Mike
The Menzi Muck is a Swiss walking excavator built for terrain where ordinary construction machinery cannot remain upright. Each of its four wheels sits at the end of an independently controlled hydraulic leg, allowing the machine to widen, crouch, climb over obstacles or brace itself across steep slopes and riverbeds. Rather than adapting the landscape for an excavator, the operator continually rearranges the excavator beneath them.
Moskva Pool was a 130-metre-wide outdoor swimming pool built in central Moscow in 1958. Its circular basin occupied the foundations of the Palace of the Soviets, an enormous government building planned after the cathedral previously on the site was demolished, but never completed. The pool was heated year-round, allowing thousands of people to swim through Moscow winters beneath clouds of steam.
The Mamuthones are masked figures who appear during Carnival in Mamoiada, Sardinia. Twelve men wear black wooden faces, dark sheepskins and up to 25 kilograms of cattle bells strapped across their backs. They advance in two rows, using synchronized steps and shoulder movements to make every bell strike together, while brightly dressed Issohadores circle them with ropes. The procession’s original meaning remains unknown.
Musgum mud huts are tall earthen dwellings traditionally built by the Musgum people of Cameroon and Chad. Their pointed, shell-like walls are covered in raised geometric ribs that strengthen the structure while providing footholds for construction and annual repairs. A small opening at the peak releases heat and smoke. The decoration is also the ladder.
Mudhifs are monumental guest houses built by the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq entirely from reeds and papyrus. Thick bundles are planted in the ground, bent together into arches and covered with woven screens—without conventional timber. The form appears on a 5,000-year-old carving from Uruk and remains in use for meetings, ceremonies and receiving guests. Few buildings have changed so little, partly because their construction material continues growing outside the door.
Madman Muntz was an American car dealer, electronics engineer and early master of the unhinged television commercial. Wearing ridiculous costumes, he threatened to destroy cars that failed to sell and claimed he bought retail but sold wholesale because it was more fun.
The Michelotti Shellette was a tiny beach car commissioned by yacht designer Philip Schell and introduced in 1968. Giovanni Michelotti removed the doors from a Fiat 850, cut its sides low and furnished the interior with wicker seats, wood trim and an entirely wicker-covered dashboard. A canvas canopy provided approximately as much protection as Mediterranean owners expected to need. Roughly eighty were made, often as land tenders carried aboard yachts. Aristotle Onassis ordered an automatic version whose removable wicker glovebox could also serve as a breadbasket. The Shellette was designed for the narrow distance between a marina and lunch.
The Morning Glory is a vast tubular cloud that regularly crosses northern Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria at dawn. It can extend for 1,000 kilometres while travelling at speeds of up to 60 kilometres per hour. The cloud forms inside a moving atmospheric wave created by opposing sea breezes: moisture condenses along its leading edge and evaporates behind it, making the entire cylinder appear to roll across the sky. Near Burketown, glider pilots gather each spring to surf the rising air along its front for hundreds of kilometres.
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.
Mehmet Özyürek is a man with a very large nose.