The arapaima is a South American freshwater fish. It is a living fossil and one of the largest freshwater fishes in the world. Because the arapaima produces large, boneless steaks, it is considered a delicacy. Commercial fishing of the arapaima has been banned by the Brazilian government.
A summer capital is a city used as an administrative capital during heat waves. Sadly, the concept is almost extinct, as air-conditioning systems have reduced the need to periodically relocate to a more temperate city. While artificial cooling of indoor air is a more efficient way of dealing with underarm sweat patches, it comes at the expense of the gorgeous extravagance of moving all political activity across the land you are trying to govern. Notable summer capitals include San Sebastián in the northern part of Spain and Palanga, a Lithuanian seaside town.
Xanadu was the summer capital of Kublai Khan's Yuan Dynasty in China.
Dreamboat Annie is the debut album by the band Heart, released in 1976.
Nemo 33 is the deepest swimming pool in the world. Its maximum depth is 35 meters. It contains 2,500,000 liters of non-chlorinated, highly filtered spring water maintained at 30 °C and holds several simulated underwater caves at the 10 m depth level. There are numerous underwater windows that allow outside visitors to look into the pools at various depths. The complex was designed by Belgian diving expert John Beernaerts as a multi-purpose diving instruction, recreational, and film production facility.
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.