Takeshi's Castle is a Japanese game show that aired between 1986 and 1990, on the Tokyo Broadcasting System. It featured the Japanese actor Takeshi Kitano as a count who owns a castle and sets up difficult challenges for players to get to him. The show has become a cult television hit around the world.
Mark Birley was the doyen of upper-crust nightclub owners in London's West End. From the outset, Birley's approach was summed up by the phrase "only the best": no expense would be spared, either by himself as owner and investor or by members, who were charged the highest prices for membership, meals and drinks. For this, they received impeccable service, obsessive attention to the tiniest detail of decor, presentation, and exclusivity. The basic qualification for membership was money, preferably old money; but Birley had the commercial sense to allow in new money as well - provided there was plenty of it - discreetly enabling the nouveaux riches to rub shoulders with the louche end of the establishment, while lightening the wallets of all. But a life informed by, and dedicated to, luxury was no protection against sorrow. The face of his younger son, Robin, was terribly scarred at Aspinall's zoo when he was allowed into a tiger's cage at the age of 12. His elder son, Rupert, vanished without trace off the coast of Togo in 1986.
Anna Mouglalis is a French actor.
Yabusame originated as a way of training samurai in preparation for warfare, but it has always had close connections with Japan’s Shinto religion, and so is usually performed at Shinto shrines. Yabusame itself is very simple. An archer on horseback starts at one end of a roped-off track around 255 metres long, and gallops down it at high speed. Without stopping or slowing down, he fires three arrows in succession, each at one of three wooden targets placed about 70 metres apart on one side of the track.
Despite Japan’s strict gambling laws, pachinko, a pinball derivative played by millions of people, is a national obsession generating 30 trillion yen profit a year.
Mehmet Özyürek is a man with a very large nose.
Gordonstoun is a boarding school in Scotland. Three generations of British royalty were educated at Gordonstoun, including the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales. Seamanship has been a main part of the curriculum since the school began.
The Highway of Death is a six-lane highway between Kuwait and Iraq, officially known as Highway 80. It runs from Kuwait City to the border town of Safwan in Iraq and then on to the Iraqi city of Basra. The road had been used by Iraqi armored divisions for the 1990 Invasion of Kuwait.
The Fiat Tagliero Building in Asmara, Eritrea, is a Futurist-style service station completed in 1938 and designed by the Italian engineer Giuseppe Pettazzi. Conceived as a simple petrol station, Pettazzi designed a building that resembles an aeroplane incorporating a central tower with office space, cashiers desk and shop — and supporting a pair of 15 meter cantilevered, reinforced concrete wings. The building remains structurally sound and has not been damaged during numerous conflicts affecting the Horn of Africa during the twentieth century.
A single golden poison frog harbours enough poison to kill 10 grown men, making these frogs perhaps the most poisonous animals alive.