwood Canyon. The Granite Mountain facilities feature a dry, environment-controlled facility used for long-term record storage, as well as administrative offices, shipping and receiving docks, a processing facility and restoration laboratory for microfilm. Records stored include genealogical information contained in over 2.4 million rolls of microfilm and 1 million microfiche. This equals about 3 billion pages of family history records. The vault's library of microfilm increases by up to 40,000 rolls per year. Since 1999, the church has been digitizing the genealogical microfilms stored in the vault. The church makes the records publicly available through its Family History Centers, as well as online at its FamilySearch website.
Caño Cristales is a Colombian river. The bed of the river from the end of July through November is variously coloured yellow, green, blue, black, and especially red.
Fort Carroll is an artificial island and abandoned hexagonal sea fort in the middle of the Patapsco River, just south of Baltimore, Maryland.
The African wild dog typically roams the open plains and sparse woodlands of sub-Saharan Africa. These long-legged canines have only four toes per foot, unlike other dogs, which have five toes on their forefeet.
Shergar was an acclaimed racehorse, and winner of the 1981 Epsom Derby by a record 10 lengths, the longest winning margin in the race's 226-year history. On 8 February 1983, he was stolen from the Ballymany Stud, near The Curragh in County Kildare, Ireland by masked gunmen with the body never being discovered. The incident has been the inspiration for several books, documentaries, and a film.
Rhodesia was an unrecognised state located in Southern Africa that existed between 1965 and 1979 following its Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the United Kingdom on 11 November 1965.